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Brandon Burton (00:00.94)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us today for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. And today we’re joined by Bradley Byrne, president and CEO of the Mobile Chamber.
Bradley brings more than 30 years of legal experience and more than two decades of public service to his role leading efforts around business growth, economic development, and workforce strength in the Mobile region. He previously served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he advocated for business, industry, workforce training, and education policy. His career also includes service in the Alabama State Senate.
On the Alabama State Board of Education and as Chancellor of Alabama’s two-year college system. With a deep background in labor law, education, workforce development, and public policy, Bradley offers a valuable perspective on the opportunities shaping Mobile’s business community. Bradley, I’m excited to have you with us today as a guest here on Chamber Chat Podcast, especially as a Chamber of the Year finalist. Big congratulations to you and your team. But I
Wanted to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (01:36.41)
Well thank you for allowing me to come on your program and hello to all my fellow chamber workers out there. thank you for what you do in your communities. So the Mobile Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1836. We are 190 years in working to build and help the business community here in the Mobile area.
We’ve been doing out-of-the-box things almost from the beginning. We actually, back in 1955, bought a barrier island that had no people on it.
Had it ch carved up into lots, put streets on it, sold the lots, sight unseen, because you couldn’t get to barrier island except by boat. Then after we sold them, we paid off the loan that we took out to do that and took the net proceeds and worked with the county to build the bridge to that island. It’s now a thriving barrier island with lots of people on it and a big boon to our area. So that’s just an example of things that we’ve done over the years, sort of thinking outside the box how we can grow the business community. More recently.
We did a review of our community, and particularly things that might be issues for our business community, and asked this question.
Who’s going to solve these problems? Who is it out there that’s going to take care of this? In some cases we had people right at hand to do that. In others we didn’t. And where we didn’t have anybody that could solve them, we decided that we would solve them. Now, we oftentimes don’t know what we’re doing when we start these things. But we found out that as a chamber, we’re good at bringing the right people together at the right time in the right place. You bring the right people together, which chambers are so good at doing, you can get a lot of things done by listening to people, learning.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (03:15.515)
And then finding the right people, the right programs, the right resources to solve that problem. So we’re going to talk about all of those today.
Brandon Burton (03:22.35)
That’s right. I’ve never heard of a chamber who’s helped to populate an island and build a bridge to it. So that’s that’s pretty neat.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (03:32.791)
I told my bo I told my board that if I propose that they’d probably fire me. But a lot of courage to do that and I’m glad they did.
Brandon Burton (03:37.236)
Right? Absolutely. so you gave us a little of the historical background on the mobile chamber. tell us a little bit about more about the chamber, the size, staff, scope of work you guys are involved with, budget, to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (03:56.516)
Thank you. We have about 1,700 members, mostly smaller businesses. We do have some big businesses, but the vast majority of our members are small businesses. we have about 35 people working here with a budget of a little over six million dollars. We are on contract with both the city and the county here in Mobile to be the economic development organization for this area and have been for the last 40 years.
So we’ve been deeply involved in what we’re doing to grow the mobile economy. We’ve announced since the beginning of 2022 over 6,500 new jobs for this area, which is a lot. And so part of what we have to do is to make sure that we have the adequately skilled workforce to man those jobs.
help those businesses that be to come here or expanding here to do what they’ve got to do to get their product to market, make their product, whatever it is that they’re doing. We’ve been pretty successful with that. We started our own workforce alliance, bringing all the players and workforce together. And by meeting once a month, talking with one another, we’re able to do the things as a community together to make sure we’re providing that workforce for all these new employers. So we’ve been deeply involved in that. Our community development department
works on a number of things. Affordable housing, attainable housing for people that are in the workforce, transportation, we’ll get to that in a second, helping new small businesses grow. We just recently got into childcare, which is something we didn’t know anything about, still don’t know a whole lot about, but with the U.S. Chamber’s help we’re learning that.
We have a very s active small business program here. And we have a host of things that we do for our members. A week doesn’t go by that we don’t have at least one, if not more than one, events going on in and around this chamber. So it’s a very active group. We’re counted upon to be somebody that brings the chamber, the business community together. And we’re the voice for the business community. So we’re strong into advocacy. We have our own in-house lobbyist that works in Montgomery. We have another lobbyist that’s on contract.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (06:04.913)
we work a lot with our local government and of course we work with the US chamber on federal issues. So this is a very active chamber, a very strong chamber, and have it has historically been so.
