Regional Coalitions with Glenn Morris

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Glenn Morris. 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 likes to explore new automation tools. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

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As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 0:59
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Glenn Morris. Glenn leads the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce in California and developed in delivering on its mission to be a catalyst for business growth convenient for leaders and influencers and champion for a stronger Santa Maria Valley. The chamber is the leading business support Economic Development and Tourism Promotion Agency in Northern Santa Barbara County. Prior to joining the Santa Maria Valley Chamber, Glenn served as president and CEO for the Visalia Chamber of Commerce, which is also in California leading the chamber through a complete update of its programs, while establishing the organization as an influential voice and local policy decision making. In addition to his work with chambers, Glenn has professional experience in economic development, tourism and business advocacy. He brings nearly three decades of experience and leadership to bear on his passions of community organizational excellence, and the power of collaboration to achieve goals. His experience includes leading nonprofit organizations in Utah, California and Nevada. As a community leader, Glenn has been involved in a number of local and national organizations working on issues ranging from access to the arts, improvement of local schools and youth leadership development. Glenn has also been part of a number of community based political campaigns. Professionally, Glenn has served on a wide range of local, regional and national boards focused on business advocacy, economic development, workforce issues and youth career preparation. Glenn has served in numerous leadership and training positions for His church, community and professional organizations. He finds great joy in being a husband to Shana and as a father and a grandfather. Glenn, I’m excited to have you with me on Chamber Chat Podcast today, I’d love for you to 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.

Glenn Morris 3:06
Well, Brandon, good morning, and thank you for this invitation. And the chance to chat about chambers, I think. I think chambers are just critical organizations and communities. And I was fortunate that kind of midpoint in my career to find myself in the chamber business and found my real home professionally. So I love that, that that you have this opportunity to bring chamber people together and help us all learn and, and grow together. So that’s wonderful. You know, something else about myself, I you know, I do a lot of work. But But I love all of it. But you know, I think the thing that makes it all worthwhile. At the end of the day, you mentioned the grandkids and that and that’s just you know, that’s the payoff in life, right? When you when you get those opportunities to see your family growing and thriving, and we’re really blessed in that way.

Brandon Burton 4:05
That’s right. I always like to say that’s how, you know you got your priorities right. You know, you can get at work and and all your responsibilities to be able to reflect on that. That’s where that that’s what matters. Yeah, indeed.

Glenn Morris 4:19
Very good.

Brandon Burton 4:20
Well, tell us a little bit about the Santa Maria Valley Chamber just to give us some perspective, midsize budget staff, that sort of thing is we get your discussion

Glenn Morris 4:29
today. Yeah, so Santa Maria Valley Chamber. We are the chamber for the city of Santa Maria and the surrounding. There’s a fairly large unincorporated community in our neighborhood. There’s a smaller city just down the street. So we kind of covered that regional area. We’re in Northern Santa Barbara County, so that three and a half hours north of LA for something south of San Francisco, right on the Central Coast. We, we think of it as God’s country. And you know, the we I joke with folks that I live in the land of the eternal 70s is that it’s really just a beautiful place to live and work. We have a wine country here that that’s a big draw for our tourism side. But there’s a significant amount of manufacturing in this area, as well. And so it’s a very diversified economy communities about 100. And, oh, if you take the all of the neighboring areas that we serve, it’s probably 150 to 160,000 people, kind of one of the last, growing communities along the central coast with with still some opportunity for new new development and new growth. Our chamber is a we think of ourselves as the one stop shop for all business needs. In addition to the traditional chamber functions, we are the tourism marketing organization for the community. And we are the economic development organization for the community. So we work with our city and the county in our area to lead in all of those areas. So we really are kind of a one stop shop I have a team of depending on the day 10 to 12 folks that lead those three functions. We have about 850 members of the chamber and our budget all in is gonna probably be in that two and a quarter million this next year. All right.

