Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Natalie English. 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 believes having an emergency preparedness plan is crucial is my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:20
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where 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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Jason Mock 0:44
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.
Brandon Burton 1:01
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Natalie English. Natalie currently serves as the president and CEO of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina. She’s served for almost 25 years in a chamber of commerce leadership role and over 30 years advocating on behalf of business. Natalie believes it’s her calling to work with business government and elected leaders to make her community attractive for business growth and investment. Natalie has almost 30 years of experience monitoring legislative and regulatory issues locally statewide and at the federal level. She has had a strong track record of success and has been responsible for building community support for many investments in infrastructure that have been key to economic development in the communities in which she has worked. She’s had leadership experience and background in effecting policy that impacts the cost and ease of doing business quality of life and workforce. Natalie found herself faced with the opportunity to advocate on behalf of her community Wilmington, following Hurricane Florence. Natalie has taken many of the lessons learned during that natural disaster to lead her community through the economic crisis associated with the pandemic, which we’ll cover in this episode in more detail. In her spare time, Natalie enjoys spending time with her son Rick on the sidelines of many sports activities, playing golf, reading and writing.
Natalie, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, if you would just take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.
Natalie English 2:43
So hi, Chamber Champions at some, it’s great to be able to be with you this way. I have admire so many of you across the country, and appreciate inputs and things that I’ve learned from all of you. So I hope that I can share something helpful for you. So I guess something interesting about me. I love to sing. And while I’m not trained to do so I have a decent voice and so have enjoyed over the years in a couple of churches that I’ve been a member of to be able to sing with the band. So we’re not talking about just Tim books, which I do, but rock and roll. And so you never know I may when I retire from this go try to replace Mick Jagger, you know, as old as he is, but, but I’m not that good. But I do love to do it. So
Brandon Burton 3:33
what’s one of your favorite songs to sing?
Natalie English 3:36
Oh, gosh. Wow. I mean, there’s there’s so many my favorite artists, Christian contemporary artists is Natalie grant. Interestingly, she has the same name that I do, but we have had a bandleader tell me that our voices are similar. Now she’s way better than I am and much better trained than I am. But I can I can sing her songs really well, because we’re the same range. So I love her. And I’ve just love the I love worshipping through music. And so I just yeah, it’s what I like to do.
Brandon Burton 4:05
That’s awesome. I love these little facts I get to learn about people to do the podcasts. Thank you for sharing. Sure. Tell us a little bit about your chamber about the Wilmington chamber kind of size staff budget location just to kind of get us off perspective as we get into our discussion.
About the Wilmington Chamber
Natalie English 4:21
Sure. And there’s a little bit of a little bit of history perspective that needs to go along with that when I joined the Wilmington Chamber in March of 2017. We were a total of five staff. Our roles said we had around 900 members and our budget was in the 800 to $900,000 range. We have been through a major hurricane, a minor hurricane and a pandemic. And I’m really pleased to say that we finished 2021 with a $1.2 billion revenue and and expenses. million million sorry, well, I want to be doing sorry, 1.2 million, I’ve been talking about building bridges. And that’s always starts with a B, so sorry, 1.2 million. And we just added our eight staff person last month. So it’s continuing to grow finding the ways we do that, and doing that in the midst of and post disasters. So I’m really proud of my team.
Brandon Burton 5:27
That is great. Oh, it says a lot about the work you’re doing to still provide that value and which is going to be evident in our discussion today, but to see that return on investments and, and to see that growth continue, even through the pandemic. So our topic for discussion, so I’ve kind of hinted towards it as I read through your bio, and in just now but we’ll be focusing our discussion on disaster and economic recovery. And I’m excited to get into this discussion with you you’ve had some I hesitate to say great experience, because I’m sure it wasn’t great experience going through it. But some valuable lessons that have come out of that. So we’ll get into that discussion as soon as I get back from this quick break.
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Topic-Disaster & Economic Recovery
All right, Natalie, we are back. So disaster and economic recovery. I’d mentioned before with Hurricane Florence that ripped through Wilmington and cause destruction, you had another minor hurricane as well. What kind of lessons did you learn through these natural disasters that would lead you to help your community be prepared and to be able to bounce back and recover afterwards.
