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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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Our guest for this episode is Nick Masino. Nick is the first Gen X President and CEO of the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership Gwinnett. At the helm, Nick is known for a strong leadership commitment to Gwinnett and more than two decades of making an impact in the community and economic development arenas. As President and CEO Nick shepherded the most diverse board of directors and chamber history, reinvigorated its public policy focus, implemented new strategic plan and is currently overseeing a massive renovation of two Georgia’s largest Chamber of Commerce facility. He also led like Gwinnett Chamber to receive its first ever Five Star Accreditation rating from the US Chamber of Commerce in 2010. In 2022, the former Chief Economic Development Officer for partnership Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Chamber, Nick oversaw the business recruitment and retention efforts for Gwinnett and the implementation of partnership Gwinnett strategy. The chamber led initiative has since delivered roughly 357 company expansions or relocations, representing more than 28,000 new jobs and $4.1 billion in private capital investment. Prior to these achievements, Nick was an executive in the recruiting and staffing industry while serving as Georgia’s youngest mayor in the city of Suwanee. In addition to his day job, Nick serves on a plethora of boards including the Regional Business Coalition of Metro Atlanta, the Coalition for Quality Growth and the Georgia Chamber and the Water Tower Global Innovation Hub Aquanet. His influence in the greater Gwinnett region has earned him many accolades such as most named Most notable Georgians, power 100 Most Influential Atlantans, and 100 most influential Georgians. He holds a bachelor’s degree in interpersonal, interpersonal and organizational communication from The Ohio State University and resides with his wife Suzanne, in Suwanee, Georgia, and they’re the proud parents of three adult children. Nick, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Nick Masino 4:29
Awesome. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. And I’m sorry, you had to bore everybody with my bio. But I appreciate you introducing me. Interesting thing about me I’m, as you mentioned in the bio married to Suzanne Masino. And we actually met in a swimming pool in eighth grade. And she went on to become my high school, college sweetheart and we got married about six months after college, and we’ve been married for 29 years. In two Sundays, so really excited about that.
Brandon Burton 5:03
That’s awesome. Congratulations, you must have been a mature eighth grader because usually those interactions at a swimming pool don’t turn out well. So
Nick Masino 5:13
I don’t know that I was, but he was also only in eighth grade too. So that helps. That helps. Yeah, I think he was forgiving.
Brandon Burton 5:22
Well, and tell us a little bit about the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership when and just to give us an idea of the type of chamber scope of work you do size, staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion.
Nick Masino 5:35
Sure, absolutely. So the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce is located in Gwinnett. County, which most people have never heard of before. We’re situated directly northeast of Metro Atlanta. Gwinnett has a million residents. In 1987 8889, percentage wise was the fastest growing county in the United States. For three years, we’ve been in the top 100 fastest growing counties for the last three years, we average about in the last 10 years, I think we’ve averaged about 18. It’s probably 17 to 18,000 new residents, that’s births and relocations. I’m one of those. I graduated, as you mentioned, from the United State University. And about four weeks later, I moved to Gwinnett County, and I was in search of a job and a career and the Olympics were happening in Atlanta in 1996. This was two years before the Olympics, and there just seemed to be a lot of energy. And I don’t think I was alone. I think at one point, we were the the we had the most the highest percentage of Gen X’s of any metro area, the United States. And I just think it was a lot of people from the Northeast and Midwest. They were looking for something new and a little warmer. And apparently for about a 10 year period. We all moved to Atlanta. Some people moved, moved back home and some of those state. So I’m here in Gwinnett, lived here for 29 consecutive years. I live in the little hamlet the little city of Suwanee, Georgia, of which I was a mayor for eight years, and really, really enjoyed Gwinnett is made up of 16 municipalities, but the most of the counties unincorporated. But we have like every suburban area, we have jobs here we have about 24,000 companies 10,000 sole proprietors. And so we’re a really large suburban chamber, we have 32 to 34, based on the time, full time employees, we are in a 60,000 square foot chamber building, I do believe outside of the US Chamber. It’s the largest chamber building in the United States. We own the whole building, and we’re overseeing a massive 23 year update to the building and which is involving $4 million worth of construction. And hopefully in November, they’ll be delivering a million dollars worth of new furniture. And we’re really excited. With this reinvestment into this incredible building. We’re really unique. We’re right next to an arena and a convention center and to full service hotels. And we also have this is really unique. We have a first class steakhouse on the top floor of our building and a private club. The Chamber members the board members started the private club in the year 2000. The same year, the Chamber building was open. And we introduced in 2017. The Steakhouse and it is first class is the top five to top five revenue producing restaurant in Georgia. So it was really unique little hub of activity here in the middle of Gwinnett. County.
