Dallas Regional Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Dale Petroskey

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Dale Petroskey. 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.

Now your host during hot Texas summers he is always grateful for air conditioning. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I am your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Matt Morrow 0:47
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

Brandon Burton 1:09
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another one of our special episodes in our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series, and our guests for this episode is Dale Petroskey. Dale is the president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber. Dale has more than 35 years of leadership experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. In April 2014, he became president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber, one of the largest and most established business organizations in the state of Texas. The Dallas Regional Chamber works to strengthen the business community by attracting companies and talented workers from around the world. improving education, advocating for pro growth public policies, and enhancing the quality of life for all in the Dallas region. Dale’s career also includes service as assistant White House press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, Senior Vice President for mission programs at the National at National Geographic and president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Dale is a member of numerous boards, including the alfalfa Club of Washington DC SMU is Lyle School of Engineering and Dallas medical resources, educate Dallas Clayton Kershaw’s challenge, the Dallas Mavericks Advisory Council and the Texas Rangers baseball foundation. Dale and his wife, Ann both graduated from Michigan State University and live in Dallas, they have three married children. Dale, I’m excited to have you with me today on chamber tap podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions. And if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well, Brandon,

Dale Petroskey 3:00
thank you for having me. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the Dallas Regional Chamber. And and it’s just going to be fun. One thing you should know about me is that I’m one of nine children. And you don’t run across a lot of folks these days who have eight siblings, but I do. And they’re all from the same parents. And I’m the second oldest, I’m the oldest son and the second oldest of those nine children. All right, yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:29
you’re right. You don’t come across that very often these days. So that is interesting. So why don’t you Well, first of all, congratulations, being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. It’s a great accomplishment. And I know you’re in great company with others in your category as well.

Dale Petroskey 3:47
Appreciate that. We’re very excited. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 3:51
Why don’t you take a moment and tell us a little bit about the Dallas Regional Chamber just to give us some perspective as to the scope of work, the size of the chamber staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

About the Dallas Regional Chamber

Dale Petroskey 4:04
It sounds great. Thank you. First of all, there are Dallas is a big market. Dallas, Fort Worth is a big market. 7.8 million people here. It’s the fourth largest market in the United States. And there are 175 chambers in Dallas Fort Worth, believe it or not, we’re the largest. And number two is half our size. And all those 173 are below number two. So we’re twice as large as number two. We have 55 full time staffers. Our budget is $12 million a year. And we have our own research team, which very few chambers do. But we have a very sophisticated research team, you know, staffed by professional researchers, which really helps our work. And why we’re very different than a lot of chambers is that we don’t take a dime from any public entity. We don’t take a dime from the city. We don’t take a dime from the county. We don’t take a dime from it. anybody except our member companies. And that gives us independence. And it allows us to do what we do. So we are the Regional Chamber. So all we care about is that companies and jobs come to this region. And they that there’s the best fit for them when they do come here. So when we go to California, and talk to companies who are thinking about moving to the Dallas area, we’re the ones they talk to, and they say, we’d like to go up and we’d like to have a campus. So we take them up to Plano and Frisco and introduce some of the folks up there where most of the campuses are in this area. That we want to be in the research area. So we take him to Richardson, where a lot of the research is done, we want to be near the airport, we take him to Irving and hand them off to Irving. Whatever the need is, whatever their wishes are, we want the best fit for them. We’re like a point guard and basketball, who’s dishing off to the guys who can score. And so as a result of that, we’ve been very successful since 2012 200 headquarters have moved to the Dallas Fort Worth region 200 In the last 12 years, and 1.3 million new jobs in the Dallas Fort Worth area in the last 12 years. Those are crazy numbers, those there no other market is even close to those numbers. And I think one of the reasons we’ve been so successful is that we have this model of sort of the artists broker, us making sure that these companies get the best fit. And they go up and work with these economic development organizations in all these great areas in the Dallas Fort Worth region, who can make them feel right at home in their areas. So that’s our reason for being is economic development. But for that to happen, we need to do three other things very well, one talent. So we do a lot of work in education, and workforce making sure that every youngster has a chance for a good education. So they can have a good job and a good life. We also attract talent from the outside, talking about the virtues of Dallas as a place to start your career, continue your career move up. Because we have so many companies we have 23 fortune 500 companies 43, fortune 1000 companies, lots of opportunities here. So we’re always looking to attract talent here as well. So number one is talent. Number two is public policy. And that means having a business climate that is strong and welcoming, low taxes, low rate, low regulations, and welcoming, welcoming for everybody. And then our third leg of the stool for supporting economic development is diversity, equity and inclusion, because we’re not going to reach our full promise as a community until everyone can participate in the prosperity that’s going on here. And we have in some ways, some areas where people don’t have those opportunities. They don’t have the educational opportunities, they don’t have the job opportunities. So we work really hard in that area as well. So that’s a little bit about the scope of our work. Yeah. Hey,

Brandon Burton 8:17
I appreciate that. And, on a personal note, I appreciate the work you guys are doing here in the Dallas region since I I’m a part of that here in the Dallas region, I get to benefit from a lot of that work you do.

