Effingham County Chamber 2020 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Norma Lansing

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

Episode 74 — Effingham County Chamber 2020 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Norma Lansing
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Norma Lansing
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.2 Brandon Burton
This special episode is part of our 2020 Chamber of the Year Finalist series, where you get to hear from some of the top chambers across the country. I hope you find great value in 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.
00:29.162 Intro Voice
And now, your host. He enjoys spending his crazy weekends with his family. He's my dad bird.
00:35.31 Brandon Burton
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. This is episode 74 of Chamber Chat Podcast. It's also our third interview in our 2020 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. If you are new to listening to Chamber Chat Podcast, I would suggest you check out our Get Started page at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash start, where you can find some nondues revenue ideas as well as our free chamber podcasting guide in case you've ever considered creating a podcast for your own chamber. Again, those resources are found at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash start. Our guest for this episode is Norma Lansing, and Norma is the president and CEO of the Effingham County Chamber of Commerce in Illinois. Norma is a 45 year chamber veteran and she is actively involved in the community serving on the executive board of the Effingham Regional Career Academy and is on the boards of the Effingham Regional Growth Alliance and Effingham Regional Incubator Network. As a member of the Effingham Noon Rotary Club, Lansing has served as president, is a Paul Harris Fellow, received Rotary's Vocational Excellence Award. She is past chairman of the board for the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives and recipient of the association's highest award for achievement, the Lester W. Brand Distinguished Chamber Executive Award. Lansing is also the recipient of the Outstanding Leadership and Community and Economic Development Award. From East Central Illinois Development Corporation and the Illinois Workforce Partnership Leadership Award. The Effingham County Chamber was also an ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist in twenty nineteen. I had the pleasure of having Norma on the podcast back on episode thirty four last year when they were a finalist for Chamber of the Year.
02:53.186 Brandon Burton
But Norma and her husband Ken have three children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild, and live at Lake Sarah. 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 Swypit. In partnership with Chamber Chat Podcast, Swypit is one of the best credit card processors in the business. With the Swypit 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 Swypit Affinity program can add thousands of dollars to their non-dues revenue annually. Please visit ChamberChatPodcast.com/cc for more information and to request your complimentary cost savings analysis. From the experts at Swypit. 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 Swypit. All right, Norma, let's if you would, just take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions out there and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
04:19.136 Norma Lansing
Okay. Well good afternoon everyone. I'm happy to be on this podcast with Brandon and talk about our chamber and certainly so excited to be part of this elite group of chambers who are in the the hunt for chamber of the year designation. So you know, I think uniqueness about me is probably just how long I've been with the chamber. I've you know, my chamber career is forty five years this year. And you know, I started as a very part time second job. e well even before that I started as a volunteer and then I got a you know part time job and just you know just grew through the ranks to be become the president CEO and I've actually been the president of the chamber for just over thirty years now. So you know long time in the chamber world. I love it, love chamber work. It's a career like no other. I think I think I think it takes a special personality to deal with deal with the everyday issues that come up, but overall it's you know just a re very rewarding opportunity to support your businesses and your community.
05:37.844 Brandon Burton
I know a lot of chamber professionals get into the industry on accident, but it really takes a special person to stick at it for forty five years. So
05:47.202 Norma Lansing
Well that I I doubt that anybody I doubt that many people will be spending that much time in in this career in the future, but it's been very enjoyable.
05:56.802 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Well, share with us a little bit about the Effingham County Chamber, just so we all get a a a little better perspective of maybe the size, location, budget, staff, things like that, so we can all kind of know where you're coming from. Sure.
