Chamber Collaboration with Nancy Hoffman Vanyek

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Nancy Hoffman Vanyek. 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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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,

Unknown Speaker 0:16
one of his favorite pieces sports memorabilia. Is this signed Steve Young jersey. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m 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 0:49
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 1:11
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Our guest for this episode is Nancy Hoffman van mix. Nancy is the chief executive of the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce in California. She started as the communications manager at the then called Van Nuys Chamber of Commerce and within six years was named the Chamber’s first female CEO. Nancy is passionate about uniting people government, business and community towards a shared vision. She serves on the city of Los Angeles’s Workforce Development Board and chairs its business services marketing and Resource Development Committee. She was named the San Fernando Valley’s Business Journal CEO of the Year in 2021. On the strength of her actions to help businesses, WACE awarded her as Executive of the Year for our her outstanding performance as an industry leader. In March Assemblywoman Suzette Validez recognized Nancy as a 2022 Woman of the Year for the 38th assembly district. Nancy spearheaded the creation of the San Fernando Valley’s Regional Foundation to advance economic community and educational development. She’s a positive vision for the San Fernando Valley and actively works to find solutions for businesses large and small.

And Nancy, I’m happy to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 2:48
Well, thanks for having me here. Something interesting about myself. That’s a hard one. I don’t I don’t always find myself as interesting probably as other people do. Well, for 20 years, I was a spinning instructor. So before I would head on over to the chamber office, I would start my day at 530 in the morning with 16 other people and teach them or lead a spin class. I grew up not being athletic at all. So to in my late 30s, became an aerobics instructor was, I think one of my most interesting things.

Brandon Burton 3:21
Wow. So you were teaching the spin class while running the chamber at the same time?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 3:25
Oh, yeah. And then a lot of times, I got some of those people to join the chamber. Or some of my, my best volunteers like they’re, they become my friends. And when I need help, the some of those same people are the ones that come to all of our events and help us out. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:41
that’s great. build those relationships, for sure. Well, tell us a little bit more about the greater San Fernando Valley Chamber just to give us an idea of maybe perspective, size and staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 3:57
So we have been around 111 years, and it’s a very big deal for us, because if you don’t know 111 And numerology means good fortune. And we felt that we didn’t get to celebrate our 100 and 10th anniversary because the pandemic so we launched this year call, it’s a grand new year, and we’ve been celebrating all of our past accomplishments and our current account and our future, what we’re looking forward to his future accomplishments. We have a staff of five, our budget is around a million dollars, which I’m going to say probably 40% as is attributed to some very specific job training grants that we have. So most of when people go oh, I can never be like, like greater San Fernando Valley Chamber. If we didn’t have the grants, we would probably just be what most books most chambers are within a budget, you know, probably a $400,000 range. We have only 400 members. People always think we have a lot of members because we’re a Regional Chamber. But we started in 1911. As the Vanna is chamber, we merged in the 80s with another chamber. And because there’s 23 chambers of commerce in the San Fernando Valley, which I’ve just want to really quick for geography, the San Fernando Valley is a suburb in the city of Los Angeles, we have 1.9 million people. If we were our own city, we would be the sixth largest city in the nation. So just put that in perspective. And yeah, we have 400 members, because there’s 23 chambers. And we have a different focus. So our members may not be the same as all the other chambers, we have some overlap, we definitely focus on a regional approach. So we get a lot of corporate offices, and as our members as well, that really come out and support us, and they support our initiatives. You know, we’re trying to shift from that. Let’s have you support this event sponsor this event come to this event to we have a job training initiative, we have a jobs initiative, we have this initiative and see how many people will support us in those those themes as focuses, which really helps us build our relationships with the business community. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 6:05
I like that. And it is a different approach for sure. Being a Regional Chamber versus a, you know, a smaller community type chamber.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 6:14
We started off as a local chamber. Yeah, our area, communities kept changing their name. And our our businesses would move into these other communities was the valley still the Valley for us, but they would remain a member. And so we needed a name that reflected like, we can’t just be vandalized anymore. Man is being chopped up into three or four different communities. And so becoming regional was a big game changer for us. But it took us several years to really embrace what that was and how we were going to do it. We had a whole plan to get there.

