Serving the Greater Business Community with Jim Johnson

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 22 — Serving the Greater Business Community with Jim Johnson
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Jim Johnson
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.488 Jim Johnson
We didn't have a really good way of knowing how to get in contact with all those potential non whatever language we like to use for those who aren't investors. But for that other much larger segment, we didn't have solid contact information for them. So how are you going to be a good conveyor when we didn't know how to get a hold of X business to invite them to have a voice at the table? Today.
00:21.742 Brandon Burton
Today I have Jim Johnson on the show from the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce as we discuss the importance of all of the businesses in your community, not just your members. So let's get into this episode, but first, let's cue the intro. 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.
00:53.518 Brandon Burton
Thank you for joining us today. We're here for episode twenty-two of the Chamber Chat Podcast. I'm Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. If you are new to the Chamber Chat Podcast, please visit our Get Started page. It's at Chamberchat Podcast.com slash start to learn more about the show. what you can expect and you can receive some valuable tips for some nondues revenue ideas to use at your chamber. Again, that's chamberchatpodcast.com slash start. Before we jump into the show today, let's take just a moment to learn about the sponsor for this episode.
01:36.118 Brandon Burton
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02:29.504 Brandon Burton
Right, and we are back. Our guest today is Jim Johnson. Jim Johnson has been working in the chamber industry for eight years and is currently president and CEO of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce in Georgetown, Texas. His role, in his role, he oversees the daily operations, strategic planning, and partnerships with multiple community organizations for a 1,050-member organization. Johnson came from Lufkin, Texas, where he served as the president and CEO for the Lufkin-Angelina County Chamber of Commerce, a five-star accredited organization with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and at the Lufkin-Angelina Economic Development Partnership. Prior to Lefkin, he was a vice president with the Pearlin Chamber of Commerce in Pearlin, Texas. He serves on the board of directors for the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives, Texas Association of Business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organizational Management West Location, Western Association of Chamber Executives, the Foreign Trade Zone of Central Texas, and the Williamson County Institute for Excellence and Nonprofits. He holds his Bachelors in Arts from in History and a minor in political science from Texas State University. Jim has received his IOM recognition from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. And Jim is married to his wife Jasmine and they have one son. Jim, please say hello to the Chamber Chat Podcast audience and share something interesting about yourself that we might not have learned about in your bio.
04:08.846 Jim Johnson
Well, thank you so much. Yeah. I'm glad to be here and glad to have a good conversation. it's always weird to hear your own bio when it's read out and you go, wow, that's way too much information. but excited to be here. And I did an exercise recently with some people that said, you know, what is something that wouldn't be written in your bio that you would want people to know? And and I normally gravitate to food and talk about how I can't stand mayonnaise. But today I'll just say You know, when you're when you're trying to balance work and life, you know, you really that last line that you talk about my wife and my son, I think that's just key. that's my world outside of this world. And they're great supporters. So as much as I want to go off the bio, I just have to say, you know, family's top priority right now with me, other than running this fantastic organization.
05:00.034 Brandon Burton
That's great. How old is your son? He's seven. He's
05:02.786 Jim Johnson
He's seven. So he's first grader and can't believe he'll be in second grade next year.
05:08.15 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So he's he's getting into the age where activities and stuff start coming along, the soccer practices and all the all the other fun stuff, the school school presentations and and all that. So
05:20.366 Jim Johnson
Exactly. You you remember when it was busy with them when you were trying to put down every day and get in bed at a reasonable time and now it's Yeah, this yeah. It's the polar opposite of that now.
05:26.082 Brandon Burton
Wish for those days. So that's right. That's right. Well, can you share with us a little bit about the size of the Georgetown chamber? Maybe membership. I guess we we know membership from the bio, but budget size, just kind of where you sit in Texas, things like that, so we can all relate to your chamber a little bit better.
