Being a 21st Century Chamber with Lisa Hermes

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

Episode 14 — Being a 21st Century Chamber with Lisa Hermes
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Lisa Hermes
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.174 Lisa Hermes
Current chamber website was trying to be all things to all people. and so I think having those two websites really helped where we could say, okay, our audience for our chamber website is this. It is for business, it's business resources. Our McKinneyonline.com is really focused to to the community. And so that's where we could have, you know, community events and stories about the community and
00:27.084 Brandon Burton
You just heard a quick soundbite from Lisa Hermes, who is my interview from the McKinney Chamber of Commerce, as she talks about being a twenty-first century chamber of commerce. And one of the things that they did was create two separate websites, one for B2B and one for business to the community. So stay tuned as we learn more about how Lisa is doing things at the McKinney Chamber. Let's cue the intro. 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.
01:08.75 Brandon Burton
Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I'm Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Lisa Hermes. And Lisa is the president of the McKinney Chamber of Commerce and has she's been in that position since October 2014. Lisa has extensive Work with chambers beginning in 2006 at the McKinney Chamber of Commerce as their communications and public policy director. She later served as president of the Rowlet Chamber and later vice president of the Louisville Chamber and president of the MetroCrest Chamber, which serves the Addison, Carrollton, and Farmers Branch areas. Her background is in journalism, where she began her professional career at the Star Group of Newspapers in Burleson. Before venturing into the chamber industry, she was a managing editor of Inside Collin County Business. She also graduated from the Institute of Organizational Management through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 209 and most recently earned her her certified chamber executive designation. She also was named one of the top forty under 40 by the Dallas Business Journal in twenty eighteen. In addition to her work, In the industry, Lisa serves on the Texas Association of Business Board, North Texas Commission Board, Imagine International Academy of North Texas, and the Community Lifeline Center Board. Lisa also enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, and playing golf. She and her husband Dennis love raising their daughter Harper in McKinney. Lisa, please say hello to the audience and share something interesting about yourself that we may not have heard in your bio.
03:05.474 Lisa Hermes
Okay, well hello everybody. excited to be on the show today. Thank you, Brandon, for inviting me. so something interesting about myself. probably talking about the hiking, my husband and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2014. We watched the sunrise on January 1st, 2014 at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. So that's the The tallest freestanding mountain in the world and the tallest mountain in Africa.
03:43.032 Brandon Burton
That is awesome. I hope you got lots of good pictures.
03:46.988 Lisa Hermes
I did, I did. It's a seven day hike and there's no showers or so it was a very I've got some good pictures of myself after seven days, yeah.
03:58.966 Brandon Burton
I I bet. We're getting personal now. No. Too personal.
04:03.239 Lisa Hermes
Probably, yes. Good thing there's no video on this, right? Like
04:07.374 Brandon Burton
That's right. That is great. I I love the outdoors and being able to to get out there and see some of those, you know, breathtaking views and kind of once in a lifetime opportunities. So that is cool. Thank you for sharing that. So can you share with us a little bit about the McKinney Chamber? maybe the size so everybody listening can relate a little bit better, you know, membership size, budget, things like that that you look at at the chamber there.
04:33.902 Lisa Hermes
So the McKinney Chamber, we are over a hundred years old. McKinney is was, I guess, a suburb of Dallas, but we're 30 miles north of Dallas. But now as the Dallas-Fort Worth region has just boomed, we continue to to grow in population and grow with our number of companies. Our chamber, we have we're almost to 1400 members. I just looked it up today. We have 1,394 members. We our budget is one point three million. And yeah, so we're we're just part of a I I I like to to not only just say like the budget size and the membership size, but I also like to put in context the geography because I think that's important when I'm visiting with other chambers. I think sometimes it's a little different when you might be a standalone community versus part of a bigger region because we do a lot of work with our neighboring chambers and build a lot of partnerships and coalitions because because we are part of a a very large region.