Brandon Burton 8:46
So does the chamber still operate the club and steakhouse or is that been going off?
Nick Masino 8:52
Well, we’ve never operated it. We just our board members started it. I mean, I’m the landlord. I’m a board member. I’m an executive board member of the private club. We have the lease agreement between the private club and the steakhouse. So it is like I had some guests up there for lunch yesterday. And they were like, Oh, this was really nice. And we’re like, yeah, we’re really that’s a really nice cafeteria bars.
Brandon Burton 9:18
That’s fantastic.
Nick Masino 9:19
It’s pretty awesome. It’s some of my peers at ACC. I was able to host I think it was in the summer of 21. I hosted a peer group of about 20 CEOs and I actually forgot to tell them we had a steakhouse. I just said, Oh, we’re going to dinner and I just told them where it was, but I did tell them it was on the third floor of the chamber. And they thought I was sandbagging, like as a show off. And I was like, Oh yeah, they were like Nick, you brag about everything. You didn’t brag about the steakhouse.
Brandon Burton 9:49
That’s awesome. I love it. Yeah, so you mentioned as far as the size of the building so had is it just like over the years hearing the size of a They’re chambers buildings, he kind of benchmark, you know, and where you guys kind of fall in there. It’s really
Nick Masino 10:05
interesting. I think in like 2007 or eight, we had that that years Chair of the US Chamber doing a road show. And he had been to like seven teen, like large suburban and Metro chambers. And he said, he said, I have been to almost every large chamber, you know, of a certain scale and above, he said, This is by far the biggest building. And so that just got us interested. So we’ve been kind of on the lookout for a building that might be bigger than ours. And we’ve yet well, we did find it, it was the US Chamber of Commerce. Yeah. We actually have two buildings in DC, which are both bigger than ours. qualify it?
Brandon Burton 10:47
Yeah. That’s good stuff, though. So you guys, obviously you’re involved with economic development, though? twos, as far as the chamber work goes?
Nick Masino 10:55
Yes, absolutely. i It’s funny, I failed to mention that, because you asked me. And I did lead our economic development initiative for almost 13 years, called partnership Gwinnett, which is a community collaboration between the county our municipalities or school system, or in community improvement districts, and then the private sector and the chamber. And we lead that effort. And it encompasses about 10 of our 34 employees. And they get up every day to recruit, retain and expand businesses, both domestically and internationally.
Brandon Burton 11:28
Awesome. Awesome. Well, what I the way I like to kind of structure these chamber, the or finalist interviews is to really focus on the two programs. So you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application, so if you could just tell us what those two programs are at a high level, and then we’ll circle back and go into more detail on each of them.
Nick Masino 11:49
Sure, absolutely. And so we really just set the stage for the one of the two, which it was our partnership with that initiative. And this is the community initiative. As I mentioned, it has three goal areas, recruit goal one, goal two, is to make sure we have the right workforce in place. And then goal three is all those it’s kind of that bucket that holds everything else from community development, to transportation to redevelopment. So it’s a three legged stool, economic development strategy, not uncommon to other large chambers. And then our second section that got us to where we are is our public policy initiative. And I think that that one probably is not super unique to large chambers. I think what was unique for us is, in our five US Chamber fivestar audit, for the previous audit we got, I don’t know that we got to zero, but I think we got to 20 out of Ardrey. So that’s pretty much a failing grade. And and then a few years later, when we really focused in the three years we were we went we’ve hired a full time public policy person put a lot of effort in initiative. And not only do we have the effort, and the action and activity, we have results, and we and then the US Chamber recognize that and gave us 100%. So we went from 20 I think it was 20% to 100%. So ACC the they recognized all of what I just mentioned. And I think we also did a really nice initiative this year with our state, House and Senate. I’ll talk more about that and follow up questions on on the Gwinnett day at the Georgia Capitol. And they went over really well. Yeah, no,
Brandon Burton 13:39
that’s great. So that that gives us a good idea what the two programs are. What we’ll do is we’ll take a short break, we’ll come back and we’ll dive in deeper on both of these programs and learn more how you guys structured them and maybe some of the origins of them as well.
