Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Pat Patrick. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
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Introduction
Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host he wants to support your health by encouraging you to go for a 30 minute walk outdoors. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Pat Patrick. Pat worked in executive marketing roles and advertising capacities for Safeway stores, Tyson Foods and Foster Farms poultry company and I see marketing systems overseeing multi million dollar budgets and multiple advertising agencies over his career. Pat came to the Lodi Chamber in California in 2001, where he was appointed the chambers president and CEO. Pat has been part of the success of Lodi wine country through establishing international access to Central America and China for Lodi wine exports and major strategy was leading the sponsor leading and sponsoring trips abroad for Lodi ventures and for foreign buyers to visit Lodi. He was also the author and developer of vision 2020 a catalytic economic look forward the Lodi community which has positioned Lodi for early success in the new decade. Pat has and is today active in volunteer roles, such as several local not for profit boards, including the Adventist Health Lodi Memorial Hospital, reaching outside of both Lodi both regionally and nationally in the chamber industry. Pat has served as past president of the Northern California Chamber association was asked to join two national fellowships one developing healthy communities and the other focusing on workforce development, and 2017. He was elected by his peers to be the board chair of WAC. In 2020, he was selected to receive the excellence and leadership award the organization’s highest honor. Pat is a graduate from the University of Texas and the Institute of organizational management. At Pat, I am happy to have you with me today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little bit better.
Something Interesting About Pat
Pat Patrick 3:28
Well, thank you, Brandon. It is my honor to be on here. I think you’ve done a couple of 100 of these and so but I’m just honored to be included. I’m excited to share with my fellow chamber professionals, some of the success that has come to the Lodi chamber of commerce with a great program. And something interesting about me. Well, my best friend’s dog, his name is Tucker. I don’t know. I think I sent you a picture of Tucker. Yeah. So if the people can see Tucker then they’ll know Hey, I’m an okay guy. Because that dog is great looking dog and he’s my best friend back. He’s here. He comes to the office. He’s He’s our greeter
Brandon Burton 4:20
the chamber mascot there. Hey, man. That’s awesome. Oh, yeah, I’ll have to put a picture of Tucker in our show notes so people can log on and see that and we’re getting close to a couple 100 episodes. This is actually 158 But we’re getting up there. We’re racking them up. So met with a lot of great chamber people. So it glad to add you to the mix. Yeah. So before we get into our discussion today, I’d love for you to take a moment to tell us a little bit more about the Lodi chamber kind of the the the size the scope of your chambers. staph budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the table for our discussion.
About the Lodi Chamber
Pat Patrick 5:04
Sure. We are in 2022. Next year we will be 99 years old. Formed in 1923. And at that time probably our membership was made up of a lot of farmers because we are surrounded by something called the Hanford sandy loam. That’s not my description, but that’s the name of the dirt around us, which is very, very rich and has a long history of growing great things. Today there’s 100,000 acres of wine grapes that surround Lodi but I as a wine region, and with the home of Robert Mondavi, right, he was he grew up here is quarterback on the high school football team. And he worked in his family’s vineyards. And he when he’s he went to France to you know, learn his winemaking craft and then came back and put in a very large production facility in Woodbridge, which is a suburb of Lodi. Lodi is a town of 68,000 people. Okay, so we’re not, we’re not big at all. The chamber has 700 members, and we had a staff of seven prior to the pandemic. And since then, we’ve been operating on three and a half staff and we’re busy people. And so we have we are coming back with that, you know, pretty good bank balance in the bank right now. Because we cut a lot and so our membership stayed with us. We couldn’t do any of our events. We have a couple of large revenue producing events first those were gone. But we are coming back strong. It is good to hear Yeah, we got a good ambitious 2020 to play.
Brandon Burton 7:14
Good deal. So and I know we’ll we’ll get into that with our topic for the we’ve settled on for this episode is which is creating a vision. And specifically you guys have what’s called vision 2020 And we’ll have you share some of the details of that as soon as I get back from this quick break.
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Topic-Creating a Vision
All right, Pat we are back. As I mentioned before the break we were talking about creating vision and specifically around your Vision 2020 that you helped to author for the Lodi chamber there in a nutshell what is Vision 2020.