Brandon Burton 6:43
Well, that does help to give some of that perspective especially as we get into what our topic for our discussions today around regional coalition’s. We’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Regional Coalitions

All right, Glenn, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break we’ll focus our conversation around regional coalition’s and your responsibility or your chamber there, like you mentioned, as you kind of gave that background about the chamber is your typical chamber work you’ve got the tourism arm as well as economic development responsibilities, so you guys stay busy. But also that gives you the need really to reach out and, and work with others in your community and the region. So I’m always curious to hear how different chambers go about reaching out and working with other organizations because it can be, you know, competitive on some levels, but also, you know, rising tide raises all ships as they say. So, I’d love to kind of hear your philosophy and strategy as to how you approach that.

Glenn Morris 11:06
So this is a this is an issue that I’m really passionate has been kind of my, my new to the topic I’ve been evangelizing on in our community for since I got here. So good, let me give you a quick story, because it’ll set some context for how we came to this this approach, I joined the Santa Maria Valley Chamber, just over just right at eight years ago, came from another community in California, and moved over here, Santa Maria is the largest community in our region. But it’s not the county seat, right. So it’s not the political center of the county, that would be Santa Barbara. And San Luis Obispo, which is about 40 minutes to the north of us is the home to the regional university. And so you know, as you can imagine, I’m sure that this will ring true for many communities, when you’re the kind of the second community that you know, there can be a chip on the shoulder, right, we don’t get our fair share, some disapprove. Yeah, and so when I moved to the community that that perception was really clear that, that this community had felt for a long time, like it was a little isolated from resources and decision making power, and all of those kinds of things. I joke with people that when I moved to town that, you know, community leaders would discuss, you know, would say, Well, you know, the community is bounded by, you know, the Rio Grande and the Grand Canyon, there’s a riverbed on the north end of town, and there’s a kind of a choke point Canyon, you have to go through to get from us to Santa Barbara. And it was their way of kind of describing this sense of a little bit of isolation, right? Not being from the community and carrying some of that emotional baggage, I decided to my role was going to be you know, I would tell my board, you know, if there’s a moat around the community, my job is to build bridges across and, and to go out and create relationships that would benefit our community. But also knowing that we could bring value to the greater region where the where the workforce home, so many people in our community can move out to neighboring communities for work during the day, where the retail center, so people that live in those outer communities on either side of us come here to shop, and, you know, so that we add value to bring, but we also needed, you know, the health of the region. And then as we really got into that we really, you know, came to the what’s probably an obvious right realization, but but, you know, took us a while as a community to acknowledge that, that we’re, you know, business doesn’t care about political lines, right? The economy doesn’t stop at a city boundary or a county line, or probably even a state guide, right? That, that people’s lives flow across that right, you may live in one community, but work in another right and your business may be in one. But your customers are coming from, you know, three or four others, you certainly are going to have suppliers that are in other communities, you’re going to have, you know, all of that economic activity flows back and forth in really natural ways that have nothing to do with the way we organize for governments. Right. And so we’ve worked we’ve been working for that eight years to really create those relationships with those economic institutions. So initially, it was probably the universities that are one university 40 minutes to the north and another 170 miles to the south. But as we got into that, what we really found worked best was when we reached out to the other chamber Vers, in those communities that said, let’s stop competing and start working together, particularly on the things that matter, like, head of household jobs, and, you know, infrastructure, and you know, all of the housing, job bows, all of those kinds of things, right, we can fight over where the next, you know, cool retail store goes, but but when we come to, you know, where are the head of household jobs, we can work together to land those.

Brandon Burton 15:31
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I, the thought that comes to my mind as he explained that because I mean, to me, it makes it like I said, it makes a lot of sense to work together to build a stronger region, because, like you said, the politics don’t stop, you know, certain lines, economies don’t stop at, you know, city boundaries. And even having a university, you know, in the community next door, doesn’t meet. Yeah, so there’s a lot of this crossover. But the question that comes to my mind is, how does one defined community these days when the world seems to be shrinking, and we have so much crossover into in these different areas and elements, that it makes sense to work together with other communities? But what defines a community anymore?