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Brandon Burton 17:06
All right, Nick, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned what the two programs are, if you don’t mind, let’s let’s dive in a little deeper on the partnership when it and you had mentioned it has kind of the three legs to that program. And maybe just tell us a little bit more about the program, the evolution of the program, kind of how you got to where it is today to be recognized on national stage.
Nick Masino 17:32
Thank you so much. I’m really proud of it. Because I was hired as the first partnership with that chamber employee and Ay, ay ay, ay, took the strategy. And then I hired all the employees raised the funds. So it was really, it goes back to 2007 When I started here at the chamber, and it was kind of my baby for 13 years. So it started in 2006, where Gwinnett County government, again, one of the fastest growing counties in the 80s that continues in the 90s got to the point by 2006 that they said, Hey, we probably need to have an economic Recruitment Policy. So they created their first ever economic incentives. And it was basically crickets for six months. And they thought, well, if we create it, they will come. Well, they didn’t because there wasn’t someone getting up every day, beating the drum to say consultants, corporate consultants, doing recruitment real estate consultants. So they said, Okay, we need to do something. And in communicating with the chamber, and the private private sector industry, there was a there’s a company, which everyone’s heard of is called Cisco. They have a major presence here in metro Atlanta, and then a huge office here in Gwinnett at the time, and they said, Okay, we’ll write a $50,000 check to do an economic study. And then that was matched with another $90,000. And they hired a consultant, they did a nine month strategy. And out of it, we came partnership on it, which is as as mentioned, and 2007, we rolled out this, it was a five year strategy. It had a three legged stool, which was focused on we need people to get up every day and targeted industries to recruit. So goal one is to recruit, recruit, retain expand jobs in our targeted industries. Number two, make sure that we’re aligning all of the workforce efforts, from K through 12, to post secondary to retraining retooling into those five target industries. And then make sure that we have a safe, clean, vibrant community that is continually redeveloping and investing in itself with new roads and infrastructure. And those three things if we stay focused on that we should have economic success. And so we implemented that strategy in 2007 to 12 months later running into Great Recession. We’re like so ready to go. And that was a bit of a pitfall. And we retooled. And it actually brought Market Street back and we said, hey, just 16 months ago, you said we’re supposed to create. It was something like 40,000 new jobs in five years. And they were like, Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen now. So they gave us, they brought him in for a couple of months. And they re told us a little bit, and we got going again. And it was really awesome. Because right out of the gate, in our first five years, we ended up landing NCR fortune 500 headquarters. And then literally, four months later, we landed Asbury automotive, another fortune 500. And then two years later, we landed and retained the merger of two companies, which became rock 10, which was another fortune 500. So we started the recession with one fortune 500 company and ended it with fours. So people were like, Oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever. Let me tell you, we’re really good. But a lot of it is happenstance and being at the right place at the right time. And it all just worked out for us. And we have a lot of success. And we continue to have lots of success. But we went from like the high of here we go in 2007, to the low of eight, nine, to end that first five years with having, in our time starting the recession, with one fortune 500, ending with four it was, it was an amazing rollercoaster ride. But we’ve continued on an every five years, we brought in a consultant to do a top to bottom soup to nuts review of our strategy and our community. And we roll out a five year strategy plan, we then do a fundraising campaign behind it, to raise the money to fund the strategy that we’ve done that now for almost 20 years. We’re in year, I guess, like 17 or 18.
Brandon Burton 22:00
Wow. So as you kind of talked about the origins of it back in 2006 2007 kind of timeframe. And thinking, nowadays, a lot of things, you know, rely on social media to help, you know, perpetuate a message or, you know, whatever messaging you’re putting out there to try to attract and retain and everything. So at that timeframe that was before, I mean, that’s still like MySpace days, right, like 2006. And so there has to be different strategies starting off and building that momentum. Right.