06:11.156 Norma Lansing
so the Effingham County Chamber is located in East Central Illinois. it's you know, it's a very unique situation that we're in, position that we're in. you know, our county is a county of thirty five thousand people. And but Effingham sits at the intersection of two major interstates, if the interstates fifty seven and seventy, so our daytime population triples every day as people come in, to work for services, we're a regional hub for a lot of government services, healthcare, manufacturing, and things like that. So we we live much bigger than than our commun our county size. So so that's very it makes makes a very interesting combination and and unique combination for our chamber to be a part of a lot of different things and a lot of very progressive ideas in our community. and the chamber is celebrated our centennial in 2017, so we're 103 years old now. so very well established organization, although you know we try very hard to be current in our thinking and in our approach to how to support the businesses in our area. We have about 575 members shooting toward a 600-member goal this year, which kind of got I that probably not gonna happen this year. Probably have to make that a goal again for next year. We actually put it into our strategic goals this year to say, you know, if this is our our goal to get to this number, then it needs to be in our strategic plan. and so we we really focus focusing on that. staffing, we have typically have four full-time staff members right now. we don't have four full-time per people but we're slowly bringing people back to work more hours in the starting next week. So it's myself. we have a membership director who is, you know, twenty-five years with the chamber, so very very good at at working w with the members, supporting the members, retaining members. I think one of our reasons, benchmarks for
08:34.272 Norma Lansing
being a chamber of the year nominee is the fact that, you know, very regularly we have a ninety plus ninety percent retention rate. so that's that's to her credit. We last fall we created and hired a marketing communications person and that has been a home run for us. I would say that, you know, bringing that marketing into the office, having that person very knowledgeable about the chamber, has really made a difference in the the materials that we're putting out and the information that we're putting out. Then we have an office manager who just kind of runs the day-to-day and and's that takes care of all the ins and outs of the the business of the chamber. Our budget is about $365,000 dollars, which the next thing I have to do in the next couple of weeks is you know reevaluate the budget and see what it's really gonna look like for this year, since we've had to cancel a number of things that we had planned to do to support the you know, projects to support the budget. So, you know, as I'm sure n I'm no different we're no different than any other chamber out there, any other organization or business who's really having to reevaluate our our yearly plan and our budget situation. So
09:58.538 Brandon Burton
That's right. In fact, a few weeks ago I had Michael Gellman on the podcast and he was talking just exactly about that, about how chambers need to kind of reevaluate their budgets and see those things that are you know, rock solid that are gonna be there, some things that are kind of wishy washy and then those things that are gone and be able to see what you can expect for your budget going forward and then trying to find ways to answer some of those budget shortfalls to to get back on track and make sure your chamber's there for the long term and and be there for another hundred and three years. So anyway, the so with the Chamber of the Year application, I know every every chamber submits a couple of the the programs and their synopsis with their application that they're they're proud of or that are working well for their chamber. Would you take a few minutes and kind of walk us through the the highlights of the Your program synopsis?
10:58.072 Norma Lansing
Sure. the one that first one that we did is on our regional incubator network and just last fall we opened the first shared workspace in in our county and actually in the area. So you know the the incubator network is a is a little bit different than most incubators that we're actually a regional we're regional in nature that it's not just one community, it's multiple communities with multiple sites around the area that were all working together with shared rent rent structure, shared rules, shared policies, things like that. what we saw and the reason we we created the regional the network was that we saw, you know, individual communities nearby, you know, trying to set up these incubators and then, you know, trying to set pricing that you know so they were lower than then than the other one and trying to, you know, track things of this way. We're working collaboratively. I mean that's one of our strength I strengths I think as a chamber is that we're very collaborative in nature. We want to work together to for the common good rather than each, you know, in silos or just kind of doing their own thing. So the shared workspace, just actually got off of a conference call on that, you know, again with the shutdown of everything we've we've kept it open on a limited basis. We have, you know, people working from home who have you know maybe content connectivity issues that they don't have good service at their home, so they're able to come into our facility and use it to access have internet access and the services there. It's right in our downtown We did a lot of research to what we wanted to have as a as a shared workspace. We visited a lot of different shared workspaces around the area. And so very proud of what we've developed. And, you know, struggling as as any new venture hit by COVID-19, you know, trying to get that off the ground in a more positive way. But great collaboration again with our city government.
13:23.602 Norma Lansing
our economic development organization, our community foundation, the chamber, a lot of different entities, a lot of private businesses have come together to support that shared workspace.
13:37.588 Brandon Burton
So I think you guys are on to something with the shared workspace. I know it was in the works, you know, before this happened with COVID nineteen, but just this morning I was talking to a realtor friend of mine and he was talking about how the the pandemic is gonna really hit the commercial real estate environment. And you have a lot of businesses that are recognizing that their employees can be just as effective or even more effective. from working at home. And he was sharing with me a a about a business that had a couple of towers, you know, office building towers. And they were backing out of their their lease. You know, it's a a million dollar lease that they're walking away from because everybody's working from home. But having a shared workspace like this where you can come and rent out a conference room for when you have those meetings, you have to be face to face. I think that's going to be the way of the future. across the country where those shared workspaces are kind of the place where people gravitate towards.