Dale Petroskey 8:28
Appreciate that. I’ll pass that along to our great staff.

Brandon Burton 8:31
Yes, please do. So as they do these chamber, the year finalist interviews what I like to spend a good majority of the discussion on is around the two topics that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application. And what I’m thinking we’ll do is we’ll just we’ll touch on what those two programs are just at a high level. And then we’ll circle back and go into a little bit more detail on each of those problems. Each of those programs not problems. As soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Dale, we’re back. Do you would share with us what the two programs are that you submitted on the chamber? The your application?

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Dale Petroskey 11:59
Yeah, happy to do that. Brandon. The first one was a vaccination program for communities of color during the middle of the pandemic. Okay, the second one is something called P TECH, which is our businesses actually being embedded in our schools, to work with students to tell them about their industries, their companies, give them internships, give them opportunities to get a leg up in the work world. So those are the two basic programs.

Brandon Burton 12:30
All right, let’s say let’s start with the vaccinations for people of color. And that’s a that’s a program that I haven’t heard of other chambers tackling. So I’m interested to hear kind of what brought that to the forefront and how you guys approach that.

Dale Petroskey 12:47
You know, early last year, we were sort of in the middle of the vaccinations in a big way. And you know, the pandemic had started the previous March, and people were getting sick. But there were no vaccines available. And finally vaccines became available. And yet, they were not reaching everybody that they should have reached either folks didn’t want to take them, or people didn’t know how to get them or didn’t know enough about what the rules were around, signing up for them, registering for them going to get them and so forth. And we thought, what can we do most at this moment in time, to help our community and help our business community. And we realized that communities of color, were dying at higher rates than anybody else. They were going to the hospital at higher rates than anybody else. They were losing their jobs at higher rates than anybody else and losing their businesses at higher rates than anybody else. And so we started to look into this. And we realize that a lot of folks in those communities either didn’t have any information about how to get vaccinated, or they were getting wrong information about vaccinations. And so nobody asked us to do this. Our board didn’t even ask us to do this. We just believe it was the right thing to do. So we embarked on a campaign that had sort of two prongs one was public service announcements, aimed at communities of color that were on there were messages on billboards, on television, and radio, in doctor’s waiting offices, and in pharmacies, about the vaccinations and if you chose to get them how it would protect you and your family and your jobs, basically. And so we worked with we put out an RFP request for proposal to a bunch of marketing agencies, and we chose one so that was one piece of it. The second piece of it was the ground game. So we worked with another organization marketing organization that works very closely with communities of color here, in order to micro target those areas and get that get them the information they need, and set up clinics on site. So if people chose that they wanted to get a vaccine, they can go right there and get their vaccine. Okay, we set a goal of getting 600,000 More people vaccinated between June and September last year, basically the summer. And by September, we had 660,000 More vaccinations in the Dallas area, most of them in communities of color. And the our budget for this was close to a million dollars. Again, nobody asked us to do this. But we thought it was the right thing to do. And we because we are very careful with our money. And we’re very good about keeping reserves, and in our, every year putting some money into our reserves, we actually had the money to do this when it was needed most. So we’re very proud of that program. And it was a great community service to our to our, to our folks and to our business community. I’ll mention one other thing, Brandon, we enlisted the help of a lot of our member companies or businesses, to get the word out to their employees, and to share information with their employees about how they could get vaccinated because there was a lot of misinformation, or people just weren’t paying attention. It was complicated. You remember the messages that were going out. And so we tried to simplify it, get it out. And our businesses are very appreciative of the educational role that we played in all of that.

Brandon Burton 16:52
That’s great. I love hearing how, you know, partnering with other organizations that service these demographic of people of color and being able to really, you didn’t mention it directly, but it’s data driven, you know, when you’re looking at who are the people most affected right now, with the pandemic? How can we make the largest impact? And the data was pointing to this program, and you guys listened and responded. So

Dale Petroskey 17:18
I think that’s what we try to do. We try to listen, we try to decide and then we try to act. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:25
So let’s shift gears. And tell us about the you say it was called P TECH getting the businesses in the schools. Is that primarily with high schools? Or is it different levels, it’s always about that.

