The Value of Placemaking with Graham Cobb

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 114 — The Value of Placemaking with Graham Cobb
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Graham Cobb
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.842 Brandon Burton
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.
00:13.95 Intro Voice
Now your host, he loves the look of fresh cut grass. He's my dad, Brandon Burton.
00:20.588 Brandon Burton
Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Burton, and you're joining us today for episode 114. And it's my goal here on Chamber Chat Podcast to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Graham Cobb, who's the president and CEO of the Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce. And I've been wanting to have Graham on the podcast for a little while now. before we started the recording, we've mentioned, I guess about a year ago, I'd mentioned to Graham that I wanted to have him on the podcast, and here we are. But a little bit of background on Graham. Graham Cobb, he's stank at sports, so playing in a punk rock band is how he learned teamwork. And then he spent 20 plus years earning a PhD in pizza. Before heading to Arkansas Business to learn how to engage an audience with content in order to find customers and to help local and national businesses. In late 2013, he entered the chamber world as a COO of the Little Rock Regional Chamber and is currently the president and CEO of the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce, where he gratefully serves the community that's home to the world's greatest adventurepreneur, Sam Walton. Boasting a rich culture of culinary, arts, and outdoor activities, Bentonville is at once metropolitan and Main Street. It's both global and local. Bentonville's greatest gift to its citizens is that of widescreen living, a 360-degree human experience revealing a past, present, and future that connects its residents to nature, to the world, and to each other by organically weaving arts and culture. The outdoors, Culinary excellence and the power of human relationships into people's everyday lives. Graham relishes his quality of life, this quality of life, as it provides him time to chase fast folks on the mountain bike trails, enjoy great meals with amaz his amazing wife Lisa, and soak up precious moments with his children, William and Sissy, searching for painted rocks, exploring on family rides, and immersing themselves in creativity on the Crystal Bridges Art Trail and Campus.
02:43.424 Brandon Burton
of the momentary. I'm excited to to have Graham with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And as I shared his bio, you can see that Bentonville is a it's a special place. And that weaves very well into our topic for discussion today, which will be the value of placemaking when it comes to economic development. And we will get into this discussion right after this quick break. Would you be interested in creating even more value? From the processes that you're already doing on a daily basis? Swypit has been one of my sponsors for Chamber Chat from the beginning. Swypit provides credit card payment solutions that will save your chamber up to 40% on your processing fees, and Swypit can integrate your credit card processing seamlessly into your existing membership software. Swypit does not charge chambers to switch, and they will make switching simple. In addition to these savings, Swypit has an affinity program for Chambers of Commerce so you can earn more nondues revenue to support your budget. Learn more about Swypit by requesting your free cost savings analysis and become more profitable today by visiting Chamberchatpodcast.com/cc as in credit card. Again, that's Chamberchatpodcast.com/cc, and you can join many other chambers. As you begin swiping with Swypit. All right, Graham, we are back. Thank you for joining us today on the Chamber Chat podcast. If you will, say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something else interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
04:27.358 Graham Cobb
Hey everybody, it's great to be here. Brandon, thank you so much for having me. And first off, a big virtual fist bump and kudos to you for making through all of that crazy language and the the fake words that I I I make up when I I can't find a word to describe something. I you know, I just try to to make my own. So Getting through sayings like widescreen living and adventurepreneur show that you're certainly nimble and willing to pivot and evolve. and also familiar with Bentonville. So I appreciate that. Yeah, things are great here in the Northwest Quadrant of Arkansas. it's a special time in Bentonville, Arkansas, and really a time that I think maybe comes around once in a lifetime. in in a in only in only a few places will you find this dynamic economy, but also just a a fast growing community, a high performing community. But one that really understands how important investment in quality of life is, you know, from a social, emotional, mental and spiritual space. you know, there's a commitment there that there's a commitment there that's truly workforce development and community development.
06:05.524 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit more about Bentonville, about about the greater Bentonville area chamber, kind of size, location. I mean, you mentioned north northwest Arkansas, but budget, staff, that sort of thing. So we can gain some perspective to how you guys are managing the the growth and expansion that's going on there in in Bentonville right now.
