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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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Becki Womble 1:03
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Mary Byers, Mary is co author for of Race for Relevance, Five Radical Changes for Associations and Road to Relevance, Five Strategies for Competitive Associations. She’s the former director of communications and Member Services for the Illinois Dental Society, and served in that capacity for nine years prior to starting her consulting business in 1998. Mary specializes in working with volunteer association leaders and chief staff executives to help define their roles and clarify their vision through leadership conference programming, facilitating strategic planning retreats and coaching. Mary is a certified Association Executive and a certified speaking professional. She is also the author of nine books. That Mary, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment 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 a little better.
Mary Byers 2:58
I appreciate that. Brandon, I’m delighted to be here. And I love the impact that chambers make on the business leaders in the community and the communities themselves. So extra special day for me in terms of helping encourage your audience. Something interesting about me that not many people know is that I am a frustrated tap dancer. I love it. My feet just don’t move as quickly as I would like them to. And I’m also a amateur improv lover. So that’s I’ve been taking some improv lessons lately. And I’m looking forward to more. That’s
Brandon Burton 3:38
awesome. I can see where the speech and improv have some correlations and some crossover when you’re on the stage and needing to think on the fly. So that it goes along with professional development, right?
Mary Byers 3:51
I think it definitely for in my case, especially Sure, right? Absolutely.
Brandon Burton 3:57
Well, normally, I would ask you how you know about your chamber size staff budget, but since you’re not a chamber, let’s just tell us a little about a little bit about the consulting work you do kind of who you try to work with impact to try to make the kind of course that you take and just give us a little bit of background.
Mary Byers 4:18
I started as an association staffer for one state level organization and one for an international organization. And that led into the work that I do you have now and I work with a wide variety of organization, trade associations, professional membership societies, and I work with them of all shapes and sizes. I’ve worked with over 400 of them. And that gives me a view of what’s happening, what’s challenging organizations but I also recognize that each is unique and they have their own culture, history and traditions. So I love being able to encourage Association chamber professionals. to share what I’m seeing in the marketplace, and then to provide some resources for them so that as they grow in their roles and in their organizations, they have some resources to help them do that. Absolutely.
Brandon Burton 5:12
That’s great work you’re involved with. So for our topic for our discussion today, we settled on the idea of talking about innovation and experimentation. And I love this idea because chambers of commerce, as you’re probably aware, and and I would venture to say associations in general are always looking to what they can do to remain relevant to their members and and the people they serve. So I think innovation and experimentation is crucial to remaining relevant, and we will dive much deeper into this conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 8:37
All right, Mary, we’re back from our break there. And as I mentioned, before we we took that pause. We’re focusing our discussion today around innovation and experimentation. And I know you as the author of the book race for relevance, this correlates very well. But I guess first of all, what what should chambers and associations be thinking about? Now as we’re sitting in 2023? And, and I hope we’re safe and saying post pandemic? What are what are some of those things they should be focusing on?
Mary Byers 9:13
Okay, first of all, let me define how I think about innovation. If I walked into the room and said, I want you to come up with a new program and service from scratch. That’s intimidating. It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to do. So when I talk about innovation, I’m really talking about doing something differently. And when you look at it that way, we’re looking at small changes, possibly making big differences. We’re looking at experimentation, as you mentioned, and we’ll talk more about that as we go along. But But small risks, calculated risks, and then learning from the market as we take some of those small risks. And then the other thing that I would encourage people to be thinking about is What I call the 10% pledge. And that is committing to evolve 10% of what you’re currently doing, whether it’s 10% of your fundraising, 10% of your programming, 10% of your special projects, 10% of your communications, that way, you are engaged in continuous innovation or continuous improvement, which some organizations call it, and it doesn’t become a thing that we have to go to the board and ask for permission to do, it becomes something that becomes part and parcel of who we are. And we know that member’s needs were changing prior to the pan damnit, as I like to call it, because I think that’s just an apt description of what we’ve been through. And they’re, they’re changing as a result on the other side as well, too. And if we are continuously evolving, then we don’t have to engage in these big projects or big programs or big changes, and there might need to be some revolutionary innovation. But I think evolutionary innovation is more realistic for chambers, quite honestly. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 11:12
In fact, as you’re talking about that 10% pledge, I think, as chambers often, if they have an event or something of that nature, they’re conducting surveys and collecting data, either along the way, or post event. And, excuse me, collecting that data is perfect to put into that 10%, as you’re talking about to build to make those incremental changes as evolutionary changes, to continue improving and staying relevant. So I think that’s a great tip.