Pat Patrick 10:02
In a nutshell, vision 2020 is an act was an economic look forward. It started in 2014 an economic look forward for our community. We identified five major areas of great challenge for Lodi, but they also offered great promise for lota. And so as I told people, we get to decide which one that’s going to. You’re going to be for Lodi and those were Workforce Development how to you know, get the young people of today ready for the jobs that they’ll need tomorrow. And then our own communities economic competitiveness. Lodi was never has never been marketed as a place to come and do business. And we are 90 miles east of Silicon Valley, which was probably another at that time, the number one place for job creation in the United States, right. And then we had business and community health. We wanted to make sure businesses healthy and their number one asset is their people. And so we joined arms with the hospital and and some other health care professionals to create a whole plan to get Lodi healthier. And then we looked at the livability of Lodi because today we have 90 wineries. And this close to some major population centers we develop the tourism industry. But tourism was the other was the last area that we looked at. And we just need to bring more people to Lodi and the livability aspect which I skipped over was one of those people that we need in our community to grow our community. What do they think the livability is like Ilona, and so we’re concerned at that from a tourist standpoint, from a job creator standpoint, and then for young families to work in those new jobs.
Brandon Burton 12:24
I think those five points the workforce development, economic competitiveness, business and community health, livability and tourism are things that probably most chamber champions listening can kind of look internally at their organization and say, how do we measure up in these different categories? Where do we need to bulk up? Where do we need to shift some some focus to make their communities stronger in these different areas. So as we talk, I’m sure you’ll highlight some of the things like you have with the wineries and stuff that are very specific to Lodi, but for those listening, you all have, you know specific things for your communities as well that make you attractive and make people or that can make people want to live and work and visit and do all sorts of things in your community. So I’d encourage everyone to pay attention to those things in your own community as we go about our discussion today. But how, how is the division created? Kind of how you know who was involved with the with the creation of it?
Pat Patrick 13:34
Um, well, it’ll be fires often start from little sparks, right. And so I am a member of WAC, which was outlined in the introduction. And the president of that organization is a fellow by the name of Dave Kilby. And so Dave does a good job, and helping executives grow. Chamber executives grow. He’s a reader. I’m a reader. He has suggested some really great books to me over the years, right. And a couple of those really changed my life in terms of how I viewed my job, and here at the chamber, and what I’m really responsible for in this seat as president and CEO of the community Chamber of Commerce. And so it got to be when I looked in the mirror in the morning, here, it was, it was a challenge. I started to challenge and so the book that really got me was a book called The Coming Jobs War. Again, it was written in like 2012, but I think it’s very still very good and applicable for today. But it changed my life. It’s written by Jim Clifton. Jim Clifton is the CEO of the he’s the CEO of the Gallup Corporation, I’m sorry. Okay, who who does a lot of polling, obviously, not just political polling, but he polls on everything in the human endeavor that we go through. And he does. So in about 150 different countries, they have offices in 75 around the world. So he knows what’s on top of mine on people’s heads. And it says, In the number one thing was jobs, what happens if I lose my job in this world right now? What happens if I can’t get a job that I want, or, you know, 25% of the world’s population is without a job. And that’s still true today. So it’s a it’s problematic. So. And he talked a lot about the influences on a community. And it just changed me, I, I saw some challenges that we had in Lodi, and no one really addressing the community, you know, your city does a general plan, which identifies where to put the housing, where to put the industry where to put the commercial, but they don’t really plan that much on the economic growth, the security of that, because without that, you don’t have a good community at all. And so we, we, you know, I took that on, because we had health challenges, too, in the county where we live in California, one out of every two people are either pre diabetic or diabetic. That’s a lot of money that, you know, that the workforce has to put in to, you know, towards that element alone. So we got a good response from our larger employers, we came out with programs to help their people get healthier. That’s what one of those five areas was about in the workforce development, the retiring baby boomers, the younger people coming in, are they prepared to work with the millennial generation, there are some challenges. And so we see that and we wanted to have some frank conversations with our school district to make sure that we were preparing kids for the workplace, not only on hard knowledge, skills, but soft skills as well. And so I just sort of lit myself on fire.