Brandon Burton (06:16.206)
Yeah, sounds like it. so with these Chamber of the Year episodes, what I like to do is focus the majority of our time on the programs that were submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. So we’ll dive deeper into those programs and learn more about those as soon as we get back from this quick break.
Alright, Bradley, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re gonna dive into the programs that you submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. I understand one of them has to do with mobility around town. The is it mogo? Is that what what it’s called? You wanna tell us about that program and with the origins and the impact that it’s making?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (06:59.075)
So as I said earlier, we have demand for a lot of new people into our workforce. And we found out from a state study that the number one reason why an able-bodied adult in Alabama is not working is that they don’t have a car, they don’t have the way to get to and from work. And so we asked the question, what can we do to solve that problem, to get more of these people who are sitting on the sidelines into the workforce? So we came up with this idea that we call MOGO. It’s a rideshare program.
And what it does is it has a set route, but the route includes all of our workforce training centers and it has most of our major employers. So you can get on one of these smaller vans and they’ll take you from near where you live, may not be exactly where you live, but within easy walking distance where you live, take you to wherever it is that you want to go. So this has been a fantastically successful program. We’ve given over 20,000 rides in a year and a half.
We have twelve hundred people that are regularly using this program.
Brandon Burton (07:56.536)
Wow.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (08:00.277)
So the city of Mobile came to us after they’d heard about it and said, Can we see your numbers? Because they wanted to see particularly what our cost per ride was. When we provided them our numbers, they said, Can we work with you so we can blend this into our mass transit program? So we said, Of course. You know, this we didn’t take this on to do it permanently. We’d love to have a partner like you. So we’ve done that, and at the end of next month, we will have our rideshare program formally enveloped within the
Mass Transit Program of the City Mobile, which both enhances our program, but also enhances their program. So we’re very proud of MOGO. It solved a problem. It figured out how to solve that problem, and we in fact solved that problem. And we’ll continue to do so with the City of Mobile.
Brandon Burton (08:48.344)
So with Mogo, is there a cost involved for writers to write it? Is this funded through programming through the chamber or how how is it set up to make it operate?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (09:00.537)
raise money from foundations to do the pilot. And so if you get into one of those cars and you’re going to one of the either business training facilities or the actual businesses, you don’t pay anything. But if you go in somewhere else, you pay $1.25, which is still pretty cheap. And so working with the city, we’re going to try to maintain that cost structure.
Brandon Burton (09:18.488)
Yeah.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (09:23.789)
But as I said, the city’s going to be augmenting what we were already offering just by the size of their program. And then we’re showing them not only how to get their cost per ride down, but how to get rides closer to where people live.
Brandon Burton (09:37.241)
Okay. So a as part of the connecting it to the mass transit, is there gonna be a i I’m trying to envision what that looks like. Is there gonna be like connection points where maybe the mogo will take to one of these employers and then from there they can hop on a bus or something like that to get to other parts of the city?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (09:58.714)
Well some some people will hop on the Mogo ride share and go directly to wherever they’re working. And some people will get on the rideshare and they’ll go to a regular bus and get on that bus and then get to where they’re working.
So the magic here is to have the sort of experience that we in the company we hired, a company called VIA, to put all that together and find the most efficient way to get people from A to B. And we take away that barrier from somebody being in the workforce by saying, Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there. We will get you there. And the employers love it because it solves a problem that they don’t know how to solve on their own.
Brandon Burton (10:35.672)
So initially did the chamber have to go out and buy a fleet of vehicles of these vans, or how did how did you execute to make that work?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (10:44.003)
We got into an agreement with a company called Via, and Via produ provides both the vehicles and the drivers. And they had this system where you can just have it on your app and you know order up your ride that way or you can call on the phone and order it up.
And they have a system of being able to keep up where we’re picking people up and where we dropping them off. And that helps inform how you change the pattern of the of the drives from one week to the next. So we’ve learned a lot in the last year and a half. And the city has learned a lot by working with us, and I think the city will take it and make it even better in the future.