Mary Byers 11:41
And I’m surprised by how many organizations do surveying, especially post event serving, and then when it’s time to plan next year, somehow that data has stuck at it. We don’t look at it, we don’t use it. And yet, if we’re really listening to our market and our members, and we’re hearing what’s being said, many of the ideas that would help us innovate, are there. We don’t even have to come up with them. We just have to respond to them. Right?
Brandon Burton 12:13
Yeah, absolutely. So and I think that’s, that’s great. So the explanation you had there about how you look at innovation and experimentation, I think is great for kind of setting that mindset as we go about our discussion today. But maybe going back to that question about what what associations and chambers need to be thinking about, as we’re in this post pandemic timeframe.
Mary Byers 12:39
If I were sitting in a leadership role with an organization, I would be asking several questions. One wouldn’t be have members needs and expect expectations changed? And if so how? I would be asking, What can we help members do that they can’t do for themselves? Because I think that helps lead to our value proposition. And I would also be asking, how can we help members work less stressfully more profitably, and more productively? And I think one of the things that challenge chambers quite honestly, is you don’t have just one type of business, represented in the chamber, you’re not all restaurants, you’re not all retail stores. And every group has different needs. And so it’s, I guess another thing that I would encourage them to think about is segmenting their membership, and taking a look at the different categories represented. And then if you think about a Venn diagram, you know, that harkens back to grade school or high school, what are the commonalities, so if you do have restaurants, and you do have golf courses, and you do have retail shops, where are the common needs, and then if you can focus on those common needs, you’re going to be relevant to more of your membership, rather than being fragmented. And when everything is important, nothing is important. So I think an exercise of this nature helps focus. And when we focus we can make more of an impact.
Brandon Burton 14:18
Absolutely. And I couldn’t agree more and trying to figure out what are those common needs and and oftentimes a Venn diagram is a good way to visualize that see, where all that overlap is and where to where to focus that that time and effort. I think as we are recording this for May of 2023. Technology is abuzz right now with all sorts of things from blockchain to AI to you name it, but how do you see technology, the relevance of technology for a chamber and you know the relevance of it in adopting it and experimenting with it.
Mary Byers 15:02
Base for relevance came out in 2011. And in 2021, we produced an anniversary 10th anniversary edition. And one of the things I’m proud of, is the fact that the chapter on technology completely changed the base 10, meaning that technology is extremely important to how we deliver programs and service was the same. But we had new case studies, new data. We believe that this has to be an important aspect of strategy for organizations. So in addition to his strategic plan, I believe all chambers should also have a technology plan. I years ago, a friend of mine who’s a realtor suggested that we look around every year in our house and ask if we were going to sell our home this year, what would we need to do, and pick one project and do it. And the reason she suggested that is then we could enjoy the upgrades while we were living in the home rather than waiting to upgrade before we sold the home. And we also would be ready, then when it was time to sell the home, there wouldn’t be a long list of things that we had to do, because we had been keeping up with it. And I think the same thing is true with chambers, I think each year, we need to look around and say if we were going to upgrade our technology, what would we do? And then we need to go do it. We actually in 2011, we took a look at what percentage associations were spending on technology, it was 4.1% of their budgets. And when that got to that it was actually 1.6%. And yet, when you look at the impact that technology has on how we can deliver member programs and services, it’s huge. So our research show that for profit companies, we’re spending around seven to 8% of their gross revenue, not their net gross ology. So if we were to even aspire to half of that, we would be in a better position. So not only do we need a strategic plan, we need a technology plan. And we need to know and most know, most technology plans are going to last longer than a year, because technology is changing constantly. And as you said, new things are being introduced AI, we’re still looking at the impact of that. But part of the challenges for many or Chamber organizations, especially they are they’re varying sizes, and they have varying budgets, but we must double down on our commitment to technology. Here’s a question and additional question to be thinking about, and that is, how can we take the chamber to members, rather than always asking members to come to the chamber? Right. And technology’s one way to do that?