06:27.128 Graham Cobb
Sure thing. So Bentonville, our chamber has about eleven hundred members. what's interesting is we have a really unique segment of our membership. So much like other chambers, you know, about 80% of our members are small businesses, but then we have a whole side of our membership that's here to do business with Fortune One, the world's largest retailer, Walmart, whose headquarters is in Bentonville, Arkansas was founded. by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas. And now the third generations of Waltons are located here and in driving Walmart forward from Bentonville. So we have an entire side of our membership that's made up of high level corporate investors. They want to find ways to better do business with Walmart. So we provide programming for them to help them get FaceTime with leadership. Learn from leadership at Walmart, but then also learn best practices from their industry peers. we have a staff of 10. we run a couple major events in this region. One is the Northwest Arkansas Business Women's Conference, which draws about 1,200 women annually. And then the Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit, now on its seventh year, that draws about 1,600 folks. In fact, Moving to virtual this past year, we saw an increase in out-of-state attendees to that virtual event of about 13%, 30 states, 10 countries. our budget is about $2 million. and about $400,000 of that is membership. about $300,000, between $300 and $500,000 of that is economic development projects. So we do some different stuff. one of the things that I have learned since moving up here is you know, you don't get to be the world's largest retailer by doing the same stuff. Sam Walton believed in a constant cadence of of improvement. long before you know Google had KPIs around failure, meaning you needed to fail.
08:49.72 Graham Cobb
Sam Walton was having Saturday morning meetings with his store managers and he wanted to know what you had done differently, where you had failed. And if you hadn't, why hadn't you failed? you know, if you aren't screwing something up, you're probably not doing enough. So we we actually have projects that utilize influencers to tell economic development stories and to market this region, to market Bentonville. but speaking of the region, let me put that in context. Northwest Arkansas is made up of five major cities Siloam Springs, Fayetteville, Arkansas, where the University of Arkansas is, Springdale, Arkansas, where Tyson Foods is, the nation's largest poultry producer, Fortune 80. And then just down the street from us is Rogers, Arkansas, the home of JB Hunt. Which is around Fortune three fifty-four on the Fortune 500. So you have you have three Fortune 500 companies located in Northwest Arkansas. You have 400 of the Fortune 500 with corporate locations in Northwest Arkansas, and you have about 1,400 corporate offices overall in northwest Arkansas that are all in service to the world's largest retailer. So for a Metro area of half a million, we punch way above our weight class economically. And Bentonville certainly is driving a lot of that. And interestingly enough, it's doing so with the smallest population today. we have about 50,000 people in Bentonville, Arkansas. However, we are the nation's fastest growing city under 100,000. So I'm 45 now. By the time I'm 60 or so, that population will be about a hundred and ten thousand people. Yeah.
10:45.942 Brandon Burton
And then you'll be one of those people wagging your finger, you know, back in the day, you know. Right.
10:50.998 Graham Cobb
I think I'll be okay. I'll try to I'll try to I'll try to look at the appreciation that's happened around me and take that into consideration.
10:59.718 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. So Bentonville, I mean, it as we as we get into our topic today of the value of placemaking, when it comes to to economic development, I mean, the table is set for you very nicely in Bentonville to to attract business and and drive economic development. So while I also I want to spend some time highlighting what some of those things are in Bentonville, I also want to go about it with a perspective to
11:02.285 Graham Cobb
Yeah.
11:29.578 Brandon Burton
chambers and other communities, things that they can do to make their their community a a place to drive economic development. So with that in mind, you you gave us a you know some some good perspective as far as these these fortune 500 businesses that are in the area which helps drive economy for sure. But maybe besides Walmart being a
11:43.201 Graham Cobb
Yeah.
11:57.74 Brandon Burton
the big retail business there, the the eight hundred pound gorilla. What are some of those other things that are driving people to Bentonville?
12:08.61 Graham Cobb
That's a great question. A very lovable gorilla, by the way. Yes. so in 2011, Crystal Bridges opened up. Crystal Bridges is a Museum of American art and world class, founded and funded by Alice Walton. it opened up in A forest valley right in the middle of Bentonville. And overnight, Bentonville became a Condonas top three destination. it's free to go and attend and enjoy. and when I say it's world class, I mean you walk in and you're face to face with Rosie the Riveter. you're face to face with you can tour a Frank Lloyd Wright House. it's it's just phenomenal. around the same time you began to see some serious investments in mountain bike trails. right before Crystal Bridges opened, the first five miles of trails in the middle of Bentonville was completed, and everybody thought, woohoo, sweet, we got five miles of trails. well, then came phase two and phase three, and you know, now Most of this work being funded initially by the Walton Family Foundation. it's maintained by by municipalities. and now, gosh, they're probably $80 million in on soft surface mountain bike trail building. completing three miles of mountain bike trails a week. Wow. There's there's no other place that's done anything like that. And In 2020, we actually stuck our flag, planted it firmly around mountain biking when we proclaimed ourselves the mountain bike capital of the world. And that certainly raised some eyebrows to some old school mountain bikers out in places like Moab, Utah, or Crested Butte or Winter Park. And you know, my argument for the mountain bike capital of the world is that.