Brandon Burton (11:19.33)
Yeah. Well that sounds sounds like a neat program and and it filled a void, it sounds like for sure. So I like that. should we shift gears to the the other program on your application? Tell us what that is.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (11:34.724)
program called business navigator. So there are lots of people that start new businesses and as you probably know there is a high rate of failure. And what we wanted to do is to make sure that we removed as a barrier to people being successes in the new businesses things that people aren’t getting because they just don’t know how to get them. So the navigator gets you there. Let me give you some examples.
You’re starting a new business and you don’t know even what some of what sort of form of organization you need. Well, you need a lawyer to sit down with you and tell you, you need a partnership or an LLC or whatever you want to have to do. Well, if you don’t know a lawyer, that’s a like a big barrier. Well, we’ve taken that barrier away. We’ve got lawyers who will work with them. Same for accountants, same for bankers. And sometimes they’ll walk in and we say, What is your business plan? And they don’t have a business plan. And we help them draw up their business plans. Now we can’t guarantee that they’re going to be a success.
But we’ve had 700 of these businesses come through our program. And we have been able to remove the barriers for the vast majority of them. So whatever likelihood they were of being successful before went way up. And we’ll see how some of these ideas play out, but a lot of them have done quite well. And we know that our navigators play a role in making sure that they have what they needed to be successful in their new business.
Brandon Burton (12:51.948)
Yeah. I mean, some people just have poor ideas for business. So you’re right, you can’t you can’t make them all be successful. But being able to eliminate some of those roadblocks, as you kind of play that matchmaker for some of these businesses and connect them to the services that they need, are they is it really just is it making the introduction? Is there is it more
intricate than that, how do you see that relationship through to help them, like you said, help draw up the business plan and then do the best you can to see it through the other end to help them be successful.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (13:33.25)
It depends on the business.
Because they’re none of them are the same, you know. They have some common problems, but none of them are the same. They’ve all sorts of different ideas about services and goods that people want to offer. And so in some cases, we may have to hold their hand a little bit longer, and that’s okay. We don’t that doesn’t bother us at all. But it’s it’s it’s probably the most important thing we do is when we sit down and say, You’ve got to have a business plan in writing. So forcing them to put their business plan in writing forces them to think through the various things that they’ve
Brandon Burton (13:36.674)
Great.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (14:04.453)
got to address in order to simply get up and going. And so we’ve enjoyed being able to provide that service to people. And we’ve enjoyed, you know, putting them in contact with an accountant here or a banker there or an investor. If they’ve got an idea that needs something more than just a bank loan, then we try to put them in touch with investors. So it really does depend on the business, depends on how far along they are, how far along they’re not.
A lot of times they come at the door and they just have an idea. So we try to get them as far down that road as we possibly can.
Brandon Burton (14:32.259)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (14:36.536)
So is the business navigator program, is that something that’s available just to chamber members or what what businesses are able to take advantage of it?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (14:45.749)
All businesses. the funding for this has been coming from government sources up until now and we found an al alternate way to fund it through soliciting CRA funds from banks. And so what we do is we offer these services to anybody that walks in the door. You don’t have to be a chamber member. And frequently they’re not chamber members because they haven’t gotten their business going.
Brandon Burton (15:08.684)
Right.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (15:09.815)
We try to make sure that we’re there for everybody, that we get the word out that we’re there for everybody. And obviously quite a number of people have come to us with their business ideas and a need for help.
Brandon Burton (15:21.41)
Yeah. So you touched on another challenge I’m sure with these are individuals who don’t have a business yet. How do you reach them? How do you let them know that this program exists?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (15:34.03)
Well part of what the navigator does is navigate around town and get the word out to people. there are people out there who, by virtue of what they do, they know about people that are thinking about doing this. You wouldn’t think about this, but there are a lot of church pastors out there that know people in their congregations who are thinking about starting a new business.
Brandon Burton (15:52.568)
Great idea.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (15:55.566)
Public officials. I know from my time as a public official, frequently people will come up and think that you as a government official have something magic you can offer them. Well, in this case, what we’ve done with public officials is said, we’re here, here’s our contact information, just send them to us and we’ll take it from there. And the public officials love it because it’s a concrete thing they can do for people they represent. And you know, they like seeing the success of a small business that gets up and running just as much as the rest of us. So we try to
get around town to make sure people know that we’re here. But it’s a constant effort. It’s not something you can do once and you’re done. You got to do it over and over and over again. So the navigators are both providing the service but also doing the hard footwork for advertising the service.