05:46.732 Jim Johnson
Wonderful. Yeah. We like the bio said, we represent around one thousand fifty businesses here in the Georgetown area. our budget is a little around over seven hundred thousand. So I think this year it's about seven hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. we don't have any contracts, so we're not involved with contract revenue from CVB or economic development. I would say our demographics kind of range. I think the majority of our members I think sixty five percent are five or less, and then the rest is anywhere from our largest businesses in town to, you know, our medium size on there. But the for historically our membership has been a a lot of real small entrepreneur based businesses in our area.
06:35.912 Brandon Burton
All right. That's I think that takes us to kind of the topic for our discussion today too, with these being the smaller kind of businesses in the community. The the topic that we settled on to to discuss today is serving the greater business community. So you mentioned you have a lot of these small businesses. I and I was hoping you could share maybe some of your thoughts with us about why you feel it's important to serve the greater business community. Rather than focusing on your membership base.
07:07.798 Jim Johnson
Yeah, I I think that's a a fair topic. And I think it's difficult when you break down what we are as an organization first. I mean, I always simplify what we do as chambers to say we're a nonprofit association promoting commerce and commerce can mean something different for each and every member that you have a part. And third, we're a membership organization. I mean, at the end of the day, the vast of what we do benefits the paying and investing members. And that's how I've my mentality has been. But over time you realize, and I've come to this more thorough thought process with some situations we've run into recently here in Georgetown, is when you start to balance that and say, we're going to put our members at a top priority, but what do we do that really benefits the entire business community? And when do we include the business community, not just our members, and the decision making process, our programs, and even specific events that might not be designed for just our members on that end? and I think it's a good conversation to have today.
08:26.688 Brandon Burton
Yeah, absolutely. So you had mentioned that there's been some recent things there in Georgetown where you've had to look at that and think, what do we reach out to the greater business community and where do we just keep with the membership? And I think there's there's a line there. I was gonna say a fine line, but I don't know that it needs to be so fine. I mean it but there is there is definitely a threshold where you want to reach out and get input from the greater business community, but also to give some exposure to. to the greater business community of what the chamber does. Instead of just trying to see a mission statement or hear what your values are, but to actually see you in action and see what kind of value the chamber does bring to the community. So could you tell us some more about some of these recent activities and events that you alluded to?
09:14.092 Jim Johnson
Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that you just sparked is you said mission. And I'm gonna backtrack a little bit and then I'll talk about a real recent issue. But back in the fall, we modified our mission very we tweaked our mission. And one of the things that we really talked about was the language. And you know, everybody has their fantastic mi mission statement, but ours and I'll the very beginning says to facilitate economic success. And then the next line was where we really went back and forth and it was For our members or for our community. And we settled on our community. And we're facilitating economic success for our community. And that has led us and allowed us to be focused on more at times than just our members. And what happened here in Georgetown was back in the late winter. I don't know if it's late winter or early spring, because it's February in Texas. Either way you look at it, you could define it either way. But we had a A natural gas company had a a leak that caused some gas to seep into the ground. And doesn't seem like a a large issue. You're like, well, there's gas leaks that happened. Well, because of the soil context, this gas migrated to a very larger area and displaced around 70 businesses in our community. So it's a you take this one segment of our town, fast growing community, and 70 businesses. were displaced. And when I say displaced, they were evacuated from their place right away. The gas, the natural gas had seeped into the soil, and our natural gas company made a decision that said it's it's not safe for them to continue to operate with the the gas readings that we're getting right now. So we looked at this situation and said, okay, there's a gas leak they've been told to evacuate it. And this was February twenty first, twenty-third of February of this year. And you kind of look at that and you say, okay, that's not that they're gonna be temporarily displaced. That was really the language that we kept using. spring break comes, and spring break here in Georgetown was the second week in March. And when we got to the seventeenth of March and realized that ninety, eighty-five percent of these businesses still hadn't been allowed to return.