14:35.592 Graham Cobb
It's not about proximity and it's not about sheer volume of trails. It's about access to those trails. And I think your chamber audience will agree that oftentimes the economic drivers in a community really build the ethos of that community and the culture of that community, right? So if if you're deeply steeped in finance, maybe you're a suit in Tai Town. And that's cool. That's that's what you are. You know, if you are if you are big tech, then maybe your hoodies and shorts, you know. clearly we are retail. And in retail, if if you're not my customer, odds are you're my competitor's customer. Because everybody needs, as we know now more than ever, everybody needs, you know, toilet paper and and and tissue, right? so if you could put if if you're faced with that, that every time I don't serve my customer well, he doesn't just leave, he or she becomes the customer of my competitor, that means that every person matters. And so in Bentonville, you get that feeling, every person matters. And the way, the way you see that play out in placemaking is is a crystal bridges that's open to everybody for free. is mountain a mountain bike system that progresses from bunny slopes to 40-foot gap junk, double black diamonds, you better have your health insurance paid and be a pro mountain biker. and that's that's super important because if I go to some places where there's a major investment in an art museum, I've got to spend money to go, I've got to take Time off work to do it, even if I live in that city. And then I take my kids, and I know me, I'm a lazy parent, right? So if I take my kids, I'm gonna be like, damn it, boy, you stare at that piece of art and you appreciate it. Well, in Bentonville, a great example would be July 4th. We took our kids to Crystal Bridges to see an exhibit by an artist named Hank Willis Thomas. And
17:00.366 Graham Cobb
It's very apropos exhibit for July fourth, twenty twenty, because it juxtaposed pop culture and and race and use of the black American body as a product, right? And my daughter, 15 minutes in at eight years old, said, My mask is bothering me. Can I go outside and play with tadpoles? And we could say, Yeah, sure. My son, who's 10 and just now really finding SEC football and the NBA and, you know, he was able to sit and digest this art, this expression in a way that made sense to him, without us rushing through it, without us telling him what to feel, worrying about my daughter, worrying about wasting time. No one told them how to feel about it. And if you're not comfortable going to an art museum because you think it's going to be snooty or elitist or expensive, it's not accessible. Same with mountain bike trails. I can I can pedal from my front door and in two blocks I'm on a trail. That's great. I've been riding bikes for 15 years. Well, my daughter can do the same thing at age eight. And my mother-in-law can do the same thing at age 70. And They have something that they can approach. Whereas in some other places, you probably need to be pretty fit and pretty skilled to not really hurt yourself on a mountain bike trail. So it's about accessibility. and the way I see that playing into into economic development beyond tourism is is workforce attraction. Brandon, when you have When you have Walmart here, they understand that they have to constantly evolve, right? I mean, if you look at 2020 from a retail standpoint, Walmart had a few lights that they were ready to flip, a few switches that they were ready to to turn, but maybe not as fast as they ended up turning them, right? Completely different workforce needed to be a the leader in retail today.
19:28.674 Graham Cobb
Than it was 10 years ago. So they have to get different people to Bentonville. Those people are used to living in Manhattan. Those people are used to living in the Bay Area. They're technologists. They are experts in AI or data science. And they want really cool, great things to do. that is why you have to have really cool, great things to do. You have to have these unique experiences. And you know, but but you also have to have experiences that that they're interested in and that they're comfortable with. one of the things that is changing is are the demographics of Bentonville, quite frankly. And so, you know, it's one thing to create a bunch of assets and amenities that you love, it's a whole nother thing to Create assets and amenities that you think people not like you will love. But really the solution is to sit down, ask and listen to what somebody's interested in, what makes them feel like they are home, and then find a way to, you know, program your community, build out assets, bring in, you know, bring in entertainers or restaurateurs or different experiences that that make people feel like this place that you're making is actually for them.
