The Evolution of Chambers with Carlos Phillips

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Carlos Phillips. 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.

And now your host. He wonders if chambers in the future will use NFT’s for membership. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where it is my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Tony Felker, President and CEO of the Frisco Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for him.

Tony Felker  0:45  

One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton  1:07  

You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Carlos Phillips, Carlos began serving as president and CEO of the Greenville Chamber in South Carolina on March 29 2016. Much has been achieved during Carlos his time with the Greenville chamber including the implementation of strategic plans for the organization and accelerate the Chamber’s private sector fueled economic development campaign, selling its office 40 years and moving downtown to Greenville central business district, leading a statewide effort for legislation to expand the number of non violent offenses eligible for removal from one’s criminal record, partnering with Columbia, Charleston, Myrtle Beach and Charlotte chambers to form the South Carolina Metro chambers coalition and partnering with the United Way of Greenville County and the Urban League of the upstate for the Greenville racial equality and economic mobility Commission. The Greenville chamber foundation secured a half million dollar grant to expand its minority business accelerator initiative to the Columbia and Charleston markets. The chamber has been awarded chamber the year by the Carolina’s association of Chamber of Commerce executives for its programmatic leadership and value to its members and earned its five star accreditation by the US Chamber of Commerce for its operational excellence. Carlos is an active leader in the community, and his profession serving as director for visit Greenville, South Carolina Urban League, the Upstate Community Foundation of Greenville and the United Way of the upstate. He chairs the United Negro College Fund upstate mares mass ball, which raise funds to help kids to and through college. He serves on the executive committee of the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and chairs its metro cities Council. He’s also a member of the US Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100 and serves on its equality of opportunity Task Force. Originally from Owensboro, Kentucky Carlos received an undergraduate degree in communications from the University of Kentucky and a master’s degree in organizational communications from Western Kentucky University. He and his wife LaTonya have four children.

Carlos, I am excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Carlos Phillips 3:32
Well, Brandon, thanks for having me on the podcast and Hello, Chamber Champions. Glad to have the opportunity to share with you today.

Brandon Burton 3:43
Very good. So I know we were chatting just a little bit before we hopped on the recording. And you had mentioned you played some college football, which is I find to be interesting. I’m a big football fan. But uh, tell us a little bit about that. You know, obviously you’re Kentucky but what position did you play? What was your experience?

Carlos Phillips 4:05
Yeah, I played a couple of positions on the defensive side of the ball at the University of Kentucky inside and an outside linebacker. But that was back during the days of leather helmets. So that was back in the late in the late 80s. The game has changed a little bit since then. But what’s interesting is my oldest son played college football at Morehead State, which is a division two school in Kentucky. And my youngest son now plays quarterback at the University of Kentucky. So it’s clear that we we kind of like the game.

Brandon Burton 4:45
That’s right. It’s a great game. I love it too. Well tell us a little bit about the Greenville chamber. I know it’s probably been a couple years ago I had Liz Horton from Greenville chamber on the podcast as well. So it was regular listeners, you know They might go back in their memories and remember a little bit about what Liz shared about the Greenville chamber but just bring us up to speed and kind of size budget, you know, type of chamber you are that sort of thing just to give us that, you know, perspective.

About the Greenville Chamber

Carlos Phillips 5:12
You’ll, you’ll find that Liz was a much better guest than I will be. But I’ll try my best today. The Greenwood chamber, I like to call the Greenwood chamber a 133 year old startup. All right. We’ve been around for quite some time delivering value to to Greenville business community. Our legal name is the greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce. But for some reason, before I got here, we shortened it to the Greenville chamber. So but we are an organization that has members from throughout the upstate of South Carolina 1800 investors total. And we’re about a $4 million chamber coming you know, revenue coming from dues. Events sponsorships are economic development initiative accelerate that you mentioned that in my intro, that’s a private sector fuel initiative that focuses on growing our entrepreneurial ecosystem, expanding our talent, and workforce and only informing our community through through data. But the foundation of that accelerate work is on increasing educational attainment for working age, adults. So there are a lot of lot of moving parts in our in our organization, got a great team of about 20 folks who wake up every day, committed to delivering value to our business community and helping our economy grow.

