COY Finalist Series 2019-Longview Chamber with Dave Jochum

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

Episode 30 — Longview Chamber 2019 Chamber of the Year Finalist with David Jochum
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: David Jochum
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.192 Brandon Burton
This is a special edition of Chamber Chat Podcast as I begin a series of interviewing the finalist for Chamber of the Year for 2019. I hope you enjoyed this series, but first, the intro. This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:29.688 Brandon Burton
Thank you for joining us today. This is our seventh interview in our special series of the 2019 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalists. This is episode 30 of Chamber Chat Podcast, and I'm your host, Brandon Burton. It is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. If you're new to Chamber Chat Podcast, please visit Chamberchat Podcast.com/slash start. To learn more about what you can expect from the show and you can also receive some valuable tips for some non-dues revenue ideas to use at your chamber. Again, that's ChamberThatpodcast.com slash start. And before we jump into the show today, let's take just a quick moment to learn about the sponsor for this episode. Chambers are not considered for chamber of the year without having great programs and steady streams of non-dues revenue. I want to introduce you to a great affinity program. From Swipe It. In partnership with Chamber Chat Podcast, Swipeit is one of the best credit card processors in the business. With the Swipe It Affinity program, you can save up to 40% on your credit card processing fees at the Chamber and help your member partners to do the same. Chambers who take advantage of the Swipe It Affinity program can add thousands of dollars to their non-dues revenue annually. Please visit Chamberchatpodcast.com slash CC for more information and to request your complimentary cost savings analysis from the experts at Swipe It. The first 20 chambers to respond will qualify for free equipment to get set up. Again, visit chamberchatpodcast.com slash cc to start swiping with swipe it. Alright, we are back and our guest today Is David Jochum from the Longview Chamber of Commerce in Texas? Dave is the Business and Leadership Development Director for the Longview Chamber, and in his role, he oversees all things membership, and he works alongside with the CEO Kelly Hall on implementing their Healthy View initiative. Dave has been with the chamber for three years and is in the midst of working through the WACE Academy. In 2011,
02:55.522 Brandon Burton
Dave became a founding partner and certified coach, trainer, and speaker with the John Maxwell team. He has trained thousands of leaders, both volunteer and paid, in the powerful principles of servant-led leadership that are at the heart and soul of John Maxwell's leadership philosophy. Dave has been married to his wife, Michelle, for 28 years. They have four children, ages 14, 16, 22, and 24. Dave's passion is to add value to people and positively impact the community. Dave, please say hello to the chamber chat podcast audience and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
03:38.358 David Jochum
Sure. Well hi hi Brandon. Thanks for having me. And hello to the audience out there. happy to be with you today. gosh, I guess there's a lot of interesting things about me. But today what's been on my mind is that I was born and raised in the New Orleans area. And so certainly the folks down there in my thoughts and prayers as they deal with this potential storm headed their way and the flooding that might come from that. So it was a great place to to to be from and to grow up. but I tell you what. I love, love living in Longview, Texas.
04:09.614 Brandon Burton
Longview's a great place and I'm sure I'm sure you're keeping an eye on on New Orleans and and everything going on there. In fact I was just talking to my wife this morning. We're planning a trip out to to Florida this summer and we were gonna make a stop in New Orleans on our way out. And now we're keeping an eye on the storm ourselves to see if that's gonna happen or if we need to take a different route. So our our prayers with the the people in that area. So Dave, can you share with us a little bit about the size of the Longview Chamber so everyone listening can relate a little bit better to to the chamber and and things you guys have going on there?
04:50.232 David Jochum
Sure, sure. our our town, first of all, is just over eighty thousand in population inside the city limits. Our county, I believe is about at a hundred and twenty thousand. our trade area is is much larger than that in in our region of East Texas. But our chamber has a thousand members and we have a one point three million dollar budget. our budget, about a about thirty percent of that budget is membership dues and the rest is non dues revenue.