Brandon Burton (16:33.784)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (16:39.35)
Yeah, that outreach. I mean, I think you guys have hit on something there with between elected officials and the church pastors and been able to help with getting the word out. But I imagine it’s a continual effort to try to continue advertising it and and making sure that people know that the program exists and it’s available and what the scope is of it, you know, what it what it can do to actually help them get up and going. Is there anything else with the business navigator program?
That we need to know about or that you wanted to highlight
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (17:12.643)
Well, our most recent addition to that program is the leg legal training and assistance. so we found that there was a gap in our program because a lot of times they needed some sort of legal overview or or overthought.
Brandon Burton (17:28.888)
Yeah.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (17:30.314)
And so we’ve been able to work with law firms in this area, and then they had to go and get the things straight with the state bar and the local bar, which they’ve done. And so we have a really good team of primarily younger lawyers who do a really good job I sat through some of those programs. They do a really good job of explaining things to these people in a way that you don’t have to have a law degree to understand. So they can sort of understand it practically. How does it affect my business that I’m trying to get started?
practically. So I’m really, really proud of that Regal Legal TA program. It’s the most recent addition to Navigator. And it’s proven to be very popular by the way, because you have these very smart young lawyers who really know what they’re talking about. And a lot of the businesses that come to these meetings will come out and tell me later, you know, I wouldn’t even thought about that as something I needed to do. Well that’s that’s why we’re here, is is to make sure the stuff you haven’t thought about, we’re going to bring people to you who will help you think through them.
Brandon Burton (18:23.031)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (18:31.34)
Connect a a aspiring business owner with an attorney and they’re gonna help them see all the blind spots and be able to protect themselves and and be prepared. Right. Yeah.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (18:37.561)
Well I I I used I I used to be one of those, so I understand. I’m I I’m a lawyer, I’m here to help you, but they really are there to help. And and I think I’ve seen them at work with these new small businesses and they do a wonderful job and and it makes me proud to be a lawyer watching these young lawyers providing this sort of a service for free.
Brandon Burton (18:46.509)
Yeah.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (18:57.655)
to people who I’m sure they hope at some point down the road will be a very profitable business and that’ll be their client. But they don’t know that going in. And the odds are that a given business probably won’t be, but some some will. We we think that’s a great success for everybody.
Brandon Burton (19:13.228)
Yeah. No, just from the legal front alone, there’s a huge value there because I mean I’ve been through just the setting up a trust and you know, all the blind spots that I wouldn’t think of that man, I’m sure glad that we had this attorney who could think through things and and take the experience that they’ve had and and be able to help apply it back to me and and in this case to the businesses. well Bradley, as we start to wrap things up.
I’d like to ask on behalf of the those listening, those watching who are wanting to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to help accomplish that goal?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (19:56.868)
Make a really strong analysis of your business community. Find out what issues and needs are out there for the business community. And then go see if you’ve got someone, some organization, some person in the community that’s adequately addressing that issue. And if so, make sure everybody knows that it’s out there. If not, try what we’ve done.
We started out in every one of these programs that we have not knowing anything. Like we’re in the midst of starting childcare right now. We don’t know anything about childcare. But chambers are uniquely situated to bring people together in the room.
To foster conversation around what the topic is and then come up with something that’s concrete that can be done. And then you go find the people that can do that andor fund that and then go drive it. That’s what we’ve done with Navigator, that’s what we’ve done with MOGO, that’s what we’re doing with childcare, it’s what we’ve done with attainable housing. I mean
We’re doing that knowing that we’re not gonna know anything about it go going into it. But it doesn’t face us and it shouldn’t face anybody out there. Because chambers are really good at solving problems. It’s really what we are, our problem solvers. And all of us can get more involved in our community to solve problems that perhaps would never get solved otherwise.
