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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.
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is John Chen. John is the author of the number one Amazon hot new book release “Engaging Virtual Meetings”. He’s been meeting virtually for over 38 years isn’t could say he’s a pioneer. He has produced over 4000 virtual meetings, including an eight language meeting and the only 100% live virtual conference in the training industry. He’s a certified speaking professional by the National Speakers Association. Let’s welcome John Chen to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
John Chen 2:39
Thank you so much, Brandon, this is John Chen reporting live from Seattle, Washington. And well maybe we’ll have to incorporate this fact later into the show that I once walked across 40 feet of fire back to you, Brandon.
Brandon Burton 2:52
All right. That sounds intriguing. It sounds like maybe a Tony Robbins type of experience. Awesome. Well tell us a little bit about what you do in the speaker realm just to kind of set the stage for our conversation today and how it’s applicable to chambers who are listening to the show today.
John Chen 3:13
Yeah, thank you, Brandon. And I have been a member of Seattle’s Chamber of Commerce in the past. So I think I know the audience. This is my 38th year of being in business after spending 10 years Brandon at that little software company up here near Seattle for a while and I shipped him products and got two US patents and then I really decided I wanted to do something with that I had my three passions in it which is technology adventure to help create human change. So I created a company that did team building using geocaching. Now Brandon, do you know what geocaching is?
Brandon Burton 3:48
I have kids. So yes, I’m familiar with geocaching. Geocaching
John Chen 3:53
was invented in Seattle, it is a high tech scavenger hunt that uses billions of dollars of satellite known as our global positioning system. And to help you find containers hidden all around the world. And I converted it into a team and leadership event where I was actually able to do 160 events a year brand and teaching team and leadership skills using high tech scavenger hunts all around the world. And by the way, for those who are in chambers in cities, it’s actually a great promotional activity to get people to all the different locations and businesses in your city. So I did that, you know, for a good portion of time, Brandon,
Brandon Burton 4:31
I love it. That’s a great idea, especially localized within a city to really get to know the community and get out there and engage with people in the community as well as you’re doing the scavenger hunts. That’s awesome. Well, as we focused in on our our topic for conversation today, we wanted to focus on the idea of engaging especially as we, I guess if we’re a chamber there’s different levels of engagement. So there’s oftentimes engaging from the stage maybe it’s at a chamber luncheon or annual banquet, maybe it’s at a training of some sort maybe there’s new business law in your state and you’re trying to educate your your Chamber members about this new business law or maybe the engagement is in trying to express the value your your value proposition of membership. So all these different ways we hope to address and talk to today’s we have John on the show to talk about engaging on all these different levels so I’m excited to dive into this much deeper as soon as I get back from this quick break.
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Alright, John, we’re back. Let’s dive into engagement. So I don’t know if before the break I talked about a couple different examples of how a chamber may be interested in in in leveling up their engagement with their membership and different events and things. Did any of those stand out that you would like to address first? Do you want to go from the stage scene?