05:21.71 Brandon Burton
Right. That's a a great balance right there. That's the kind of thing we like to see. So in leading up to this chamber of the year, with being a finalist, what is making the Longview Chamber stand out to be considered as a finalist?
05:39.054 David Jochum
Well, I I there are two things that we submitted, which is I think kind of the process. You submit a couple of your projects that that you've done in the last couple of years. One of those is around our redevelopment work in our city. and that both of our projects come out of our strategic initiative, which is called REACH, and it stands for redevelopment, education, advocacy, collaboration, and health. And our redevelopment work is focused a lot on our downtown area. And several years ago after one of our intercity trips, and we've taken probably eight to ten of those trips over the last eight to ten years, the idea of a comprehensive plan came out of one of those trips. I believe it was the one to Chattanooga, Tennessee. And we recently as that plan has been implemented and we're looking at what to do next there, our our city council and the volunteers who've been a part of that. Came up with with about a hundred and it was a hundred and four million dollars or something like that of projects that need to be completed over the next few years. And so there's a big bond election on that. And you know, anytime you're talking about potentially raising people's taxes, they're not necessarily thrilled about it. But yeah. But I I the great thing was that our city rallied around it. The chamber really got behind the push for that bond election. Because we believe very strongly in our comprehensive plan and in the future of our community. And we had one of the best voter turnouts our city's seen in quite a long time, f for a bond election in particular, and it was like a two to one margin in favor of the projects that were on the on the docket for that. So so that's one of the the big things that helped us to stand out. The other was our work around education. which which involves a whole lot of things, but one of the things, one of the main things, is our East Texas Advanced Manufacturing Academy, which also came from one of our intercity trips. The the the vision was cast, the dream was birthed, and people came back to town and said we gotta make this happen. And so some of our industry leaders especially were very interested in helping our high school students that were not gonna go away to college.
08:01.506 David Jochum
To be ready with job skills that they could be employed right out of high school, making a livable wage. And so these industry leaders were telling us, hey, we've got jobs that we're gonna need people for coming right out of high school if we can get them some training and we can start them out at like fifty thousand dollars a year. Now, I don't know what fifty thousand does in New York and Los Angeles, but I can tell you that's pretty good in Longview, Texas. So so that That's what kind of began that that route there and our f our chamber has a foundation and the foundation really has taken the lead in in helping that to come about. Our economic development corporation, which is a separate entity from us, gave a million dollars towards the project. So they they funded a great deal of it. but our our foundation board signed the contracts and rented the space and all that kind of stuff. So so those two things, The bond election and the East Texas Advanced Manufacturing Academy were the things that caused us to stand out.
09:06.796 Brandon Burton
All right. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about the the bond election and you know what was what you guys had going on there as far as redevelopment work. How did you guys get the the branding, the marketing out there to get that kind of turnout for the bond to pass, you know, so yeah, two to one ratio?
09:26.36 David Jochum
Yeah, we obviously we had some community partners. there there's an advertising company in town that that helped us out with the with the logo and and you know the images and things that we we put out there. and there's just some other community influencers were gathered together. you know, convening is one of the big things that a chamber does, right? Convening leaders and influencers. And and we got those folks together and began a social media campaign. we didn't do anything like we didn't do television ads or anything like that, but but newspaper, social media, YouTube. our our CEO has a deal that she calls E to ETE, employer to employee initiative. And that involves like a one page info sheet. maybe it's an infographic sometimes, and she also does a video along with it about four times a year. And so that was an avenue that we used as well. Kelly had a video made and produced the sheet to give out to our larger employers to help them have the conversation with their employees about the importance of this bond election for the future of our community. We talked in terms a lot, Brandon, about the fact that look, we're we're not doing what we're doing here for us. We're doing what we're doing here for our kids and grandkids. w we believe we have a great place to live. We believe we have a great future here. and we want it to be a place that our kids and grandkids can stay and and raise their families and not have to feel like they have to go on to Austin or Dallas or Houston or a bigger city to to live their life. So that was, you know, a lot of the big push behind it.