Brandon Burton 6:46
Yeah. So that how long ago did you guys make that change from Van Nuys to the greater San Fernando Valley?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 6:52
Well, we first went to Mid Valley, when we merged in the 80s, or mid San Fernando Valley, they kept plasmid Valley and that meant we could have been any Valley. Right? You know, it didn’t matter. We could be a valley in Appalachian Valley, for all that matter. And and so we, in 2007, we changed our name to greater San Fernando Valley Chamber. And that’s when we actually launched I think we changed it the year before. But we it was a it was a slow process to really change our internal events, because we didn’t want to scare off our existing members. You know, some of them already freaked out. When we moved our office, we didn’t move because we were coming regional removed because our building burned down. Yes, we couldn’t find another built in we we didn’t have like time we needed an office. So we moved to where we are now. And people in that neighborhood were very upset. And we’re like, well, there’s literally like a hole in the floor. We

Brandon Burton 7:46
didn’t plan for this. Yeah, I want to look

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 7:48
down and see into the into like the hallway or the restroom, because that’s what we were able to do. And so we moved our offices, and we already had to go through that trauma. And so when we became regional, we wanted to do it in a very thought out way, because we didn’t want we didn’t want to have any issues with other chambers, we always work well with them. And we didn’t want them to think we were coming in and we were going to overtake them, we still wanted to work well with them. Because local chambers, even if there’s a reasonable one and have a purpose, we all have a purpose, and how we serve our communities, whether it’s certain certain communities or cities or certain regions. And so we really have thought it out and how we were how each year something else was going to take us to the next level. And probably we went for like five, six years with not doing a lot. And then we brought in a new communications manager. And she saw the really big picture of it and started changing our narrative, changing how we looked at everything, really emphasizing how we need to change some of our events or bring in different events. And I think when we did that everything kind of just naturally shifted for us.

Brandon Burton 8:57
Yeah. So I think this is kind of naturally taking us to our topic for our discussion today. Being a Regional Chamber collaborating with other local chambers and just other chambers in the region becomes important. So our topic for discussion today is Ram chamber collaboration. And we’ll jump into our conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 11:04

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All right, Nancy, we’re back. Tell us how are you going about collaborating with other chambers and in your region to to create a stronger San Fernando Valley?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 12:16
Well, I don’t think I’m just a regional collaborator. I’m definitely a national collaborator,

Brandon Burton 12:21
scaling it up.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 12:23
So you know, I’m a longtime chamber exec 35 years, and I’ve always had collaboration envy. I’ve always seen like, some of these chambers come up with a project or a plan and do something. And I was always that person on the sidelines, I was never the leader in that collaboration, I kind of feel when it comes to collaboration, you have like, if you take the chamber three Cs, you could have put it this way, you have the person who is the champion, and they’re like they’re sitting at the table, and they have a voice. And then you have the catalyst and they take an active role in the collaboration. And I think I’ve moved up to being that active role probably 10 years when we changed our name to more active role. But you could be the convener of their three C’s and you could be the one who brings everyone to the table and that’s a big shift especially if you’re working with other chambers or other organizations, Business Development economic development agencies because most chamber execs are pretty strong personalities and we all want to be the leader so to be able to come to the table and be a convener and have other people who are normally conveners to move the needle takes a lot of patience internally tail so so how did I come about it? I looked at those three C’s and where I was with my collaboration and B I was always just a seat at the table I look at so there you know we have 23 chambers of La like I said we collaborate on some things especially through like I think a lot of communities have like a United Artists United chambers you know some of them have a Regional Chamber group. But might be collaboration came from other chambers that were like minded with us and our Eric’s had mentioned we’re in Los Angeles was like Hollywood, Culver City, people who were were very active in advocacy, economic development and workforce development issues that weren’t just networking and just the basic of the chamber. And so I’m gonna say that I used to just ride on their coattails. I was the youngest of our group, and I was the kid that everyone took care of, and then they all retired and left me in charge. And I was like floundering for a while and I wasn’t a collaborator, I was really just trying to keep myself afloat without anyone to lean on. You know, and I have not that, again, 35 years in industry, there’s a lot of people lean on, but not within Los Angeles for me, and that’s my hub. So, you know, over the years, I just, you know, it was kind of fiddling and everything around trying to figure it all out and doing things collaboratively with a bunch of different local groups and Then I’m gonna say 2016, I had a big shift. And I was, it was a shift entirely for me in our organization, where I think I finally understood, like, you could say, your mission based, but making the mission the priority and doing the best you can for your members becomes more important than your personality, your ego, and anything else that is you want and all of a sudden great things happen. So for me, it happened with breweries. I am the craft beer advocate of Los Angeles, okay. And we, in our area, like I mentioned, were part of Los Angeles, but the San Fernando Valley had four craft breweries, and as part of Los Angeles, it was a new industry and La didn’t know how to treat it. And what I mean is a brewery was brewery, so they were paying the same fees, licenses and taxes, as Anheuser Busch