John Chen 7:48
Yeah, let’s go for the person. Alright, so Brandon, let me know that a good majority of you chambers have back to the in person. And while I wrote a book called Engaging virtual meetings, here’s one of the secrets. The challenges of engaging on virtual are also the same challenges that you have in person. So one of the cool parts here is that I did earn this, just two weeks ago, I earned this certified speaking professional. And so then then the National Speakers Association gives away this designation. And it’s only given it away to 17% of their members. So that the CSP is supposed to designate you as one of the top speakers, I’d really like to share some onstage speaker tips. And I want to share two for chambers. The first one is so key, it’s the first five minutes of your chamber meeting are the most important. Let me say that again. The first five minutes of your chamber meeting are the most important. Now I’m gonna let Brandon guests a little bit like Brandon, why is this so important? Why do you think this is so important? You’re
Brandon Burton 8:55
setting the stage for what’s going to happen the rest of the event? Hopefully it’s a if there’s enough intentionality with it, maybe you can get people there in the room for the first five minutes. I think that’s huge to be able to have people there at the beginning. But I think overall, it sets the tone for what they’re going to expect. And
John Chen 9:17
now you have to think yourself, put yourself back in the seat as a new member. And I’m sitting in the chamber audience, and I don’t know anybody. Right? And in those first five minutes, I’m probably going to make a decision that will tell me and especially if I’m a guest, right, I haven’t even made the decision yet to join the chamber. Most of us in the first five minutes of the meeting will make the choice going, right. These are my people. Yeah, I belong here. Or they’re gonna make the other determination going. I’m out which ways I’ll give up my 45 bucks I registered with I got it. I’m out of the door now. All right, and so so that’s why those first five minutes are so important. So think about All the different ways so a lot of people in like some of the past chamber meetings that I’m imagining I’ve been to a lot of other different ones that kind of stat start out kind of lackluster. It’s like, you know, hey, we’re gonna start in three minutes, right? So just mergency exits are located here in here, right? He’s like you got on an airplane or something, as opposed to, right, you are going to love this meeting, right, coming up next is this speaker, he hosts the chamber chat podcast, and he’s got hundreds of people’s experience, and he’s gonna share at least three of them with you today. Let’s, we’re gonna welcome Brandon Burton, right. So something like that, how you open your meetings should really look for it. And I see this in virtual meetings. But I also see this in in person meetings. And in that first five minutes, you should really think about what are all the different ways that I can bring the meeting to order to bring to attention and saying, There’s something here for me today, like I need to pay attention, and, you know, get the return on the investment on my time and money for being in this chamber meeting. And doing that. So that’s the first one. Brandon, do you have any examples that you’ve seen of like, great ways that somebody opened a chamber meeting?
Brandon Burton 11:06
Um, I, I don’t know about great way. Like, I’m not the expert on it by any means. But what I have noticed at some, like chamber luncheons that I’ve been at is at the beginning, they will give a couple minutes for everyone at the table to introduce themselves to each other and get to know each other. Yeah,
John Chen 11:24
see, now that’s great, because you’re immediately actively talking to somebody else. You’re not listening to somebody talk and not talking. And you’re engaged because you’re meeting somebody else. And you most likely came to the Cambridge chamber to network. So I love that idea. I think that’s right on. I mean, another one, Brandon is invite one of your local musicians, who’s really good, and I have them open the first part for five minutes. And let me tell you, one, if they’re great musicians, people will pay attention to number two, it like changes the whole, you know, the whole mood of the meeting, especially if somebody’s inspiring, or uplifting, or fun, or something like that. So we’ve seen that happen. One of our conferences had the theme of the phoenix rising from the ashes. Okay, right. And so. So we actually had a singer come in, and she’s saying, Rise up from Andrea day. Yeah. And the whole place like everybody, like started, like looking at, like, you could hear a murmur in the back of the room going, This is so amazing, this is the best way to start a meeting. You know, this was like, right after the pandemic ended. And we’re like the first in person meeting. And so it added something to the meeting. Okay, so that’s the first tip, which is, is that the first five minutes are the most important. And the second one is that if you want engagement, Brendon engage, and so have a plan to engage every single attendee of your meeting before the end of the meeting. So one of them is Brandon, I think geniusly said, Let’s do a networking piece. So for the first time, welcome. I’m Brandon Wright, and I’m the host today, for the first five minutes, we want to immediately give you value. So take a moment and introduce yourself, make sure there’s enough time for everyone at the table, right? Take a minute or less, but introduce who you are, right, what you do, and what value do you bring to our community? Okay, go right. So, so now everyone’s talking. I mean, the other one is just walk out into the audience, Brandon, yeah. Or highlight your members might have two member highlights, ready to go and have them talk about their business, but also talk and have them talk about why they like coming, why they are a member of the chamber. Because if Brandon is like the executive director for the chamber, he’s always going to be saying, oh, you should join blah, blah. But when your members say it, it is so much stronger. So one of the things that I do Brown, and maybe this is not for all chamber meetings, but when I present, Brandon, I allocate up to 50% of the time for the audience to talk. Okay, and here’s the reason why. It is impossible for Brandon as an attendee to be checked out, right? checking his cell phone and checking his email. If I have a mic in his hand, and he’s talking in front of the group. Brandon has to be with me otherwise, he’s gonna like look like like, like the business chamber person. You don’t want to know who’s multitasking in the middle of a meeting, but
Brandon Burton 14:19
and you said, you know, walking out into the audience, and I know not to throw my wife under the bus at all. But if we’re at at an event and the speaker, somebody that performer comes out into the audience, her immediate reaction is Don’t come near me. Don’t come near me. Don’t don’t engage me. Don’t talk to me. Say and she will be petrified of the person but it keeps her engaged, right? She’s not looking at her phone. She’s watching the speaker, whatever to make sure
John Chen 14:45
she is she’s going like No, no, no, no, no. And so you know, even the negative engagement is engagement. It’s kind of like bad commercials, right? We would just watch the Superbowl right. Even the bad commercials will talk about going did you feel bad that was that was horrible. So I do believe That’s right. And then the second part as a speaker, there’s actually a good follow up to Brandon, right is that the psychological safety is the other thing you’re trying to build in your chamber meeting, which is that you feel safe. Taking a risk in front of your business peers. And so what you do is come up to as like, Brandon, What’s your wife’s name again? Brandon.
