Mason City Chamber 2021 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Robin Anderson

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

Episode 129 — Mason City Chamber 2021 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Robin Anderson
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Robin Anderson
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.
00:14.252 Intro Voice
And now your host, he is a about this year's chamber of the year final.
00:19.874 Intro Voice / Brandon Burton
Chamber. He's my dad, Brandon Burton. Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast, where it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your chamber members and your community. Our title sponsor for Chamber Chat Podcast is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Is your chamber struggling to drive the revenue it needs to support your initiatives? It's a common problem, and one that our new title sponsor, Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions, knows a lot about. Doug and Bill Holman aren't just sales consultants, they're real live chamber guys with twenty plus years of chamber leadership experience. They know how to diagnose and solve member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they're ready to put that knowledge to work for you in your chamber. Call the Holman Brothers today at six one nine eight five two one three nine one. Or check them out at HolmanBros.com. That's H-O-L-M-A-N-B-R-O-S.com. In this episode, we are kicking off our 2021 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist series. And I love doing this Chamber of the Year Finalist series. We get to hear from some of the best chambers out there as to what they're doing, what's working for them, and to be able to get those tips and strategies and And learn about the programs that they're doing that have been effective in their community. So hopefully you chamber champions that are listening can adopt some of those things into your own organization. But our guest for this episode is Robin Anderson. Robin has served as the president and CEO of the Mason City Chamber of Commerce in Iowa since 2001. A native of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, she graduated from the University of Iowa and holds a master's degree in servant leadership. Prior to assuming 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 Iowa locations. She's earned both her IOM and CCE professional designations.
02:40.288 Brandon Burton
Robin is a past chair of the Mid-American Chamber of Commerce Executives, the Iowa Chamber Alliance, and the Iowa Chamber of Commerce Executives. She was selected as a fellow with the ACCE Educational Attainment Division and is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100. Robin, I'm excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. If you would just take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and Share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little bit better.
03:13.222 Robin Anderson
well hey everybody. thanks for tuning in. it's always a pleasure for me to get to sort of feel like I'm with people, again, especially from chambers across the country, because there aren't tons and tons of us who do this job. as he mentioned in my bio, I came to the chamber world from the banking industry and in my I found that actually that was a pretty good background for running a chamber and since that time I've hired people to work on our team with sort of diverse backgrounds. We have a former TV anchor who works for us and that's a great background for chamber work and then we have people who've worked in for businesses in public relations and marketing roles. So I think it's really important as we all strive for professional development to also think about what kind of people might be good prospects for the chamber world.
04:31.474 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. I like how you were able to give some background of those that that you brought on at your chamber because it it gives you some some thoughts, some ideas as to who you can kind of try to to poach in your community. well share with us a little bit more about the Mason City Chamber, maybe size, location, budget. Give us some some perspective as we get into the the
04:45.355 Robin Anderson
Okay.
04:57.902 Brandon Burton
Topic for our discussion today, around your chamber of year application. Sure.
05:02.622 Robin Anderson
Sure. Mason City is located in North Central Iowa and we are sort of a trade center for a 12 county region. So even though we're technically the Mason City Chamber of Commerce, we really brand ourselves as the Chamber of Commerce serving North Iowa and we really seek to serve our entire region. we have 4.5 FTEs on our staff, five people, and we have a budget that's around 600,000.
05:43.99 Brandon Burton
All right. So that will help kind of set the table as we get into our discussion today of kind of the area that you serve, kind of that 12 county area, which is a big scope. kind of get your work cut out for you. But we will get into our discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break. Are you looking for a year-round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB? Look no further. Build a custom eat shop. Play mobile app with App My Community by visiting AppMyCommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings, they provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar, partner with a local fair, festival, or farmers market to provide a schedule, map, and other resources to promote the event. Run a small business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built-in scavenger hunts. Allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your App My Community mobile app will be a unique member benefit, allow you to generate non-dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities, and best of all, provide a valuable resource to your community. Please visit AppMyCommunity.com/chamberchat now. to receive ten percent off your first year of an app my community mobile app. All right, Robin, we are back. So typically in these Chamber of the Year finalist interviews that I do, I like to dive in and and learn about the the two program synopsis that you put on your application for chamber of the year and kind of get some some detail on those. so I know as we were talking before we started the recording, your your program synopsis are around workforce and talent attraction.