Brandon Burton 15:53
doesn’t really work. Well, that way doesn’t work

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 15:55
well. So like, they didn’t do an inspection fee, and the city would show up. And then Anheuser Busch, you get in a golf car, and you drive across eight acres, and they look around. They were charging this brewery where you literally could stand on a stepladder, craning your neck look around the same inspection fee. And so the breweries came to me, and they said, Hey, we got a problem. We can’t afford this, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I called a bunch of land use planners who normally would help people. And it was a new industry, no one really knew where to start. And they just said, talk to this person, talk to that person. So I brought everyone to the table. And I said, I was just angry, I was angry on their behalf. There’s small family owned businesses, you know, their cousins, or husbands and wives. You know, sometimes I called one of them as a bunch of like college roommates, you know, that started it. And I just felt for them because they could not afford a land use planner. But Nancy’s not a land use planner, but Nancy’s gonna figure it out. And I got them off the table. And I was very lucky that someone completely understood the big picture. God is in front of the right person at the city’s economic development agency. And I know that sounds crazy, but it took a year but years very fast in Los Angeles, to literally get all the specs where they could now, we got four tasting rooms open within like, you know, they always were scheduled like within a very quick period of time, we got the fees reduced by over 50%, we got a qmD, which is the Air Quality Management District to waive all the fees for all their equipment, which was over $3,000. And I realized, and the big change for me on that on collaborating was unknown known to a lot of these people as a hothead. And I couldn’t be a hothead. I had to learn to just take a step back and say, here’s the problem. This is the solution I need. And once I did that all these people came to me and wanted to help. And they weren’t other chambers necessarily. They were just other people that could affect the change. And I just, it just was my game changer on how collaboration can work.

Brandon Burton 17:50
Yeah. So amazing. So what do you think it was early on in your career that made you feel like you couldn’t be that convener, the one to gather everyone together? Was it kind of an imposter syndrome or like you didn’t have that credential or how to yourself early on like that.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 18:10
I started off being the communications manager, and then our program manager and I had a boss, longtime chamber exec as well. So he was really that convener, but I realized that was a better convener than that I’m definitely good at bringing people together. But I think a lot of it was imposter syndrome. I never felt as felt as secure as I imagined other people, and I can name them all and tell you who they are. And I always felt like I was kind of watching them but not doing. And if I did a program, and we have many awards and accolades, I never really felt like, did I really do that? Or did I copy that. And then I the brewery thing was just a whole shift in our whole organization where we thought we can do anything to help our business community. And when that all right, Lisa chambers say these things for years, but we don’t, and we do them sometimes with other people. But not everyone just steps up and takes up the mantle on behalf of an industry or an organization because we think it’s going to be too tough, right. And sometimes you just have to be fearless. And you just have to take that risk. And people are free to take that risk with their legislators because they don’t want to ruin that relationship. But you have to they have to you have to find the right ones who are going to be your champion as well. And we got very lucky because two of them joined us and then everyone else and we’ve had all of our city council members love craft beer. So that that was my big catalyst though, for when the pandemic started. And I started a nationwide coalition with my friend Patrick Ellis at the Marietta chamber to help businesses find economic recovery during the pandemic. And it was all those lessons from that brewery episode that helped me you know, do you’re just starting to save small business Coalition, which isn’t all my class braided efforts, but it was when I realized that you could put those there were so many components when I pulled together, people not that they were my friends, people I admired that I met at conferences that I knew were doers. They were respected, and they had. They were critical thinkers. And they were also action oriented. And so we formed a leadership committee. And we got together. And then from there, we all reached out. And before you knew it, we thought we had like 39 chambers, and we had 200 chambers across the nation. And I think the biggest thing part of it was we were having chambers join us that had never done advocacy before. Their chamber might talk about advocacy, they might do something, they have relationships with elected officials, but truly do advocacy, mobilizing their members or their business community to have a voice. And we create a toolkits for them, we made it easy for a chamber had never done advocacy, we literally handed everything to them with like a timeline, everything written out instructions, they could do all of it, they could do one piece of it. And we were able to mobilize these 200 chambers we on one of our letter writing campaigns, which was using one of those systems that everyone goes into a computer system, we were able in one day to mobilize 8000 advocates and advocates means people who write a letter so from all those 200 people, that was just the first day 8000 people across the nation right to Congress.