Brandon Burton 15:21
Sarah.
John Chen 15:22
Yeah. So Sarah said, Sarah, right? I see this terrified look in your face and said, Would you like to contribute something? Or would you like me to go to somebody else, and she’s gonna go to somebody else. But I’ll give her the choice. So because I don’t want her to be traumatized at my chamber meeting
Brandon Burton 15:37
right now.
John Chen 15:38
So you know, that’s the other part is to think about as like, I almost never call directly anybody in a chorus, but ox, I’m looking for volunteers. Yeah. But in a chamber meeting, too, especially if for the first time I’m doing this. I’m gonna work ahead, Brandon, and make sure there’s at least one or two people who are going to volunteer if nobody volunteers. There you go. And that way, we know it’s going to be a success.
Brandon Burton 16:01
Get your your plants out there, right. Yeah. So I’ve heard people that speak from stage talk about different levels of engagement. So maybe asking some questions at the beginning to get people to raise their hand or stand up or move to another table if you do this or that. So just getting them to do something as part of that engagement. Where Where would you see some value with having them actually do something rather than sitting there nodding, or? Yeah, so getting them to actually act. So
John Chen 16:38
Brandon, I come from the school of what’s known as experiential education, which is a big fancy way of saying, learning by doing Yeah. So if you were to hire me, as a speaker for your chamber, oh, my gosh, I have a great chamber story. Okay. So in one of the chamber stories, I have something and it’s so simple, right? It’s like a one foot of a screw rod. Right? And it has like, six wing nuts, or eight wing nuts on it. Okay. So the, the, it’s a, it’s a team building initiative, where every table is competing against other tables, okay. And I did this actually as a chamber speech. And so what we did with it is that you the rules are, you have to start with all of them off, then as a team, each person is responsible for putting their wingnut on, okay, and the wing that is like a task, right, and the screw, right is like a process. And then you it was a race to get all of them on and then off. And when you went off, that’s when the time expired for it. Okay? Okay. And I was trying to use it as a metaphor of like high performance business, like, if you can take a process in your business, and shorten the time to create that, then you can create more business, right? And so that you can produce more product or whatever. So anyways, this group does this. And, and the, the, so a bunch of people competed with this, and I think I was using it for customer service or something like that. And so what happened was is, so then I started talking about how to produce it. So one is that this team’s did it. And by the way, the high the energy gets really, really high when everyone is competing against each other, especially if you have like a fictitious or like even a low value prize, like a gift card. Okay. And then the funny part that came around is that when we started talking about customer service, and these groups are like, I kept talking about these, these tips about like great things that you can do for customer service, like try to protect your customers needs before they ask you. Okay, and there’s one group at this one table started laughing like a lot. And I finally had to go to the executive director going, what’s happening? Why are they laughing? Because it was kind of like weird and inappropriate. And she goes, finally, she leaned up to me and she goes, John, they’re morticians. Yeah. So I just told them this tip of like, like, you need to anticipate your client’s needs before they need them. And they’re dead. There’s like, use their first name, and they’re dead. And so it just became really, it was I was crying laughing from the stage, but everybody in the group was laughing and that was totally not planned. Brandon. Yeah. Yes, yeah, that was the stuff that people remembered. And then they actually did remember the tip. So anyways, I’m a big fan of, of if you are going to have speakers, yeah, make them do something, whether it’s a table exercise, talk to each other, you know, all these but there’s lots and lots of different ways that you can do that. And, and then use that, which is you debrief that activity and saying this is a metaphor for something in your business. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 19:42