And started talking to I went around groups and pushing this concept 2020, I had a population pyramid, which is one tool that I would recommend to any chamber commerce professional. It’s a bar graph that shows the population and how it is arrayed in your community, population pyramid, and ours, what I mean, there’s 1000 things that that one graph can tell you. And it makes you aware of the changes that are coming over the next 10 years in your community population wise. Right now, we see a lot of shifts coming in. So how does that impact your community? How do you change your community to or prepare your community whether you know for what’s coming? And so we I would go out and talk to service clubs, I got on the stage at the community theater with about 900 people, and I just wanted people to get close to me. So the what was burning inside me would catch them on fire too. Because what vision 2020 needed was about 70 volunteers, leaders and influencers to pick up this mantle and start charging and that’s what we did. We put about 15 people in each one of those five areas. We call them that vision action team. Okay, kind of goes with Lodi right wine. So it wasn’t the chamber. I always envisioned the chamber being on top of a mountain kind of kicking over some big rocks and hoping that a landslide would start when when the chamber rocks would hit the healthcare rock and in the education rock and it would start to roll down. And so it it quickly became bigger than the chamber but the chamber had the responsibility to drive it. And that meant the board I tried to put as many leaders and influencers on my board as possible. We only had a board of 12. Today we have a board of 15. But in those days, we had a board of 12. And the best business people in Lodi is what the goal is. I could talk about how we do that to the nominating committee, which is valuable for chamber execs. But what we did was we, we built the board drove it in five areas. So we put two board members on each one. And so they were in charge of running their that their vision action team. And if it was tourism, we had the leaders and tourism in our community on that committee. If it was workforce development, we had the career tech people from the high school we had the community college, we had employers, from industry and from business, all kinds of business sectors. And health, we had a bunch of health professionals, they’re trying to work on this big problem about the diabetes, and the health of our community, the health of our business community. Very important. So you kind of get the idea. We had 70 people from the community, top people, the superintendent of schools, a CEO of the hospital, and they brought some of their folks. We had this we had city government, their city council people even had county supervisors want to sit in because they heard about this. I had one county supervisor say, Well, can you come do this for the county?
No, I can’t. There’s only one of me. But we wrote a 43 page booklet with color photographs and graphs and things to back up everything that we were trying to the condition that our community was in where we wanted to go and how we thought we were going to get there. So each of these five vats, the people, they started with a vision statement, they created a vision statement for tourism, created a vision statement for workforce development and so on. What will this look like? What will tourism look like in Madang? In 2020? That was the question, what will it look like? Right, and so they wrote a vision statement of what that would be. And then the next thing they had to come up with once they had the vision statement was what are the strategies that we have to employ to make that vision come to pass? And then once you get the strategies, strategy, number one, number two, number three, what are the action steps over the next five years because this was 2014, to get us to 2020 to achieve our vision. So vision flowed into the strategies. And the strategies were made up of action steps that were on a timetable. lead organizations lead people were identified to make sure that that thing kept moving forward, that actions do
Brandon Burton 23:29
I love that. I love the idea of these bats to be able to have these or these committees to over these specific segments have the vision to three that vision, the strategies, the action plan and see these things through to you know, like you said over a five year thing, so I assume the people that are involved with these vats, it was a was it a five year commitment to be on one of these committees. Is that how I was approached Okay. Very good.
Pat Patrick 23:57
As some people you know, drop out some new ones. Come on. So, yeah, so a lot of great things happen. We have a huge today we have a huge biking community bicycle. It was enough we want to have one stage I guess you could say we had two people in our livability that and they formed bike Lodi and now bike Lodi has done fantastic things. I mean, we have bike trails that go from downtown now all the way out in all directions. We didn’t have that before. We didn’t have tourism wayfinding signs before we got those put up. These are examples of the action steps to get things done right. And so great things just sort of organically came out. And it worked. It worked.
Brandon Burton 25:05
So now here we are, as we record this, or at the end of 2021. This will be releasing beginning of 2022. But you guys have been able to see this vision unfold. How do you vision out? You know, the next five years? Let’s say, I have is that looking for Lodi? And are you continuing the same type of structure, same type of model or what? What’s your thoughts and plans going forward?