Brandon Burton 21:19
Yeah. So from these experiences from those craft breweries to help with the economic recovery, have you kind of formulated a a template of sorts for bringing people together to collaborate? What does that look like?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 21:35
I’m not i For me, I think it’s really not having to have made the lead. You know, I’m like, I know that sounds crazy. We all want to be that leader and say, Oh, greater San Fernando Valley Chamber or whatever greater, I don’t know, degree chamber or whatever you want to call it. Like recently, recently, we received a grant for paid to give micro grants to small businesses. And I knew I could do it better. All the chambers have been promoting grants the whole time during the pandemic, right help businesses, and this is still recovery grant. And we received half a million dollars. But I knew I couldn’t do it alone. And every chamber has members that this grant could have helped. And so I reached out, I sent a big email to a lot of people I knew from small business coalition people I’ve just known from 35 years, all in California, and said, Hey, this is another grant, we’re not going to put our name on it, we’re just going to call it what it is. You can promote it as your branch if you want, however you want to do it. And everyone just joined in, because I think when you realize that you don’t have to be you might be the leader, but you don’t have to wear that crown the whole time that everyone can share the crown, you get a lot further, you have people who want to work with you, you want to work with them. I think I think it made me a nicer person. I know that sounds like so crazy. But I think, you know, I spent a lot of time on trying to prove to who I was versus trying to prove and what I could do for the business community.

Brandon Burton 22:59
Right. But I think it’s easier to get other in this instance, other chambers on board to help push it and promote it because they can look like a hero to to their members. And it’s not, you know, here’s a tool from the greater San Fernando Valley Chamber that we’re going to, you know, jump on top of, but it’s a, it’s positioned in a way that they’re there to help the business. And it’s not about where the credit goes. It’s just we’re here to help.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 23:25
And we promoted all the partners on it, you know, because we want them to get credit as well. But we want them just to we give them a gave them a sample news, release your name in here, you know, and, and then we made the website that it wasn’t one organization, but there’s a partners page. So everyone has a piece of the pie. Yeah. And now we’re actually coming to it because of them with this is a two year grant is supposed to take 24 months to give us money. Through all these chambers. We gave out all the money and under 120 days. Oh, wow. It’s crazy. So I mean, this shows you the strength of what chambers can do when they get together.

Brandon Burton 24:02
Yeah, absolutely. So that how many chambers all together joined together for the

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 24:08
there’s now 29. And they’re all across the state of California. And you know, it’s interesting I reached out to I didn’t chase it down because I didn’t have time I needed to get it together. And I got 20 right away. If people didn’t respond to me, they didn’t need to respond. Because all I’m asking us to do promotion, we just gave them templates to an idea. So you can do it on social media, you can send news release, you can announce it at events, we didn’t care how it was done, right? Through everyone doing it. Different media picked it up, because everyone has a different source right? Before you know it. All these HR organizations picked it up and all these HR attorneys picked it up. And so it means so even though maybe we didn’t get a lot maybe our individual chambers didn’t have a lot of applicants. Our efforts had people who had a lot of influence pick it up that helped us give away all this money.

Brandon Burton 24:57
Yeah, all those different organizations have their different toolkits that they can leverage and apply it. And that’s great, really gaining momentum quickly.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 25:06
I think you have to bring in people you trust, if you’re going to do that chip. I mean, if you’re like, there’s, I mean, not that everyone could collaborate, but you also have to know everyone’s strengths. These people are good at this, these people are good at this. And so at the basic level, like when we did save small business, everyone had different jobs to do whether it was locally in their state, or in their community. And then with this one, it was chambers that we knew that would actually spread the word that weren’t that have someone on staff cry that was doing the newsletter, or someone who’s doing social media, because if we didn’t get the word, if they weren’t, if they were just going to put their logo on our on our thing that wasn’t going to help us