So maybe we’ll shift gears just a little bit. So I know there’s a lot of carryover from speaking on stage to a virtual type of event. And I know chambers they all went digital during the pandemic. Most are back to in person so I’m still have a hybrid or maybe through the pandemic, they spin up a YouTube channel or regular webinar or things like that. So for those that are still engaged with the virtual type of meetings, is there anything that stands out on the virtual front? One thing in particular that I think of is kind of that waiting that awkward waiting room experience before the meeting starts? Like, they’re, they’re sitting there, they’re like, Am I really connected? When is the start? Like what? There’s an awkwardness? Right? So how do we overcome that and keep them engaged on that on the virtual front?
John Chen 20:40
Well, we created a new word for this right, Brandon, have you ever heard the word ZOC? Word?
Brandon Burton 20:46
No. Word. It’s,
John Chen 20:49
it’s a combination of zoom and awkward. It’s also like when you log into a meeting, and all the screens are black, and there’s no audio playing, and there’s no slide you’re like, Am I in the right room? Yeah. Did I just zoom bomb somebody by accident? But
Brandon Burton 21:04
and you get in a Zoom meeting now, never first thing anybody says? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah, the same technology on your telephone us to say hello, but a zoom. Can you hear me? Can you see me? Okay? So let
John Chen 21:17
me give two things. So you know that awkward pauses really something that we do work on? And there’s a cool piece of technology that almost nobody knows about? So Brandon, did you know that you can put a video in your waiting room on Zoom? I did not know that. Now, for a chamber. This is what I suggest you do. You could create like the the slideshow or a video of you, the executive director. And you can highlight right? This is the, let’s say, my hometown of Stockton, this is the Stockton, California Chamber of Commerce, right? This is what we represent. And do this is our mission statement. Here’s our upcoming meeting. And you can flash that or you can have audio. And so you’re building your brand, even before somebody comes into your virtual meeting.
Brandon Burton 22:02
I love that. That is a great idea. Yeah.
John Chen 22:05
Now in this other awkward parts that you have, I mean, you know, you’re talking about podcasts and all these other things. The good news is, is that there’s editing. So you can solve a lot of that. But if you don’t have editing, even kind of think about how you went back and been watching a lot of like old TV shows, and like an old live TV shows. They used to have people come out and warm up the audience. Yeah. Because they need them to laugh, right? When the jokes come up on stage. So you should be the same way. Even if you’re not recording, and you do have an audience, talk to them saying, hey, that’s so thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast, blah, blah, blah, you know, there will or will not be chances for you to ask question, you know, you can chat questions, and the moderator can decide to pick them up. So you just kind of talk to them about the you know, what do you have interest? Or why did you choose to log in today for this program. And so that person that ahead of time, can sometimes find some things out, I find that the great podcast hosts will then use some of that content, because now they know it’s going to solve a need for their clients, right? For the for the audience. And
Brandon Burton 23:10
I can see for a chamber maybe hosting a candidate form, you know, for an upcoming election or something to be able to do that virtually to be able to get those questions, but then to be able to have content to speak to and address and inform voters going forward. So great.
John Chen 23:24
You’re gonna do for me, right? Yeah.