Brandon Burton 7:01
Very good. Definitely helps us to kind of know where you’re coming from, but especially as we get into our topic for today, which is the evolution of chambers and I know through the pandemic and everything chambers have had to take a hard look internally and say okay, where’s our core values? What do we have to offer to our business community and the community in general. So I’m excited to get into that discussion with you and kind of learn how the Greenville chambers approached this and and maybe some things that you picked up on from other Chambers as well. But we’ll get into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Carlos, we’re back. So as we get into our topic today, evolution of chambers, I wanted to circle back to something real quick that you had mentioned, when you were talking about the Greenville chamber and you mentioned being 133 year old startup. Can you expand on that? And why you look at your the chamber as a startup 133 years later?

Topic-Evolution of Chambers

Carlos Phillips 10:38
Yeah, I can. We were, we were formed back in 1889. And it’s, it’s amazing how the chamber has, has evolved in led the evolution of our community. But you know, we did that the status quo has never been, has never been acceptable. For our community or for our organization. We’ve always either changed when we needed to change, or we’ve led the change when necessary, as well. So you know, some of the worst things that you can say that a team member can say here to be with chamber is, well, that’s the way we’ve always done it. That because that doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter. To us. We’re also the type of organization we don’t, we tend not to wait until something’s broken, to fix it. Sometimes we’ll break it. Yeah. To, to make it better, to make it more to make it more effective, or to deliver greater value to our investors. But that’s the kind of shop that’s kind of shocked that we are, I talked about our team all the time, because I really do have a special team, it takes special, it takes special people to embrace, you know, continuous improvement. But we’ve got such a team here at the chamber. And I think our organization has been in a state of continuous improvement over the past 133 years of its existence.

Brandon Burton 12:29
That’s awesome. A couple things really stood out to me. And your response there is one is that sometimes you’re the ones that break, you know, you’ve got going on to be able to innovate and move forward and reminds me of Apple, right? I mean, they had the the iPod, which is incredibly successful product, probably arguably one of the most successful products that Apple would ever put out. And they essentially killed it when they came out with the iPhone. Right?

Carlos Phillips 12:52
They basically cannibalized the product,

Brandon Burton 12:55
right? Yeah, yeah. And, and is done very intentionally, and it’s worked out very well. But you’d also talked about how the status quo is never good enough, which I think is a good theme to follow through for our discussion today as we talk about the evolution of chambers. So what are some things just, I know, I mean, pandemic is top of mind for for everybody here. How does the chamber remain relevant? How do you provide value? What are some of those things internally there at the Greenville chamber that you guys looked at to make some of those changes and evolve as the times changed?

Carlos Phillips 13:30
Yeah, great question. Brandon. One of the first things that we did was, we revisited the Chamber’s vision and mission. When I first arrived, the chamber had vision and mission statements. But on my first my first staff meeting, when I asked the staff to, to recite the vision and the mission,

Brandon Burton 14:00
like stare, because

Carlos Phillips 14:02
they couldn’t do it. It was it was long. And well, both of those statements were long. And they clearly had not committed to it. It was as if they were, they were showing up to do a job. But they hadn’t committed to the vision and the mission. So we shortened both the vision and the mission statements. The vision, we changed that to being a globally competitive, upstate economy where businesses succeed, and people prosper. And the most important word in that vision statement is to and sometimes I’ll quiz sometimes I’ll quiz people, and I’ll say what’s the most important word in that vision statement? And they will, they will say everywhere except that and so, but we changed that we changed our mission statement, so that we could be very clear and concise on what our what we what we committed to delivering for our business community and that is to lead convenient mobilize the business community to drive regional economic growth. That’s, that’s how we are going to achieve that vision that I stated earlier. Doing those things really helped us in a couple of ways. First of all, help our staff, our board, our stake or our stakeholders, have a clearer understanding of our of our Northstar. This is our goal. This is what we’re trying to pursue. And that’s from a vision perspective. But then it helped us focus on on how we get there. We, we were an organization that we we were uncomfortable saying no. Yeah. So if someone would call chambers fall into that, yeah, someone you know, someone will call and say, Hey, I need Can you can you? Can you help me build a birdbath? You know, can you? And that’s, that’s a little extreme. But we would say yes, to opt almost everything. But in in so while we, while we may have please people short term, long term we couldn’t deliver, we couldn’t deliver. So we actually ended up disappointing, folks, because we couldn’t deliver. Now, instead of disappointing people for that we can’t deliver. We disappoint people, because I’m sorry, that doesn’t fit into what we’re tasked with doing. But we’ll say but let me refer you to this organization or that organization who can better serve you that has provided a much clearer path for us to achieve the value that our business community expects from us. So we’ve learned how to say no. And through that, we’ve become much more valuable, much more effective for our business community, and quite frankly, for the community overall. Right.

