Vail Valley Partnership 2020 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Chris Romer

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

Episode 77 — Vail Valley Partnership 2020 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Chris Romer
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Chris Romer
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.
00:29.218 Intro Voice
And I your host, after twenty years,
00:31.554 Intro Voice
He now owns his high school car again, a nineteen sixty eight Mustang. My dad, Brandon Burton.
00:35.224 Brandon Burton
He's my welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. This is Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to help introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. This is episode 77 of Chamber Chat Podcast. And this is also the sixth interview in our 2020 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. And if you're new to listening to Chamber Chat Podcast, I'd invite you to check out our get started page at Chamber Chat Podcast.com/slash start, where you can get some ideas for some nondues revenue ideas as well as our free chamber podcasting guide. If you'd like to check out how you can get started with your own chamber podcast. Again, that's chamberchatpodcast.com/start. So our guest for this episode, as we Continue on this Chamber of the Year finalist series for 2020 is Chris Romer, who serves as the president and CEO of the Vail Valley Partnership in Colorado. The Vail Valley Partnership is a regional chamber of commerce, a destination sales and marketing organization and economic development organization representing Vail Valley, Colorado. The VVP plays a leadership role in the In the continuing process of building trust between the various sectors, geographic and economic, and provides community leadership and vision to enhance commerce and economic vitality of the Vail Valley and was named Chamber of the Year by ACCE in 2016. In his role, Romer leads the partnership team to help positively impact the community in various programming and tourist tourism endeavors. VVP has received several recognitions during Romer's tenure, which include Chamber of the Year winner in 2016 as well as a finalist in 2015 by ACCE. Chris is also the first, just a fun fact, he's the first repeat guest on Chamber Chat Podcast. So we're excited to have him back on the show. But Chris dedicates time to a variety of industry boards and committees as
02:53.952 Brandon Burton
many chamber executives do. he's a resident of EagleVail, Colorado, with his wife Stacy and daughter Kayla and their golden retriever Cayman. If you are interested in seeing what Chris had to share with us in his previous episode, that can be found at episode 21, so chamberchatpodcast dot com slash episode 21, where he talked about forming member needed programs. But In today's episode, we will talk about some of the highlights that are making the Vail Valley Partnership stand out to be considered as a Chamber of the Year finalist again. And we will get into this conversation with Chris as soon as we get back from hearing from our sponsor. 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 slash 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. Alright, Chris, we are back. If you would take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know Chris Romer a little bit better.
04:54.508 Chris Romer
Yeah, thanks, Brandon. It's an it's an honor to be with you. It's an honor to be the first guest to be a repeat guest. so that that's quite a a fun little tidbit. And I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit about the partnership and and the work we're doing here in Eagle County, Colorado, and how we how our focus at Vail Valley Partnership is really focused on on building relationships and building bridges and building program member member centric programming to support our business community and support our organization and look forward to diving into all of that. It's quite an honor again to be a finalist for ACCE Chamber of the Year for the third time. And we congratulate everybody who is a finalist because I know everyone is doing great work in their communities. As for me, you know, it's I'm in the in the relationship business and you know, just like many chamber executives out there really like to and enjoy giving back to the industry and giving back to our communities, I serve as a trustee on our local college board and have been involved in a variety of different economic development tourism and chamber roles and committees on a on a local state and national level the last pit bit I'll add maybe because it's timely with with COVID I am on one of the governor's economic recovery task forces so probably many chamber execs are as well but Just that that that level of commitment to community and helping recovery during this time is that little tidbit that I think you asked for.
06:53.234 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. And I'm sure we'll we'll have an opportunity to hear a little bit more about that further in this discussion today. But if you could just maybe share a little bit about the partnership there and to give us a little bit better idea of the perspective that you're coming from as you present kind of about your chamber to the the listeners today, maybe size, location, budget, staff, things like that, just to give us a a better idea of where you're coming from.