Brandon Burton (21:14.764)
Yes. I I totally agree with assessing the needs of your community. And for those listening, don’t just listen and think, well, if if mobile’s doing this, we need to do a a mogo program or you know, it’s a rideshare program. No, like assess the needs in your community. You don’t need to guess. You don’t need to just totally rip off and duplicate as as chambers do. There’s times for that, but you need to assess what the specific needs are for your community. Otherwise if you’re
Guessing it’s gonna fall flat on its face and find out what those needs are and be that problem solver. I love that advice.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (21:52.1)
Don’t be afraid if you don’t know anything about whatever that is you’re going into. I mean, you are uniquely situated to bring in people that do know, to bring them together, to work together and solve the problem. and it’s for us it just has happened over and over and over again.
And we don’t ever go to sleep on this. We keep our eyes open if something new’s out there. We’re gonna get on top of it. And I think the people in the mobile community, particularly the business community, I think they appreciate that that’s what we do.
Brandon Burton (22:23.33)
Yeah. And those things that are real problems, others will line up to help to answer those problems.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (22:30.701)
People have been great. I mean, every time we’ve asked somebody to come to a meeting, to lend us their professional knowledge, do anything, they’ve been great about getting involved.
giving us the benefit of what they know, working with other people. I mean, we n we n almost never have it somebody telling us no. They may say, we can’t do it that way. You gotta do it a different way. Fine, good. You do, and we’re gonna listen to you. So i we’ve been very, very pleased with the response we’ve gotten to everything that we’re doing.
Brandon Burton (22:52.023)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (22:55.832)
Sure, yeah.
Brandon Burton (23:05.934)
Good. so I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers of Commerce and how specifically how you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (23:18.637)
Well, chambers are going to become more important going forward because with the speed of information, not just AI, by the way, the next thing that’s coming after AI is quantum computing. Chambers are going to have to stay out there in front.
And help our members, help the business community figure out how we’re going to deal with all this exploding information, how we can protect ourselves when it may hurt us, but also how can we include that in our operations where we can use it to become more profitable? So I think chambers are going to have to be the leaders in all that. And also in many respects the thought leaders in those communities as things change.
Sometimes there just needs one voice to stand up and say, we should consider this. And chambers have a great opportunity to use their voice to help lead our businesses, to lead our communities through whatever is going to happen in this rapidly exploding information age.
Brandon Burton (24:21.026)
Yeah. I think to your point with all the information, it reminds me of how chambers are uniquely positioned as well to be the same center when it comes to political issues, but they do that by digesting information.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (24:34.627)
Yeah, I didn’t mention that, but that is an important part of what chambers do. We bring people together, as we do here in this chamber through our governmental affairs committee, to find out what are the issues that are confronting our members and how can we get together with other people and be advocates for our business members on those issues. We do that every year for the legislative session. We do it during city council meetings, county commission meetings.
And it’s our voice, the voice of everybody, every business in this town. Just while we like having small businesses, we speak for all businesses in this area. And I think it’s incumbent upon chambers to get up and speak when there are issues that are important to the business community, important to our members. We do that and I know many, many other chambers do that as well.
Brandon Burton (25:20.92)
Yeah. I think that that goes to your point of being able to process information and be able to to give warnings, to be able to help guide businesses, to help them understand what’s important, where the threats are, where they need to be focusing going forward. And I think you hit the nail on the head there. So appreciate that.
I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how the how you’re doing things there in Mobile. where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to connect with you?
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (25:56.899)
So we have a great website called mobilechamber.com. And virtually anything that we’re doing here is going to be on that site. And if you want to know more about it, you can go on that site and decide who it is that you need to speak with. We talk to other chambers pretty regularly. We benefit a lot from those conversations. And we’re more than happy to be in conversation with any chamber in the United States of America. Because working together, we can help one another and make our community.
Brandon Burton (26:26.81)
Absolutely. Well we’ll make sure we have your website and our show notes for this episode. But this has been great to have you on the show, Bradley. I really appreciate you spending time and setting aside the time to to be with us today. And again, congratulations to you and your team for getting on this stage and wish you guys best of luck as Chamber of the Year.
Bradley Byrne – Mobile Chamber (26:49.657)
Proud just to be there, honestly. To be one of the top three chambers in America is outstanding. I give all the credit to my team. They’ve done a great job.
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