Pat Patrick 25:33
Okay, good question. We, there were a total of 55 action steps that were created for those five. That’s right. And we achieved 38 of them, which is quite a few. And some of the ideas were just a bridge too far. And some of them weren’t, didn’t turn out to be a good idea at all. And so what we did was we wanted to keep an effort going, but the main effort, what changed in our world was businesses started coming over the hill, there’s been an exodus from the Bay Area, Sacramento has really prospered from that. And again, load I really hadn’t been marketed. And so we we created a completely new website. Not a chamber website, but what I call an attraction website. Yeah. And it’s called grow in Lodi, very simple, you can go to it grow in lodi.com. And you’ll see a lot of information about Lodi from what, what the living is about here, what the climate is about, what, what’s to do here. testimonies from business owners who were doing business in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they came over to Lodi and started or renewed their business and what has been their experience and so it’s it’s been catching on slowly but good. We have one of the fastest growing businesses the fastest. Certainly the fastest growing business in Lodi, and one from Sunnyvale is a business called Cepheus. Their molecular diagnostic company that bought out a supplier here that supplied them with a key product. And long story short, they bought that company 38 employees today they’re at 750. Next year, there’ll be a 2500. Wow, molecular diagnostic and healthcare right now is head of premium. They went from one small building to now four very large buildings and made the made the step to bring their research and development over here. So that’s huge for a small town. And so they’re growing in Lodi, and we’re using them as sort of a bell cow to bring other people over, because they’ve had some great success here. And they’re big proponents, they love it here. And so there’s room for more. And so that grow in Lodi, today’s Board is saying okay, what’s next? We really liked what vision 2020 did. How about a vision 2030 And I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. I agree more. And so we’re, we’re in the very early planning stages of that. I’ve got an excited board. And that is so key to any success that a chamber executive at a chamber could have is to get the right people on the bus and sitting in the right seat. That’s right. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 29:01
And I think a big part of that is these bats he talked about that’s putting the right people in the right seats that are excited and know about what the opportunities are in these different segments that are specific and relevant to Lodi you know, in our conversation but you get get those people in the right seats, they are able to create that vision, bring it back together create the synergy it’s just it’s a great model that you guys have gone through and and you’ve done well explaining it to because I can see all the different intricacies you know that have gone into this.
Pat Patrick 29:36
Right. Yeah, and some of the serendipities are the real the relationships that form you know, because here’s the school district in their silo so to speak, you know, fighting the battles that they fight working every day hard, everybody’s busy. And then here’s city government over here and they’re doing their thing and then here’s, you know, health care over here. They’re doing their thing. And here’s the Chamber of Commerce trying to help everybody out in all directions. And so, hey, what if we all got into the same silo? Right? Instead of all working, so, you know, making time to align ourselves with each other over the big community, the things that are really driving to unity, and, and their little rolling, or their big rolling and working together. And that is, that has been great. And I think that’s really one of the things that is, in the My current board about wanting to, hey, let’s do that vision. 2030. Right, because we know we’re not where we want to be yet. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 30:49
So as we start wrapping things up here, I wanted to ask you, for the listeners, what would be maybe a tip or an action item that you would encourage them to do to help, you know, elevate their chamber up to the next level?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Pat Patrick 31:03
Yeah. Well, I mentioned reading, it’s a funny thing, you know, you’re gonna watch a video or you can listen to something of book on tape or something. Yeah. And they’re great. But, you know, set a goal, if you’re a leader, set a goal to read a book a month. And usually books around 200 pages long. And so that’s like 10 pages a night, put up a nightstand, and then go to sleep 10 pages, you know, but pick the book, and ask some of the ask some of the CEOs that you look up to for some both times that can help that can help a person out in their leadership role, their community role there, you know, the, the Chamber of Commerce, there’s some great ones out there. One of them’s called Make it Happen. That was one of the first ones that I got. And what happens When the Boomers Bail was very intellectually about the changing indite. In the demographics as the seniors, the baby boomers move out of the work force, and the millennials coming in the changes, you know, dramatic. So it changes you, it makes you smarter, and it also touches something inside you. Chamber executives have, I think, the best job in the community, they really do. Yeah, because you’re working for some great people, working for all the different businesses in your community that create the jobs and those employees, buy homes, make loans through the bank, create property tax, create sales tax, and it makes the community go around. I really believe really truly and believe that you don’t see a good community without a very robust active business community. Face it, we make the we make the community work. If you can get it better for business, you’ll get it better for the community
Brandon Burton 33:31
very too. And I appreciate you sharing those, those book references too. So we’ll have those in the show notes that people can look up and if they wanted to check out one of those books make it happen or what happens in the boomers Dale and you mentioned earlier the Coming Jobs War as well. So good options.