Natalie English 8:45
It’s funny, you know, to be to think about being fortunate for a disaster, but and it was it was a great experience because it has equipped me, I think, to to help to lead my community through the pandemic. So in September of 2018, Hurricane Florence was expected to be a Category five storm and so I left town with my young son at the time and our our dog and we camped out in a basement at a friend’s house in Charlotte. And instead of being a Category Five, she downgraded but she sat here for days just dumping rain on our community in our region. And because I still had internet service and phone in Charlotte, I started calling colleagues around the country and so shout out to folks at chambers of commerce in the Houston area in the New Orleans area, who had been through major hurricanes who who provided advice and counsel to me. And so from that basement in Charlotte, one of the biggest pieces of advice that I’ve received from from our colleagues in the Houston area was to make sure that the community gets connected Some of the some of the scariest things that can happen, or that people get left behind in recovery. And the way to prevent that is to make sure that we’re talking as we’re responding to do the the immediate needs in the community. And so I called my friend, the CEO of the United Way of the Cape Fear area, and said, I think we need to get the not for profit response agencies together with the business community, because I had been getting calls, right? So from from the response agencies asking me if I had a business that could provide this or that, and then the requests started sounding the same. And so I had that fear that we were falling into this trap of having multiple responses to one family, and no responses to another family and so called in church leaders from across the community, and found that we did have some less connected communities, less affluent communities, communities of color, who were not receiving the same responses as others, and it was unintentional, and yet it still was happening. And so that was the biggest lesson I learned is that immediately after some sort of disaster, making sure that you’ve your community is well connected, putting aside competition and putting aside potentially partisan differences. And, and I’m so proud of this community for doing just that. And being able to develop not only the response, the immediate response, but then to continue working together, literally, even through the pandemic. We’ve been working together to identify grant dollars that could help us become a more resilient community when the next storm hits. So infrastructure, specifically water, sewer and electricity infrastructure that will withstand the next major storm that might come through with continued to stay together. Because response can sometimes takes years to complete. When there’s damage done to homes, then the second major lesson I learned is that there is a lot of opportunity to help individuals and families recover from storms. But there was nothing for business unless you wanted to take out a loan, we’ve we invited the SBA into the chamber building after that hurricane and said Come help our businesses. But when when a business is impacted, so detrimentally, they don’t have the capacity for a loan. And so so that’s so I started then advocating in this community and at the state level, to say, look, the next time a major storm comes to any, any place in our community, in our in our state, we need to be ready to respond. Because those businesses represent jobs. Sometimes it’s two jobs, sometimes it’s 20. Sometimes it’s 500. But whatever the number is, something has to be available not just for an individual to save their home, but for their employer or to save their job. That was a broken record.
Brandon Burton 13:04
That’s so important. Yeah. And I think that gets overlooked and curious, what kind of traction Have you seen as he started to advocate for businesses to be able to recover after disaster?
Natalie English 13:14
Well, and I can’t take credit for it happening at the federal level. And because I’m not sure my voice has been that loud. But I but I think that coupled with colleagues around the country who’ve been through this and had said the same thing, when when we hit the lockdown for COVID, the amount of investment that our federal government, our state government, and then our local government were willing to make in businesses that that were forced to shut down as a result of the pandemic, that that did. That doesn’t happen. You’re right. We so even though government doesn’t force a shutdown, post disaster, natural disaster, the shutdown still happens. But this time, because government forced the shutdown, they also saw themselves as a as a as a resource for recovery from that shutdown. And so we here at the Chamber advocated locally for our city and county to use some of the dollars that were allocated from the federal government to invest in the recovery and reopening of our business community. And they responded, four and a half million dollars that we were able to, to distribute in our community. And then because we were so successful and advocating for it, they turned around and said, Okay, can you manage the program? And of course, we said, yes, yeah, as wide open, what have we done, but that also brought in some revenue for us because they were willing to pay us to administer the program and then to help them get the money out more quickly. And while I’m looking around the state, other communities who still haven’t done You’re down how they’re going to spend their American Recovery Plan funds. We’ve already gotten ours out the door, because our local governments worked quickly.
Brandon Burton 15:08
Yeah. And the time is so key to that, right. I mean, it really just sits there. And you know, it’s not getting out to the businesses not doing the purpose that it’s supposed to be. Right. So I’m curious as he reached out to, through the the hurricane situations, he reached out to other chambers, he had mentioned the Houston area, did you happen to chance to chance to speak to Diane probes at Rockport Fulton. Now?
