Lessons Learned in 2019

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Episode 50 — Lessons Learned in 2019
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00:00.842 Brandon Burton
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.
00:14.988 Brandon Burton
And now your host, he has a goal to positively affect over one million businesses through this podcast. He's my dad, Brandon Burton. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. This is Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. Wow, this is episode 50 of Chamber Chat Podcast. And when I started this almost a year ago, 50 episodes seemed Like so far in the future. But yet here we are, and it's gone by very quickly. I it's been a lot of fun. So as I look back on this past year, in this episode, I decided I'm gonna kind of take maybe a top 10 list of things, lessons that I've learned from this past year in doing this podcast. And It just kind of fair warning as I get into this episode and and going through this top ten list, I'm gonna be referencing several of the past episodes that I've done and I'll have links to them all on the on the show notes page for this episode, which will be found at chamber chatpodcast dot com slash episode fifty. So if you wanna if you hear something I say that you wanna dig in deeper and see what it was about, Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode 50 is where you'll find those show notes. So as I was looking at the top 10 lessons that I've learned this year through doing you know hosting Chamber Chat Podcast, the number one thing that I I've learned is just that the chamber community is full of great people who are willing to help others to be successful. And I've known that. But being able to see the gratitude and the just the open arms of the whole chamber community and all these people that I've had on the show as guests and their willingness to to come on, share their insights, and they do this all in an effort to make everybody else better, to help lift other others up and to get their message out there. And I'm just so appreciative to everybody who has been a guest on the show.
02:37.694 Brandon Burton
and who's contributed in any way to helping this chamber chat podcast get traction and and get legs throughout the chamber world. Just I I can't be more grateful than yeah for what all of you have done. The second lesson that I've learned this year from doing Chamber Chat Podcast, I learned these tips about chamber travel events and inner city trips, especially in the episode that I had with Bob Quick, and that was episode forty two. So again, as I reference any of these episodes, you can find those episodes at chamberchatpodcast.com slash and then episode and the number. Or you can go to the show notes page and direct link to them. So anyways, let me get back to so the second lesson I learned is around the travel events and inner city trips to learn from other communities. Now I've been to n quite a number of chamber conferences and I always see these things and hear about chamber travel trips and these trips to China and overseas and all these different things. And I've never quite understood what the purpose was. Call me naive. I don't know. I just I had a hard time connecting those dots. But my eyes were just totally opened as I had Bob Quick on the show. And as he talked about what their chamber there at Commerce Lexington is able to learn from these other communities throughout the world. And these inner city trips with other chambers that are similar in size and demographics, it really opened my eyes to that, you know, what we can learn from others, but also that networking that happens from all those community leaders and everybody that goes on those trips together. And the more I thought about it, I thought really that coin coincides so well.
04:43.138 Brandon Burton
with the purpose of Chamber Chat Podcast. As I just developed this podcast, the whole idea was to be able to help make your chamber members and your community to be able to help you serve your members and your community better. And we learn how to serve better by learning from others. Whether that's on an inner city trip or through listening to an interview of a chamber president or some other chamber professional. telling how they do things in their community and being able to find those nuggets that you can apply back at your chamber. So that that really resonated with me and seeing that I'm I'm right on track, right on course with this podcast. And it just it was great. So the third lesson I learned in this 2019 from doing chamber chat podcast is that a chamber can and should be much more than a networking business community. And with this item we can reference episode 44 with Libby Spears and episode 46 with Roy Williams. And Libby talked about how a chamber should be the go-to resource to for education, for anything in the community for information. And Roy Williams at the Oklahoma Greater Oklahoma City Chamber really has kind of blown the top off as to what the capacity of a chamber can be. And if you miss that episode, I would definitely go back and listen to that one again because the Oklahoma City Chamber is really on the cutting edge of being able to see the need in a community, in their community. create a program and oftentimes they'll spin it off to somebody else in the community who can run and manage it going forward. But chambers no longer just the good old boy club of networking, which most of you listening to this know that, but my eyes were just opened, especially in that episode with Roy Williams as to the what the potential of a chamber can and should be. The fourth lesson that I wanted to highlight was the importance of staying true to your strategic plan.
07:03.362 Brandon Burton
And we can point to episode 40 with Henry Floorsham. And he talked about blowing things up in his strategic plan. And I like the idea of being able to say no to things that don't fit into what your strategic plan is. Anything that takes you off course is a distraction. So stay say no to those distractions, stay true to your plan. You can keep a note. Or keep notes of what some of those no's are. So as you reevaluate your strategic plan going forward, you can see what changes you might need to make and strategies you need to implement. But stay true to your strategic plan. The number five lesson is that most of you know this, that digital is important. But I'm not gonna end there. So digital is important, but print is still very relevant. And Justin Starlin in episode thirty-one really talked about how their chamber does a printed newsletter that they send out throughout the whole community. And I forget the number, I wanna say it's like eight thousand copies they print each month. It might be more than that. I I can't remember off the top of my head. But they print a hard copy of it and mail it out to everyone in their community, not just members. And the traction That that has gotten for their chamber by having that printed material and establishing the brand of their chamber in their community has just been outstanding. And Justin couldn't talk enough about how important that print material is for them. And that's just scratching the surface as far as print material. In episode 15, we had Lane Mullenon from Community Matters, the chamber publisher, and talked about the both digital strategies as well as printed strategies for chamber directories and maps and and the distribution on those and why that is still an important way to to serve your chamber members and your community. But you can also learn more about community matters and what they what services they offer for chamber directories and maps and magazines.