Nick Masino 22:33
Yeah, 100%. And I have to say, I’m gonna be very quick. So I want to I’m sure you’re familiar with IEDC, the International Economic Development Council. So I was very involved in that as an economic developer. And I went to my basic 101 training. It was actually right here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. And we had a session on social media. So the social media I knew was LinkedIn. Yeah. And, you know, we’ve all been on it, our resumes there. I was in the recruiting industry for 12 years. So I knew LinkedIn. Well, I left that session, and I was signed up for MySpace, and Facebook. We know how all that worked out. But it was funny is it 2008? Like, I’m doing all kinds of like, a posting stuff on Facebook, about the community. And my wife’s like, what are you doing? You’re wasting time. And she’s giving me such a hard time for being on Facebook. And then I could I love the like, two years later, she gets on it. And she’s like, Oh, okay, I was such a hater to Facebook. And I kind of didn’t understand what you were doing. Right. And of course, my face was completely creepy. And two weeks later, I turned the thing off. Never went back on it. Because of IDC, that course and we got super focused on creating Instagram. And we I think we maybe had one of the first Twitter economic development accounts. And we actually won an IDC award for like the best social media of a large IDI organization in the country. So like around 2010. So we’re really proud of that. But so yeah, there was really just that was just the beginning of social media. So I’m not kidding. We must have done a dozen a month of these community meetings that some like two people would come to and we were really pumped when we’d have double digits and people would come. And we had to just do it. I was I was at every rotary every cuantas club, every community HOA meeting, just tell them the story. This is what we’re doing. And not even I wasn’t really trying to raise money. I was just trying to get awareness out there. Yeah. It was really interesting. You know, people asking, you know, raising their hands. Why are you doing this? Why does it matter? And it was really awesome, because professional meanings people aren’t going to really put you on the spot, go to an HOA meeting. The hard questions and they’re like, they almost like revel in it. But it really helped me with my talking points and And after my first year of doing that, I was like I could take on any talking point I was. So I was like, excited to go out to public meetings.
Brandon Burton 25:06
That’s funny. Yeah. So with the three legs you talked about, the one that really stands out to me that I’d like to learn a little bit more about is how you approach the you’d mentioned aligning the workforce efforts from kindergarten on up to be able to keep and retain them in the community and have that workforce pipeline, what are some of those key things that you do to help align those workforce efforts?
Nick Masino 25:30
Absolutely. And I will tell you in 2008, to 10, really, up until almost it feels like the beginning of COVID. This was completely unique. People were barely talking about this. Now, every chamber in the United States, it’s their number one priority. And it’s very innovative to talk about the last three years. But in 2006, and seven, when we were kicking this off, it became very clear that we were pretty good at already doing this. But we had to create some formality around it, which was committees and goals and Task Force and action committees around getting the talent creators together with the employers. And so we literally started this, I guess, you know, 18 years ago, projecting, hey, we’re starting this new division. And we’re going to need this type of workforce. And we started at the same time creating career academies in our high school. And even now, it’s actually now all the way down to middle school. We that was one of the epitomises to start what we call the Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology. We went to go visit one on a peer tour outside of DC and Fairfax County. And we created it a year later in Gwinnett. And it’s been the number one academic school in Georgia, for the last 11 years. We’ve since because of this connection between the workforce, and in education, we now have four STEM schools, one focused on AI, and it’s actually a K through 12. Ai, integrated system. So a whole school cluster on AI. But we’re, we’re probably year five or four on our engineering STEM school. So if you want to be an engineer, mechanical, electrical, you have a specific engineering school. And then the last one is health, and it’s anywhere from EMT to a doctor, if you think you’re gonna go to medical school or become a nurse or a PT or an OT, you could go to this school. I also think it’s important to point out we have 183,000 students, and our K through 12 public school. And then we have a municipal school. And we have some very large private schools. So we have well over 200,000 students being educated K through 12, not including our college, and our 12 or two year technical school. So we have a lot of people like this past May, we grant we had we had 15,000 graduates in Gwinnett. County between all those school systems. So we don’t leave out the private schools or the city schools, the alignment, and we do the same with the technical college and the four year college.
Brandon Burton 28:12
Wow, I love how you refer to them as talent creators, instead of just schools, not just the school system and their talent creators. And I think if they can really adopt that, that title, it puts out that that talent and workforce with a specific focus on what they want to do and what they want to become when they grow up. Right?