11:34.57 Jim Johnson
We realized we had a little bit bigger situation on our hand. That was three full weeks that he had not been able to operate. And so we we had to take a step back and say, okay, we have out of the 70 business 70 businesses displaced, let's just throw a number that 10 or 15 are actual chamber members. So we're looking at the vast majority of these displaced businesses aren't investors in our organization. Do we just focus on the 10 or 15 that are our members that have been? dues paying investors? Or do we take a step back and say, what is for the greater business community? If we are in our mission to facilitate economic success for our community, is this the opportunity to step up to the plate and say, if who is going to benefit these benefits, these businesses, who is going to be a conveyor, who is going to bring everybody to the table? Well, that's where we come in. It's our responsibility in this situation to serve the greater business community and do something for all seventy businesses.
12:43.382 Brandon Burton
I I can't even imagine that many businesses trying to figure out what to do next and and not really having a place to turn. I mean, other than the chamber. So how did that look like as you did convene and did they feel like they had a voice in in offering up their situation or helping to come up with solutions?
13:03.918 Jim Johnson
Absolutely. I think that was the first thing we we realized. Did did they have a voice? Were they were they being communicated in a way that was effective? And our natural gas company was doing a great job communicating with everybody one-on-one and doing their messaging. But what that really came down to how are they going to be financially compensated? But as we deal with businesses and we have these conversations daily, we know that it's more than just. You know, are they going to get a a check today for their lost revenue? What is it going to look like when they reopen? Do their customers know where they're temporarily officing out of? because we had everything from major churches and huge health providers to two man tax operators that's in the middle of tax season. So the first thing we did was we brought everybody to the table. We there was not one list of all the businesses with contact information. again, the chamber we're so used to just maintaining records of our of our existing members, we didn't have records of the other 50 plus businesses. So we we really put something together and it was an exercise for us to realize as much as we serve a good portion of our population, we didn't have a really good way of knowing how to get in contact with all those potential non whatever language we like to use for those who aren't investors. But for that other much larger segment, we didn't have solid contact information for them. So how are you gonna be a good conveyor when we didn't know how to get a hold of X business to invite them to have a voice at the table?
14:40.472 Brandon Burton
So how do you how do you overcome that looking forward? I mean, if you could have kind of gone in a time machine, hop in that DeLorean and go backwards, how would you gather all that information ahead of time before something like this happens?
14:53.814 Jim Johnson
And I think that's where times where as chambers we might not be as proactive as we need to be. if I could go back in time, I would try to be a better competitor with our larger search engines that spend as much resources as they can to have all those information already available. Google, Yahoo, TripAdvisor, Yelp, they all have these businesses on there. yellow pages. But again, when we're focused on our members, which we should be, that's what we core should do. we're missing out on the opportunity to better serve the entire business community. So if I had to go to Time Machine, I would have a rec a way of knowing every business at every time, a name, not just the company, a company address, a contact telephone, and an email and an actual person. And that is something that we are really looking at. How can we have an accurate record of every business in our community? Not just for unfortunate situations like this, but for our messaging, for our prospecting, we could do a much better job of knowing each and every business there and not let other people be those record keepers for us.
16:16.938 Brandon Burton
Yeah, and I can see for advocacy too, when you're trying to reach out about something that it's gonna affect all the businesses in the area to bring their voice to the table and say, This is how it's gonna affect you, you know, what can we do to help come up with a solution? So how would you see going forward to be able to collect that information? I mean, I think you can go to some of these websites that you mentioned to get business names, but to get the a good contact name or an email or best way to to reach out. Do you guys have a plan or an idea how to to go about doing that?