Natalie English 15:34
I don’t remember. I actually, yeah, spoke to so many.
Brandon Burton 15:39
I had her on the podcast way back in episode 12, over 150 episodes ago, when she was talking about, you know, the hurricanes that have hit them, you know, on the Texas coast. Yeah, and what they’ve did to, you know, prepare the infrastructure and everything going forward. But then it was interesting, because I had recorded that, and it was just a few months later that, you know, the pandemic hit. And I actually had several recordings for the podcast ready to go. But that week, when everything shut down, I was like, you know, what, we’re going to push these back a little bit, I’m going to replay that episode from Diane probes, oh, there are so many key lessons in there from a natural disaster that can be applied to economic recovery, and just, you know, a pandemic, you know, I guess at the time, we didn’t realize it is necessarily going to become a pandemic, right. But key lessons to be learned. So, share with us what some of these things are that you took from the natural disaster experience, experiences, and being able to roll those over into, you know, pandemic response and relief and recovery from that situation is that I see that being a lot more applicable to chambers across the country.
Natalie English 16:52
Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, I think that you sometimes Chamber members, they write their check, and maybe they come to an event or two, that maybe they they don’t really think they hear from their chamber, right for the year, and then the renewal notice comes up. See, so we are all struggle, we all struggle with making sure that our investors see the relevance even if they don’t participate in the programming, right? And and what’s the best communications tool to do that? I will tell you if Chamber of Commerce does not take full advantage of any disaster that strikes, but being that trusted source of information about the resources, where the pandemic was concerned about new regulations and new guidelines, I mean, the guidelines were changing and still are, right, it feels like by the hour, and and so we post hurricane, and at the beginning of the pandemic, we implemented daily and then for not for long, but for a few weeks daily, people wanted to hear from us every day about what was new, and what do we need to do? And where do we where are we going to find help and, and so we did daily emails probably for about six weeks into the pandemic. And then we waned back to about twice a week, and did that well into the fall of 2020. We’re now back to our once a week official news related email that we send to our members, but it showed them that we were on top of what was going on and that we could connect them, it improved our relationship with many of them who didn’t hear from us. And it also opened up a line of two way communication, so that they could tell us the issues they were facing, we may not know about ahead, manufacturers at the very beginning stages. So but we are essential services, right? So different types of businesses wanting to make the case to our elected leaders that they were essential to the to to to our country, to our community. And so it opened up to a communication with some companies we had been getting checked for, from for years that hadn’t really heard from and so never wasted disaster as a Chamber of Commerce’s what I would suggest.
Brandon Burton 19:19
Yeah, I’ve heard a quote about that, you know, never let a good disaster go to waste, right? So when you talk about two way communication is that they would respond back to the email or they would get that input from you from those weekly or daily emails, and then pick up the phone and call or how was that two way communication established?
Natalie English 19:41
So some of it would happen in response to the email. And then you know, when I when I moved here in 2017, I reluctantly put my cell phone number on my business card. But in hindsight, I’m glad because we all got sent home right and, and yes, I could My voicemail or I could forward my voicemail from officer, but they are members, those who wanted to reach out to me, and who were able to get their hands on my cell phone number, I believe that they felt like they had a more immediate connection. So a lot of it really did come through my cell phone number. But also, in response to the email to my staff team, I’ve surrounded myself with people who are well connected in different parts of our community than I am. And so they got direct phone calls from our members. And it just we were we were responsive that we were available. And we were responsive, even though we were not sitting in the chamber building. We were each sitting in our individual home offices, but but we were available for them.