Nick Masino 28:32
Yes. And in two weeks, I will be in front of 1500 new teachers, just because of turnover and our system is so large, it’s about 12 to 1500. And it’s the big orientation of all the new teachers. And I’ll go, they gave me five minutes as tamper CEO, and when I was Chief Economic Development Officer, and I just do five minute pitch on them. And they’re the future is on their shoulders, because the future workforce or Gwinnett. County is in your kindergarten class or is about to graduate in the next nine months. So that the talent creator, I’ve been using that for some time, and I give them I hopefully inspiring speech about what their impact is in the classroom, what it means to Gwinnett County’s future.
Brandon Burton 29:14
Absolutely. There’s so much focus these days on content creation. So to be a talent creator, that’s important. No, no pressure to those teachers, you know. But let’s shift gears a little bit over to the public policy initiative that you guys had on your your application for chamber the year and tell us about that. And, and what makes that stand out?
Nick Masino 29:36
Yeah, and just briefly, the standout is we were doing very little, and we started doing some stuff at a quick fast paced level. I always say whatever you put in your budget is what you do. And so we budgeted for a full time employee and we budgeted for them to have funds to invest. And right out of the gate, was it The first year of our first new leader in public policy. And almost seven years, we were up against a big community vote to for one cent sales tax to fund capital improvements for our cities in our county, which means police departments and 911 centers and parks and libraries, in roads and sidewalks and bridges. And so we said, we’ve got this, we’re going to take the take this on, we’re going to, we’re going to lead this effort through our newly staff position. And we raised monies and hired money and we hired consultants. And we actually at the end of that vote, we actually had that was the highest vote yes, in the previous three campaigns. And so that was huge. And then we said, well, we need to start doing one that Day at the Capitol again, and go down there. And we did one last year, which was pretty COVID centric. Last year spill, we’re very limited, but we were there. And we did it was within the rules of COVID. But this year, those rules were removed, and we’re all back to normal. And we’re trying to find the date that worked best for them. And for us. It actually ended up being Valentine’s Day. So our awesome marketing and communications graphics team came up with you remember in elementary school you gave Valentine’s out? Yeah, yeah, we created Quinn net loves Georgia, Valentine’s. And we’re giving it to all of our legislators with candy. It’s awesome. It is awesome. And I just say it’s cording, but apparently no one had ever done that before. And I was really shocked. Because our we have a state legislature that needs annually, and it meets from January to March. So Valentine’s Day is always there. Like, how are we the first I think it is, but we have a really, really creative marketing team. And they came up with it. And I thought it was 100% corny, but I didn’t want to do it. And they were like, no, no, we got to do it, we’re really gonna stand out. And I was like, I don’t know if we’re gonna stand out for good or bad. But well, we’ll go for it. And everyone loved it. I was wrong. They were right. It was it was super positive. And all the photos were super cool. And it was it was really memorable, which is what was important. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 32:21
it’s nice when you can have a little bit of humble pie when something really, you know, is well accepted. And it’s okay, you know, to accept that and give your team all the credit for their good ideas, right?
Nick Masino 32:34
Oh, yeah. If they would have listened to me, we would have would have not done it. And we would have not been a finalist in the ACC. I give all the credit other places? Absolutely not, I
Brandon Burton 32:45
think you hit on something important that you know, where you put the budget is what gets the attention, right. So being able to align your intentions, you know, fiscally towards public policy, you’re gonna see more focus and more attention and more results by doing so. So I think that’s a good leadership note right there for others to take note of that if you don’t budget for it, it’s not going to happen. So
Nick Masino 33:11
totally agree. That’s, that’s definitely one of my mantras.
Brandon Burton 33:15
Yes, for sure. Well, Nick, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any tips or action items with listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level. What piece of advice might you offer to them?