Dale Petroskey 17:37
It’s high schools. And, and, you know, several years ago, the Dallas ISD, Dallas, Independent School District, you know, was struggling, and like a lot of urban school districts. And we have a very innovative superintendent here, Dr. Michael Hanna HOSA, actually just retired. And, but he was always wanting to partner with with everybody he could, okay to get things going in the right direction for Dallas, Independent School District. And he came to us and we came up with the idea of reaching out to our big companies mostly, and getting them to work, to adopt a school and to work in that schools. So for example, AT and T, you know, they adopt a school, they go, they send him plays into that school every day. That’s their job to work with those kids on technology, and what it might be like to work at at&t, maybe not in a technology role, but an accounting role, an HR role, showing young people, the future, showing them that what a job looks like, what working inside a company looks like. And then at&t provides internships for a lot of those students, and ultimately jobs for those twos. Okay. But we have companies like Frito, lay, Boeing, you know, gosh, Texas Instruments, all the big companies of Dallas are involved in this. In fact, 90 companies send people into these schools every day to work with these youngsters to provide internships, job opportunities to teach them skills. And as a result of that, more companies work in Dallas ISD schools than any other school district in America. And literally what it is if you think about it, you know, most of us were in high school, we don’t know what we want to do. We only know what our parents did. And so so often what happens is people go into jobs into the the industries that their parents are in because they don’t know anything else that’s out there. This gives them a chance to really see See some other things, test some other things and be exposed to other companies, other industries and know more about what, what the possibilities are on the job market, and what they might be going to college to study for. So that when they come out, they’re a little bit more targeted.

Brandon Burton 20:19
I like that. So when you talk about these businesses being on the campus every day, is it the same employee going to the campus every day? Do they have multiple Pete is that their full time job is to be the campus representative?

Dale Petroskey 20:33
Yeah, most of the time? Yeah. It’s varies a little bit. But yes, that’s their job to be a math

Brandon Burton 20:39
school. And then they get worked into the curriculum for the different classes to

Dale Petroskey 20:44
kind of show. Yeah, they were the counselors, work them in teachers work them in, so forth.

Brandon Burton 20:52
That’s fantastic. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, very innovative,

Dale Petroskey 20:55
very innovative. And, and as far as I know, one of a kind, at least at this scale.

Brandon Burton 21:02
Yeah. Whenever I hear these programs of chambers, getting involved with education and showing these job opportunities, I’m always a little jealous that I didn’t have that when I was growing up to be able to, you know, see what the world has to offer.

Dale Petroskey 21:16
No question, you know, what I, when I was growing up, I grew up in the Detroit area. And, you know, I didn’t know what was out there at all, really, and my wife says, she said, I think you could have been a great architect. Because you know, you’ve got a good sense of space. You aren’t you are good with pen and paper, you can draw, you know, I’m not a trained artist in any way. But it comes easily to me to draw and sketch things out. And she says, You would have been a great architect. When I was growing up, I had never met an architect, I didn’t know there was a job, such as architect, right. Or when I went to Washington, and I started working, you know, in the White House and on Capitol Hill, and, and I would see people who are in the Foreign Service, you know, who are diplomats or working in an embassy, I never knew that those jobs existed in high school. But I might have loved to have done that. So the more we can expose kids to various things that maybe fit their capabilities and their interests, the better off we’re all going to be,

Brandon Burton 22:24
right? Absolutely. And it sounds like both of these programs make a huge impact in the Dallas region. I’d like to ask as a chamber, the year finalist, and you kind of alluded to this earlier with your your metaphor of being the point guard, you know, getting those assists. But how do you see your role with the Dallas Regional Chamber within your community?

Dale Petroskey 22:48
Yeah, I think Dallas Regional Chamber is viewed in our community, as a go to organization. When when when things need to get done, people tend to go to us, because they know that we have relationships all throughout this region, with other chambers, with economic development organizations, with political leaders, with business leaders, and we are a great convener, to bring a lot of people together. And other folks, in many ways don’t have that scale or that that perspective, to bring all those folks or those relationships to bring all those folks together. So I think that’s, that’s one way that we are seeing, I think the other way we’re seeing as an organization that steps up, and something needs to get done. We’ll take it on, just like the vaccine program. Nobody asked us to do it. Nobody expected us to do it. If we didn’t do it, nobody would say why are you not doing that, but we just knew it was the right thing to do. So we did. And so you know, it’s a great, we feel like we’re in a great position. And I’ll say this, it’s, it’s building your reputation and your brand every single day in order to be in that position, that it was you have to be trusted. So you have to you have to do good work. You have to work with people, you have to they have to know your hearts in the right place. Right. So that you are trusted and and can have that kind of oh, I don’t know. Brand in order for people to want to go to you or to say they’re the they’re the natural organization to go to on this.

Brandon Burton 24:38
Yeah. And I think that’s so important is that the showing up every day and being an impact in the community. So when a real crunch time comes or real crisis, people know who to turn to for answers.

Dale Petroskey 24:50
I’ll say this to Brandon. You know, my we have a staff of 55 and everyone here is taught and believes say that we are here to be of service. We are a service organization, we are here to help people. And so whatever needs to be done to help them. That’s what we’re here to do. Okay. And and that’s, uh, and you know, that’s the way you’ve got to look at it to be so public servants.