Brandon Burton 17:12
And sometimes those referrals or other organizations, like you mentioned, and sometimes their businesses that are partners at the chamber. Yeah, that are investors.

Carlos Phillips 17:20
We’ve learned that sometimes the best, yes. Is a no. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:25
And you can make a mutually beneficial, you know, relationship out of that where everybody thrives to be better. Yeah, I often have friends throughout the country that they know, I do this podcast and me on my work involved with chambers, and their business owners, and they’ll say, Should I join our local chamber? Yeah. And it’s like, Man, what a loaded question. Like I wanted to say, yes, you know, no, good. But it’s like, well, I don’t know, you know, what is the mission of your local chamber? What is their vision? Can you get behind that? Does it resonate with what you want to do? Do you have similar goals to move your community forward? So I think, you know, like you guys did with condensing and you know, refocusing your mission and vision I think, is very effective to be able to tell your, your existing members and potential members investors, this is what we’re here for. This is our purpose. And if you want to jump on board on this best and write it with us and be alone, this is this is the group for you.

Carlos Phillips 18:28
Well, and Brandon, to that point, our our retention has improved. Because we’re now we’re now attracting and securing investors who a have a clear understanding of what the chamber said it’s going to deliver and they vote in its they’re not disappointed when when they expect one thing that is not, that’s not delivered. We have we have five focus areas at the chamber. And our goal is when we could have had 20 focus areas. Yeah. But for those five, we wanted to, we want to be the best in the marketplace, and delivering on those five. We, we pride ourselves in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, I’m not the most, I’m not the smartest person in the world. I keep things really simple. That’s for me, that’s for our team. And that’s for those who engaged with us keep things really, really simple. But if we do those simple things, if we do those ordinary things, if we execute them extraordinarily Well, you have very satisfied, very satisfied investors in members. And I think we’re improving on that. Daily.

Brandon Burton 20:12
Yeah. So I think, yeah, going back to the, what we’ve titled this episode, the evolution of chambers. You know, it went, I believe, from a lot of chambers that their founding had a very clear purpose, very clear vision. And then those waters got muddied over time. Because you get different organizations, different people, different business owners saying, hey, the chamber would be good for this. So got to be where you could go to any community, you know, most of the communities throughout the country, and ask the random business owner, what is your local chamber of commerce do? Yeah. And they would have no answer for it, you know, they do some networking, they, you know, like, it would be really hard for them to come up with an answer. Right. So I think refocusing is going to help give a clear definition to those businesses, what the chamber does why you exist,

Carlos Phillips 21:03
Brandon, to that point, I was on a zoom call. It was a strategic planning call for an organization here in town a couple of weeks ago, and someone on the call, they were in the performing arts sector. And they wanted to include as a part of the strategic plan, the chamber to build a performing arts venue, for smaller, non for profit, performing arts organizations in the area. And I chuckled because someone sent me a text on the calendar like, Hey, did you hear what you hear what you’re asked to do? And I replied back? Yeah, I heard that. No, it’s a bit of a mission creep. For us, yeah. You know, and it’s not, it’s not far fetched to think that at some point, it’s at some time. We may have tried to pull that off. Yeah. Yeah. But but based on our current, based on our current mission, just it just didn’t align.

Brandon Burton 22:15
Yeah. But I think among that confusion of what a chamber does it in, you touched on this earlier, where those expectations of what the members have when they join, you leave them not satisfied, because you’re not delivering on what they thought the expectation was. So going back to just being clear on that,

Carlos Phillips 22:35
well, and you know, if we’re going to disappoint you, we’d rather disappoint you up front.

Brandon Burton 22:42
You have a little more control there to you know, if you’re disappointing up front, you’re able to control that you’re able to direct them or redirect them the right way. So for sure, I think there’s a lot of value to that. Are there things that you’ve noticed other chambers doing that you think is maybe innovative, you know, as this evolution process that maybe you guys haven’t adopted, but you think you know, that it’s something good to explore? Put me on the spot? Here.