16:51.296 Jim Johnson
Well, we just you don't I would say just wait for another unfortunate situation and people are willing to give up their information when you're offering services back to them. you know, I think that what we learn from this experience is that when you are providing some benefit and some resource back to them, in this case it was advocacy and collaboration and education. And that's what we were doing through this situation. People are they're they're offering up that information and it's like anything when you Are happy with a product or service, whether you buy from them all the time or never buy them ever. You might just be browse shopping them on the internet, but you want to be in the loop on what they're doing and you want to know their information. So, you know, that comes back to probably many of the conversations you've had with our colleagues in the chamber world. It's when you can offer something that's of value, and when you can actually have a messaging that is positive and or not even positive, but proactive for their business, it allows you to allows them to want to come to you and share that information. But I think as chambers, if we go, well, we only want to give our information out to members, that that's a member benefit. I think we're we're missing a window of communicating with whatever portion isn't your members. And I think even, you know, good chambers, they're running 30, 35% penetration rate in their community. But that's still That's like a baseball averages. I love baseball. You know, you're you're bad, you know, baseball's the only game that you can be happy with getting a hit three times out of ten. So if three out of ten member businesses are members, seven out of ten aren't. And if we're not communicating with them or at least dripping and and making sure the messaging is right, we're we're not gonna be able to get and be relevant when those unfortunate situations come out come into your community.
18:45.314 Brandon Burton
Think that's so key, having the meaningful messaging because you know, to be able to approach a business, I think the natural reaction is, what are you trying to sell me? You know. So they're they're on defense right away. And so how do you get past that defensive mechanism? You know, have that trust, know that you're there to help them and to advocate for their the success of their business. whether or not they're a member. I mean, there's obviously d other benefits and perks that come with being a member, but establishing that messaging that you're here for them too, even if they're not a member yet or at the moment. have there been other examples in your community there in Georgetown where you found out reaching out to businesses outside of the chamber was beneficial?
19:38.982 Jim Johnson
We have in and you know, and the less on this advocacy conversation. And it's, you know, when you have programs that are very niche based that you can really look at a a segment of the business community and say, Are we reaching the right people? And and I it was honestly when I came to Georgetown, it was one of the most unique events that we run. We run a a bridal show here in Georgetown. And I'm sitting here talking about messaging and serving a greater business community. And then I get into that very specific program that you might question, how does it serve your greater mission to be involved in a bridal show? and for us it's two reasons. The first off is uniquely enough, we actually have an event center tied to our building. It was originally designed to be for the business community for conferences and and breakout meetings. But over time we realized there was an opportunity for non-dues revenue to rent it out for weddings and birthday parties. And we own a dance, we actually own a dance floor. I don't know how many chambers actually own a dance floor, but we own one. So we have this opportunity to market. And so we about 10 years ago, the chamber came together and said, we are gonna do an event for this meg this segment. And when I came on board, it was one of the hardest. Things at first for me to graph, how does that fit? But then when you think about what we do, when I talk about one segment of our businesses displaced by the Gas Leak, you talk about your segmented partnerships but chambers do with women-owned businesses or healthcare or manufacturers. But in our area, in our region, Central Texas is very popular for wedding destinations. And we actually have a fairly large segment of our membership. I would say out of our thousand fifty, we have. Over sixty to almost seventy members that are uniquely tied to wedding and event industry.
21:41.4 Brandon Burton
It's a lot higher than I expected.
21:43.436 Jim Johnson
I mean, and so you look at this and you say, how are we serving the greater business community? It's by having the opportunity for them to showcase what they do. And that is not through advocacy or through trends in the wedding industry. That segment, member or non-member, wants direct exposure to brides. They want it, they want that customer base. And it's grown, it's it's evolved. But again, it's it's sometimes we always we want the advocacy stories because that's the value add. But sometimes you can be very specific to a very unique and specific segment of your members and serve not just them, but the greater wedding, and it's still it's it's just random for me to say that, but that wedding industry that there is a large segment of our members that are involved in that.
22:38.19 Brandon Burton
So in that example with the bridal show, what benefit is there on the the side of the your members that participate in that to say, you know, I'm a chamber member, so I see this there's this added value at this bridal show versus, you know, the person at the booth next to them who's not a member? What what differentiates that?