11:12.46 Brandon Burton
So what with the redevelopment work, what is the what's the exact target that you guys are trying to tackle with this bond and the the money being pulled together?
11:25.484 David Jochum
Yeah, there's there's several things. it involved the the the bond money involves police and fire or you know, public safety issues. So our police department, for instance, their building was built to accommodate, I believe, about maybe eighty employees or s something around there, and we have two hundred and fifty employees now with the police department.
11:48.546 Brandon Burton
I'd say it's time.
11:49.834 David Jochum
It's time and they've been renting space. The building was built in the seventies. It's not it's not a bad building. It's just not it doesn't fit the need anymore. so this includes a state of the art police department building that's gonna be phenomenal when it's done. it involves some some upgrades to a couple of our fire stations. Our fire department has a training area that they it's really kind of a part of or next to one of our parks. And it's really not the best situation because that park is in a neighborhood. So they have needed a place outside of that for their their fire training, their safety training. It's the kind of thing, you know, where they they set a little building on fire and and fight that fire and and do their their drills and such. And so that it it includes that, that they're gonna get a a new space, a new area in which to to have that. besides safety, parks and recreation, some upgrades to a number of our parks in town. one of one of the things that that includes is we have ten miles of trails that go around our city, walking, biking trails. And and they're paved. these are paved trails. And we're trying to finish up connecting those so that there's a continuous ten mile trail all the way around the city. and so so that's neat. It's it's really awesome. and so it's it's some of that was included in this in this bond. and and then you know, some f a few street type things. There's there's a corridor coming into our town from Interstate 20, where there's this intersection that's what we call in Texas wonky. you you get to it and you're not a hundred percent sure about which way you need to go. because of the way it was initially built. So we're gonna improve that. we're gonna take that street that connects to that that intersection and then kind of comes around to our downtown area and we're gonna put that street on a street diet. I I I don't know that that's the term that the city planners like. I think there's another term that I can't remember. But it's it's it's basically taking that street from four lanes down to two. it won't impact the traffic flow.
14:10.328 David Jochum
They're adding bike lanes on there and you know, just beautification to that area so that it's more walk and bike friendly along that path. and it'll lead people from our one of our big universities into our downtown area with with hopefully with ease is what we we expect to happen. So the bond included that as well.
14:33.63 Brandon Burton
All right. A a street diet. I've never heard that before. I mean, maybe like street tacos or something, but yeah that
14:40.31 David Jochum
Right, right, right. Th there's I'm telling there's a better word for it, I just can't think of what it is right now.
14:45.246 Brandon Burton
Yeah. No, I think that works. you said that and I knew exactly what you're talking about. So i if that's not the word, it maybe should be. So how about with the education workforce initiative? Let's maybe dive in a little bit deeper there and and tell us how that program works, how you're getting in front of these juniors and seniors to get them that work experience to help them be employable.
14:53.15 David Jochum
Right.
15:13.6 Brandon Burton
Right out of school at a a good livable wage.
15:16.494 David Jochum
And if you don't mind, I'll back up kind of to the to the genesis of of that education work. Yeah, it in Longview we have in us in our city limits, we have three independent school districts. I'm I'm not, you know, I I've only been in Longview for about five years, so I'm not altogether sure as to why that is and and most newcomers to town don't understand it either, but it it is what it is. Probably so. And and so they they haven't always worked really well together.
15:21.826 Brandon Burton
Yes, that would be great.
15:38.286 Brandon Burton
That a hundred years ago.