07:46.082 Brandon Burton
But I'm gonna kinda hand the ball over to you and let you just tell us what those two programs are and and share some details behind them.
07:55.0 Robin Anderson
Sure, thank you. well we really what we hear around our board table every single month is the need for qualified workers. And we are in a what would be considered sort of a rural area. We're actually a big city for Iowa, but we're a rural area and Our population is aging and shrinking. So in addition to that, 40.3% of our workforce is age 55 to 64. So everything we do is about workforce attraction and retention. And there is plenty of work to go around in that realm. We decided a few years ago as we were working on sort of a countywide strategic plan that we could either wring our hands and bemoan all of these sad demographics or we could start chipping away at things and doing a little at a time. And so our first program is really on placemaking and branding. We took a look at our community and what makes us unique. And we thought for a long time that it was our musical heritage. Meredith Willson, who is a Broadway composer, and right now Hugh Jackman is in rehearsals on Broadway for the Music Man. And the Music Man is actually a Valentine. From Meredith Willson to his hometown, Mason City, Iowa. So we really sort of embrace that whole musical heritage, but also we have the largest collection of prairie school architecture in the world that is unified by a common setting, and that is Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.
10:12.03 Robin Anderson
And he's probably arguably America's most famous architect. So what we found is that really that is authentically an asset as well. So our chamber really started working on building our brand as a destination for art and culture and architecture. And we've been pretty successful in fact. Condé Nast Traveler named Mason City as one of the world's best cities for architecture. And that was our dinky little Iowa town alongside Dubai and Istanbul and Paris and Miami and some other big boys. but anyway, we think we've got something here that is worthy of promotion, and so that was one of our synopses. And the other one. is our community concierge program. And we've had that for a while and really focused on professional and executive recruitment. But our hospital is our largest employer in our county. And when we started looking in the economic development data and saw that for every physician we could recruit to our region, That resulted in 10 to 12 additional health care jobs. And for every specialist that we recruit, like an orthopedic surgeon or an ophthalmologist, that brings that supports 19 to 21 additional healthcare jobs. So we sort of said, Why aren't we spending all of our time recruiting physicians? And so we set out to do that and obviously we don't spend all of our time doing that, but we have a staff person that that is the primary focus of their position is on attracting and retaining physicians.
12:18.966 Brandon Burton
That is awesome. I I'd love being able to look at that is saying bringing in one professional service. And and I know you're you're talking specifically in healthcare, but just to maybe broaden the discussion, it could be any professional service and the jobs that come with that. you see that with major employers that a city will bring in and and then the other businesses that are needed to support that big major employer. So same kind of thing. Yeah. So as you say you go about attracting these physicians, what what does that look like as you as you try to attract these physicians that also bring the other jobs along with
12:59.064 Robin Anderson
Sure, it's interesting. So the hospital has recruiters and you know that's pretty common. But the difference is that as employees of the chamber, we are not limited by human resources restrictions on what we can ask people. So we can ask people if they're married, if they have children, you know, a lot of things that employers are restricted from asking. And Honestly, before we do our community tours, we do social media sleuthing and try to find out as much as we can so that we can customize everything that has to do with our interaction with that person. So everything from the welcome basket we live in we leave in their hotel room and we line them up to stay in the Frank Lloyd Wright. design Park Inn Hotel, which is the last remaining hotel in the world designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. So we, you know, sort of reel them in on with that special experience right away. And then we find out, you know, do they want to live on water? Do they is the thing that's gonna make them come here if they have a place for their daughter who's a budding gymnast to continue her gymnastics or a place to keep their horse or if they're interested in collecting comic books or really, I mean, we try to get down to what makes these people tick because everybody's gonna talk about, we have great schools, we have nice neighborhoods, we have, you know, this, that, and the other thing. Most people when they roll into town and see we have a super target, they're like, Okay, I could live here. Yeah. So you know, so there's some things that are sort of a baseline, but then we try to go a little further and really hone in on their interests.