05:41.46 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. That's a great point to make. I'm sure a lot of your members cross over into some of the other communities as well. Yes. so it it makes sense to have those coalitions together. And if you're a standalone chamber, you know, out on your own, then that means something different. You know, those numbers do for sure. So today our topic of conversation is gonna be focused around being a 21st century chamber. So Lisa, can you just explain to us what does it mean to you to be a twenty first century chamber?
06:16.952 Lisa Hermes
That is such a great question. some of some of the elements that will make our chamber industry strong are things that we have been doing for a number of years. And I think that's really understanding our communities and and becoming really becoming experts in our field. I think the Some of the challenges we face that might have changed over time is that is that people, businesses, they're f they have so many options for communication, for finding resources. In fact, it's almost as if there's so there's there's so many resources out there that it's an overload. So so an example. Let's say somebody wants to get connected and and network. Well, they can go to, especially in in our region, there's all kinds of networking groups. There's B and I's, there's there's other chambers, there's of course, technology, there's LinkedIn, lots of ways to connect with people. So we have to figure out how to find our unique value proposition and stand out from the crowd and and and the noise of everything. So I think what what we can provide is being able to kind of filter and information and digest it and be able to give that to our members in a way that is easily digestible, I guess, would be would be my my take on that.
08:06.806 Brandon Burton
Yeah. so I'd like you mentioned finding what your unique value proposition is. I think, you know, some chambers as they think about that may struggle a little bit to find, you know, that identity or what they can broadcast to their members as far as what that value proposition is. What are you finding works for you in McKinney and what are your members responding to?
08:31.764 Lisa Hermes
So I think what we have to do. So in McKinney, we're kind of we're we're unique in a way. We our chamber, several years ago, right when I first started working at the chamber, or again, I guess I should say at the chamber in 2014. So our chamber for a long time had published a magazine. We were we had our chamber you know, the typical things that you do in a chamber advocacy and membership development and leadership programs, but then we also owned a for-profit subsidiary where we published a a magazine. And and at the time it was, I think, a unique value proposition, right? Because what the leaders when they started it saw was that we didn't have we didn't have an opportunity we we a a medium for getting information out to the community. and our community was growing and so they we wanted to be able to provide be be a r information source basically. But over time, print, media, well, they have their own set of of challenges. And we were seeing sales declining. So our board back in 2015 made the decision to close the the publication and close the company and we really had to blow up our chamber in a lot of ways. So we we hired a a consultant and had Kathy Hyde, I'm sure many of you know her. She's she's terrific. and she came in and we we redefined our purpose, our vision, and put together a three-year strategic plan where we really focused on delivering value to our members. That's one priority area, organizational sustainability, and advancing community excellence. And we said these are the things that we're going to do as an organization, and we're gonna just really just hyper focus on those things. But to back up, before we could get to that place, we had to understand our community. And as you mentioned, I've been in a lot of different chambers and and I know everybody's heard the term, if you've seen one chamber, you've seen one chamber. It's really true because every community is just a little bit different. And we had to do a fact-finding mission of really understanding
10:52.738 Lisa Hermes
what our members' needs were. And like I said, every every community's different. So we have a large healthcare pot you know industry, so we had to learn what was important to them. We have manufac light manufacturing is has a presence here in McKinney. And so we needed to understand what their needs are and that takes this is where the good old fashioned work comes into play. It just it takes rolling up your sleeves and going and having meetings and face to face meetings and and then trying to put all that data together to figure out what your what you can do and what you can provide that's going to be unique to each of those, you know, to your community.
11:36.782 Brandon Burton
I find that interesting. Where you were mentioning with the publishing side, you know, the publishing business that the chamber had there, that it came because of a need to be able to reach, you know, the community and and the information that the chamber had to share. But then once you found that that was maybe not the best way to distribute information, you guys kind of took an evaluation of that and made a pivot to be able to kind of stay with the times and stay current with how to you know, get your messaging out to the community. I think that's a valuable lesson for every chamber to to pay attention to and look at any programs that you have and see what is still relevant and what changes might need to be made. You had mentioned with with these like healthcare and light industry and things, you know, that have a presence in McKinney. Did you did you have any committees formed or anything to learn more about them and what kind of attention those industries needed or Or was it just more face to face interactions or what did that look like for you?