Brandon Burton 17:56
Absolutely. So I think that’s fascinating looking at the percentage being spent on technology in associations versus, you know, in the the for profit world. And yeah, I guess there’s the caveat with that is a lot of these technology, software’s will say, and we’ll have a free or maybe a nonprofit rate. So there’s reasons you could justify why they spend less and, you know, be be resourceful, by all means, but the point is to start integrating some of that technology. In your research and case studies, Were there certain things that stood out to you that would maybe be that, like, going back to your analogy of getting your house ready for sale, right, like a kitchen bathrooms, those things have the biggest ROI, right? So as you look at associations, what kinds of things technology wise, would you say, have the most ROI to try to implement implement sooner than later,
Mary Byers 18:55
making sure that you have a database that is flexible, so that you can actually pull data that you need and can use without investing a lot of time into that. I think a lot of associations don’t even realize what kind of data they’re sitting on. And so they’re not using, that’d be the first thing that making sure that your database is robust and flexible, so that it will help you with what you need. We also want to be thinking about automating and systematizing. Most chambers have smaller staffs. I’m surprised sometimes by the way that we are still manually taking registrations handling new dues or you know, new members. So anything that would help us streamline our workload, because we want to free up our staff to do the things that staff does best and that is relationship building, interfacing with members troubleshooting, solving problems getting out into the community. So any thing that would free up staff time, I think would be an important piece of it. Right? Our web presence absolutely needs to be modern, easy to search. Friendly. If you think about it, it is our first impression. When members are interested in joining, they go to the website. So how user friendly is it? We have to think about the member experience, when I find what I need, when I need it? Are things streamlined? Is it frustrating? How hard is it to use that I always tell people go try to join your organization. And pretend you have never seen your website or your processes before. So see it with fresh eyes, and then find the places that are frustrating. And then start with those.
Brandon Burton 20:49
I would say I would add, you know, have somebody who’s totally not in the chamber world. Look at your website, you know how? Because then you’ll know is your website telling the story of what your chamber does, like will that individual have an understanding of what a chamber is or what your chamber is? In your points on that the automation, I think of the example of the dentists you know, who goes to dental school, they learn how to be a great dentist, that’s what they do is they work on teeth, but if they have to spend, you know, 50% of their day, doing paperwork and moving things along the process, when there’s tools out there that will move it along. And that that would be the equivalent of the chamber being out there in the community and helping businesses be successful. And there’s tools like like Zapier, you know, that will connect a lot of these other technologies to be able to move things along in the process automatically. And, and relatively inexpensive. So you need to be exploring those different options, because there’s, there’s a lot of great tools, but you got to set aside that that 10% of the time to study it, research it and explore it, right. Yeah,
Mary Byers 22:00
and that’s one of the great things we’ve seen change in the last 10 years, since the first edition of the book was written, we now have more options, more apps, more plugins, it used to be that you would have to do a huge technology upgrade. And we’d go to the board and we’d get money. And then we would go through all the stress and strain of getting the new application installed. And then we would just live with that until it was time to do another upgrade. But you know, much like looking around your house and seeing what needs to be done. We can do that with technology now. And we can, we can say this is working, this isn’t we need to change this out, we need to plug this in. So we’ve got more flexibility. And now that we’ve gone to service as a subscription model, it’s more affordable. So rather than having a huge upfront commitment financially, we can basically pay as we go. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s gotten, you know, so much cheaper, that technology isn’t going to take a bite out of our budget. But I think we have to recognize the power of technology, and make sure that it is creating the kind of return on investment that we deserve for that, for that investment that we’re making
Brandon Burton 23:19
on that pay as you go model allows you to experiment a little more to and see if it really does work before you commit to buying a whole big price tag package. So I know you had shared a tip earlier on this. But I wanted to ask specifically about how to build a culture of innovation at a chamber. You know, there’s the old saying of you know, things have always been done this way. And of course, you want to break that mold. So how do you create a culture where people are thinking kind of what is that next step? What is what is the thing we can do to improve what we do here at our organization.
Mary Byers 23:58
The first thing I think we have to acknowledge is the importance of innovation, because the only way we’re going to change is by innovating. And this became an area of interest to me after the book was written because I started noticing the difference between organizations that were thriving, versus those that were just surviving. And those that were thriving, were actively innovating. They had a not only a verbal commitment to it, but a strategic commitment to it. They recognize that innovation requires experimentation. And so they change their language around how they even talk about it. They don’t talk in terms of success and failure. They talk in terms of success and learning. And so that takes some of the stigma away from innovation. So there has to be a commitment. There has to be it has to be part of the cultural value. We have to recognize and reward innovation, rather than punish it when It doesn’t work. And honestly, the board really has to have buy in for that, because the board’s role is to make sure that the Chamber has the expertise and the funding that they need to innovate. So some organizations actually have a line item in their budget, dedicated to innovation so that the staff doesn’t have to go to the board every time they want to try something new. They also other organizations will earmark a percentage of reserves, perhaps each year toward innovation. So we want to make the barriers to innovation as low as possible. And if I have to beg for money, every time I want to try something new, that certainly doesn’t encourage innovation, it actually discourages it. So the board has to really understand the role of innovation, they need to support it, and they need to adequately finance fit.