23:01.016 Jim Johnson
Think it's I think it's for them it it comes down to that one time that they get the exposure that they can say that they're involved in our organization, but what it did for us by involving the greater business community, it allows us to tell our messages to those non non members. And that goes back to this gas leak situation, as if now we have provided messaging that is relevant to their certain situation. We've gotten their ear. We have reached out to them and found something that they want to hear us talk about. Gas League wants to talk about when where they can get back in their business, what signage they can get, permitting, inspections when they reopen. The whole polar opposite of that same thing, but that direct messaging that's specific to that one topic is the bridal people. And I think both sides of it, it's making sure that when you're communicating with the better business community, the greater business community, that you're not just trying to say the same message for everybody on that end.
24:07.148 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So let's maybe close this loop here. The the people the businesses that were displaced with the gas leak, are they back in business yet? Or what's the what's the situation?
24:19.63 Jim Johnson
The last business got released last a ther a week ago basically. And so the last business was a little over around eighty days of displaced from their business. So that's a long period of time. So what all did we take place over that 80 days? the chamber had reserve funds and we adopted a program For temporary signage for all the businesses displaced. Again, are we going to do it just for our chamber members, or are we going to do it for chamber members and non-chamber members? We did it for both. We provided complimentary banners and signage for them that says where they're relocated to, when they will reopen, so they can message with their people, their customers. We are planning, it was supposed to take place earlier this month, but the rain out, we had some rain weather issues. But June 1st, we'll actually have a whole relaunch event where all businesses get the showcase, whether they're members or non-members, talk to the general public about what's taking place with them, what products and services. We're even doing a scavenger hunt bingo competition. And what that means is for the next eight weeks, if you visit X Business and spend five dollars or in some places. Take a fo a selfie and like their Facebook page for every five businesses that you participate with, you get entered into a drawing for a hundred dollars. If you blackout your card, you get a thousand dollars. And the next question would be well, how can that how can you afford to fund signage? How can you afford to do a relaunch event with live music and bounce bounce houses and this giveaways and free food and this drawing? Is because we're serving the greater business community. Because we went to the natural gas company and said we are doing this for everybody. We went back to the city and and they knew we had taken the lead on all these businesses. We were able to go back to the natural gas company and ask for funds to fund ongoing recovery efforts for each business through a contribution, a large contribution from this natural gas company. And I don't think, Brandon, if we would have just said we were doing it for our chamber members, that we wouldn't be in a position to better serve.
26:43.468 Jim Johnson
A much larger area.
26:45.578 Brandon Burton
I think you're absolutely right with that comment. They would would have been maybe less likely to give the kind of funding that they did if it was only going to serve you know 10 or 15% of that, you know, affected businesses. I'm glad to hear that that scavenger hunt is visiting the different businesses and not trying to find the leak in the gas line.
27:06.35 Jim Johnson
No, yeah. That I I think that's the first comment down that road that I've heard. But yeah, it's it's the it's difficult to word it. We say bingo, but it's b it's like the most bingo scavenger hunt. Enjoy Georgetown and and come and hopefully make some money at the end of the day. Yeah. and we and you know it's it's been it's been a an an interesting experience for us to live out our mission. Because as much as we had that one program that already kind of touched a larger segment of a of one one a larger portion of one segment of our members, for us to realize that if we serve that better business community, that greater, I keep saying better, but greater business community, there's potential value back to those businesses. And we have seen members join us. We haven't made a single ask about this. We haven't said, hey, we're doing this for you, by the way. you should become a member. But we've had multiple businesses displaced now see the value of what we do as an organization and decide to join us and become investors because they see that we are we were there for them when they needed us when we when they we were there for them even when they weren't even thinking about becoming a part of our organization.
28:25.568 Brandon Burton
Yeah. And now you're gonna have those people for life, I'm sure. Those businesses will be around forever.