12:38.378 Lisa Hermes
Yeah, both. So we did we did one on one conversations with CEOs and then we also pulled together some focus groups, which was w was really valuable because it's great to be able you know, the one on ones are great, but then also when you're in a focus group, I think each of the leaders like it's like a brainstorming session, right? And so they they start giving you they feed off of each other basically. And one idea spurs another idea and so that you're really able to extrapolate a lot of good information.
13:15.758 Brandon Burton
You had mentioned before the you know, with the changing in technology. In being a twenty first century chamber, how is technology playing a role there at the McKinney chamber?
13:27.374 Lisa Hermes
So going back to to the the conversation, and this kind of relates to that to your question, when we decided to not do the the monthly publication, we did decide we needed to we were going to produce certain niche publications. So we were finding we have our community resource guide that we produce. we still produce a a fold out map, which I know sounds crazy because because of technology, but people I mean they fly as it the maps fly off our shelves. I mean it's people like like that. we also do a business to business guide. So it's very it's more focused on companies relocating or if you're a company here, what resources are available to you. But then with the technology, this is where this plays in, we we all we actually h operate two websites. So while we we killed our publication, monthly publication, a community publication. We have a community online news source. So we have our McKinneyChamber.com, which is we redesigned that to where it's really focused on more B2B. And then we have McKinney Online dot com, which is focused on B2C, basically. It's for the community to learn more about what's happening to provide information, events. and it's also a way for a lot of our businesses to connect to the community. So they have they can build out their chamber listing. It's very robust on that on that end. They can post articles, news stories, they can post calendar of events, hot deals, just all kinds of things. And so we we really wanted to segment how we were communicating. And I think that that's also another really important thing that chambers need to learn to do. When we decided to use technology instead of with a website, instead of printing a monthly publication, we also had to go back and and decide how what we were putting out. So our what our current chamber website was trying to be all things to all people. And
15:47.212 Lisa Hermes
It was just too cluttered, it was too hard to find information. and so I think having those two websites really helped where we could say, okay, our audience for our chamber website is this. It is for business, it's business resources, this is where you can find advocacy, all kinds of stuff. Our McKinney Online dot com is really focused to to the community. And so that's where we could have, you know, community events and stories about the community and I think that's I think that's really important. And also in our email communication, that's another step that we're taking is segmenting our audiences, even with just our, you know, almost fourteen hundred members trying to figure out how to make sure that we're communicating just the information that they want to to receive versus a one size fits all for everybody.
16:39.618 Brandon Burton
I really like that. You'd mentioned something to the effect of you were you know, a lot of times the messaging is all information for everybody. And oftentimes when you go about that approach, you end up serving nobody. So being able to take a look at what that messaging is and who your audience is, I think it it seems like it's been a a great thing and it's working out well for you to have those two different targeted audiences, the one the B to B and the one to the B to C or to the greater community. I I think that's a some great advice that other chambers can look at too. If they don't have a separate way to be able to reach the community, there's it's obviously a great way to leverage and and help your your member businesses get known better throughout the community. I I assume on McKinney Online, the business the business to consumer or community website has advertising opportunities and things like that on it as well. Is that correct?
17:38.25 Lisa Hermes
It does, yes. Yes. I would and I will say, quite honestly, it's that has been challenging. we're really looking at different ways. There's there's banner ads and and we haven't had great success in selling those, but now we're starting we're gonna start a different way to try to make money on that to to turn some revenue on that. And that is we're gonna have what we call kind of like a special section. So a newspaper back in the day might do a home and garden section to include in their publication and they would focus on that industry with certain advertising and stories. Well we're about to launch something very similar. So if you go to McKinney online, it's going to pop up a special section that you could X out of or you can read. So for instance if it's home and gardening then we'll have, you know, maybe roofers, landscapers, pool companies we'll have content, like real content, not just advertising, but also advertising opportunity. So if any listener out there would like to see what that looks like, you'll have to stay tuned because we're we're kind of in the early stage of that. But what we have seen, so so while the advertising has not been a strong presence in in driving revenue for the chamber, I will say it has been having McKinney Online and having and our members being able to communicate with the community at large and with consumers, especially for the retail and service-based industries, it's been a way for us to retain and sometimes recruit members. So somebody's, you know, you know, somebody wants to drop and what do they what do they say? Either they find no value or they have no time to go to your to an event. And so our, you know, our comeback to that is, well, you don't have to go to an event. You we have an opportunity for you to be visible to the community 247. And that's helped us, you know, retain some members. because we're not to get too far off the subject, but I guess it kind of goes back to that adapting. We in the past, I think as as the chamber industry as a whole,
19:55.362 Lisa Hermes
We tend to think, we we'll add another event, we'll add another event, and time is so precious for people that we've got to find other ways to connect and to provide value without it necessarily being attendance driven.