09:27.718 Brandon Burton
at cham at chamber chatpodcast dot com slash cmi and there you can there's a form you can fill out to if you wanted to get a quote about getting a publication done for your chamber. The number six item that I'll touch on on this top 10 list is the importance of great community partnerships. And both Jenna Armstrong in episode 18 and Becky Womble in episode three talked about the importance of having great community partnerships. And I think that's something that that we all know. it's just neat hearing from other people's perspectives how they were able to leverage some of these communities. Partnerships in their community to overcome some struggles and difficult situations. And it it's always nice to be able to learn from others and see how they've been able to come through some of those challenges. Number seven is the importance of talent and workforce development. Now, I had done a series, the Chamber of the Year finalist series for 2019. which encompassed episodes twenty-four through thirty-five. So we had the the twelve finalists for Chamber of the Year. And as I had them tell about their chambers and kind of what was in their synopsis for their application with Chamber of the Year, almost every single one of them talked about talent and workforce development. And it's so important as we see the change in education systems in colleges and universities and the rising cost of student debt and things of of that nature, as well as a struggling workforce in in many areas, it it just makes perfect sense for the chamber to be in alignment with these educational institutions, school districts, and workforce development to see what those needs are in your community and to be able to help align the education so you have a strong workforce to fill those holes.
11:42.19 Brandon Burton
And just seeing that that was such a strong strong thread amongst so many of these Chamber of the Year finalists shows that that's a need and something of importance for chambers throughout the whole country. The number eight item that I'll cover is there's no such thing as too much non-dues revenue. Am I right? I think every chamber out there knows that. We can't just get by anymore on chamber dues, membership dues, that it's a matter of having good quality programming and events that will help drive that non-dues revenue. And I can see a time in the future where we don't even call it non-dues revenue anymore. It'll just be revenue and maybe revenue from dues. So maybe that'll be the distinction is is the dues revenue and everything else will just be revenue. But I have partnered i i back in episode seventeen, I had Kevin Hodas, who's the founder of Swipe It. He was a guest on the podcast, and he talked about a partnership that ChamberTap Podcast has with his company as a credit card processor to provide a chamber affinity or affiliate program that allows swipe it as a credit card processor to save your chamber money and your processing fees, but also to have this affiliate program going forward. So as you're able to recommend swipe it and to your members and and have other businesses sign up that your chamber can actually earn a commission from the credit card fees that get processed. And swipe its fees are very low. So I mean you're not going to get rich off of this program, but It is something that builds up year after year and continues to be added upon. And there's chambers I know that are I mean, they're seeing five to seven thousand dollars a month or five, sorry, five to seven thousand dollars a year on non-dues revenue from credit card affinity program. So if you don't have a credit card affinity program, check out Swipe It. Kevin's a great guy, great company, one of the best in the business.
14:08.246 Brandon Burton
And you can learn more about swipe it at chamberchatpodcast.com slash CC. And that CC stands for credit card. So chamberchatpodcast.com slash CC. Number nine is the future is bright for chambers that stay relevant with technology and even automation. And we've had a lot of people on the show talking about how bright the future is for chambers. And we had Tony Felker in episode five, who talked about the importance of staying relevant as a chamber. We had Frank Kenney in episode sixteen talk about the importance of technology and social media, that digital presence and how to leverage that amongst your your chamber. And then just recently we had Jonathan Packer from the Austin Chamber, and he talked about automation, which is I I that wasn't all he talked about, but that was one of the key things that he did touch upon. And being able to take some of the burden of some of those repetitive tasks that are on your your chamber staff, things l such as invoicing and just some of those kind of things that are not personable and just really time consuming. And being able to automate some of those tasks so that those staff members are free to better serve your members and To be out in the community being seen and interacting with businesses and and the people in general. So I think that's so true. For the future to be right for chambers, you need to stay relevant. And for a lot of that relevancy, technology and automation is going to be right up there to to keep you relevant. Now, number 10, this is something that we didn't have anybody necessarily talk directly towards in these This past year of doing the podcast. But it's something that I've gathered as I have talked to several chambers and and even talking to some of the these chamber people off the air. And that is every chamber should explore the option of producing their own podcast. And several have already reached out to me about doing this. So much so that I'm starting to put together
16:38.706 Brandon Burton
A a guide, kind of a step by step guide of how to get started with creating your own podcast. And and that'll, I'm sure, evolve from being a guide to maybe a tutorial and maybe some services and things that I can help provide to help get you up and going at your chamber with your own podcast. And there's a lot of reasons why. you may want to consider having your own podcast for your chamber. And I'll probably do a future episode where that's all we talk about is why your chamber should have a podcast. And we'll go into some of those those reasons and kind of why you'd want to dive into that and and take that task on. But for some of you you already know the reasons why and you just need to know how. What do you need to do to get on board and to To get that ball rolling. So if you go to chamberchatpodcast.comslash guide, I will be creating this step-by-step guide to get started with your own podcast. Depending on when you listen to this, when you go to that site, I may or may not have that already ready. But if you enter in your your contact information, then I will email it to you as soon as it is ready. Or if it already is ready, then you'll get it right away in your email box again, depending on when you listen to this. But again, that's chamberchatpodcast.com slash guide to be able to get that step by step guide as to how to do your own podcast at your chamber. So I'm having a blast. I love this. I love doing chamber chat podcasts. I think that number one lesson that I've learned about how great. the people in the chamber community are is really what's most important. I love you guys. I'm glad you're out there. I'm glad you're part of this chamber chat podcast community. Keep listening. Please share this out with everyone in that you know in the chamber industry. we can always get more listeners and get more people on board in our community. So again, thanks for being here and I look forward to another great year in 2020.
19:05.876 Brandon Burton
And seeing what lessons I learned there. Again, show notes for this episode can be found at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode fifty. If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.