21:13.8 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. And I know and I think that's a great picture that you painted. And as I like you mentioned earlier, I'm I'm familiar with with Bentonville, been there a few times, and it's it's a beautiful city. It's beautiful. You got the trees, the downtown, the square. I mean, from the first time I was there, I said this is like Pleasantville. You know, if you've ever seen the movie Pleasantville, it's everything's very well manicured and cared for. Where in other communities that I've been to, the square is kind of forgotten, you know, everything's being built off the main highway that kind of skipped the square and and Bentonville's taking a lot of attention to make sure that the things that are that should be important are important. And I guess the the question I would have for you if for other you know chamber professionals that are listening that We've had discussion about how every chamber needs to have their hand in economic development, whether they have that official responsibility in their city or not. But what role can or should a chamber have in developing their city, their community into a place to drive economic development?
22:28.258 Graham Cobb
Well, you know, I I believe that every chamber, whether or not they recognize it, is in economic development. Because if you're taking care of your members, that's economic development. You gotta take care of the customers you have first, right? And so so membership is economic development. but I I think that now more than ever, top talent can live and work anywhere, right? I mean, that was true in 2019 and then 2020 threw the doors open with organizations like Facebook, Google, Stitch Fix, you name it, saying, hey, work remotely. so that means that that talent can move to any community. It's gonna move to the communities it's aware of first. Those communities soon become unaffordable. Right. So that that talent wants to go someplace that is welcoming, that is healthy, that is vibrant. That's what a chamber does, is that it it you know, it doesn't try to make a town something that it's not. It just tries to make sure that everybody is benefiting. I don't know a single chamber that wouldn't say, yes, I work for my members, but truly I want to increase the quality of life for all citizens in this community. Everyone is doing that. Yeah. So when when you are when you are working to make everyone happy, you're never gonna be happy. when you're working to make sure that everyone has the opportunity for happiness and livelihood, I think you feel that in your town. And then when I think people begin to look at the place where they wanna raise their family, where they want to do business, Your town becomes more attractive. And we see those urban areas, you know, there's there's an exodus in a lot of those places. They're not going away, but there are a lot more options in other parts of America that are pretty darn attractive. I think chambers have a responsibility, like I said, not only to build a welcoming community for people that aren't there.
24:50.904 Graham Cobb
But then as your town changes, as your community changes, chambers are well positioned to embrace their history, right? I I think that for a while chambers have have struggled with a brand identity as they've tried to figure out how to make themselves relevant. Well, here's the deal: like you are relevant. And Some of your relevance can be in the fact that you're traditional and stodgy or at least perceived as such. That's okay. I know that for example, I'm serious.
25:26.963 Brandon Burton
Not everybody wants to adopt that, but yeah, go ahead.
25:30.036 Graham Cobb
No, no. You have to be you have to be self-aware. Yeah. Right. And you know, the the the remote tech worker is not moving to Bentonville, Arkansas, going, I better seek out the chamber. Yeah. It's my job to have events and programs and a persona that they then realize, damn, the chamber is doing that. Okay. Now, on the flip side, the legacy business, maybe they're two, three, four generations in.
25:33.294 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Right.
25:59.246 Graham Cobb
to a glass manufacturing company in in Bentonville or an automotive store in Bentonville. If the chamber is willing to have a couple luncheon learns at a contemporary art space, maybe we get a few of those people who are trying to get the budget to buy a table, but their granddad doesn't think art is important. Maybe we get that business to go, whoa, it's a the chamber's doing it. Well, my granddad served on the chamber board back in 1962. I guess it's okay if the chamber's doing it. And then they come along with you. I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're a brand new. You know, if you're brand new to business, going somewhere you're not used to going is hard. You need somebody to open the door and walk through the door with you. If you've been doing this forever, going somewhere new is hard. So the chamber can not only drive this newness, can drive this progressive. Development, they can also make sure that they're bringing along their legacy companies in their town that have helped move the chamber forward for generations and say, look, these new things happening, they're not happening to you and at you. They're happening for you, they're happening with you. Come on, let me show you. Yeah.
27:29.986 Brandon Burton
So you had mentioned earlier about using influencers to market Bentonville. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
27:37.582 Graham Cobb
Yeah. So it was February of 2020. there was about to be a new facility that opened called the Momentary. The Momentary, I think the official I think the official statement would be that it's an experiential art space that is falls under the umbrella of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. I would call it Crystal Bridges Punk Rock Little Brother. it's a
28:04.663 Brandon Burton
Okay.