14:42.838 Norma Lansing
Well, and we talked, you know, in our meeting today about people who are working from home and have small children, you know, they may be looking for some place they can go, you know, for a day and just to get a different atmosphere and you know, we we have day passes available so people can come in just and use it for the day just to get a you know, to live to work in a different atmosphere perhaps, or have a meeting that they have to have, a conference call or something like that. So, So yeah, we're we're excited about what that can become for us. The other project that we submitted was our manufacturing day, which we've been doing now for seven years. And again, you know, being a small rural area, rural area, and manufacturing being, you know, 17% of our workforce is in manufacturing. so we work with high school thirteen different high schools within a fifty mile radius of us bring kids, bring students together for a day, to visit two manufacturers. Each one gets to visit two. We kind of flipped the s the the script on it last last year, last fall, and it was probably very successful. So what we did was we we kept the students together so they all gather, they all come from different places and meet in one one location and so we kept them in that location longer at the front end of the day. and and did some team building with them. Because like I said, we've got students coming, you know, three or four hundred students coming from thirteen different schools. So they don't know each other very well, you know, unless they're with their classmates. And we try very hard to get to to mix up, even when they go out on tours, they're not going, you know, one school's not going here, another school's there. We we we mixed the students up. So they're meeting new other students from other school districts. we did team building activity and you know the response we got from that I think made all the difference for the rest of the day. The industries that were part of the tours said the students were more engaged, asking more questions because they they spent that time getting to know each other at the front end.
17:05.432 Norma Lansing
So it you know, we're we're proud of that event. We're one of the first ones in our region to really put it put together a manufacturing day program, continue and that pro you know getting bringing students from all those different areas together. the other benefit from that is we have a a CEO, high school CEO class program that we offer. So students from all these different school districts have learned. that they can come together and they may be competitors on the basketball court or the baseball field or football or whatever, and be competitors on Friday night, but during the week they can be friends and classmates and and learn and be and develop friendships. So that's been I think a real side benefit to all of these types of programs where we're bringing students together. And we again start on the path of looking at Manufacturing Day be as a one day activity, but how do we grow that relationship with our students and our businesses in a bigger way? And so we're starting down that path of using manufacturing as kind of a launching point for us to engage students more closely with businesses through internships, apprenticeships, job shadowing, and just and and just really how do we get them to come back here if they grad when they graduate from high school and they go away to college, you know, when we connect them more personally with businesses and they build those relationships, it's it's a easier way of bringing them back after college to to go into the workforce and to build new businesses. So we're seeing the benefit of that. we still I see we've kinda laid the groundwork for some other program, the program that we're trying to develop. so that was that's a launching point For us now to some other programs.
19:08.152 Brandon Burton
So is manufacturing day targeted mainly towards the high school seniors or is it juniors and seniors? And do they sign up to participate or is it all of the students?
19:19.464 Norma Lansing
no. It it's typically seniors, some juniors, they have to sign up. It's not, you know, every school district ha we don't want you know, we don't necessarily want the best student in the school. We want we want those that are gonna go that wanna go into the workforce. maybe their career path is not a college degree, but it might be trade school or something else and so you know, we rely heavily on our s principals, do school leadership, principals, guidance counselors to really identify the right students to come.
20:02.68 Brandon Burton
That makes a lot of sense. so as you guys are are selected as a a finalist for Chamber of the Year, in in your opinion, what do you think it is that is making the Effingham County Chamber stand out to be selected as a finalist and even for a a second year in a row? What are you guys doing that maybe other chambers might not be doing?
20:27.402 Norma Lansing
Well, you know, the the benchmarking for Chamber of the Year is based on results of the AC ACCE operation survey and you have to re you know, meet three of the five benchmarks before you can even apply to be Chamber of the Year. So to me that is the the biggest thing, the strongest benchmarks I think for us are our retention rates. You know, we're regularly over ninety percent retention with existing members and with first year members. So to me that's probably one of the main reasons that we are continue to be recognized in the upper level of chambers around the country is just strong retention policies in p in place and just service to customer or service I think member satisfaction is another big issue and reason why we've managed to continue to be at that level.
21:37.655 Brandon Burton
So yeah, I was gonna say, what are you what are you doing to retain ninety percent? That is awesome. How are you keeping your members so satisfied?