Brandon Burton 23:28
Love it. So chambers inherently are their membership organizations, right? So they’re constantly trying to express their their value to potential members to retain current members. What kind of tips or thoughts would you have around engaging on the membership level, to express that value and to keep those members coming and staying with your organization? So Brandon,
John Chen 23:56
I’m a 15 year member of meetings professional International, one of the largest meeting organizations in the world. And I served all the way up to VP of education and VP of membership. And then I’m President Elect now of our national speakers Association’s Northwest chapter. And so I’m familiar with these challenges that we all have as as membership organizations about number one, the attraction. And then number two, the retention. You know, the fact that I’m a 15 year member now in MPI, makes me a bit of a unicorn so I as the VP of membership once charted the memberships based upon the number of people and how many years they’ve been in, and most organizations brand and I think you’ll probably agree with me, right? The like, over half of the members are one to three year members. Right? There’s a churn at the bottom of people who are like I’m in I’m out I’m in and mount. And so I would first start, you know, in terms of that engagement, one is take care of your, you know, five If you’re and plus members, they’re the easiest people you’re ever going to get. Although, if you piss them off, right, they will do a lot of negative damage to you that don’t ever join that chamber. Right? Right. And so I think that’s, that’s one of the key pieces around there is that if you take care of your longer term members, often, everything else will take care of itself. Now the second part, in drawing new members, which sometimes is easier, it’s more exciting, alright, to draw on the new member, because you take somebody who like knows nothing about your organization and talk about the value, you know, you sold them on the value. So number one is you got to sell them on the value. And so you need to go look at your chamber, and say, What’s at least one core piece of value that is worth this yearly membership and more, you’re gonna get a return on investment, right? Because there again, most of them are business owners, or very high in the business. And so they the time is actually probably what’s the most precious thing. So they need to know that there’s this great investment on time. And, and so they think that that’s the part they need to get a new member. So for instance, in our NSA membership, we have a multiple benefits, but one of the benefits is what we call an E speaker’s profile, which is how meeting professionals find other speakers. And the cost of that basic membership is $179. And our yearly membership is only $149. So basically, you’re getting more than the value of the membership immediately. And now every other benefit from us is gravy. So hopefully that’s a good example, Brandon.
Brandon Burton 26:34
Yeah, that’s good. I like that being able to have that one key element that no matter what else, however else, anything else shakes out there, just that one piece is going to be worth the value. I also heard a recent tip, and I don’t remember where I heard it from, but when talking to somebody that you’re trying to, I’m gonna say sell, I’m trying to sell a membership to ask them. What do you know about the chamber? Have you heard of our XYZ chamber instead of just going and, you know, just vomiting everything all over them? Start starting the conversation with what what have you heard about it? So have you? Because then if they’ve if they’ve heard anything negative, let them get that out? Otherwise, you’re going to tell them all the perks, and they’re going to have the Yeah, but I heard this or that. And so let them get that out first, and then you can add whatever the value is and overcome those objections they might have.
John Chen 27:28
So Brandon, I actually want to add my my next top tip. Have you ever read Chris Matthews book called hardball? I have not. So Chris Matthews is, of course one of those political experts. And in hardball, he detailed some of the top political tactics and techniques that politicians have been using for decades. And one of them is called the ask. And you reminded me of the story because somebody came up to me about NSA and and talked about like, they came to a meeting, like four years ago. And they were really turned off because one of the speakers started selling from the stage. Right, which is a is a big no, no, he shouldn’t have done it. But something happened. I wasn’t at that meeting. But something happened. And she goes, I was so turned off like I just didn’t ever joined. And I said, Oh my gosh, right. So I said, I understand. I think I heard about that meeting, I wasn’t at that meeting, I can tell you that we do have some things around that. So what I’d love to do is personally invite you Why don’t you come check it out again. Alright, May 11 is our next live meeting, you can either come virtual, or you can come in person because we run hybrid, right? And I’d love for you to be my guest. If you come I will introduce you around. Two hours later, she came around back to me and she goes, John, you know what, I just want to let you know that I’m going to come to the May 11 meeting and I want to let you know that your personal ASTs made a huge difference to me. So think about that for all your chamber board members. That one of the most powerful things they can do is personally invite somebody even despite they had a negative, you know, experience like acknowledge like, Okay, you’re right, maybe it was bad back then. I’m here now. When you come check it out. And you determine for yourself and my hope is that that’s how we grew membership over 63% last year, Brandon Yeah. 63%
Brandon Burton 29:16
That’s awesome. And I love the idea of having it be a board member or maybe a chamber Ambassador somebody who’s doing that talking positively about the chamber rather than a staff member trying to do is say no, I promise things of change. Let let a member let someone who’s actively engaged with your chamber extend that invitation in person I’d love that agree. This is going to be a heavy question but what else are we missing on engagement that we need to cover? The all encompassing right?