20:10.882 Brandon Burton
That's yeah, that's true. I've heard that as I've been doing, you know, these interviews with different chamber executives, that seems to be a common thread of you know, so many members of of your total membership, such a small percentage is able to actually attend different meetings and events that the chamber puts on. So what are those other ways that you can engage with your members? Some of that is leveraging technology. You had mentioned earlier in our conversation these things digital. you'd mentioned LinkedIn. There's other local networking groups. Are you have you as a chamber been able to find ways to leverage those groups or or technology in a way it rather than looking at as as maybe competition against a chamber, ways to leverage that and to help get messaging out to membership that way?
21:01.816 Lisa Hermes
So like a lot of chambers, we're still like really trying to grapple with that and make sure that we're we're really focused on utilizing all these different platforms. And so we're we're out there and we're on LinkedIn, we we are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and I would say yes, we have utilized it. I I I So first of all, I think number one, we can't look at things as competition. I think that was a good point you just made. I think we have to look at these as other mediums that we can communicate with with our members, with businesses and and the community at large. I would say we're probably more efficient or more effective on Facebook, which I know that seems odd because we really should be on LinkedIn as if it's a professional site, but But a lot of our members are on Facebook and they use it. So we've been very successful with that. One thing that we've well actually that just that just reminded me. I'm so glad that you brought that up. So we had we have candid forums all the time, right? And for a number of years, our candidate forums were really highly attended, which was awesome. but over the years we saw that they were dwindling, and our last one. we did. We we broke it up 'cause we have a local city council election and then we also have our school board and our our Collin College our community college election. So we did two different forums. and I was really disappointed in the attendance. I thought, okay, we've got, you know, we used to get a hundred people and now we're getting you know, thirty people in the room or twenty-five people in the room. And but we decided to Facebook Live, both of the forums. Well, our city council forum was viewed over 2,000 times. Yes. Now school district education one was only like 700 times, but but it really shows the power a lot better than 30. Absolutely. Because again, it goes back to that timing of somebody, and I'm sitting there watching as my communications manager is is is FaceTime or what do you call it? See I've got to keep up with it. Face
23:08.462 Brandon Burton
A lot better than thirty.
23:24.718 Brandon Burton
Face timing.
23:26.414 Lisa Hermes
It's not really face timing, is it? It's like li like face lies.
23:29.432 Brandon Burton
Why? Yeah.
23:31.794 Lisa Hermes
so while she's doing that, I'm watching and I'm seeing people pop in and watching, you know, that they're watching with us. And so that was really, really cool. And so I think again, like to your point, utilizing these mediums could really help us.
23:47.086 Brandon Burton
Yeah, and one thing that that you said, I don't I don't know if you noticed it so much when you said it, but it really stood out to me. You had mentioned that it would make sense for a chamber to be on LinkedIn and really push that platform, but you guys are finding more success on Facebook because that's where your members are. And that's the key thing is find out where your members are and be there. You know, have that be the platform that you magnify and and reach those people. And I love that example of being able to Facebook Live these different events. And I mean you're you're gonna get people watching it that may not even be members, but it exposes the chamber to the greater community and shows what the chamber's doing to serve the community. So great example there. So I wanted to ask a little bit about as an organization, I know you you know you're continually trying to make sure that you're providing value to the businesses that you serve. What are some things that that you're doing to stay in tune, yeah, with the increasingly diverse world that we're in today?