Brandon Burton 20:48
Yeah. So I think you’d also touched on the idea of being the trusted resource for information. And we hear that being said a lot these days in reference to chambers of commerce. But just to stress that point a little bit more. We see in communities all over that the what was the traditional trusted news outlets, you know, local TV, newspapers, things like that are, you know, if they haven’t closed or shut down their resources, or much less to cover those important stories to, to establish that information base, where it creates a void in communities, where Chambers of Commerce really are very well suited to fill that void. And to get out that information. And you don’t need to cover you know, all the high school, you know, sports events and all that. But, you know, the things that are important to get information out in your community. What communication methods you met, you mentioned email, what communication methods do you guys use to help establish, you know, that trusted credibility in your community? Yeah,
Natalie English 21:55
yeah, I don’t, it’s not unique. I mean, we do we, we, under normal circumstances, let’s call them we send a weekly email and it includes a president’s report, we call it so it’s something some topic for me that’s current and maybe in in the works that we inform our members about. We then we also have gotten much better over the last few years at incorporating social media and connecting with our, our business community through our social media outlets, and we haven’t yet dived into Tik Tok, but we’re on every other channel there is out there. And so Tik Tok. Next, they keep my staff keeps telling me, they want me to start doing videos. So we’ll see how that goes. But um, and then, and then I would say, again, because we just celebrated last week, our 150/5 consecutive annual meeting. So this Chamber of Commerce is more than 155 years old. And many chambers right across the country, or many communities across the country have had Chambers of Commerce in their community for that long. And so I think, I think we need to be I think it’s incumbent upon us to keep being that trusted source because they I think that I really believe that we don’t fall into the same category as as same members of Congress, right? People say Congress is that I don’t trust Congress or I don’t trust the legislature, I don’t trust that’s the only because because the the, the the perception that they’re all about politics, and they’re still doing really good work on our behalf. But for us Chambers of Commerce were seen as the place to go for information about tourism, for information about starting a business. And so it’s not political at the start. And so just taking advantage of that reputation that we’ve had for over 100 years in most of our communities, I think is how to do it and then using every channel possible, because different people are communicated with differently. And then finally, I would say that you can’t only communicate with everybody with the same voice, right? So me as a white woman, chamber CEO, I’m probably isn’t the right person to communicate with our young professionals in this community. I’m probably a little older than they’d like to see. Or you we have some great leaders of two councils that we’ve created an African American Business Council and a Latin American Business Council. And so we make sure that whenever we have critical messaging that needs to get out to the entire business community, that we we engage with them to help us get that word out, and whether it has to be in a different language, or through different channels. Because everybody’s not going to listen to the white female chamber CEO and US got to accept that and and use those other vehicles and show that willingness to build those bridges between communities.
Brandon Burton 25:08
Right? I think a point that you touched on that, yeah, turn on the light bulb, in my mind is when you talked about, you know, 155 years for the woman can chamber. Talk about credibility, you know, you guys aren’t going anywhere, you’ve been around a long time, you’ve been representing business in your community for a long time. And being able to get that messaging out to the community and say, Look, we are here for you, we’re here to help make Wilmington or whoever’s listening, you know, your own community, a strong place, you know, a great place to live, and work and to do business. It builds that credibility. And, you know, I wanted to circle back and I apologize, this kind of goes back to when you’re talking about the disaster recovery, from the storms, that you had mentioned, how you reached out to church leaders, which I thought that’s genius. I mean, they have a close following right there in good. Typically, they’re going to be in close communication with members of their congregations. Granted, not everybody in the community attends a church or, you know, regularly to have that relationship, but you’re getting certain segments of the population that, like you’ve mentioned, are being missed. I wanted to kind of piggyback on that maybe, and even add in homeowners associations. So that would be another way to reach some of those in communities that normally your email blasts with necessarily reach. But in times of a disaster or emergencies, they can be a great resource to help you connect with the greater community.
Natalie English 26:42
Absolutely. And, and I would also say, other membership associations, right. So locally, we have strong partnership with our Home Builders Association, and our Realtors Association. And, and then other Chambers of Commerce in our region. So and in some of those cases, they have significantly fewer staff than we do. And so I considered it extreme flattery, when I would have a chamber exec from another county in the region, or another partner, you know, text call, email me and asked me if they could cut and paste our information. And I said, Absolutely, this is not this, I don’t own it, I got it from other places, to please just do whatever you need to do, you can board it as is or you can paste it in your own template and take credit for it, I don’t care because at that time in our region, it was it was about getting the word out about the resources available. And, and so I think it’s also incumbent upon us to be those partners and not see ourselves as competitors. With those organizations, we all have the same goals, we all want our economies to grow, and economies don’t stop at county lines or city lines.
