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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.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.
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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.
Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.
Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Betsy Gardner Eckbert. Betsy was raised in Winter Park, Florida, where she came full circle in January 2017 to become the president and CEO of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. She’s focused on innovation and closing the relevancy gap to modernize the organization earning the 2018 chamber Innovation Awards grand prize. Previously in 2009, she moved her family to London, England, where she became Director of Business Development for a mentor consulting limited a UK consulting firm advocating for gender diversity at the board level. She would go on to co found an International Children’s luxury brand of UV protected swimwear long wave apparel limited that was marketed in 14 countries. Building a successful career after taking several years off to raise her two children led Betsy to create relaunch career reentry for professional women at the Chamber of program with more than 100 graduates, many of whom have rejoined to the workforce. In April 2022. The Winter Park Chamber of Commerce released its prosperity scorecard, and ESG embedded scorecard with a commitment to values beyond simply the financial bottom line. Betsy is a graduate of the University of Florida where she was named the 1991 outstanding female leader and has been inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. She was also a previous guest on Chamber Chat Podcast back on episode 66. For any of you who want to go back and listen to that episode again. But Betsy, it’s a pleasure to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 3:55
Well, Brandon, thank you so much for having us and for giving us an opportunity to highlight the work we do that serves the Winter Park community and boast a little bit about the dedication of our team to enhancing the quality of life and business in Winter Park. I really appreciate having this opportunity. And I was reflecting on how much better the conditions are meeting with you today than they were back in the early days of the pandemic where I did a podcast with you from my kitchen, a place I thought I’d be working from for two weeks, which spanned into about four or five months. So we’ve really come a long way since then I’m grateful for the opportunity to be doing this from my office and having a more business like climate for responding to these questions. You know, I think an interesting fact about me is one that my mother hated. And that is a back in in 1999 I took a six week leave of absence from my job and I hiked the Appalachian Trail which my mother described as an unladylike thing to do. Because I was basically living in the woods for six weeks, but it was a really transformational journey for me. I brought a lot of focus into my life, and I was able to move on with intention into the next chapter. But it also taught me a lot about how things don’t go to plan. What happens when you gotta hike through the rain, and when you can’t find the campsite, you’re supposed to find or setting things up in the dark or getting blisters, how you work through and push through some of that stuff has been really helpful for me moving on in through my life. So yeah,
Brandon Burton 5:31
that is really interesting. In the Appalachian Trail, it definitely builds character and a lot of people who spend any time on it. So that is, that’s fantastic. I think that’s awesome. You took that time to do that. I’d love to hear more. But why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Winter Park chamber just to give us an idea of the type of chamber you are the size staff budget scope of work you guys are involved with and kind of go from there to set the table for our discussion.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 5:56
So Winter Park is one mile from the Orlando city line. So that city line is one mile from my office. So we we have we use the Orlando airport we shop at Orlando malls, we drive on Orlando Roads, we’re very much integrated into the Orlando MSA. But Winter Park itself is a 29,000 person community spanning nine square miles. However, we are a $4 billion a year economy. And a lot of that is driven by our top industries health care, higher education we have to higher education institutions within the city of Windsor Park. We have financial services, professional services, real estate, restaurant retail are some of the biggest players in our economy. And what’s interesting is that we’ve got about $130,000 of gross regional product per worker in our economy. So it’s a very robust engine. Even though we’re small, we’re mighty, because primarily a lot of Central Florida CEOs live and to some degree work in Winter Park. So what we lack in size, we make up for an influence. And we’re awfully proud of that. You know, one of the other things to frame for our listeners today is that, you know, our job growth has been 10% over the past five years, which has outpaced the nation by almost 7%. And so what’s happening in our community is a real window into the explosive growth that’s going on in the region. And the wraparound problems that come with explosive growth are ours to solve. So that’s a little snapshot of what we have going on here in Winter Park.
Brandon Burton 7:35
Oh, that’s fantastic. I think he just energized everybody to think how can we be like Winter Park, right? He hasn’t done a great, great work. What
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 7:42
I what I didn’t say is that we’re a category two competitor, which means that we’ve got 15 people on our staff about seven FTEs. And we’ve got a $1.2 million operational budget annually.