07:20.726 Chris Romer
Yeah, so we are located in Eagle County, Colorado, home to Vale and Beaver Creek Ski Resorts, probably best known for the ski resorts, of course. And we have about 914 members. We average a 92 to 93 percent retention rates, about 35% market penetration of of membership. Our budget is about $1.5 million a year. We have 10 staff between full-time and part-time. And focus our efforts on really being a value-oriented organization focused on building communities to which residents, visitors, and investors are attracted, promoting our communities. We have nine different communities in our in our county. Again, we're a regional organization. We really work to ensure future prosperity via a pro-business climate and representing a unified voice of the employer community to reduce transactional friction between government, business, nonprofits, special districts, et cetera, really working to be that convener and catalyst organization. To ensure that our community functions at the highest level that it can.
08:47.864 Brandon Burton
That's great. I love your ballpark estimate of members. You know, about nine hundred and fourteen. Yeah.
08:52.846 Chris Romer
It changed you know, it changes it changes pretty often. So yeah. It's it's hard to commit. By the time, you know, we record this today and then it errors, it could be a couple more or it could be a few less, but right around that ballpark.
09:06.114 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So let's let's talk a little bit about the the application for chamber of the year. And I know as as you submit the application, kinda you hit a couple highlight synopsis on there, if you wouldn't mind taking us through those and maybe spend a little bit of time hitting those highlights.
09:26.318 Chris Romer
Sure thing. And the Chamber of the Year application for those who have not completed it before, it's it's a it's a project, right? You need to put a lot of thought and effort into number one, is your organization doing work that is deserving of consideration? And then if you determine that it is, there's quite a bit to put together and to package in a way that can be absorbed by the by the judges who are past chamber of the year winners of course and can be meaningful so showing the the impact not only within your community but how can that be scaled and duplicated in other communities. So the the two synopsises synopses synopsises that that we did one was around our workforce housing coalition And that is a group that we built a number of years ago, a few years ago, about about three or four years ago, in regards to one of the biggest community challenges that we have here in our rural resort community around workforce housing. So we crowdsourced, built a variety of different public meetings, brought in experts, averaged between 80 and 100 people at each of those community meetings. And spun that off to a grassroots advocacy network and a working task force that meets on a monthly basis, looking at different workforce housing projects, advocating for workforce housing projects, really keeping that within our nine towns and our county, keeping that top issue for our business community at the forefront. So we we were able to build white papers and work with our our planning community, work with our developer community, and work with our elected officials to really help move the momentum forward around working workforce housing. I would note that in the five years prior to us building the workforce housing coalition, we had zero projects approved, zero projects with workforce housing approved in our in our region. And in the time we built
11:46.036 Chris Romer
and implemented the Workforce Housing Coalition. Again, those public meetings, that grassroots network, those relationships between public and private and and bridging the developer needs and the government processes and government needs, we're able to help get 16 projects approved in the past four years. So part of that's certainly the economics and the economy, but a big part of it due to our grassroots advocacy and building those coalitions and bringing government to the table with industry and finding middle ground and finding finding ways to make things happen and and finding a way to get to yes, whereas before it was completely polarized. So that was a that's a fun project. That's an ongoing effort. We continue that working task force as we move forward.
12:35.988 Brandon Burton
With the workforce housing coalition, is that mainly in the segment of tourism workforce or is there other segments that are included with that? Or is it is it particular to a certain segment?
12:47.63 Chris Romer
It's not necessarily particular to a specific segment. Now, of course, about 60% of our economy is focused on tourism. So there is a tourism seasonal focus to that, but our primary focus has not been around the seasonal tourism worker. Our primary focus has been on year-round residents and building those communities where people can stay. leading to a retention of employees and a retention of businesses. So our focus has been been around helping build deed restricted occupied units, both on the rental and ownership side, where folks need to live and work in Eagle County, work a minimum of 30 hours a week, and have a deed restricted deed restriction tied tied to their ownership occupied or rental occupied unit. So it's been a little bit less on the tourism seasonal focus and a little more on the year round community building aspect.