21:46.286 Norma Lansing
Well, part of it is that we have a what we call a member care program. So from the onboarding first year of a of a membership, you know, we have a very specific plan of how they're contacted, when they're contacted, who makes that contact. we do every other month we hold what we used to call new member organizations. That's a little bit broader than that now, but you know, we we br we invite people who are new to their companies, even new businesses that in town that may not be chamber members yet. And for a long time, very long time, we we asked the same three questions at all of these events is you know, why is it important for your business to be a chamber member? What is an issue or challenge that you have the chamber can help you with, and then the broader picture of you know, what is one thing the chamber can do to support the business community as a whole. And those answers to those questions are key for us to develop new programming, new services and things like that. So I think that just just really close we you know, like I said our membership development person is really does a good job of of maintaining contact with our members on a regular basis at the end of Each year we also take a look we through our chamber master software and run a report of those members that are considered to be at risk and we pick the I guess the lowest 100 of those and make her personal contact with them. We call them up, we just it's just a check-in call. We're not trying to sell them anything, just checking in, see what their needs are, what we can help them with. we try to provide very personalized. service to our members. And I think that that's a key. Becky's built a lot of our membership director has built a lot of great relationships. And so the members know that they can rely on us to give them the feedback and the information that they need. And that we've, you know, we've set ourself up even through this whole last couple of months as being a very trusted resource of information.
24:10.424 Norma Lansing
You know, we're not gonna tell them on what we think as much as tell them what we know are facts facts and have are backed up by reliable sources.
24:23.532 Brandon Burton
That's awesome. I love the idea of that member care program and the way you guys go about your onboarding and and like you said, following up with those you feel like are at risk as far as renewals go and really showing them how much you care. And there's that old saying of they don't know they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care and you're really making that evident and showing the value that the chamber has to offer to them. So I think that's a great example.
24:47.554 Norma Lansing
Yeah, the member care program also goes into the second and third year. So it's a three year contact program with th for a a new member.
24:58.892 Brandon Burton
That is awesome. So I wanted to maybe shift gears a little bit here and ask you with the the change going on in our environment right now with the results from the the COVID nineteen pandemic, what plans do you have to lead your business community through the recovery, through the the economic impact of the the pandemic?
25:22.956 Norma Lansing
Well, we start and a couple of things that we started that we'll continue to do, and I think that the most important thing that we've done is just to make sure that we are a trusted source of information. I think that's the most critical thing anybody can do right now is is to be sure that when the business comes to the chamber and asks a question that what you're telling them is true and backed up. so we have, you know, as most chambers have a resource page on their website with all of that information. We up you know that's updated multiple times a week and refer people to that all the time. Now that their focus is on reopening, we're really you know, trying to help them with signage or anything they need, you know, forms that they need, things like that. other thing that we've done is as I mentioned early on is, you know, converting, you know, to a more virtual environment, we start a weekly re webinar series. Right now they are complimentary to our members and of course we're not paying any speakers to do that. But we've had you know sometimes some webinars are over a hundred people participating in them. so I think I know that that will continue. We won't stop those. We're gonna you know I'm sure at some point in time we're gonna have to figure out how to make some money off of those. But for now, you know, if we can continue to do it in a format that that we can offer it and give them information. They're recorded, they're made available every you know we all month have them on Thursday mornings. Friday we send out our weekly e blast. There's a link to the recording. The recordings are posted on our YouTube channel so they're always available for people if they you know so they can go back and listen to those. And we'll like I said we'll continue to do that. The other thing that we did early on that right away was start an email program that goes out not just to the business community but any anybody in the community, any resident of the area can sign up for those and they go out on Friday afternoons. really just, you know, and we're getting such great feedback from businesses who are, you know, until I mean for another month we're offering free coupons. If any business that wants to put a free coupon out, they can
27:44.416 Norma Lansing
they can let us know we'll put out a coupon. We have a section that talks about, you know, well right now with who's who's opening what they're open, you know, what their hours are gonna be. If you have to make you know some business you have to make an appointment to go in. And so we're we're gathering all that on out. you know eventually we hope to be able to talk about this is the you know this is what's coming up this weekend in the community. These are specials that a business, a restaurant might have. this weekend that you want to check out. There's entertainment. You know, our goal is for that to be looked at as a, you know, this is what's going on in the weekend and the the following week. So that's been a big success. And then we did start, we did create a small business grant program through our foundation that we just opened up for applications last week. So We haven't had as many applications as I expected, which is a good thing. I think I don't wanna you know, I don't wanna disappoint anybody that we can't support f financially, so
28:52.908 Brandon Burton
That's right.
28:55.384 Norma Lansing
So I like said I just think that just looking at how do you deliver things in a different way. I mean, we do a reverse raffle and we've show we've decided to do that virtually this year. Quite frankly, I think it'll financially do better than the in person event because when it's virtual, anybody anywhere can buy a ticket, you know, and have the same chance of of winning our grant. We didn't we we're still giving away five thousand dollars even though we've cut our ticket price in half, but because we don't have those other expenses.
29:32.886 Brandon Burton
Yeah. And hopefully you can sell more tickets now too. Yeah.