28:07.244 Graham Cobb
Gosh, 40,000 square foot former Kraft cheese factory. They used to manufacture Velveeta. Okay. And so anyway, they built this super cool vibey art space. It's not a museum. It's like MASS MoCA in Massachusetts. It's a place where artists will go to have residencies, to to make art, produce art, whether that's dance, whether that's visual, whether that's technology enabled art. It's super cool. It's like nothing else. And the opening, I just can't put into I can't put into context the opening. It was it was globally amazing. In fact that there was at one point in time there were these dancers repelling down the side of the building that had been light mapped And they would push off the building in formation. And when they hit the building, the lights would splash across. They're from they're from Australia or something. And I turned to the guy next to me and I said, Can you believe this is happening in Bentonville, Arkansas? I said, I can't believe it's happening in America. I live in Seattle. Like this doesn't happen. And so we started to look around and take mental note of who was at this event. And it wasn't Unusual to see the caliber of person at this event. It's not unusual to see very influential individuals at Crystal Bridges or riding mountain bikes in Bentonville or coming to the Momentary or going to a James Beard dinner. We are, I think you in when reading my bio referenced, you know, we're a global town, right? Yeah. so I started to think, wow, if we could just Get these folks to tell the story of Bentonville. We could really amplify what's going on here to an important audience. And there had been a country singer performed down the road who when he that's a big name country singer. When he left, I found out that he loved aircraft. He loved vintage aircraft. Well, we happen to have a ton of vintage aircraft in Bentonville. Sam Walton was a pilot.
30:29.696 Graham Cobb
His grandkids are pilots. There's a lot of cool airplanes. We have a we have a stunt plane manufacturing plant right down the street. We could have got this guy in a vintage aircraft and asked that he talk about it and it would have reached millions of people. So initially we said, How do we, you know, how do we incent people that are coming here for cool events to talk about it? Yeah. That's how the influencer campaign was born. Then COVID hit and events got canceled. So what we've had to do is pivot towards more of a traditional campaign. We're focused on finding voices in cycling, the arts, health and wellness, which is a transformative industry in Northwest Arkansas, aviation, and technology entrepreneurship. We find voices in that space paying specific attention to voices of the underrepresented and marginalized communities to tell stories about Bentonville, what it's like to be here, to kind to it's almost know before you go campaign. we've reached gosh, You know, potential impressions around 10 million so far in about a year of work, not quite a year of work. and then convertible impressions or converted connections in the thousands, hundreds of thousands. So it's an exciting kind of top of the funnel project. we're getting some help this year in pulling people through the funnel. All right. If you think of it as economic development as sales, like we've we've we've we've warmed everybody up. We've built some awareness and some affinity. And now we're trying to to bring people through and really be able to reach back out and and reel in those fish. But it's exciting. I mean as as much as going as is going on in Bentonville, Arkansas, I'm still shocked that people don't know about this place. Yeah. But I didn't know about this I I
32:54.988 Graham Cobb
I had never been here until two thousand seventeen. Wow.
32:58.798 Brandon Burton
Well, and and like you said earlier, that it's all about bringing the awareness at the beginning. So it's that top of the funnel and kind of working them through and giving them those experiences and reason to come back. And and as you were given this last experience about trying to get these influencers to market Bentonville and thinking for chambers anywhere, most towns have some kind of a connection to somebody, you know, or some family, some type of influencer. So Get creative, you know, to see what you can do to to get some of these people involved to help promote the city that they love for whatever those reasons are in your community and really embrace it. you know, every thankfully, every city's not the same. So they all have different things to embrace and to highlight. So
33:46.636 Graham Cobb
Yeah, but thankfully thankfully every city's not the same. And you know, I think we all follow people on social media now, you know, and and we all have certain you know, certain people we follow that have a bigger audience or a bigger sway. We follow them for a reason. Think about why you follow them. Are there things you see on their Twitter feed or their Instagram feed, or are there things they say in their podcast? that you connect with and you go, my God, I felt the same way when I was in, you know, such and such restaurant right down the street. All right. Well, have you tried to reach out to that person and invite them to your town? You know, I mean, one of my one of my bosses when I was running pizza restaurants said to me, Well, hell, you don't get what you don't ask for. I was trying to negotiate some sort of, you know,
34:28.844 Brandon Burton
Yeah.
34:43.726 Graham Cobb
cheese price or whatever it was. And he said, well, you I I guarantee you one thing, you'll never get what you never asked for. And you know, hell, I'm that's it that to me is economic development. If you don't invite somebody to your town, why would they come?