24:54.912 Lisa Hermes
So it I think you have to do it in in multiple ways. You one thing that we do is you know going back to when we originally kind of blew up the chamber and had to do kind of a listening tour, so to speak, we continue to do that. So we we have focus groups, obviously meeting with members one-on-one. And we also utilize our ambassadors. We changed our ambassador program up a little bit. I know a lot of chambers will have the ambassadors go out and do goodwill calls or member retention type calls. And we looked at the form and and I I realized the questions were all about us and not about them. And you know, as like as our membership continues to grow, it's hard for staff, there's we have nine people on staff to to be able to call people and really d get a lot of information. So we used our ambassadors and said, why don't you ask questions about the company first? And then as they are giving you feedback, that's where you can show, hey, maybe you can get connected to the chamber in this way. Or maybe, you know, if you're looking for skills and training, the chamber offers these webinars, or they have a competitive edge workshop or watch their blog because they are posting different on different topics. so again it's it's really I think less about ourselves and more about listening to the the the businesses and utilizing every avenue that you have. so our ambassadors are one. also I think I think surveys are always good too just for a sampling or a temperature check. Keep it simple. and even paper surveys. one of our so we have a like most chambers, we do a a weekly networking event. we have anywhere from 100 to 120 businesses who show up every Wednesday and do their 30-second commercials. And we had to revamp that program because it was kind of getting stale. And what we found was by putting two questions on a piece of paper out on all the tables, we were able to get a lot of great feedback that way.
27:19.798 Lisa Hermes
So you can use technology, but sometimes even just utilizing a quick postcard at an event is also very helpful in getting information. And I think it's important that we have to get information in so many different ways. You can't just use one, you know, survey monkey and then feel like you're in tune with your with your membership.
27:41.9 Brandon Burton
So I have to ask, do you remember what those two questions are that you had out on the table?
27:47.64 Lisa Hermes
So it it that's a good it it always changes. so one, it could be something as simple as something about the program itself. So like this seems so trivial, but our steering committee that runs that networking group would would sit there and debate for an hour during their meeting if if they should allow the people giving door prizes to have a certain value amount. Well, instead of debating it for an hour, they put that question out on the table, they got the feedback, and we can make a decision very quickly and move on. But then when when you're at a like our quarterly luncheons, we might ask a question about what's happening in the community. Like for us, we have a major thoroughfare that our state is looking at either widening in place or creating a bypass. And it's a very controversial issue. And so that's a good question that we can just put out there. to our membership so that we can get a good sampling of where they are, you know, get the pulse of what how they feel about this particular issue.
28:53.996 Brandon Burton
Those are great examples. I love how you had mentioned the how the ambassadors brought up to you. We should be asking the questions about the business, you know, about them, and then being able to interject their needs with what the chamber can do to meet those needs. I think that's so valuable.
29:10.382 Lisa Hermes
But I'll tell you it takes a lot of training though. It really does. ambassadors about how like almost flipped out because they were so used to the form of is this the correct you know, do we have your correct contact information? What event have you attended? You know, do you what how how is the chamber performing for you? And if they got a hold of somebody, everybody's like, Fine, I don't know, don't have time to attend.
29:14.39 Brandon Burton
I'm bad.
29:38.006 Lisa Hermes
And so but they but the ambassadors are so used to it. So we had to do a lot of training of but also promoting and saying, look, you're an expert too. Like you are stepping up as a volunteer and as a business in our community, that you're stepping up and you're you're seen as almost like a consultant. So I I I think it's it's made our ambassadors stronger, but it it was it wasn't a painless process, I will say that.
30:06.294 Brandon Burton
Yeah, I can see that learning curve for sure. So one of the early episodes that I did on this podcast, I did a it was a solo episode just with myself talking about the importance of frequency and resonating with with your members. So I wanted to ask you, what is what's one action item that listeners can do to better tune in to the needs of their members? So I've I'm thinking as far as frequency and resonating, how can they tune in?