Carlos Phillips 23:07
You are, but you are, but you know, in our industry, we tend to be an industry that’s heavy in r&d. Right, and not not research and development. Rip off and duplication. Yeah. And so I’m a part of a group, you mentioned that I chair, our metro, metro cities Council. And that’s about 75. Chamber CEOs from the largest markets in, in the country, and we meet monthly. During the pandemic, we’ve been meeting via zoom. Yeah, and I’ll tell you, that was a, that’s been a great. It’s always been a great resource, but during the pandemic, there was some great ideas sharing. We probably, you know, drank a few virtual beers, you know, as we were trying to figure out how to lead organizations in our communities through through the pandemic. But there are a lot of great ideas from from those organizations. If you, there’s a oh, there’s a saying in our industry that if you see one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber? Yeah. There are no, there are no two chambers that are identical. But what we tend to do is, we’ll see we’ll hear an idea or an initiative from from one chamber in one community, and then we’ll, we may take it, season it to our taste, you know, how can it fit with our organization and our community and we have you and we, we repackage it, and we’ll implement it and there’s a lot of that, that there’s a lot of that that goes on For the folks on listening to the podcast, I would strongly encourage them. And I’m heavily involved in ACC, the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives. But I would encourage them to join a peer group. And engage in those meetings, whether they’re virtual, or they’re in person, there’s a lot of great idea sharing, and you never know what you’re going to learn. It’s a great, it’s a great network, great professional development, it’s probably where I received, my greatest professional development is through the metro cities Council through ACC. And it keeps you up, again, to talk about the status quo and how that’s not acceptable in our organization. Well, one way to one way to avoid that is to, to listen to others, listen to other people who are trying to figure it out, as well, you may have an idea for them. And I guarantee it, you’ll take some ideas from them as well.

Brandon Burton 26:08
And that’s actually the whole basis of why I started this podcast over three years ago is the idea of I initially trying to reach some of those smaller chambers, maybe they’ve got one staff person, maybe it’s a volunteer, maybe it’s part time person. Because I would see some of these smaller chambers, it just really struggled, where other chambers are hitting on all cylinders, everything’s great everything communities, well respect some and it’s like, what can we do to help these small chambers that are underfunded, they can’t take the time to be a way to be in these peer groups, they all these things. And it’s like, so here’s a resource, but that is a great tip is to for everybody to get involved with the peer group.

Carlos Phillips 26:49
I’ll say this, Brandon. All chambers have their challenges. Because matters, not matters, not your revenue level, your number of investors, how many? How many staff, me folks you have on staff, all chambers have challenges and opportunities. So when we talk big versus small, it’s a scaling. It’s a scale factor. But everyone’s all chambers have to have challenges and opportunities. Even for the small chambers, if you’re a one person shop, professional development is still important, for sure. And you have to carve out, you have to carve out time for that. And maybe it’s an hour a month, maybe it’s an hour a month, but that hour a month could help you figure out how to overcome some of your challenges. Yeah, it could help you, it could help you better understand how to deliver enhanced value for your, for your members. So I mean, yeah, I’ve not worked for a small, a small chamber, I started off with greater Louisville Inc, which was a pretty large shop. I moved from greater Louisville, Inc, to the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, another, you know, fairly large shop, went back to greater Louisville Inc. and then came to Greenville. So I don’t have a full understanding of, of being the only person in the office. So I want to be careful that my, my comments, I want to be careful that they’re not insensitive to that. But if professional development is a need and a priority, then no matter what, no matter the size of your chamber, you got to figure out how to carve out time for that. And that’s, again, that’s one of the values of those peer groups through ACC is that is an opportunity for leaders to carve out time for their development, which is great not only for them, but for their organizations and further their communities. Right.

Brandon Burton 29:14
And it reminded me of the quote, and I’m terrible given attributions, but you can’t get from where you are to where you want to get where you want to be by doing the same thing. So by hearing how other people are doing things by not being, you know, okay with the status quo, continually evolving, I think is key to that transition.

Carlos Phillips 29:35
Yeah. You know, you made me think of something to Brandon, a book that I read, that is referenced continuously. It’s called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Yeah. And it was a good book for me personally. But it was also a good book for the Greenville chamber organizationally, as well. What what got us here over the 133 years won’t get us through the next 133 years. Right? And we have to be intentional in that in that mindset.

Brandon Burton 30:08
Yeah, that’s good. Well, as we start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask you, and you’ve given some great tips. But I’d like to formally ask if there’s any tip or action item that you would suggest for a listener to help take their organization up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Carlos Phillips 30:25
Well, random Far be it for me to, to give tips or formal advice to folks because we’re still trying to figure things out here at the Greenwood chamber, but I will say this, recognize that you’re still trying to figure things out, recognize that you’re not quite where you need to be. Recognize that your your business community and your community as a whole, they’re always going to need you to be more, more effective. And the pressure on chamber CEOs and leadership is to continue to seek opportunities to deliver better value. So if your chamber is primarily engaged in networking events, then how do you make those networking events more valuable for the folks who, for the folks who attend? You know, interestingly, our business community 10 years ago, they charged the chamber with being a thought and programmatic leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Not a traditional space for Chamber of Commerce.