15:46.38 David Jochum
You know, there's been some turf and territory type stuff. so we realize that the kids that are in school today, regardless of whether they're high school, middle school, elementary school, they're our future workforce. And as a chamber, it's important to us to make sure that our businesses are going to have what they need as these kids, you know, graduate high school. We also know that. High school success doesn't start in high school. It starts in elementary school. And so we adopted one of our local el elementary schools that was struggling with their test scores and and that kind of thing. And said, Okay, we would like to come in and partner with you and see if we can help you where you need help. We brought a program in called Raising Highly Capable Kids for the Parents. And We're about to enter, I believe, our third year of this with these parents. We we started a couple of years ago. The first group we had twenty-five parents come through. We had an English track and a Spanish speaking track. about half the parents, you know, in in either one of those. And we graduated those twenty-five parents at the end of the school year from that program. They meet once a month on a I'm sorry, they they meet for a semester once a week for about twelve weeks. And we do it in the fall. and and so we graduated 25 parents the first year and about that same number the second year. And like I said, we're about to enter our third year of that with that elementary school. In addition, one of the things we realize is that the principals oftentimes they'll let other groups, nonprofits, come into the school to help. It might be boys and girls club, junior league, partners in prevention, mentoring, things, that kind of stuff. They let him in, but but the principals often don't even aren't fully aware and engaged with what those organizations are doing. and those organizations really aren't necessarily strategic in helping the principal reach his or her goals. So we said, what if we did what we do and we convened those people, we gathered them together, and let's work collaboratively on solutions for this school.
18:07.392 David Jochum
And so we got all the leaders of those nonprofits that were coming into that school. We met with the principal and said, principal, tell us what your goals are for the next school year. What are you really trying to accomplish? What's most important on your list? And then those nonprofit leaders talked about what each of their organizations bring to the table that can help reach those goals. And then they thought about okay, where are the gaps in there? And could we help one another bridge those gaps to help? this principal meet her goals. And so that's what happened. And that's been as phenomenal a thing as working with those parents.
18:46.516 Brandon Burton
An excellent an excellent example of convening and trying to get everybody behind the same purpose and really seeing what all these different nonprofits have to offer. I love that idea of just bringing everybody to the table together and work towards a common goal. I think that that's an excellent example.
19:05.206 David Jochum
And Brandon, doesn't it seem like one of those things that you'd like slap yourself on the forehead and say, Man, we should have we should have thought of this twenty years ago?
19:12.116 Brandon Burton
It does. Yeah. What were we think what were we doing? Yeah.
19:15.072 David Jochum
Right, right. Well, out of all of that, you know, we we've other other schools, other school districts have said, Hey, we we went in on this, you know, we like what you guys are doing here and and in the process we said, Okay, you know, it would be great if we could get our superintendents from each of these districts and even the districts outside of the city limits that are still part of our county, if we could get them all in the same room at the same time. And wouldn't it be really awesome if we could get them to meet with some of our key business leaders? And let them talk about what let the business leaders tell the educators what they're seeing, what they need, where some of the challenges lie for them, and then let the educators tell the business leaders what they might could use from them to help them succeed in their work. And we had first one of those probably three years ago when we started all of this. And from that is some of where that advanced manufacturing academy came from. because the business leaders were saying to those superintendents, hey, you know, we don't we don't just need kids running off to college. We need some college graduates, but we need some kids right out of high school. And and the print the superintendents, each of them have their own kind of vote type center, but none of them had anything that these manufacturers needed for their future workforce. And even their current workforce because there's machinery and equipment that the schools can't, you know, any one district on their own couldn't afford to to put into place. So that was one avenue that the whole idea, the whole dream, the whole vision came from. And you put that together with what we saw. It was actually our trip to Waco, and we saw their manufacturing academy, and those people got together and said, Okay, this is the answer. And we can we can make this happen in our town. Now here's the cool thing. There's a lot of cool things, but here's one of the cool things is I think in Waco, I believe it took them three years from the point of the decision to make it happen to making it happen. We were able to get ours up and running in one year, which is phenomenal. and it was again because of the people. Brendan, I gotta tell you, I I have been so impressed. one of the first things I did before I even worked for the chamber.