Brandon Burton 7:55
All right, that’s perfect. So typically, the way I like to structure these chamber, the or finalist interviews is to really focus on the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application. So what I’d like to do is, is have you tell us at a high level what the two programs are, and then we can dive into each of them a little bit more in depth.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 8:18
So program, one is our relaunch program, which you referenced in my bio, but not just that we started it, we underwent an enormous transformation in the way we delivered that program. And that was to move it from a five session of four hours in length each session live delivery to an online delivery, which we began beta testing in late 20, moving into 21. And then we made the actual launch of the kind of this official model and 2022 was our online platform for delivery, which meant that so much of the curriculum had to be moved to self starting work at home and homework that would come back to our sessions online. We started beta testing this during COVID, naturally, because we couldn’t meet live and in person. And we were concerned that we there was going to be a kind of loss of emphasis or focus or impact to what we were teaching and presenting when we moved to an online model. More importantly, we thought that there was going to be a deterioration of the safe space that’s created for our participants who are struggling with confidence gaps is the reason why they’re not really approaching the job market. And if we don’t have some kind of vulnerability and authenticity in the unpacking of these confidence gaps, we’re not going to help these women close them. So we were concerned moving to an online format would be two dimensional, and it wouldn’t have a sense of togetherness that we had created so well in the classroom. And we were ably served by our vice president of programs, who used her significant get an understanding of program delivery, certainly online delivery and how adults learn to help us create a model that not only worked but exceeded the one that we were delivering before. And we got higher engagement from the women in the class because we mandated Facebook group participation. So people are now connecting to each other for coffee in between classes, and they’re sharing, you know, vulnerabilities and struggles and strengths. They’re sharing when they get hired to be an inspiration to the other people in their class. And so and that lives on those Facebook groups live on and they’re private, of course. So we’re really proud of the way that that that has delivered on our core promise to the people that take the class. But what we hadn’t realized was that we were going to start creating regional and national impact with this program. And, you know, when I came into this role, over six years ago, the board asked me to turn my focus and the focus of our staff to a more regional focus, instead of this parochial Winter Park nine square miles focus, we don’t live, you know, they’re not borders that are sealed off here commercially, or otherwise. So we’ve got to live regionally. So when we offered the class online, we started getting people from all over Florida taking it. And then from there, we actually moved into I think it’s five states total that we’ve delivered the program to now. And chambers over the years have come to us and said, Hey, can you help create this class for us to use and actually, unintentionally we did, by making it available through this online learning platform. So now it’s open to anyone who wants to do it, we do an application process to make sure there’s a good fit for this program, because what I will say is that there are well meaning people who realize that we’ve created an amount of networking, capital, and social capital in this program that people want to take advantage of that don’t quite fit the profile of the woman who’s been staying home with children. And so we want to make sure that we’re filtering for that and filtering for professional women who are well educated about 45% of our participants have advanced degrees, that means Master’s or, or doctorates, who, if you can imagine, are struggling with a confidence gap and failing to re approach the job market because of that. So we desperately need their talent in Winter Park, because our job growth is outpacing our population, which is creating strain on our infrastructure and otherwise, and so we we need these talented women to come back to work. It’s a workforce solution that meets the needs of our community. Because there’s enormous demand for degreed, highly sophisticated, polished professionals to serve in the types of jobs that we have in this community.
Brandon Burton 12:50
Yeah, so there are I love so much about this program. One is it, it was something you had started before the pandemic happened. So you have the in person model, you’re kind of, you know, your hand was forced a little bit to reinvent and reimagine what this could look like. So as you compare the old structure to the new structure, I’m sure there’s things that have stood out to you. But what are some of those main takeaways that you see with with moving to the structure being online?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 13:18