30:37.982 Lisa Hermes
Okay, so I I would say I would challenge the listeners to I think to come up with a a structured program. I I say structured program, but I think I think you've got to put things in place like this month let's let's do an online poll or I'm gonna visit as the chamber president, I'm gonna be intentional about visiting three members in these three different industry groups, right? And like creating that action plan for yourself and putting it on your calendar and doing it. But then also it's taking that information and and finding a way to communicate that with your staff. but also to communicate that with your board so that you're you're not just getting the information, but you're actually acting on it and So I'll I'll also, this might be a little off topic, I guess, but I'm sitting here staring at our three year strategic plan. And I had somebody ask me one time, like, why do you do just three years at a time? And that's because while we're currently trying to stay in tune with our members, we have to be able to be adaptable and flexible. And if our plan is five years out, ten years out, it's it's That's difficult to be that flexible, right? So so we do a three year plan and we we try to build on them. So they're not necessarily like you're getting a whole new plan every three years, but we're also able to adjust and make those make those changes based on the information that we're getting from our our members. And also our non-members. I mean, don't don't forget, I mean, we only have a penetration rate of about sixteen percent in our community. And so Our other goal is what who are we not serving? You know, if we're supposed to be the voice for business, what businesses out there are not utilizing the chamber and how can we help them?
32:44.088 Brandon Burton
That's a good point. I think it's easy to get caught up on the members and and you should. You should be trying to figure out what the needs of the members are. But like you said, you're you're the voice for business in your community, the ones that you're not getting through to, what what needs to change to get through to them? And and I think it it could be valuable to have maybe a vision that's five to ten years out, but keeping that that plan to about three years. Seems like a good sweet spot to be able to adapt and and change with the times to be able to meet that vision that's further out. So great point there. So Lisa, as we wrap things up here, I have a a question that I ask everybody that as we look to the future, how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose?
33:30.446 Lisa Hermes
So I believe that chambers have the ability to be a leader in our community and lead business. but I also think that we have to be valuable to our members on a one-to-one basis, but I think we also have to take on community initiatives. And I think that's gonna show a lot of relevancy to to the businesses that are in our our community. Because while we have opportunities to be able to connect businesses to customers and and but we're also finding that you know that that a lot of our businesses are are now their customers may be global. So the old school networking, while it's still very popular here, is great, but as our businesses are kind of changing and their customer bases are changing and how they operate, there may not even be brick and mortar anymore. We have to find out what's important to them and take on and tackle some of those big community initiatives because we w we wanna make sure that they have a strong economy that they can operate in.
34:43.81 Brandon Burton
I think that's a great point. And as you're talking about, you know, world business, you know, businesses that service customers throughout the world, that doesn't mean that those businesses are irr are irrelevant to the chamber. It's just how can the chamber better serve those businesses, whether it's through education or, you know, any other, you know, means to be able to help them to promote their business, grow their business and and be strong in the business community. So great point there. So Lisa, I wanted to thank you for spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I also wanted to thank everybody for listening, tuning in today. The show notes for this episode can be found at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode 14. And Lisa, where can listeners connect with you if they have any questions about what was discussed today or about how you're doing things at the McKinney Chamber of Commerce?
35:35.278 Lisa Hermes
Absolutely. so email me. It's L Hermus, it's H E R as a Mary E S at McKinneyChamber dot com. call me at nine seven five four two zero one six three.
35:55.328 Brandon Burton
Right. And we will put those in the show notes as well. We'll also if it's okay with you, Lisa, we'll put some links to both your chamber website and to McKinney Online. So as people listening and want to see the difference between your two different websites and and the communication style, we'll we'll put those in the show notes as well. If you are a chamber professional who's listening, please be sure to subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in either Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. And as you subscribe to the show, when new episodes are released each week, they will automatically show up in your podcast app on your phone. So they're ready to listen to whenever you're ready. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and review in iTunes. And most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry. Hopefully you can take some tips that you learned from Lisa today and apply them as you serve in your chamber. Please tune in again next week as I continue to bring you more great content to help spark ideas. I look forward to chatting with you again next week.