21:37.65 David Jochum
is I heard about their leadership program, Leadership Longview, of course, here. And I said, I've I've got to do that. That that's when I met Kelly Hall, our CEO, and ended up doing some volunteer stuff for the chamber. But when I went through Leadership Longview and I saw the cooperation and the collaboration that happens in this town, when I heard from city leader after city leader, county leaders all saying the same things about the direction that they want to take this town in. I thought, man, this is impressive. And you know, on on the surface, you come in, you look around, you drive around, you might not be, you know, particularly impressed with our town. It's nice. We've got some nice views and things. but when you meet those city leaders and those county leaders and and you meet some of the movers and shakers who want things to happen here, it's it's amazing that you know, the collaboration that comes about. When when we all have the same vision, we all have the same dreams and concerns for our town, a lot can happen. And that's that's what we're seeing. The momentum has been building. And we're pretty excited about what's gonna happen from this point forward because we've we've got some big plans and some big dreams. And so that again, that's that's all of that's fed into making that manufacturing academy happen. we we didn't consider really any other part of town but downtown for that academy, because again it it falls into line with our redevelopment work. We found an old a building that had been at one time used by a car dealer who moved to a a more growing part of town. And so we said, hey, can we lease that? And we did, and that's where the academy is now. And so it it it looks really nice. It it spruces up that part of the block and that that street. downtown, it look it looks really awesome. And again, it was just it's just because people came together and and and nobody with a big ego trying to get all the credit. we we put we tell people all the time we're the catalyst, we get the wheels turning, and then we let it go. it's it's not our our name's not on the building. our name's on the lease, but our name's not on the building. And and and and we're not it we're not trying to own it.
24:02.316 David Jochum
We know other people know how to do that stuff. We don't. so so we just want to get the ball rolling and and and be the catalyst for making those things happen.
24:12.546 Brandon Burton
I like how you you were talking about with the developing those skills to be able to go to the employers and and find out what the needs are, what what skill base are they looking for as they hire and make sure that's in alignment with with the these high schools, with these these students looking to graduate and making sure, you know, all along the way that everything is aligned to be able to to meet your goal. And I think that's just so invaluable. And I see this more as a a trend now. I don't know if trend's the right word, but I see it happening with more and more chambers where that attention and that focus to developing the local workforce and keeping people in their town and and not necessarily, you know, shipping everybody off to some university and and going for that big diploma, the big big debt and everything. But being able to look at the students and see what the students' needs are, what their skill set is, what do they enjoy? And again, aligning all these different things to make things work and and being that that convener and and catalyst as you're talking about. I just think this is a a great example of how all of that is being pulled together. So kudos to you guys.
25:26.062 David Jochum
Thanks, yeah. And another part of the the goal there is that even the kids that do go off to college, wherever they wherever they go, we really want this to be a place that they plan to and want to come back to when they're done. you know, that this truly is home for them. So that's a that's a whole nother part of the story, but
25:48.184 Brandon Burton
That's right. That's another part of the alignment to work on, right? So Dave, from everything we've discussed today with w all that you guys have going on there at the Longview Chamber, can you maybe condense down into one action item that listeners can implement at their chamber to maybe level take their their chamber up to the next level?
25:52.319 David Jochum
Yeah.