Well, I think it gives. So one of the things that we say to the women who take our classes, we are not going to find a job for you, we’re not going to take the thrill of that away from you. We’re going to teach you exactly how to do it yourself. And then you’re going to feel the pride and satisfaction of knowing you did this on your own. So I think when we shifted the model to have more homework based and less, no one’s going to sit on Zoom for four hours, right? I mean, maybe somebody will, but I don’t know who those people are anymore. So we want to make sure that we’re using our zoom time incredibly preciously. Because it’s very hard to keep adult learners engaged on a zoom platform. And we know that so what we’re trying to do is make sure that you know, we’re doing the the work of, of the women teaching each other what they need to learn in that platform. And we play the role of sophisticate, I’m sorry, a facilitator, and teacher. But what I will say is, having the work shift at home, gives them an even greater sense of ownership of the process, which I think is an as a consequence, we couldn’t have anticipated when we did that. And then I also think they’re getting the opportunity to we make them present a vision board on a video and put it into this Facebook group. And we make them basically interview online, which for many people is going to be their first entree into a career search experience. It’s a zoom interview or a recorded interview. So we make them present themselves on Zoom. And we make them present themselves in recorded videos where they’re presenting who they are, what they’re about, which are actually strategically advantageous to our candidates because they’re probably going to have to do that in the real A world. Now these are technophobes because they’ve been at home. That’s one of the greatest divides between women who are in and out of the workforce is they feel that there’s some big technological boogeyman, that that is going to make it impossible for them to return to work. So when we close those gaps by presenting the recorded interview that is recorded on your phone, or we do the Zoom based interviewing, they no longer have those fears. And they’re much more likely to re approach so that that was one of those sort of unintended consequences that we found that we get asked all the time, when are you moving this back to live? And the answer is never, because it’s much more powerful to deliver it this way. And we’re getting a better result. So with intention, we’re keeping it this way. And it’s really funny, because you know, they only see me on Zoom. And then we’ll end up having live events, because we do recall events with our community, we’ll get together for kind of what we call after care events, they’re, they’re called power ups will bring in alumni and prospective women to come and have hear a topic about something like the imposter syndrome or topics that are relevant to this population. And when they see me for the first time, it’s like they’re seeing somebody from TV, and I’m like they’ve never been in person. So it’s really interesting, that dynamic, but what I do love is that the groups that are forming in these classes have got a greater sense of authenticity and connectedness, because they’re doing shorter touches more frequently on their Facebook group, we just had one get on Fourth of July and was wish everybody Happy Fourth of July, their class ended three months ago. So they’re still very much in touch. And the powerful thing is, when one of them gets a job, it’s role modeling for the rest of the people that get jobs, because it usually takes about six months after our class for them to get hired, on average. So it’s really that’s a really powerful consequence. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 16:52
So I think one of the other things you had mentioned about being intentional about this program is that it’s about building that confidence, or rebuilding the confidence in these women who’ve been out of the workforce for so long. And I see where the online platform, it removes some barriers, where they may not have the confidence to show up to an in person, you know, the seminar event kind of situation. But when it’s online, it the threshold is a lot less to get involved. But then there’s more of a stickiness factor that kind of keeps you in there as well. So I’m sure there’s been examples of that, that you’ve seen people coming out, or maybe just more registrants. And and so maybe talk to that and and also talk about how you broadcast this to the women in your community to attract them to the program.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 17:37
So I really love that you seized upon that, because we we say internally, we measure our success with relaunch in tears, for a woman to come to grips with her competence gap is inherently vulnerable and sometimes terrifying. Maybe it’s a sad process, you know, not all of the women that go through the program are undergoing a fracture in their marriage, but some of them are, and they’re coming to grips with some really painful features of their lives. And so when they can come to us and unruly, sit with that, and kind of let it wash over them and they can work through it, then they’re by the end of our five week course, ready to have the confidence to go back to the workforce. So we they cry more from their own house. So when we’re on the inverse is I didn’t like interviewing with you in my house, but I like interfacing with you in my office versus true for relaunch, they feel much more comfortable at home. And they’ll share more about what’s at the core of their competence gap, which is when the magic happens, that’s when we can really work to close it. So I think that dynamic of being able to, to feel comfortable in their home and they’re each in their homes, they’re all in a way in the most comfortable place they can be it’s private, they’re not exposed. The other piece is in the beginning. They don’t feel like they belong at the Chamber of Commerce building because they’re not in full time work or part time work. So for some of them even. And so, you know, they feel like you’ve got to be a member of the club to come to the chamber, but like you have a right to be here. What’s really interesting is that many of them report because they get member rates on our events a year after they complete our program, as they say the chamber feels familiar and comfortable to them. So they feel like they’ve got a right to come. So it removes that barrier of just physically arriving at the chamber, which I think can be intimidating to some of our participants as well.