15:06.456 Brandon Burton
So are the recruiters for the hospital kind of cueing you in and letting you know when they have a potential physician coming to visit so you can be in connection with them and
15:19.19 Robin Anderson
Yep, they actually have a contract with us and so we provide specifically these tours, welcome baskets, but establishing the connection with them and with their families is what is so important because it might not be until after they get here that they think, my gosh, where should I take my dry cleaning? my goodness, I need someone to cut my lawn or you know, do this or that and the chamber is always gonna be here and we're always gonna be the best resource for anything they need down the road.
15:59.488 Brandon Burton
love that i love the idea of just having i mean it's beyond just a a warm welcome but it's it's helping them see where they fit in in the community and helping them
16:10.376 Robin Anderson
Well and a a lot of physicians come from diverse populations, and I can tell you our county is ninety-four point three percent white. So we do not have a lot of diversity here, but that doesn't mean we can't be welcoming, and that doesn't mean that if somebody of Lebanese descent is moving to our community. that we won't find for them where they can purchase a special kind of Lebanese grocery specialty or let people know where they can go to worship.
16:53.996 Brandon Burton
Yeah, I think that's so important. And this sets sets Mason City, your area, apart from other visits that they make to other hospitals that are trying to bring them on as well. So
17:07.552 Robin Anderson
our goal and we really during the pandemic all in-person recruiting pretty much stopped and we were able the chamber in a big way we have a video brochure that it looks like a book but when you open it up it starts playing a video and it can be customized so that we could say hey Brandon I'm sorry that because of COVID, you weren't able to come to North Iowa and see all we have to offer, but we know that you know you're a prospective neurologist. And so here's the head of our neurology department to talk a little bit about what works there. And then we follow that up by loading up a quality of life video. And so we were able to send those out to pretty much all of their prospects and recruits during the pandemic. And that video brochure is really pretty impactful. People are like, wow, you know, I open it shut, you know, it starts playing, it stops playing. And the the wow factor of that helps us get noticed.
18:28.064 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Anytime you can customize something like that too, where they can tell that it's meant for them, it's made for them. That's awesome. So back to the the placemaking and branding synopsis you you submitted. so you you talked about the kind of becoming that destination for the arts and culture and architecture. what are you doing to promote and to try to attract how are you getting the word out? About the culture and architecture.
19:00.6 Robin Anderson
Well, we've had a huge focus on public art. Chambers started a sculpture walk in 2013 with an exhibit that had five sculptures. And we just installed in May our new exhibit, and it's a 1.7 mile walk that goes from the downtown core. To our cultural crescent and back. And there are 71 sculptures on that sculpture walk. And about half of them are rotating. So we change them out every year. And that really maintains interest in the program. And we engage people by having a People's Choice competition where they can vote on their favorite sculpture. And then the city of Mason City has committed to purchase that people's. choice winner every year. So it's really helped us to increase our quantity of public art. We also started a mural program that's called Building Our Brand. And any way that you approach our downtown, you look at the ugly backs of buildings. And so we took those building backs and have hired professional artists to put up murals using geometric designs in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright on the backs of buildings. And it has made a huge, huge difference. And we try to do two or three murals every summer. And then last year we the other one of my other pet peeves were ugly utility boxes that seemed to be everywhere. And we used the technology that they use for wrapping vehicles with advertisements, to wrap utility boxes. And again, we use geometric designs in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright and they look like art glass. And it's been fun and interesting because now people go by these utility boxes and because they look like art glass, they think they light up from the inside or and we're like
21:23.798 Robin Anderson
No, it's the same ugly box that was there before. It's just covered. But you know, I think the chamber having those connections to like the utility companies and being able to convince them that this wasn't going to increase the danger associated with those utility boxes. and then our youth leadership programs have taken on. Similar placemaking things by doing sidewalk art and sidewalk murals. And we've done public pianos sort of as a in homage to our musical heritage. So we have about five public pianos around in the downtown area. And we're also next, we're tackling. the underside of railroad bridges and we're gonna use that same vehicle wrap technology to wrap our ugly underside.