29:36.162 Norma Lansing
Yeah, so you know, it's just learning those new ways of doing things. Not great at it yet, but getting there. I know and I and we're like we're not doing things differently than anybody else, but I don't think but it works for our area. I think the biggest thing is just knowing that when people come and ask us a question they're gonna get a truthful, honest answer that's backed up by By the people out there who who know more than we do.
30:09.73 Brandon Burton
Yeah. so Norma, I wanted to ask you as we start wrapping things up here, what might be one action item, one piece of advice that you would give to the the chamber champions out there listening that they can do to help take their chamber up to the next level? Yeah.
30:30.488 Norma Lansing
Well, I'm I'm gonna give you two actually. One I I think it's most important that chambers are or the the chamber executive is affiliated with their state professional development organization. I think that's critical. you know, the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce executives, we have two conference calls every week. One's just a general update. You know, we've brought in legislators and
30:32.908 Brandon Burton
We'll take it. It's about
31:00.89 Norma Lansing
you know, our state chamber and and just and attorneys and labor attorneys and things like that and just get some real good information. And then the next one is on how we're transitioning events, you know, virtually and and programming virtually. So those are for me very important. So you know, just being a part of your state professional development association is critical, I think. I know that, you know, for smaller chambers it's a a financial outlay that maybe their board doesn't want to pay, but I it I think it's up to the executive to to sell that to their board if they have to because it's so critical for support, for ideas, I mean for ways that you can use what somebody else is doing. You know, I always look at chambers that are bigger than than ours is. I really look at what they're doing, that that is where I benchmark myself against not somebody my same size, but somebody that's that's got a bigger chamber and bigger city. so I can see what they're doing and there's always a way to take those ideas or those programs and and get them down to a a level that works for your organization. So, you know, that's one. The other one I for me is following those chamber folks out there that are doing things like Frank Kenny and Cathi Hight, Shari Pash and Kyle Sexton are ones that I follow. and they're just so they've been so helpful this past few months. just incredibly helpful and providing all kinds of resources. So and you know, your podcast would be another one that gives people all kinds of up of of learning opportunities. I think I think right now sometimes we're overwhelmed with webinars. I sign up for ones all the time and you know, still trying to go back and and reuse some of them and by now some of them are even irrelevant, but just having those those types of professionals that you can, you know, develop a relationship with, reach out to. they're super great about answering questions and providing op sh you know, providing information, resources. So those are two
33:25.44 Brandon Burton
I agree. Just being connected with others in the industry is is so vital for sure. That's that's the whole purpose of this podcast is to to make those connections and to learn from each other. But Norma, I know I had asked you this last year when I had you on the show, but I ask everyone I have on the show and and things may look a little different now too, but as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see their purpose going forward?
33:56.012 Norma Lansing
You know, that's a big topic. And of course ACCE spent a lot of time creating the Horizon Initiative a few years ago and and that's a great document to take a look at and and look at the future. I, you know, I personally think it's that just that relevance factor that we all talk about. That being relevant to your to the businesses, to the community. we, you know, we're we're as much engaged with the whole community as we are with the business community. And I think that's important, especially at time like this. You know, if you don't have a great relationship with your city government or your county government or your schools or whatever, it makes it very difficult then to try to build a a coalition of people and and really you know find ways to to build up the community again because we we all have a part of that. you know, individual businesses are worried about, you know, their own needs. but they need to know that we've got their back and that we're we're doing the outreach that needs to be done to make sure that the community itself is strong and can continue to attract new businesses, new residents, you know, just just those things that are needed for community growth and development.
35:24.222 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. I totally agree. I wanted to give you a a chance if if for those that are out there listening, if they'd like to reach out and connect with you about how you're doing things at the Effingham County Chamber or or continue this discussion that we've been having today, maybe offline, what would be the best ways for for people to reach out and connect with you?
35:47.212 Norma Lansing
Well my my email address is N as in Norma, N Lansing, L A N S I N G at Effingham County Chamber dot com. phone number here at the office is two one seven three four two four one four seven. So happy to to to talk to anybody that that that I can help.
36:08.878 Brandon Burton
Perfect. And we will get that in the show notes for this episode, which will be found at Chamberchat Podcast dot com slash episode seventy four. But again, Norma, thank you so much for spending time with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I wish you and the Effingham County Chamber best of luck with Chamber of the Year.
36:26.328 Norma Lansing
Well, thank you so much. I'm I'm sure we all wanna know that we're gonna be the chamber of the year. So
36:34.294 Brandon Burton
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