John Chen 29:50
Well, this is good I love that your answers Brandon because you know I teach another class and engagement is called the seeds of facilitation right so at I’ll do as a team builder. And in facilitation, quite often the thing that people don’t talk about or that we think we have too much of maybe here in America is controversy. Yeah, although, you know, people love a good fight. So
Brandon Burton 30:16
it drives engagement on social media for sure. Right. So
John Chen 30:20
why don’t you invite that? And so there’s two things I would say. Number one, though, is again, go back and think about, are you creating psychological safety? Meaning that can a business owner come and talk about a challenging issue that they are having, without people, you know, giving them negative harm for that saying, all right, you know, Brandon’s businesses, losing employees, but where are you know, something like that saying, because in earnest, they want to talk about these problems. So somehow or another, you need to make your meeting safe enough around that and that they can get, they can talk about it. And maybe ideally, then get another real idea from another chamber member saying I’m having I used to have the high turnover, and I got it down to like 15%. And let me share one other two or two of the tips how we did it. And so I think that’s really what you’ll find out. This is what I got a chance to interview Miranda de Santos. She is a certified Association Executive. And she has worked with over 20 associations prior to becoming an and working for National Speakers Association. And she says that the community at the National Speakers Association is one of the best she has seen. And because the community is so supportive, and even though we’re all speakers, and sometimes we’re battling it out for the same speaker dollars, but the way it’s set up, they had called it the one of the founders was a guy named Dick Cabot, and they call it the spirit of Cavett says, there’s enough for everybody. And we should share what we learned. Because we’re speakers, there’s very few of us speakers, that if we share what we learn, that we could all be better speakers. And I think business owners are the same way 10 business owners or less than 10% of the community. But they have a really unique position, again, as a member of EO Entrepreneurs Organization, as a business owner. And I think if business owners can collaborate together, they can do more. Tennessee’s EO did a stat and they said out of all their members of the total of all the employees that they have, they are the 10th largest employer for that state, as an organization, and I think that’s something that chamber should think about, too.
Brandon Burton 32:28
Wow. Yeah, that’s awesome. So as we start to kind of wrap things up here, I wanted to ask about any maybe tip or action item for chambers that are out there listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you encourage or advise him to do to try to meet that goal?
John Chen 32:50
Well, we talked about those senior members. And I can tell you one strategy, again, I’m president of, of NSA, is that one of my strategies is that I’m attempting to talk to every member but we’re not we have an organization that’s kind of the right size. And all the Copic is brand, and it’s not to sell them on another year. I just calling to say, introduce myself as the president and say, How’s your how’s your membership going? That’s it. And what you get from that? I’ll tell you, number one, is that 90 plus percent of the organizations that I’m a member of don’t do that. Yeah. And if you do, you’re gonna hear I think, two great things, right. One of them is people complaining, I was just thinking about ditching my membership, which is a gift by the way, you have a chance now to intervene you before you didn’t even know. Or you hear the other part going, I am loving my membership. What’s the part you love the most? And they’ll tell you X and you’re like, Great, let’s do more of that. Right. And sometimes you can even get them involved. Because I think the other part about membership. That works is when you like to going back to this ask not only asking them as a member like Brandon right now, right? We are President Elect had to step down because he couldn’t you know, he’s got a family emergency. Brandon, would you be our next president for our chamber? And you’re like, Wow, and so the asker when he said that, you know, Chris Matthew said this about the house. He goes, the Ask has value whether Brandon says yes or no, sure. Yeah. Because Because of Brandon says, No, at least he knows that out of all the membership I chose him to ask. And then if he says yes, I get a whole bunch of time out of them because he’s gonna run. So I can think that’s the best thing you can do is engage your membership. One of the other things I do is when I call these members, because I’ll find out do I have a role for them? Some of them immediately told me I don’t want to be on the board. Right? I don’t have the time. I’m like, okay, that’s fine. I said, What if I could find you a committee position that was like one to three hours right? Totally self contained, do something that but also showcases something that you do and your job. I’m in there. Yeah. So that’s what I would say is go through your membership and figure out, how can you engage them? Yeah. And if you do that, I think your membership will grow and thrive.