35:01.91 Brandon Burton
Yep. And it it goes back to the beginning when you mentioned Sam Walton going to the local stores and seeing how they failed. And if you're not extending those invitations, if you're not getting told no, you know, that that'll happen to get to the yeses that will end up being the big wins for your community. So
35:19.234 Graham Cobb
Well, I think I think you're right. And I also think we owe it to ourselves. Chambers owe it to our communities, not only to promote the amazing things about our communities, but also to find out where we could do better. Because we all need to do better in so many spaces. So if you are, you you shouldn't confuse activity with achievement, but if you're getting a bunch of no's back from your outreach, does that provide an opportunity for you to say why?
35:45.602 Brandon Burton
Make some adjustments.
35:46.746 Graham Cobb
Yeah, what do what do you see that's wrong? Is it the messaging? What do we not have? There's a lot that we do not have. and and I have been directed, the only thing I'm allowed not to do is to wake up and say, Man, this is the greatest place I've ever been.
36:05.283 Brandon Burton
Yeah.
36:06.828 Graham Cobb
Because it it's pretty great. But it but it's not the greatest yet. Yeah. We'll get there.
36:12.312 Brandon Burton
Yeah. That's right. Well, Graham, I know we need to start wrapping up here. So I wanted to ask you if you might have one tip or piece of advice for anyone, any chamber champion listening that they might be able to do to help take their organization up to the next level.
36:31.424 Graham Cobb
First off, I would I would say invest in the experience. We are in the events game, right? And you know, I know that our events need to drive revenue and they need to pay for a lot of other things that we do. But do not do not race to profitability or that net. I I think you have to invest in your experience. or somebody's going to out experience you. And if you know, you can't make the connection, you can't build the network, you can't tell your story if you don't have an audience. So find out what you do, do it well, and then compensate others to help you do it even better.
37:27.03 Brandon Burton
Good good advice. So I asked this question to everyone I have on the podcast. As we look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers of commerce going forward?
37:42.368 Graham Cobb
I think that I think that now more than ever, the value of the chamber or what or what the value could be is obvious and apparent to people that are involved in chambers. It's not to people that that are not involved in chambers, but when you look across our country, never before have egos driven decisions more, never before have Have opinions been more polarizing? Have people been less willing to listen to the other side? Have people shouted and stormed off before they sat and listened? Well, business happens squarely in the center. And you have to have people different than you help you make decisions if you want to make the most profitable decisions for your business. I think chambers have a great opportunity to do that. So I I think the future of chambers might I think they will look differently. I think they have to look differently. I have to think I think we have to focus on what our boards look like, what our staff looks like, make sure we have different people of different backgrounds. we have to be intentional about that. And then we have to be brave and willing to champion some things that that a lot of folks aren't going to understand as as an economic issue, whether that's placemaking, whether that's systemic racism, whether that is political polarization, we don't need to shy away from those topics. Yeah.
39:20.338 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. well, Graham, I wanted to thank you for spending time with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast and wanted to to give you an opportunity to put some contact information out there for anyone listening who'd like to follow up with you on this discussion, learn more about the great things that Bentonville has going on, or or just overall connect with you. What would be the best way for them to reach out?
39:44.088 Graham Cobb
Well, please shoot me an email at gcobb at greaterbentonville.com. You can follow me on Instagram at Instagram Cobb, of course. and please go to becausebentonville.com and follow the hashtag becausebentonville on Instagram to get a real authentic taste of what life is like in the mountain bike capital of the world.
40:14.822 Brandon Burton
I will put all of that on our show notes page for this episode too, just in case someone's riding a mountain bike while they're listening and they can't write all that down. That's right. but the the show notes for this episode will be found at chamber chatpodcast.com slash episode one fourteen. And I don't know, maybe you can repurpose some of this as you drive economic development there even better in in in Bentonville. Yes, out to some of those businesses you're trying to bring in.
40:23.456 Graham Cobb
Right, yeah, please don't.
40:43.534 Graham Cobb
I think that's a I think that's a great idea. Brandon, thank you so much and thank you to all the chamber professionals out there that are doing what they can for their economy and the community.
40:53.856 Brandon Burton
If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
41:25.676 Brandon Burton
As a podcast listener and as a chamber leader, have you considered the benefits that podcasting could have for your chamber? This is what I like to call the podcast pivot. If you're like many chambers, you're always looking for ways to provide non-involvement value to your member investors. Many chambers are finding that podcasting is a great solution. A podcast platform becomes a media arm for your organization that builds trust in your community. Tells the stories about your members as well as your advocacy efforts and becomes a valuable, tangible asset for nondues revenue. If you'd like to see if podcasting is a good fit for your chamber, visit Chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot to learn more and to gain.