Brandon Burton 19:32
Yeah, I think that’s great. As far as the how the program is facilitated? Is that chamber staff that facilitated is it alumni you bring back in? Is it accommodated? What does that look like?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 19:43
Now one of the things we do is we survey every single class so we feel really confident about our delivery model and I teach every class and then our programs manager is Ashley billings, and she helps deliver the class so she’ll do all of the admin she’ll do all of the work of getting everybody there. So each week they get a PDF of their whole workbook. So we, we send them a whole workbook, which we have them get a notebook. And they are meant to print out the PDF worksheets, and fill out their worksheets from the week before and their homework packs. And so Ashley does all of that connective tissue so well, and she’s kind of like their, their concierge, their captain of their ship, and they have a deep connection to her. And I just kind of shoot in and teach the class. One of the things that I think is essential is nobody wants to believe us, we tell them that we can help them. And I think if I didn’t have the authentic journey of my own 13 year career break to stay home and focus on my children and the soul crushing and arresting experience of going back to work and feeling really terrified by it. They wouldn’t they sometimes they don’t even believe me when I tell them that that I can help them right. And so I think Ashley and I are both returned to work moms. And I think if we didn’t have that journey, we wouldn’t have a secret sauce in this program. And I think they have to trust us that we can help them. Because there’s just a shockingly low level of self belief for women who’ve made the choice to stay home with their children. And this is something that’s been documented by reports by McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, this is a very big problem. Because this is what’s called the leaky pipeline for talent. And what we really can’t afford to do, it’s like losing a customer. Once you’ve paid the acquisition cost of a new customer, you don’t want to lose them once we’ve put people in a talent pipeline. And we all know how hard that is to do. And that’s core chamber work to put people in a talent pipeline, the last thing we want to do is lose them. And that’s exactly what happens with women who stay home from work. So it’s hard for us to find these women, you asked about how we find them, it’s hard for us to find them. And we have to buy Facebook ads we have to go through we do presentations at PTA meetings, we reach out to places of worship, we reach out to preschools, but the big most effective thing we do is we ask every woman who completes the class to fill her seat because they all know somebody. And when someone comes to you as a stay at home mom and says, I think this class can help you to it did this for me. That’s the most powerful way for a woman and we create the power up programs so they can come kind of check it out and see the shop window. We also have a luncheon in April every year, where we pay tribute to our woman of influence our woman of influence is a woman who’s in full time work, who has made a difference for bringing other women along in the community. And then we also are now giving our lifetime achievement award to a woman who’s probably retired but still making a significant contribution to the community. I’m pleased that we were just able to honor the former Lieutenant Governor of Florida and that way and so when we’re honoring those senior members of our community, their friends come out. And that’s when we have a graduation ceremony for the people who’ve completed the program so that our participants can meet senior women who can help catalyze career growth and promote awareness of the program.
Brandon Burton 23:21
That’s a great idea. I love it. Well let’s let’s look at shifting gears into the other program on your chamber the your application as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Raquel Borges 25:50
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Brandon Burton 26:39
All right, Betsy, we’re back. So I love everything you had to share with the relaunch program that you guys have is that focused on workforce and bringing women back into the workforce. Let’s shift gears over on to the Winter Park prosperity scorecard what that is and kind of how that came to be and what what all that it encompasses.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 27:01
So as I spoke earlier, we’ve got tremendous pressure on our local economy that wants to grow, and is growing, but not in the way we need it to. And the kind of growth that’s happening is creating enormous strain on our infrastructure. So every time we have a municipal election, which is every year in March, we have the number one issue that rises to the top is traffic. So of course we’re sitting in this area of explosive growth, and you can expect traffic to be a problem. So if you ask people, especially retirees, what do you think is the biggest problem and Winder Park others too much traffic? Well, the reality is we’re operating a $4 billion a year GDP. So there’s a significant enterprise and Winter Park. And we have healthcare needs. We have a hospital here we have two higher education institutions and Winter Park. And there are people who need to get here. Now the reality is Winter Park has 6000 more jobs than people to do them. So how are we going to get them here, they’re going to drive and clog up our roads. So until that changes, we’re going to see a continued strain on traffic infrastructure, road infrastructure and quality of life, quite frankly. And so what we’re looking at is a holistic approach to not only managing growth, but to promoting it, and making sure that we’re taking all the factors into account that we can, as we try to deliver growth that aligns with the values of our community, high emphasis on quality of life, high emphasis on arts and culture, high emphasis on, you know, historical way of doing things. Florida is really about a 70 year old state. And actually, with the advent of air conditioning, that’s when things exploded here, obviously, right? There were bits of Florida for a very long time that still had a frontier feel to it. Now we’re experiencing our centennial this year. And that means that our chamber was founded in 1923, when margins around Winter Park were frontier feeling. And so we’ve had a sustained presence of supporting the business community here for a long time. And we have people who are committed to making sure that winter parks quality of life stays high. But that very little changes here. And so that’s a mismatch with what’s going on one square mile or one mile from our office with respect to Orlando. So we have all these strains on our community. We need to support the growth of our businesses, we need to make