22:27.63 Brandon Burton
I love it. The beautification of the city. I really like the the murals. I mean, when I go to a city and they've got the murals on the backs of the old buildings, it becomes a a destination, a point of interest for that city to go kind of find those hidden gems even throughout the city to to see what the murals are all about.
22:49.506 Robin Anderson
Well, and it's been the art has been very impactful. a housing developer actually said in front of our whole city council, and then he repeated it when he was being interviewed at a news conference, that the reason when they were touring Midwest cities looking for a location to cite a housing development, they saw the public art in downtown Mason City and he said, you know what? This is our town. A city that invests in itself is a place where we could be successful. So they built a hundred and thirty-three unit housing project. It reached capacity in three months and now they're looking for a second site.
23:37.31 Brandon Burton
Nice. That that is a a success story right there of
23:41.622 Robin Anderson
It's a success story right there. So invest in beauty, like Frank Lloyd Wright said, invest in beauty.
23:47.522 Brandon Burton
That's right. So I imagine with these these programs that that you submitted with your application, that these are things you guys have probably been doing for I I would guess a year or two at least, or some aspect. And you know, we see the the magnification of the need of of a workforce and a talent attraction, especially in this last year. as things are starting to reopen and th and whatnot after COVID. so it it's nice to see that you kind of have some of these things in place that were already in the works. And hopefully that's helping in your community to kind of boost some of that employment need that that we see throughout the country right now. So being that I mean You guys are a chamber of the year finalists. So I I I see you guys as being one of those special chambers right now. I'd like to to see what do you think stand makes the Mason City chamber stand out? if there's something that you're doing differently than what you see a lot of other chambers doing, or just something that another chamber might be able to to learn something from. Is there anything that comes to mind?
25:06.37 Robin Anderson
Well, one thing that we've been doing for quite a few years, and I wouldn't say that it's necessarily completely unique to us, but I think our approach is somewhat unique. And I mentioned before sort of the lack of diversity in our current population. And so we started several years ago, as many chambers did, a travel program. And we refer to ours as a global familiarization program. And again, we started like many chambers with sponsoring trips to China. But then we really took the approach that we were going to help our community transition to a global economy by actually traveling to countries that are important US trading partners. And especially because our economy is based largely on agriculture and food processing. we really focused on countries that were important US trading partners that you wouldn't travel to on your own, but also that were important from an agriculture standpoint. And what we found is that by these trips, which I think we've gone to China four times, we've gone to India, Turkey, many, many destinations. we are changing the hearts and minds of our community because what they learn when they travel is that people in these other countries are not waking up every day and thinking, how can I take an American's job today or you know, they're just like us and they're trying to educate their children and have adequate housing for their family and they want to improve their lot in life and you know get good jobs. And so I think by taking this approach, it's not like we're
27:24.386 Robin Anderson
doing a junket to Ireland or you know places that people would go on their own. We've really been intentional about our destinations and how they relate to Iowans. You know, when we went to India, we went to New Delhi to their agriculture building because they have a statue of Norman Borlaug who is an Iowan from not very far away from Mason City. And, you know, he developed genetics in agriculture that really are helping Iowa feed the world.
28:07.862 Brandon Burton
That is I I like that. I like making that connection on a global scale and and seeing how locally you can kind of interconnect on the global scale and and make those connections. I think that's it is unique. I mean, you hear a lot of these chambers doing these these tours, right? These these visits. but doing that with intention. And I think other chambers do it with intention, but maybe the direction of your intention, I think is is unique.
28:38.264 Robin Anderson
Also helps me get it past my board because I don't think they would really go for you know.
28:45.632 Brandon Burton
Trip to the Bahamas just doesn't do it. Yeah. so what might be one tip or action item that you could encourage a chamber champion to do to help take their chamber up to the next level?
28:48.503 Robin Anderson
Right.