Brandon Burton 25:54
Yeah, I like that. I like the whole mindset of success and learning. So it’s not success and failure, success and learning. So I wanted to ask you, you’ve got a phrase called dual transformation. So how can dual transformation help a chamber remain relevant.
Mary Byers 26:12
So this is actually a concept from the for profit world. And dual transformation really means that you service today’s business model, while you’re building the future of the organization. So I’ll give you an example of what this might have looked like for a group at one of my clients actually explained it to me is flying the airplane while you’re still building. Yeah, and that’s, I think that was kind of a good metaphor. And, you know, very picturesque when you think about keeping a plane afloat while still building it. You know, we’ve seen a moved for, for some organizations to go to a tiered membership model. So this isn’t a chamber, but the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association adopted a tiered model in 2016, because they wanted members to essentially be able to choose their own adventure. So they have three package levels. The first level really was for those who were just getting started in veterinary medicine maybe didn’t have a lot of financial resources, but they wanted to offer them a home, and access to some education and resources that would be beneficial to them. The middle package was the one they expected most members to take advantage of. And it was the package that offered what previously had been available for their membership. And then the third package essentially was for the whole practice. So you pay more, you can enroll as many people in your practice as you want into the membership. And they built the model that way that other organizations have gone to a subscription model from a membership annual membership model. They’re billing on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis. And again, it’s flexibility. They’re letting their members choose how they want to engage. So those are some examples of small changes that have had a big impact. One group that I’m familiar with, when they went to the subscription model, the monthly model actually increased their membership by 11%, just by offering them flexibility. So it wasn’t a huge change, although they had a few things they had to do on the back end with the technology. And they had to do a little bit of experimentation there to see how that was going to work. But that’s one of my favorite things about it, quite honestly is a small changes can have a big difference. But the dual transformation idea is that you are doing everything you need to do in 2023 to meet members needs, simultaneously, thinking about what your membership model is going to look like what the business model is going to look like in 2020 before 2025 2026. So it’s actually made things a little bit more complex, because we have to worry about today and tomorrow at the same time. But it’s a concept I think that is worth borrowing from for profit, America, especially when we talk to our boards about the complexity of the environment. One of the other things that we’ve seen change in the last 10 years is competition has heated up and it is coming from all sorts of places. I think we have to acknowledge how that’s challenging our models and use innovation to mitigate the impact on chambers.
Brandon Burton 29:49
Yeah, I like that. The dual transformation doing what you need to do today, while also looking at the future reminds me though the Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going right. He’s in the game. He’s doing what he needs to do, but he’s going to where the puck is going. And I think that’s so crucial for us to have our eye on the future and not be left in the past. So no, admittedly,
Mary Byers 30:11
Wayne makes it sound really easy, right. So I think he had a sixth sense that a lot of other hockey players didn’t have. And I’m pretty sure he had eyes on the side in the back of his head, too, because that’s almost what it takes to be able to skate to where the puck is going.
Brandon Burton 30:28
And he already knew that I escaped. So that’s a big accomplishment.
Mary Byers 30:33
I would agree with that. Right.
Brandon Burton 30:35
So as we begin to wrap things up here, I like asking if you have any tip or strategy or action items that you would suggest for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.