Glenn Morris 16:25
You know, that’s a good question. And I think it’s changing, right. And I hope that that, in my belief is that it’s expanding. Right. So, you know, I think you can define community by the neighborhood that you live in, I think you can define it by the city that you’re engaged in civically. And I think you can define it in that region that you live you that you really live your life and right, and where you do, you’re recreating, and you’re working, and all of those other kinds of pieces. And I think when you really think of it as kind of that Patchwork, right, with different pieces, it really adds a richness, and you know, a lot of value, right? You know, the you may not have every kind of thing you’re looking for in one in one of those boxes. But if you can pull that lens back just a little bit, you probably find, you know, what you’re looking for, right? And, you know, we would, we would have conversations about, you know, well, we don’t have this type of housing in our community, but you know, what, the guy five miles down the road does. And so, you know, if I’m selling, you know, if that’s what the, if that’s what somebody’s looking for, we can point them to it. Right. So, yeah, that, you know, the set the idea of community, I think, is really evolving, and, and hopefully growing. Right,

Brandon Burton 17:51
yeah. I like how you brought up the richness and the value that comes as we expand community and be more inclusive of others in those, you know, traditionally, bordering communities. And, you know, when, like the example you gave of certain housing, you know, you got to play with how the fields striped at the moment. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t help to redefine where the stripes go right over time.

Glenn Morris 18:17
Yeah, and, you know, we really, so Well, you know, a big part of our role in the community is economic development. Right. So we’re all we’re engaged in business attraction. And, you know, often we would get ourselves into these conversations with prospective businesses about, you know, well, we need we need more of this particular type. We need engineers, and, you know, in your city data, we don’t see enough engineers. Right. But But again, I pulled that lens out 40 miles, and I one of the top engineering schools in the country, right, just just across the river. Right. And, you know, so it’s like, the real, we got him, right. You may not see him as you walk down Main Street, but we got him. Right. And, and, you know, that held true for, you know, housing, it might hold true for available land, right, maybe they want to put a factory in, and, you know, my neighboring communities having that conversation, and they don’t have the 10 acres the guy needs, but I do right, but in so you do that. And I think this kind of an approach is critical on business retention. I’ll give you one quick story right before I moved to the community, we had a business that that moved 20 miles away. And people in the community when I moved into town, they were just really still upset about this, right. It had probably been about two years. And they were really still ticked off about it. Right because we lost the business. And as I thought about it, I thought, you know, okay, they you know, they’re fizzle. cool facility is 20 miles down the road. But all of the people that live in our community that work for that business are still in our community, they have a little longer commute. Right. But they’re still here, their kids are still playing on our kids soccer teams, they’re still volunteering on our local nonprofits. Right. And they’re still, you know, in, in our, you know, in our churches. So, did we lose? You know, I don’t know. You know, if, if people are your greatest asset, I’m not sure we lost, right. And, you know, maybe the city lost a little property tax, I don’t know, you know, but, but in the grand scheme of it, I think, because we were able to stay in the region. You know, I don’t think I don’t know that I would chalk it up as a loss.

Brandon Burton 20:50
And say, especially with that example, keeping them in the region, just 20 miles down the road, there is a facility that’s available now, for somebody that move into so yeah, the perceived loss is also a gain on another side, as well, bringing new people new resources, new, you know, everything else.

Glenn Morris 21:10
And, you know, the reason that they had moved was they needed to grow, and Mike tanned at that moment didn’t have a building they could grow into. Right, and, and I think without a regional kind of an approach, when the next one of those comes to me and says, you know, I need another 10,000 square feet, and we just don’t have it in the market. You know, I think without a regional approach, the risk is that they start looking at other states, right? Or completely different markets, where my neighbors who work for them are either going to have to make a choice to relocate, or find new employment. Right. And so, you know, do I want them to stand my town? Yes, I do. Right. But if I can’t make that work, and I can put them in the town next door, that’s a better outcome than, you know, letting them, you know, load a truck up and go someplace far away.