Brandon Burton 25:20
Yeah, absolutely. So I look at all the chamber the year finalists as kind of being organizations that are, you know, doing great things right now, making a huge impact. And I like to see if you might have any tips or advice action items for listeners that might want to take their chamber up to the next level, what

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Dale Petroskey 25:44
would you suggest? Yeah, I would say, you know, it’s so hard to give advice to others, because so many people are doing so many good things, right? I would say, to be very, to be very good with your finances, you know, so you, you’ve got members, you want to serve those members in the best possible way. But make sure that you are paying attention to the bottom line, so that you can put money in the bank every year, so that when times get tough, or a crisis happens, you have something to draw on. So for example, during the, during the early days of COVID, I was scared to death, I thought we were you know, we were gonna face $2 million losses in our budget, and we’re gonna have to lay people off and, you know, all these kinds of things. And in the end, and I went to the board and proposed that, okay, we’ll take salary cuts for, you know, as long as it takes. And we, you know, I took the most and it went down by, you know, great, and so forth. But in the end, we didn’t have to do that, because we were able to manage our way through it, okay. But the fact is that we had money in the bank, so we had a cushion, to get through this. And that’s from years and years and years of paying attention to the finances and being good with your finances. So I think that is a an important piece of this. Because, you know, having money in the bank gives you a lot of flexibility and gives you a cushion, when you need it, or gives you the money to do things like a vaccine campaign, when when the time comes. So that’s, that’s number one, I would say number two is just really try to get to know as many people as you can in your community, and build trusted relationships with them, provide programs that will want them to join your membership. So that you’ve got a great base of support among your membership, that allows you to do a lot of things, if you have relationships with a wide array of companies across the spectrum, you know, and try to think about what you offer, that maybe they need, right, the various people in various sectors of the economy need, so that you can build this broad base of support among a lot of folks, you know, and then I would say, third, from a staffing standpoint, is just hire the best possible staff, you can treat them really well. You know, make it fun to work here. Remind them every day. This is a privilege. It’s a privilege to work for a public service or focused organization, and that they’re doing really important work, I often will relate to them. My favorite quote is by Teddy Roosevelt, who said, the greatest prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. And I remind them often that we work hard at work worth doing. And that not everybody out there comes to work every day, able to work hard at work worth doing. They are working off and at things that need to be done. But we actually get to work hard to make this a better community and to to really move the needle during our time here.

Brandon Burton 29:26
I love that. And I think all three of those tips that you suggested they really they position an organization well to be able to serve their community in the best ways. You know, when you’ve got those connections in the community, you’ve got the great staff you’ve kept track your finances and prepared for the rainy day. It makes you available to make clear decisions that are not fogged up with some of those other things that could get in the way and distract you.

Dale Petroskey 29:52
Yeah, well said Brad. I love that.

Brandon Burton 29:55
So I like asking everyone that I have on the podcast about the future of chamber. So how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Dale Petroskey 30:05
Yeah, I think, again, as some people have a notion of a chamber as sort of a dusty old place that’s for the past, we feel just the opposite of that, you know, we believe that chambers really are the central point, it shouldn’t be the central point in a community that people go to, and for resources or to for help to get things done. And so that’s the sort of the incoming, the other piece of that is for chambers to be always having your ear to the ground with their community, and saying, what needs to be done? How can we best help? So there’s a little bit of defense, like, we’re here to help. And there’s a little bit of offense, which is, here’s what needs to be done. Let’s go out and do it. And I think if you keep in mind those two things, you’re going to be a very relevant and very important organization in your community.

Brandon Burton 31:08
I love it. Great advice. So I’d like to give you an opportunity for anybody listening who maybe got intrigued about any of these programs, or the way the Dallas Regional Chamber is doing things, what might be the best way to reach out and connect or to learn more, what would you suggest that? What’s the best way to reach out and connect with you? Yeah,

Connect with Dale Petroskey

Dale Petroskey 31:29
I think probably the easiest thing just send me an email at dpetroskey@dallaschamber.org. And I will you know, I’ll be initially answer it but I’ll get it to the right person, my organization who can help them the most.

Brandon Burton 31:50
That’s perfect and we’ll we’ll get your email in the show notes for this episode as well. So people can look that up and and connect with you and learn more if there’s something they they need to dive in deeper with. But, Dale, I really appreciate you spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. Again, personally, thank you for what you guys are doing to the Dallas region. I wish you guys Best of luck to you and your team as chamber the year and I look forward to seeing you in Indy. Well,

Dale Petroskey 32:21
it’s been great fun. Thank you, Brandon and appreciate your what you do, and love the questions you ask.

Brandon Burton 32:29
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