Mary Byers 30:49
So this is going to sound too simple, and counterintuitive, but it’s the best tip I have to offer chamber professionals. And that is get away from the office on a quarterly basis. I’ve been doing this since 2016. And I actually found a retreat center that is close to me. And I check in with a pad of paper, my calendar and a pen. And I try to minimize electronics. And even if I have a cell phone with me, I put my Do Not Disturb on and I try not to look at it until it’s bedtime on the first night. And then I usually work until noon or late in the day, second day. And essentially what I’m doing is I’m dividing my year into quarters. And I’m looking at what needs my attention over the next quarter. And the next year. And I’m making some longer term plans. I’m making some longer strategy plans. One of the first things I did when I started this is I went back, and I chunked my career. Okay, what was true about the start of my career, what became true about the next piece of my career, and essentially, I was able to identify pivot points. And I think this has value to a chamber exec as well set aside some time to go back and look over the past couple of years past five years, 10 years, your whole your chambers whole history. Where were there strategic decisions made. That allowed the, the chamber to get momentum, or to really make an impact. And understanding backwards will actually help you strategize forwards. So that was the long way of saying, I think chamber execs need to get out of the office for at least a day, four times a year, no phones, no members, no interruptions, and strictly think about how they think about strategy. And to look at both the past and the future, and to look at where they can get pivot points that will help accelerate the value and relevance of their chambers going forward. So
Brandon Burton 33:12
as you do this, how long do you take when you Is it two days, three days a week? Usually,
Mary Byers 33:19
I do it overnight. And I plan on the first day and I spend most of the second day. So I would say on average, it’s a day and a half. Okay, so I’m spending three what is that day and a half day and a half, three, six, I’m spending six full days a year outside of my office, away from any interruptions. And I find that the more time I spend on the front end, the more I gain on the back end. So when I do it, I’m strategizing about my own business. But I’m also strategizing about my clients and how I serve them. And so the equivalent for a chamber would be strategizing about their role, their personal role in growth and development, and then also strategizing on behalf of how the organization serves members and how that’s changing. And I really believe that the changes we were seeing before the pandemic have been accelerated. But the pandemic gave us a tailwind. And now we have a choice coming out of this. And I think of it as no longer business as usual, but business as unusual. And how can we harness what’s happened for the good of our chambers. I also like to think about whether what we’re seeing is for now, or forever. So we’re coming out of the pandemic now. And so some of the trends that we’re seeing now may or may not be in existence in two, five or 10 years, that if some of the trends are in existence in two or five years, what does that mean for your organization? For a lot of chambers, they became more relevant because they were answering questions for members about, can we open? How can we open? When can we open? What does that look like, depending on what state they were located in? So that crisis actually increased our relevance. What can we learn from where we leaned in, during the pandemic that will help us going forward in our chamber?
Brandon Burton 35:21
I love that. That’s a great, great tip there. Say, I like asking all the guests that I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how would you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Mary Byers 35:38
I am very bullish on the future of all associations and chambers. However, in order to remain relevant, we’re going to have to continuously evolve. I do not think that if we stayed the same, that we will be as meaningful. Comfort and complacency are the enemy of relevance. And that’s why I think every chamber professional needs to be focused on continuously evolving what their business model looks like. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 36:11
and that’s so difficult, right? We say comfort and complacency are the enemy and, and that’s all human nature wants is to be comfortable. They don’t want to do the hard thing. You don’t want to do the painful thing. But those are the things that see growth and positive change is being able to push through and get out of that comfort zone. I think that’s it,
Mary Byers 36:32
I think, because there was so much stress and pressure and innovating on the fly. I think for many people, we’re sort of like, we’re in recovery mode. Right now. We’re sort of like who, wow, we made it through that. But we also build resilience muscles. And my biggest fear is that we our desire to go back is stronger than our desire to create a proactive go forward strategy. So I do think there is a role for rest and recovery. But we have to be careful that that doesn’t become our modus operandi. You know, we were tired, we were overwhelmed. We got through it. Now we got to keep going. Right? Absolutely.
Brandon Burton 37:16
Well, Mary, this has been a great conversation, I appreciate the the point of view and perspective that you bring to this topic, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more and connect with you what would be the best way for them to do that?
Mary Byers 37:34
I appreciate that. Brandon, thank you. It’s simply my marybyers.com. There are resources there. And I also have AssociationInnovation.today. We did a report with loyalty Research Center, where we took a look at what high performing innovative organizations are doing. And there is a free report there. So anybody that’s interested in building an innovative culture in their organization can access that report. There’s a lot of food for thought. We talked about weak innovation, culture, strong innovation culture as we talk about how its funded. And we just talked about what you should be thinking about if you want to be an innovator.
Brandon Burton 38:19
Awesome. Yeah, everybody needs to take you up on that and go see that that free report. So well. We’ll have both of those websites linked in our show notes for this episode, so people can hop on there and click through to the websites. But Mary, thank you for spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast for sharing your insights and, and the future looking vision that you have for associations and chambers of commerce. I really do appreciate it.
Mary Byers 38:47
Thank you. It’s been my privilege to be here. And thank you for the work that you do because I believe that educating, encouraging, connecting, and allowing people to tap into other people’s good ideas is where many forms of innovation come from. So thanks for your work as well.
Brandon Burton
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