Brandon Burton 22:05
Exactly. So and those are tough decisions to make, too. And they need to do that. But maybe let’s talk a little bit more tactical. So as you started reaching out to some of these neighboring chambers, and saying, Let’s collaborate together, let’s work together, let’s not compete anymore, let’s, you know, level or let’s let’s raise the bar, I would say, How was that received? How did you approach it? And is there anything formal that’s come out of it as far as like a regional round table or something like?

Glenn Morris 22:37
So? So I think it starts with relationships, right? It starts with chamber CEOs, you know, having lunch with other chamber CEOs in the area, and building that relationship that you can get some trust, right, that, that if I need that business, I need to find that business that 10 1000s extra square feet, I can call you, and and we’re going to work that out together. But you’re not going to use that as an excuse to come poach to others or Mike. Right. Right. There’s that trust that you have to build there. And that’s really one on one. And then we found that, that one of the areas that we could, that was easy to collaborate on early in that process was around legislative advocacy, right? Because now we’re all fighting the State Capitol. And that’s, you know, a common, you know, foe maybe or, you know, and so it wasn’t about, you know, balancing between us, it was us all together, yeah, against an external thing. And so that got us started working together, taking common positions, collaborating around advocacy, kinds of discussions. And then from there, we’ve been able to move to more of the Economic Development kinds of things. But it’s also, you know, spun off into we do some joint staff development things and you know, all of those kinds of things, once you start working together, you can find lots of opportunities. But we do now have probably three formal Regional Chamber, you know, elaborate so we have one that’s around this advocacy piece, that actually is about 30 chambers in a three county region that come together for that. We have a another chamber group that is more more on MRI on local kinds of issues. That is what eight chambers in in one particular end of that region. And then we’re, we have a two County Economic Development, collaboration that started as the chambers and as actually now, we’ve actually stood up a new organization to really lead regional economic big development initiatives. So, you know, that was probably the one that became the most formal as it really just kind of became a new entity. Right?

Brandon Burton 25:12
Now, I love those examples and being able to put some numbers to that about what that looks like at the regional advocacy, you know, 30 chambers come in together, I mean, the power that comes with those kinds of numbers, and you go to the state capitol and say, Look, you know, 30 chambers representing I don’t know how many 1000s of business owners we believe strongly in this, you know,

Glenn Morris 25:34
it gets, you know, in my town, I have one member of the assembly, right, and I have one, Senator. But if I bring that Tri County group together, it’s like eight members of the assembly and three or four state senators, right. So all of a sudden, we have more people we can talk to. And so you know, that that gives us a different kind of a voice.

Brandon Burton 26:00
Right? So as far as the approach with with your membership, I know, there’s always going to be somebody that will find a problem with whatever the Chamber’s doing, you’re going to hear those voices. But hopefully, there’s more that are seeing the bigger picture of how you’re working with neighboring communities. What type of feedback are you getting of a note and a lot of times, so maybe preface that a lot of times members don’t see the work that’s happening behind the scenes. But with that in mind, what what type of feedback do you get from your members with taking a more regional and collaborative? Yeah,

Glenn Morris 26:40
so yes, you’re right, most of them probably don’t know what we’re doing. Right? Because because they’re focused on on much more transactional business and their day to day and that’s great, right. That’s what they should be doing. And we try to support them in doing that. But, you know, the most of our community leader level folks, you know, appreciate the, what we’re trying to do. And they see the bigger picture. You know, occasionally when, you know, we’re, we’re celebrating what they to them looks like a neighbor’s win. Right. You know, they can kind of go explain this to me one more time. Right. And so we have to be really good about telling the bigger story. Right. And so, you know, particularly with local elected, right, city council members who, by definition, should be passionate about their, their little spot in the world, right? Yeah. And, you know, so it’s important for us, if, if we’re celebrating a business location in a neighboring community, that we’re highlighting the jobs that are going to be, you know, filled by residents of our community, or, you know, the supplier relationships that our small businesses will not be able to have. And, you know, so you do need to localize the the impact and the benefits, you know, for folks so that they see themselves in, you know, what, on the surface can feel like someone else’s when, right, yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:12
help help them see where the insane fall, I usually fall out to negative connotation. But yeah, a positive fallout. The windfalls that come from a neighboring win? Yeah, yeah.