Brandon Burton 35:14
And I think you touched on a great point that for a lot of chambers, there’ll be a reminder, they can think back to when the pandemic first happened. Everybody’s businesses shut down. And pretty much every chamber I can think of, they were calling every business to check in on him. How are you guys doing? What do you need? What can we do to help? And the stories that came back the feedback, they got back the value that their members saw from their chamber by making that personal, you know, extension to see how they’re doing and how they’re, you know, weathering the storm was so instrumental that afterwards chamber saw a huge wave of businesses that wanted to get back because now they see what the chamber does. And to be able to remember that experience, and to incorporate that going forward. Because those members will have that memory to Oh, yeah, you call me when things were really hard. And now you’re calling just to see how things are going now, it’s gonna have a lot of good rapport going forward. So that’s a great reminder that you put out there. Yeah,
John Chen 36:17
you’ll love this to brand new, which is like, you’ll get a lot of a you don’t need a pandemic to have to do that. And one of my favorite quotes is goosebumps don’t lie. And so while Brandon was talking about that, like I had goosebumps on my side and saying that, that was such the right thing to do. And why don’t people do that, like all the time?
Brandon Burton 36:38
So? Yes, yeah, that’s good. I love that saying to goosebumps don’t lie. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, about how you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.
John Chen 36:55
Well, rounded, I told you at the beginning of this meeting, that I’m a team builder. And I can tell you this too, after 28 years in my career of team building, that the one thing I know is that America in general is getting worse at cross team collaboration worse. Like, it’s it hasn’t gotten better. It wasn’t, it didn’t stay the same, it actually got worse. And so what I mean by that chambers give the opportunity for two or more businesses to collaborate to create more business. And they should do more of that. And they don’t. And so that’s the one thing that chambers can do. And when they do it that I knew though some of them do it well, like a business fair like a you know, a hiring fair, like solving the members challenges. But doing it collectively as a group instead of one person doing it is where I think many businesses and many organizations like chambers can add the most value to their community.
Brandon Burton 37:59
I love that. So as we wrap things up, I wanted to give you an opportunity, John to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and engage with you like what they did there. Maybe maybe have you come in and speak at a state cup at a state conference or something like that, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?
John Chen 38:23
I see what you did there, Brandon. Yeah, you can reach me on my website, engagingvirtualmeetings.com. Again, engagingvirtualmeetings.com. I do host a conference, Brandon, called The Engaging Conference on October 1, second, and third, it’s every October to every year if you’re listening to this later. And this year, it will be our first time that this conference will be running hybrid. And we’ll be showing the best engagement techniques, whether you’re in person or virtual or having it all at the same time. So if you run any kind of conference, Summit, masterclass, or meeting, you know, I invite you to come join us at the engaging conference and see the all the latest techniques around engagement. Thanks, Brandon.
Brandon Burton 39:10
You bet I could see somebody really nerding out at that conference and just taking notes of all the the tech and the approach to driving engagement on that virtual front. So I appreciate it. This has been a fun conversation, engaging conversation. I hope all the listeners found it to be valuable as well. And I appreciate you setting aside some time to join us today here on chamber chat podcast to share some of your experiences. I love the personal stories that you share. But most of all these tips and and action items that you shared for chambers to help take their organizations to the next level. So thank you for being with us today. John, I really appreciate it.
John Chen 39:48
Thank you, Brandon, and thank you to the chamber chat podcast.
Brandon Burton 39:52
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