28:30.754 Jim Johnson
What better story to tell? You know, do you remember the time that we did a ribbon cutting at your business? Or do you remember the time that we helped you navigate an unfortunate situation when you were displaced for sixty plus days? I think the second story relays a little bit more mission focused value add back to those businesses.
28:50.152 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. So Jim, as we start to wrap up here a little bit, I wanted to ask maybe one action item that listeners can do to better serve their greater business community in their area.
29:05.662 Jim Johnson
I I think it comes back to when we were talking about maintaining a true list of your businesses. And I and that is it's a difficult action to take place. And I think there are chambers that have taken that to a level of including members and non-members in their directory. But as we continue to look at serving our business community, we like to use, we represent X amount of employees. Whether those are all the employees in the area or just your members. But I would challenge every chamber to really find a way where you know good contact information for your businesses. And the simplest way to start off with that is to reach out to the comptroller's office and just get a listing of all registered businesses by zip codes in your community. Start there. That at least gets you a list. An address and a name of a company. It doesn't give you all the other details, but that's something that you can start to work towards. Because if you, if your goal is 100% members, you got to know all the businesses to start off with. It's easy to know the ones that have already been there, but and the ones coming in, I guess is easier than the ones already there. But start working towards that list because when advocacy and value add is more and you want to get their ear. Something you're doing is going to catch their ear eventually, but if you're not communicating with them at all, nothing's ever going to catch their ear.
30:37.56 Brandon Burton
I think that's perfect. And I if I could add, I I think that's where every chamber needs to start is to have that list of the of the businesses, whether they're members or not. But then whenever there is an event or anything the chamber's putting on, to think, is this something that would be appropriate to reach out and invite the entire business community, or is this something just for members? And have some good discretion on that. And where you can reach out to reach out and show where the value of the chamber is in your community.
31:11.586 Jim Johnson
And I would just piggyback off that, Brandon, and it's easy steps. Whether as you print your annual directory, why not instead of just mailing it to your chamber members, use that list and make that be initial touch every year, is that they get a copy of your directory, whether they're listed in it or not, why not start off there? and some of those easy steps are are the beginning of relationships with more and more businesses.
31:36.782 Brandon Burton
That's right. Great tip. Thank you. So as I ask everybody this question that I have on the show and and I I love hearing the answers, but as we look to the future, how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose?
31:51.362 Jim Johnson
Wow. I think that's the the question that all we all would love to know. I continue to see us realizing we s we are an an advocate for these businesses. And I I I think Tony Felker talked a little bit about churches on his podcast with you. And I think it's going, realizing that as much as a church is about People coming there on Sunday and going to church that one time, the real value add to the chambers and organizations is will be going to our members and realizing that the more we are there where they are, and at that point, is going to be the long-term value opposed to them needing to come to where we are.
32:44.876 Brandon Burton
That's perfect. I I I appreciate you sharing your insights with us today. Wanna thank you for spending time with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And wanna thank everybody out there who's listening. And to access the show notes for this episode about things that have been discussed today, you can find that at ChamberThat Podcast dot com slash episode twenty-two. And Jim, where can listeners connect with you if they have any questions about what was discussed today or how you're doing things at the Georgetown chamber?
33:16.398 Jim Johnson
Sure. They can go to our website, Georgetownchamber.org. My contact information is all on there, but for the listeners listening, it's just Jim at Georgetownchamber.org. I'm pretty good about I'm a little OCD about managing that email. So if you send me one, I'll do my best to get back with you pretty promptly.
33:34.87 Brandon Burton
All right. That's perfect. And I will put that contact information in the show notes so people can reach out to you. And again, I appreciate so much you spending time with us today and look forward to the value this delivers to others.
33:51.48 Brandon Burton
Thank you for listening to this episode today. I hope that you're finding value as you listen to Chamber Chat Podcast. If you are enjoying the show, I would encourage you to tell your colleagues that are in the chamber industry. Also, please hop onto iTunes and leave us a five-star rating and review to help others find this show. Thanks again, and I look forward to chatting with you again next week.