Glenn Morris 28:25
There’s a we have a nuclear power plant 30 miles north of us that is slated for closure. And, you know, when that was announced a couple of years ago, you know, people started ringing alarm bells, right, because it’s a significant economic driver, 1200 highly paid jobs, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And we jumped in and said, you know, this is a problem, and we need to help figure out what we do next. Right, what, how do we respond to that issue? And we got folks that were like, that’s, that’s their problem, right? We don’t, you know, city, folks, were saying, we don’t get any taxes off for that, right, that the taxes all go to the other county. And we them, yeah, but we have, you know, three or 400 people in our community that work there. We have, you know, a dozen businesses that are in the, you know, local supply chain that provide services and products to that facility. You know, so you just started have to figure out and, and just constantly be repeating that local impact of monies being

Brandon Burton 29:34
spent in your community from those jobs and mine, like how much of your communities receiving their power from that right plan? Yeah,

Glenn Morris 29:43
you know, so there’s those macro issues, but, but there are going to be local issues in regional impacts,

Brandon Burton 29:50
right. That’s a great example. So I wanted to to ask if you might have any tips or strategies that you could offer for a chamber champion, listening they can do to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Glenn Morris 30:04
Well, you know, and I recognize that, that I’m in a little bit of a unique position, I, you know, we started this with kind of the, the DNA of our Channel by chamber, right. And I shared that I have a team of 10 to 12, you know, full time employees who helped me do the day to day work. That’s a blessing for me, because it frees up some of my time to go and do these other kinds of things like building relationships with regional partners, and some of that, and I, I’m fully aware, that’s not every chambers, reality. Right, right. But I do think that there are ways that, you know, we have chambers in our regional coalition’s that have, you know, a CEO and one staffer, and, you know, maybe a part time, you know, kind of helper, right, so we have some very small chambers that are part of this as well. And they they add value, they add, they add really important context to our discussions. And so, you know, I would say, Don’t worry about your size, if you can have a conversation with people, you can begin to become part of a regional coalition. The, the pandemic is awful, never want to do it again, there were definitely some benefits that came out of it. And one of them for us, was it really took what was it these fledgling kind of regional issues, you know, partnerships, and made them essential, right. So from the very beginning, we all started to go, you know, you can remember two years ago, we were immediately the kings and queens of webinars, right? We have information and our members need it, and we get it to him, and there’s no way to put them in a room. So we all learn how to do webinars on Zoom really fast. And we really quickly went, you know, they’re eight chambers right here in a 30 minute radius, we don’t all need to do the same webinar. Right, I can do the one on Tuesday, and you can do the one on Wednesday, we can both promote them to all of our members. And so we were able to share workload, right and, and provide consistent information. The reality is our businesses are members of multiple chambers. And if they’re getting different messages, that’s confusing, right? And in a crisis, confusing is not helpful. And if you’re not helpful, they don’t need you. Right, they’re going somewhere. And so I think we helped all of our chambers be more essential by doing it together, right. And so, you know, and it didn’t cost us anything fact, if anything, it probably saved us all, you know, some resources because we could share. So, you know, if you’re, if somebody’s really looking to start this kind of a journey, you know, I start with

Brandon Burton 33:15
all right, not sure what happened there.