Nick Masino 33:33
Absolutely. I think this one’s actually I’ve read it. Like he first stopped me when it when you kind of gave me the heads up, I needed to answer that question. It but I think the answer is so obvious. Because this is what I’ve done for my entire career. When I was a mayor, I got involved in the Georgia Municipal Association, surrounded myself with peers learn best practices. And I think just as important is to avoid the mistakes that they shared with you that they made. Then I became an economic developer, and I joined the International Economic Development Council did the same thing. And it literally, I started on as the chamber CEO, July 1 of 2019. Two weeks later, I was in Huntington Beach at the annual conference, learning best practices. And I literally showed up like I took a flight really early, so I could go attend the board meeting of which one I was not allowed to attend because I wasn’t on the board. And I tried to play the well no one said I couldn’t do it. Let me sit in I just like I like if I’m going to do something I’m all in and they were like Well, sir, sorry, you cannot see. First of all welcome, but you’re not here. You can be here I need to be just not in this office. So So I went I you know, I went to the new member orientation and then I went to the big welcome ceremony, and it was all awesome. And the next day I got on a peer group I have which I’ve been on for four years, I’ve met some incredible chamber leaders from literally across the country across. There’s great folks from Canada as well in the Caribbean. And it’s been awesome. And I have learned so much. When anytime I dive into something, I want to hear what the people that have done it, what they what, like, we didn’t have a foundation at our chamber. So I’m sitting there in a room with 40 CEOs, me and one other CEO did not have a foundation, I immediately went back, why don’t we have a foundation sound out we did. And we had created our Community Foundation 20 years prior, we just found it out. And they were doing a really unique, important work of the community. But it wasn’t around business. So we actually created a chamber foundation focused on helping businesses that have owners that have been historically left out people of color women, veterans that haven’t been given their fair share of the pie. So we’re focused on that group, because nobody else was doing that work. And so that those peer groups are so important. You never know what you can learn. And also, just as importantly, what you can avoid. So sorry, that was a long drawn out answer is join, well join ACC, get on one of their peer groups in there based on the size and complexity of your chamber. So there’s a peer group for anybody, any chamber CEO,
Brandon Burton 36:23
right. And that’s one of the main reasons why this podcast became what it is, is to be able to share some of those best practices, get to know others in the peer group and learn from mistakes and successes of others. So do do all of the above as far as learning from your peers and those best practices to adopt those. I appreciate that. Nick, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Nick Masino 36:53
Well, I see a bright future for chambers. I do think that that’s a complex question, because it really depends on the community. Because not there is no cookie cutter chamber. They are as different as the individual communities. And I think it’s a great question every chamber leader needs to ask themselves. For us. We’re a very, we’re the fifth most diverse county in the United States, again, a million people, a quarter of them 250,000 People were born outside the United States of a million people on my community. And so we’ve been super intentional about inviting people into the chamber. Because if you don’t know a chamber, you’ve never been involved with one. A lot of people think chambers are government. And we find people that are first generation American, don’t have a lot of trust in government. And so we have to be super intentional about inviting people. That was what it was for us. And we knew that our physical structure of our chamber wasn’t super inviting. So we had to make it more open and bright and welcoming. So we’re doing a $4 million renovation right now. And that’s what it meant for us. But I think, you know, view as 10 chambers that question, you might get 10 different answers. But I think what’s important is you’ve got to think where is your community headed? And are you headed? Are you in a parallel direction, because if you’re going east and your community is going west, that’s that’s not good for your chamber. You’ve got to be mirroring your community have what they need. And that means thinking differently, as your community might be changing.
Brandon Burton 38:24
Right now, that is such a great answer. So every chamber is right yeah, every chamber every community is so unique. And you need to be able to listen to that community see what direction you need to go and, and it’ll kind of chart the course for you. But every every answer is slightly different. As I asked that, you know, now in 238 episodes, we get different answers from everybody. So I love it. Nick, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things or when it would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.
Nick Masino 39:02
Sure you go to GwinnettChamber.org I will point out when that is two ends in two T’s by the way, Gwinnett you’ve never heard that name before. It is one of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia. You’re gonna love this the guy’s name was button. Bu t t o n button good at
Brandon Burton 39:27
just don’t name their kids Button anymore.
Nick Masino 39:29
No, I know it’s such a classic thing. So what net chamber.org You can reach me at Nick@GwinnettChamber.org Pretty, pretty simple.
Brandon Burton 39:39
All right, we will get that in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy for people to find you but Nick, this has been great having you on the show and hearing about the exciting work you guys are involved with. I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year and it’s been great having you on the show.
Nick Masino 39:55
Thanks so much. It really was an honor. I appreciate it.
Brandon Burton 39:58
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