29:03.41 Robin Anderson
well we just really take risks, try to innovate, and you know, when we get stressed out, it's my job to remind our staff that we are not saving lives. And really we're doing we are in such a unique position. You know, when I was a banker, there were nights that I lost sleep because great people would have financial disasters. And I knew I was going to be putting them out of business or, you know, really contributing to hard times for them. Here I sit at the Chamber of Commerce. I haven't lost any sleep any night in the 20 years I've been in this chair. And it's because we can make things better, but we really can't make things worse. And what an enviable position to have a job that you can go to every day that there's only an upside. And I think sometimes, especially in really small chambers that smaller than ours even, that might only have, you know, one paid staff, it's easy to forget that we're not saving lives. We're just trying to make things better. And we're lucky.
30:29.826 Brandon Burton
That's a great perspective to have. And I think that just having that perspective alone kind of takes the stress level down, you know, a couple levels and really helps you re-hone your focus on on being able to just make things better. I love that. So I like to ask everyone that I have on the podcast this question that as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see their purpose going forward?
30:58.874 Robin Anderson
well I think we learned a lot during the pandemic about what our purpose is. And it's really connecting our members to resources. And we really need to, you know, look at the Horizon Initiative. One of the things that we aligned with is the whole idea of communication and technology. We need to Customize our message to our individual members. During the pandemic, I was so happy we had a database system. If a program would come become available to help restaurants, for example, we could just send it out to the restaurants. We didn't have to fill the inbox of our entire membership database with stuff that didn't apply to them. And I think that's really where we can show our value. And since the pandemic where I hear from some of my colleagues that they're losing members, our retention rate is the highest it's been in five years. And I think it's because during the pandemic we didn't shut our doors. We were here for them and we were reaching out to them and making sure that they knew we cared. And we were trying to help them keep their business open and delivering to them. There were lots of programs available, but all of them were specifically targeted to a group or an industry. And I I said in our application, what we found was we had a lot of members that we would have maybe thought they just joined the chamber because they thought it was the right thing to do. But during the pandemic, we were there lifeline. And it was a huge re you know, that was a big responsibility. We thought, my gosh, we're flying blind and here they are turning to us as their information, their primary information source. And I couldn't believe how many hits on our COVID website and those kind of things, you know, they were.
33:19.98 Robin Anderson
you know, counting on us. And then when you look at it, if they can't count on us when times are tough, they don't need us when times are good.
33:29.154 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Yeah. I love hearing those stories of the businesses reaching out in the time of need, in the in their d moments of desperation, and hearing how chambers are able to deliver and were able to be that lifeline. Like you I mean, you said earlier, you're not saving lives, but you you were saving businesses, you know. You were I mean Yeah. I mean, it was so important and still is. So,
33:50.539 Robin Anderson
Businesses, yeah.
33:55.904 Brandon Burton
I think that's a a great perspective to be able to make those connections in the community, leverage your technology, and you know, get the right information to the right businesses in the in the right time. I think that that's key. Well, Robin, I've enjoyed visiting with you. I'm so glad that we're able to to connect and and have you come on Chamber Chat Podcast. I'd like to give you an opportunity to put out any contact information. So if any listeners wanted to follow up with you about any of these programs or try to get some more details about how they might be able to implement some of these things at their chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?
34:33.912 Robin Anderson
Sure, you can find me through our website would probably be the easiest. And we are simply masoncityia.com. And check us out. we have a terrific team. And so if you take a look at our website, they don't really need to talk to Robin about this. It sounds like Colleen or Allyson or you know, someone else are the ones, reach out to them. We're all of our our goal is to always have everybody be in the institute graduate. So our team is pretty well networked and we'd love to network with you.
35:16.76 Brandon Burton
That's awesome. I will get your website on our show notes for this episode as well, which will be found at ChamberChatPodcast.com/episode129. But Robin, again, thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing some of these insights to the great chamber that you're running there and and the team that that you guys have there representing North Iowa. I really appreciate it.
35:40.514 Robin Anderson
Thanks and thanks for doing what you do.
35:44.928 Brandon Burton
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36:20.43 Brandon Burton
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