Brandon Burton 27:56
That’s right. Now, I love that idea of especially if you can establish those relationships and just know, hey, going forward, we’re gonna put out a lot of information, we want to be that trusted source for information in our community. And if there’s anything that resonates with people in your group, whatever your organization is, please take it and share it and anything to support our community. So absolutely, that’s very key. Well, I wanted to ask you, if there might be one tip or action item for listeners that they could do to maybe lift their chamber up to the next level.
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Natalie English 28:33
So I was I had to fill out a survey a questionnaire yesterday about something in our community. And I was asked what the best piece of advice I ever received. And, and it was about staffing, right about building a team. And so this one mentor of mine once said, surround yourself with people who think differently, and you have different skills and gifts. And I know we’ve all heard this Yeah. And and some of us do it really well. And, and some of us and even me at times, have fallen into that trap of of having people around me who think like me, and I’m I don’t know that unnecessarily horribly failed at those moments in my career. But I can tell you that in the moments of my career, when I have surrounded myself with people who have different perspectives, who think differently for me, who have different backgrounds, and different skills, we’ve been so much more successful. And so as I have rebuilt this Wilmington chamber team since 2017, it’s been the focus for me is to ensure that when I’m creating a position and then trying to fill it that I look at a broad array of talents and skills that I don’t necessarily bring because I am I am not the beyond the wall and I need people around me who can backfill my weaknesses, so that I can soar with my strengths and that would be the thing that I would say to get to the next level, it really is about building a team around you whether and for you small chamber staff leaders, I get it, it’s like, how can I do that I only have one other position, well then bring in volunteers who think differently. So whatever your team has to look like, just make sure that there are people who bring different skill sets to that table and different ways of thinking,
Brandon Burton 30:21
and what a great feeling neurologically, you know, when your mind is open to a new perspective, I don’t know if it’s a flood of serotonin, or dopamine, or whatever it is, it’s like, whoa, you know, that’s how some people see the world. This is. Right, it really changes your perspective and changes you as a person for the absolute LinkedIn. So I know chambers all over the world are always thinking about the future and trying to remain relevant. So I always like to ask as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Natalie English 30:55
Gosh, in certainly in the immediate future, it was before the pandemic. And but it’s just been exacerbated, I think we have to become the resource for Talent Development in our communities, we have to have our ear to our members in the business community about what they need in talent development, workforce development, if you will. And then we have to advocate with our education institutions. So that they while they are unbelievably smart, they don’t work in industry every day. And we have to help them as they’re creating the curricula and the programming that will develop our future workforce, that workforce that that our businesses need tomorrow and the workforce that they’re going to need 10 years from now.
Brandon Burton 31:43
I love that. It reminded me I just recently had Doug Griffin’s on the on the podcast, the author of 13 ways to kill your community. And when I asked him this question, he had a slightly different spin on it. But is he talking about talent development, a lot of times we think of the schools and workforce and talent development, which is I think, right on, and he was looking at it as training for employees of your member businesses, and really the businesses throughout your community. And he said the number one thing would be to train employees and customer service. Right. So when you have people visiting from out of town or new to the community, if they can go into the local businesses and have a great experience? Absolutely. Again, chambers perfect to help train the development in their communities. So just under that umbrella.
Natalie English 32:36
Absolutely. We talk about that all the time on our tourism development authority. Yeah, yeah,
Brandon Burton 32:42
that’s a great tip. Well, as we start wrapping up here, I like to give you an opportunity for any Chamber Champions listening that might want to reach out and connect with you and, you know, maybe expand on anything that you’ve shared with us today, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Connect with Natalie English
Natalie English 32:59
So the best way is probably through email simply because I check it sometimes 24/7 It’s English, my last name english@wilmingtonchamber.org. And I do try to get back to everybody, at least within 24 or so hours, and we’d love to help I think that’s the best thing and I don’t know who coined the R&D phrase as rip off and duplicate but I do it proudly and unashamedly and I, I encourage people to rip off and duplicate for me anytime it helps.
Brandon Burton 33:31
Perfect. Well, we will get that in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode165. That Natalie, thank you so much for joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcasts. I love hearing from your experiences and things that you’ve learned and, and ways to help the Chamber Champions that are listening. Thank you so much.
Natalie English 33:53
Thank you, it’s a great opportunity.
Brandon Burton 33:56
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