Brandon Burton 31:53
Yeah, he said 10 years ago, 10 years ago, 10 years ago.

Carlos Phillips 31:59
And what we realized is and what these leaders what our board realized a decade ago, was there’s a business case, for insuring for trying to include more people in in the economy, for sure, yeah. So how do you include not just more more black owned businesses in your economy, but more women owned businesses, Hispanic owned businesses, veteran owned businesses, there’s a business case. There’s a business case for that. Our board leadership embraced that business case. And for the past decade. We’ve been that thought and programmatic leader in our in our community. You mentioned the partnership with United Way and Urban League on the racial equity and economic mobility commission. Yeah. It’s it, there’s a business case for ensuring that that there are minorities and blacks have better health outcomes, better education attainment, better jobs, and that our justice system works, you know, more fair than it is than it is today. And so, again, my only advice is, you know, yesterday’s. Yesterday’s homeruns won’t win today’s ballgame. Right? What what you did yesterday, what you did 133 years ago. It’s really inconsequential. You got to figure out how am I going to hit singles, doubles, triples, home runs today? And how is my organization going to be best positioned to hit those singles, doubles, triples, and home runs? Tomorrow? And that’s, that’s, that’s my goal, as the CEO of the Greenwich chamber, and I would encourage others to, to proceed accordingly.

Brandon Burton 34:06
I love that. So many thoughts as you’re given that response. Maybe a try to condense it down to one response for myself is it reminds me as I read Dave Atkinson’s book. Yeah, of course, she’s, I love that. But it really paints a picture very clearly about the purpose of the chamber is to advance your community to build a stronger community. And as you talk about the diversity, equity and inclusion front, I think that’s a there is a huge business case for that it from a chamber if your goal is to advance your community and make it a better place for everybody. Where’s the most room for growth where who who has been underserved who has not had the opportunity to be able to advance and develop and do these things? And if you can put some some focus on those areas As the whole community is going to advance so much further. So I love that. And I

Carlos Phillips 35:05
want to give a shout out to Dave Backus and he’s the person that introduced me to this industry. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so he introduced me to the industry. And after working in Google in for five years, I got a chance to join his team and work for him for five years. And you may have seen me referenced in that book that you Yeah, that you that you spoke up? He is. He is He has that book is I consider that book kind of the Bible. Yes. For Chamber Leadership. And it certainly has influenced how I lead this organization and community.

Brandon Burton 35:43
Absolutely. Well deserved shout out for Dave Atkinson. I like to ask everyone this question as we look to the future of chambers. And that’s kind of what we’ve been discussing this whole conversation, but how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Carlos Phillips 35:59
That’s a good question. Brandon. I think I’ve answered that question. Throughout today’s throughout today’s interview, again, I think it’s just embracing you know, continuous improvement. Think investor or member first. You know, we we tend to, we tend to communicate in chamber speak.

For which are the businesses in our community really don’t care much about chamber speak.

And so but but be in a mode of, of continuous improvement. And, and I think you’ll position chambers will be positioned for success. In yours in the years to come, I think, again, and I think we’re a testament to that, again, 133 years. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 37:02
I appreciate that. I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who would like to dive in a little deeper about how you guys are doing things, they’re in Greenville, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Connect with Carlos Phillips

Carlos Phillips 37:15
Well, you can email me at cphillips@greenvillechamber.org and or go to our website, greenvillechamber.org. And while I enjoyed my opportunity to speak with you today, I’ve got a team that’s much more knowledgeable on this stuff. They forgotten more about this than than I’m ever going to learn. But go on our website, you can find my contact information there. And you can also find the rockstars who are helping us not only develop our plan of work, but are effectively executing each day.

Brandon Burton 37:55
I love that advice because you’re right you do have Rockstar team and it doesn’t all have to come to you. Yeah, they’ll filter him out to the people with those you know programs are looking to learn more about that Carlos. I really do appreciate you spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. Thank you, you delivered a lot of value and and some you know thoughts to provoke. You know what the evolution of chambers can continue to look like at the local level for those listening,

Carlos Phillips 38:24
My pleasure.

Brandon Burton 38:26
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