sure that we are driving economic growth and not just helping people fight for market share, but actually grow the pie and you do that one of two ways. The first way is you grow in population and the second is that you increase productivity. And so if we’re going to grow in pop violation to meet this delta between 6000 jobs and people, we have to use land differently. And we do not currently permit land use to allow for dense multifamily units, mixed use, that’s just not in our land use code. And so that’s put there by a group of people who are committed to making sure that we don’t have that here. So we can do what keep real estate prices high. Well, they’ve gone so high that we can afford now to welcome innovators, certainly persons of color, people who are new onto the property ladder in Winter Park, because within one year, our single family home price on average rose from $771,000 to 1 million. Wow. So that has long term consequences for our community. And we’re trying to create a and we have created an ESG embedded scorecard that looks at what are we doing with our governance models? Are we taking in people who are previously unseen? Are we making them seen in the models that we’re creating to make this a better double? Or at least triple bottom line community where we’re not just focused on? Are we all making a lot of money? But are we actually creating opportunities for the environment to thrive? Are we doing the right strategic planning to make sure that we’re taking a leadership role in the region on sustainability with respect to energy, we own our own power company. So we have a role to play there? Are we doing the kinds of things that take into account people who are previously not at the table? Again, we grow the pie by increasing population. And certainly when we increase the population of people who haven’t previously been engaging our economy, it’s a competitive advantage to pursue diverse persons to come and participate in our economy. And so that’s a strategic priority for us. And we’re working with our local government to embed these as priorities. But we can’t do that from the perspective of we’re right, and you’re wrong. So we’re trying to move past that binary system of winners and losers, where there’s always a turf war between growth and no growth, we really want to move past that we want to say, Look, these are our community’s problems. Here they are, and they’re data driven, we’re giving you the data so that you can see, these are in fact, our problems. You can’t, you can’t solve for a 6000 delta between jobs and people without creating solutions for that, that are strategic. And so that’s what this scorecard that we released last year, is designed to do is help us strategically plan for the future.
Brandon Burton 32:37
Yeah, with a city the size of yours being nine square miles, I picture it, it can very well be a master plan, community of sorts, you know, where you can go into it with intention, you have to get all the players involved on the same page to be able to present the data, say, here’s where we are, here’s the direction things are going. And here’s how we get from here to there. And to be able to facilitate and convene those people together to really take that lead as a as a chamber, and kind of chart the direction that your community needs to go to service, those needs that are there, like you had mentioned with the traffic and the workforce shortage shortages and things like that. But also looking at the housing and everything else that is tied to that. So I think it’s very forward thinking for you guys to take the lead on this. And since releasing this scorecard, what kind of feedback have you received? What kind of conversations have come out of this?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 33:36
Well, I think it’s, it’s great, because it’s dovetailing with our centennial celebration, and we’ve been able to get a lot of engagement and a lot of community buy in from this. People are excited about it. I think it’s signaling a different kind of look from the chamber than anybody’s seen before. And we’re just really excited about the impact that it’s starting to have in our community.
Brandon Burton 33:59
Awesome, awesome. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, I like asking everyone I have on the show for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you offer to help them accomplish that goal? Well, we’re
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 34:17
big believers in partnership. And we want to make sure that we’re always aligning with people who can make one plus one equal three, four or five instead of just two. And I think partnership is the key way to get that done.
Brandon Burton 34:30
I would agree partnerships that you can leverage a lot more of your your assets and everything by partnering together and seeing a much greater outcome than just the sum of the parts. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 34:50
So I think it’s important for chambers to be problem solvers going forward. I think it’s important for us to move past the model of of kind of the coffee club. You know, we’ve got to be measuring our ROI and our outcomes. And I think that we’ve got to be anticipating the needs of our members and ideally getting there before they, they can even figure out that it’s a problem for them with a solution.
Brandon Burton 35:17
Yeah. And oftentimes that brings work with it. So you can’t be afraid to work if you’re
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 35:23
able to do that. We’ve got an incredible team here and very proud of so yeah,
Brandon Burton 35:27
absolutely. Well, Betsy, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about your relaunch program or how you went about the scorecard or anything else, you guys are doing their Winter Park, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect,
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 35:44
I’m pretty easy to find at WinterPark.org. My email address is on the staff section, which is under the about tab. And also, I’m on LinkedIn. So I would love to link in with people. I’m very happy to speak to what we do here and help out in any way I can.
Brandon Burton 36:00
Very good. And we’ll get all of that in our show notes for this episode as well make it easy for people to find it. But Betsy, I am so glad we’re able to get you back on Chamber Chat Podcast, you guys are making an impact in your community doing some great work, I can tell the enthusiasm that you have for this work. And I appreciate you being with us today and sharing about these programs. And I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert 36:25
Thanks, Brandon, we really appreciate that have the opportunity to share what we’re doing here in Winter Park with the Chamber community. So thank you so much for the time today.
Brandon Burton 36:33
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