Brandon Burton 25:39
need to have buy in. Yeah, that’s good. So I’d like to ask everyone that we have on the show, for any maybe tips or action items, to help other chambers that are listening, how to take them up to the next level? What might you suggest to help some of these other chambers that are listening?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 26:02
Well, you know, I think there’s a few things, like I already mentioned, like be a risk taker, you know, be a little bit fearless. But I think that everyone needs to remember to be mission focused. And I’m going to just refer to a chamber I was talking to yesterday who had a committee, you know, we all have that that committee who says this grant was a that was great, let’s do 12 more times. We don’t have the bandwidth, the money or they’re not thinking about how you’re not going to get all the sponsors 12 times for the same amount of money, you’re gonna saturate yourself. And I said, are these other events the same? Or do they do they go back to your mission, because you know, how you could always manage everything as being mission based, you know, you have a mission, like our mission is to promote the economic vitality, you know, of our community. And if it doesn’t go to that, we’re not going to do it. And so it helps us one, filter out the things that that we don’t have, that we don’t have time for, and but it also keeps us on focus. And if you stay to your mission, and always act in the best interest of your members, you’re going to be a champion for your business. So I’d say that’s a big one. And then I think advocacy chambers are very afraid to get into advocacy, and they look at the big chambers to do it for them. But chambers can do it at a very small level too. And that goes to back to being not afraid. And then that small level, I’m going to use my concierge service with the breweries, maybe you don’t want to go fight a bill ello, I want to encourage everyone to to fight bills and to advocate for bills that help their business community. But if a business comes to you, and they have a problem, you don’t always have to refer them out. Right, you can act as their liaison and their concierge. And then you become the expert. And then other other businesses come to you other organizations come to you. And it’s such a wonderful feeling to actually see the success that you’ve helped those, that industry or that business, even if it’s something as simple as they need a permit, we had someone during the pandemic that they couldn’t get the city to sign off on something just because everyone was working from home. So they have been able to call someone and say, hey, the SBA is not going to give them their loan, if this isn’t signed off, like the next four days, and get that done. Get to know the right people. When I started in the business, I would have to institute and this is back when you had paper, you didn’t have a computer. That was guys to make a list. If you’re gonna do economics, all the key key offices are key players. So if someone needs a business permit, and all these different things know who they are, and I kind of operate with that, like I need to know who everyone is and what what role they play, so I know who to call. Yeah. So that’s how you could advocate at the most basic level.

Brandon Burton 28:39
And I think along those lines of advocacy, using the brewery example, as a, as you have some of these craft breweries come to you, you may see an opportunity for another business industry that could benefit from advocating for these breweries because they have some kind of tie in to whatever that that, you know, piece of advocacy is you’re going after, and then even get more on board.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 29:05
People come to us all the time because they saw what we did with that and I have a beer named after me because a bit so plaque you got his plaques, all these words you heard like when you introduce me, you know really, I rather the beer has ever given me an award. I don’t want to say like I’m not grateful. But the people can walk into this brewery and it has the name of the baristas, Nancy’s beer. And then there’s our story of getting the the taproom event is really special.

Brandon Burton 29:31
So I will say you need to add that to your bio. So next time we can talk about Nancy’s. That’s great. Well, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 29:46
You know, I think we really learned a lot in the pandemic about what we can do, like, you know, we were closed and we were closed down in some ways, right? You didn’t do your events, all those things that we rely on, I know our CPAs to say, Oh, well we shouldn’t do this because that could go away tomorrow. Well, by the way All our events went away. And the one thing that was holding us up was this thing he told us, I shouldn’t be doing training, because Job Training still existed, you know, for certain, like manufacturing and different industries that we were doing. So got what I really think chambers need to dive more into workforce development, or economic development, or Business Retention and Expansion, which those two things kind of fall under, well, first of all meant economic development. And I really have a lot of envy for those organizations, too. I mean, I’m pretty competitive. And so like, when I have a friend that’s doing something in a different community, I’m in a different state, I want to know how they’re doing it and chambers are great, we all will share will pretty much give it to you in writing, look at your entire package of whatever it is we’re doing if you just fill in the blanks. And so how I got all these other things I’ve been doing is because there was one person I was kind of following, you know, like, follow the leader, and how do I do that in my area, because they were doing it further down in Southern California. And I think all chambers, once you do that, and you understand how it relates to your mission and how it relates to your members, it totally changes your chamber, you still do your network breakfast, but when you’re when you’re talking to them, and they hear you’re doing the job training, or you’re doing this advocacy on their behalf or, or doing concierge red tape busting. It really helps your business community move further ahead,

Brandon Burton 31:24
right. And that’s the whole purpose of this podcast is to share some of those best practices and, you know, shine some light on some of those things, and then reach out and connect with these people that are on the podcast and learn more about how they’re doing these things. So, Nancy, along those lines, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about how you’re doing things there in your area?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 31:47
Well, my email is very long. So let’s start with my phone number. How’s that? Okay, you can reach me at 818-902-9455. That’s my direct line, my office, my email,

Brandon Burton 32:00
and I’ll get these both in our show notes. So you don’t necessarily need to spell the whole email out. You can say what it is and then we’ll we’ll have it in the show notes.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 32:08
It’s nancy@sanfernandovalleychamber.com. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:15
you got a good URL, but it’s nice in like

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 32:19
a shorter URL. It’s just not linked to our email. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:23
yeah. No, that’s great. So I’ll get those in our show notes. Anyone listening, you know, while they’re out walking the dog or driving in the car can can go on and look it up there. But, Nancy, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for carving out some time to spend with us. Talk about the things you’re doing way easier. You’re building those collaboration efforts. I think this is terrific. So thanks a lot.

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