Glenn Morris 33:18
The beauty of zoom, all of a sudden, you just stop moving,

Brandon Burton 33:22
as you’re talking it up about how great it is for these webinars and everything and just boom, it’s gone. Yeah, no,

Glenn Morris 33:29
you know, the point I would make is, you know, during the pandemic, it became you sent, it became really important that we all were doing consistent messaging, sharing resources quickly. And it became, you know, to try and do that all by ourselves, it was overwhelming. But if we could share the load, chamber, one takes Monday, we take Wednesday, somebody else does Friday, all of a sudden, we all looked better, and we’re more valuable to our members. Absolutely. And so, you know, if somebody’s really thinking, you know, I really should work more closely with the chambers and or other economic development, tourism or whatever, in your region, you know, I’d say, pick one issue, right, pick something that you have in common. And, you know, figure out how you can do it together, and then you know, it’ll grow from there.

Brandon Burton 34:30
Yeah, I think that’s a good tip. And you know, you started that answer by talking about not everybody has the luxury of you know, going and meeting but as you brought in the zoom, you know, there is the ashes you get to know these people, you don’t need to have the commute time just hop on a zoom call with the neighboring, you know, three or four chambers around you and talk about the latest stuff.

Glenn Morris 34:52
You know, when I when we started that the legislative advocacy group, we met in person, right and So the days of those meetings, you know, depending on where that was a, you know, hour and a half meeting became a half day commitment. Right. Now it’s back down to the hour and a half. Because we can do it on Zoom. Right. And that just creates a lot more opportunities.

Brandon Burton 35:17
Absolutely. So Glenn, I like to ask everyone, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Glenn Morris 35:27
Well, I think chambers are currently essential, and I think they’re going to be more so in the future. But I do think that there are some, there’s some risks out there, I think, if chambers aren’t becoming really focused on what matters in their community. And, you know, I think for me, that really is all about economic vitality. It’s about jobs. It’s about wealth creation, it’s about quality of life. If we’re not doing those kinds of things, businesses can find a lot of the other things that we used to be, you know, their provider for right, networking will always be part of our DNA. But there’s other ways to get networking, you know, general information about business, there’s a lot of resources out there. What chambers can do uniquely is be a convener to bring your leaders together, set economic and community priorities and then rally, you know, as a catalyst really bring the resources together and focus on that economic growth. Right. So I think, I think the future for chambers is really strong. If we’re really focused on what is, you know, essential to our businesses and the, you know, the people they employ.

Brandon Burton 36:49
I love that response. It’s a very well concise and good summary about the importance of being the convener of leaders, and then becoming that catalyst for those actions throughout the community. Glenn, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, if anybody listening wanted to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you’re doing things at the Santa Maria Valley Chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Connect with Glenn Morris

Glenn Morris 37:16
Yeah, absolutely. So our website is just SantaMaria.com. One of my predecessors early in their life, grabbed the best URL possible in our town for the chamber. So just simply Santamaria.com get a good price for that these

Brandon Burton 37:34
days, I’m sure. Yeah, exactly.

Glenn Morris 37:35
I think my city manager probably was like, how do we. And in the spirit of keeping it simple, our email, my email is glenn@santamaria.com. Right.

Brandon Burton 37:50
That’s perfect. And I will get that in our show notes for this episode. But Glenn, I appreciate you joining me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, this has been a great discussion. And hopefully some of these things just, you know, remind some of these Chamber Champions listening of, yes, I need to reach out and connect with, you know, one of those neighboring communities, or we need to form some kind of a more regional coalition together. So hopefully, this is a catalyst for them to move forward and do some of those things. I

Glenn Morris 38:19
I think what you’ll find if you as you do that, and you start to tell your businesses, particularly your, your primary, you know, Head of Household job businesses that you’re doing it, they’re gonna go it’s about time.

Brandon Burton 38:33
For sure. Yeah, I totally agree. I appreciate it, Glenn. This has been a great discussion. And again, appreciate your time with us today on the podcast.

Glenn Morris 38:43
It’s been my pleasure, I’ve enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 38:45
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