26:12.844 David Jochum
What I would say to that, Brandon, it's it's not an easy thing, right? So it's it's not something you're gonna do today or tomorrow or next week. It's gonna take some time. But I think a big key to all of this for us was that strategic plan. And so I think, you know, getting with whether it's the staff or the board or the executive board, whoever it is at your chamber that or the real decision makers for that. I I think it's it's thinking through and and setting down and writing what are we about? What what what do we need to be about for our town? What does our town need from us? And what does that look like? How do we how do we verbalize that? And then how do we make it a strategic plan so so that we're intentional in our work? We're not just I I I think a a challenge in chamber work. is you can get so caught up in running from thing to thing to thing, you know, busy with event after event or w whatever it is, that you lose sight of the fact that you're trying to accomplish something bigger than the next luncheon, you know. and and we have luncheons, but we we started thinking of our luncheons in terms of how is this luncheon going to help advance our strategic plan? How is this luncheon help us reach the goals that we have set forth? How is this luncheon contribute to the betterment of our community? Rather than just being, hey, come eat lunch, we'll either entertain you or give you some information and send you on your way to let's make it part of the strategy. so that again, I know that's not an easy thing to walk off with, but I think it's key if if you don't have that, man, I would Th I wouldn't do anything else until I had that set. What is our strategy going to be from here forward?
28:11.872 Brandon Burton
I think that resonates perfectly with aligning the purposes and having that strategic plan to make sure everything that you're doing at the chamber aligns with that strategic plan. Now, how often do you guys look at and reevaluate your strategic plan?
28:29.612 David Jochum
We evaluate it yearly at least. I mean, we're you know, we're constantly talking about it because it's sort of our guiding, you know, our our guiding light for our movement. But it's probably what, three years old now, I think. I think it was adopted in twenty sixteen. And and we've talked about even recently, Kelly and I were talking the other day about, you know, what what is the next five to ten years look like? And how does our strategic plan look? Is it gonna continue to serve us or do we need to rethink it? And for now we think it's gonna serve us well for at least the next five years. because just there's just a lot of work to be done in those areas. And we want our chamber to be a truly impactful chamber. We want our we want our chamber to make a difference in our community.
29:17.868 Brandon Burton
That's great. So Dave, as we look to the future, so I ask everybody this question that I have on the show. How do you view the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose?
29:31.918 David Jochum
That is really great question, Brandon, and it's something that I've thought a lot about. if you look at associations of all different kinds across the country, you will see that there's been a decline in association participation in in some areas. there may be some pockets where they're not in decline. so I think we have to be really careful that we stay relevant. to our communities and and again that goes back to the whole strategic plan and and and you know being intentional about the work because i as as the the younger generations come along and they're looking at what we do sometimes they look and they go, what's the point? you know, I don't need networking. I can network in a hundred other ways. I don't need to pay money to go to an after hours or something. And so
30:24.837 Brandon Burton
I'm on Instagram. What do I need to network?
30:26.646 David Jochum
I exactly, exactly. So so they're looking at this through a whole different lens and I think we have to be mindful of that. I think that larger chambers are really gonna have to start to look out, watch and and help smaller chambers so that they can stay viable. I don't know what that looks like, but I just I think we we need to be mindful that if if we're not if our communities don't see us really being impactful, contributing to the to the betterment of the community. I I think it we're gonna have a hard sell on why we need to stay in business. So I I again the strategy, being intentional, and then again, having each other's backs, you know.
31:16.416 Brandon Burton
I love that point of the the larger chambers kind of looking out for the smaller ones to make sure they stay relevant and and stay in the forefront of of the right minds. That's key. That's huge. Well, Dave, I wanted to to thank you for spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And of course, thank all the the listeners out there for tuning in and being here with us. The show notes for this episode can be found at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode thirty. And Dave, where can listeners connect with you if they have any questions about what we discussed today or how you guys are doing things at the at the Longview Chamber?
31:55.802 David Jochum
our website is longviewchamber.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and I think we're even still on Snapchat. I don't mess with Snapchat, so I don't know if I think we're there. and I and you can find me on those those platforms as well.
32:14.304 Brandon Burton
All right. That's perfect. And we'll try to get links to all those in the show notes so people can can reach out and connect to you from from there. But again, thank you and best of luck to the Longview Chamber as a finalist and hope things go well for you.
32:29.688 David Jochum
Thank you. It's been great to be with you, Brandon, and we're looking forward to it. We're excited.
32:37.056 Brandon Burton
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