Pat Patrick 33:50
Those are just three. Yeah, if anybody wants to get in contact with me or you can go to the to the chamber website, Lodi chamber comm click on grow in Lodi, and you’ll see just a little introduction to vision 2020. Not the whole thing. But I could supply them with other information. Somebody wants to go further. I knew, I know, chambers do a lot of community type plans. But I never came across one that was an economic look forward. Because that really gets to the heart of so many issues. It does.
Brandon Burton 34:29
Right And speaking of looking forward as we look forward to the future of chambers of commerce in general. And how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Pat Patrick 34:40
We only become more and more important in the information age if we still refer to ourselves as being in the information age. There’s so much out there. And we know that a lot of it can’t be trusted, or it’s always going to have a leftward spin or around With spin, where is where’s truth? Versus truth? A chamber is not Republican, it’s not Democrat. It’s not red, it’s not blue. It’s, it’s it’s the community. It’s about the future. That’s where That’s where a chamber is roll is. And it, it creates opportunity did, I think a podcast from chambers, um, we we started down that path. But then the board sort of took us in a new way. And so I’ve got all the equipment that I’m working because I think, to be the same middle, right, the same middle, on on community issues, you’re gonna tackle probably anything that’s happening in Washington, DC, or, in my case, even Sacramento, as low as a small community, but in that community, you know, if your newspapers are going out, or they’re getting thinner, now’s a good time to start, I think, bringing two people together, like point counterpoint. Yeah. And and do it very respectful of each other. And do it with information, not necessarily what your opinion is, but what you know, to be the facts on this issue, and the other person who may be and have an intellectual conversation. And I think that can be very, very valuable. And it they, I don’t know where it would go. But I think it would go in ways start on the business platform approach. But I think it could go very deeper into things like homelessness as I can. Yeah, every community’s got that challenge. And, hey, there’s the smartest people I know, are business owners, right? Very successful business owners. What do they think? How can they think out of the box, and help the community get a program?
Brandon Burton 37:11
I love that if if the purpose of a chamber is to help build stronger communities, you need to be that go to resource of trusted information, that’s that sane center to be able to bring both sides together and really get behind issues to drive progress forward. So I think you hit the nail on the head
Pat Patrick 37:29
is that we call ourselves a three C chamber. I don’t know if you’ve heard that before. Yeah, yeah. A catalyst for business growth, a convener of leaders and influencers, for positive change, but always to be seen as a champion for the community, three C’s catalyst, convener, and champion.
Brandon Burton 37:50
That’s, that’s why I call my audience chamber champions, you know, they that’s one of the essays to draw him in.
Pat Patrick 38:00
And that’s what they need to try to ascribe themselves to the film. Yes.
Brandon Burton 38:05
Well, Pat, before we go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to put any contact information out there for listeners who may want to connect with you and learn more about your vision 2020 and going about creating a vision of their own their chamber, what would be the best way to reach out and connect with you?
Connect with Pat Patrick
Pat Patrick 38:24
Well, I can be reached at PPatrick@LodiChamber.com. And the old fashioned way on a telephone for my direct line is 209-365-4604.
Brandon Burton 38:45
Which is perfect. And I will get that in our show notes for this episode as well. So we’ve got a lot of good stuff in there. We got some book recommendations, we’ve got pets contact info, a pitcher Tucker, hopefully we’ll get in there as well. So go to chamberchatpodcast.com/episode158. And, Pat, it’s been a pleasure having you on here. I really appreciate you carving out some time to visit with me and to talk about this important work that chambers across our country are doing and you guys are doing a great job there in Lodi.
Pat Patrick 39:18
Thank you. Thank you, sir. Enjoy.
Brandon Burton 30:28
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