13:51.99 Brandon Burton
Okay. That that makes a lot of sense. And it's good just to have that stability too, instead of trying to figure out the seasonal, you know, every year or every season to have that shift. So so what is your other
14:06.062 Chris Romer
Yeah, our second our second synopsis was a program that we are very fortunate to be involved in that is called CareerWise Youth Apprenticeships. And the CareerWise Youth Apprenticeship Program is an apprenticeship program that is a statewide effort and localized to individual communities. So we we helped build a localized youth apprenticeship program. in partnership with our school district, our community college system, and a number of other business stakeholders, where we have scaled this commu this youth apprenticeship program into a pretty significant effort with it's a three year youth apprenticeship program. We target kids in their at the end of their sophomore year. They go through an interview process. The businesses select their their intern or their apprentices rather for the for the upcoming year. And they are part of a work apprenticeship program for three years: their junior year, senior year, and their 13th year of of high school. So the program is a d in partnership with our with a dual enrollment where they're earning college credit at the same time. Their junior year, they are working two days a week and going to school three days a week. Their senior year, they're working three days a week, going to school two days a week. And then their their bonus year, their 13th year, kids are working essentially full time with some work study and and college credit. involved as well. So 32 to 40 hours of work, the balance there being, courses or certifications they might be interested in. The unique thing about this apprenticeship program is that these are quote unquote white collar jobs. This is not a traditional apprenticeship from the standpoint of vocational learning and because many of those already exist, electricians and stonemasons and
16:24.35 Chris Romer
and plumbers and things like that already have established apprenticeship programs. What we've built is an apprenticeship program for information technology, for business operations, for finance. So we have we have kids going through the program to become bank managers, to work in our in our medical fields. And during the COVID situation, many of our apprentices are on the front lines, remaining employed, working Earning paychecks to help support their families and move forward. And the the last piece of this of this program that I think is really interesting and unique is that the goal of the program is to have a full-time job available for the three years that is at or above our area median income. So these are this is training kids. It is building a future pipeline for our businesses and really helping us with retention of of individuals within our community so the kids don't have to move away. And it's an options multiplier because again, at the same time, they're earning college credits and could conceivably graduate with their associate's degree at the end of the apprenticeship as well, and have the option to transfer into a four year system to go to work full time for the employer or to move on and do something different. But the college education component is completely paid for by the employer as well. So there's no out of pocket cost for the kids and they're earning a paycheck at the same time. So it's really a win-win-win, a win for the kids, a win for the community and a win for the businesses.
18:13.954 Brandon Burton
That is awesome. Now you mentioned something about thirteenth year bonus year. Can you explain that that's something new to me?
18:20.854 Chris Romer
Yeah. So kids have the opportunity to defer their high school graduation by that extra year. And as part of the apprenticeship program, they can defer their graduation for a year and then i earn their college credits at the same time. so they can still walk, they can still do the graduation ceremonies, but they actually will stay enrolled and that helps with some state funding and allowing the the i college system and the school system to retain their funding for the for the student during that extra bonus year.
19:00.034 Brandon Burton
So is that a a Colorado thing or is that a
19:03.198 Chris Romer
It's a Colorado thing and I'm not sure if it's available in other states. but it it very well could be. It's a it's a pretty unique program that gives i again that options multiplier idea where kids have they just have the ability by being part of this CareerWise youth apprenticeship program, they have the ability to just expand their opportunities in a pretty significant way.
19:28.558 Brandon Burton
That's great. So many more options now for these youth in in high school and even some as early as middle school than you know, when I was in their situation. I mean, I had these blinders on and you knew it was like military or college, or what are you gonna do? You know, once you graduate, where are you going?
19:45.942 Chris Romer
Yeah, and that's really what what our program again because this is this is not a traditional vocational apprenticeship and those those programs exist and they're very good. this is really mm gives kids the opportunity to get up to two years of school paid for, to expand their their future horizons, expose them to work. And we also are involved in apprenticeship pro or internship programs. We're involved through our workforce programming in job shadowing. So we're really doing what we can to ensure that kids have career pathways and ensure our businesses have the ability to build that pipeline. It's it's a very real challenge in our community as a rural rural resort environment with a very high cost of living. How do we help retain kids and give kids the options to grow their career here instead of feeling like they need to move away for career advancement opportunities. Yeah.
20:49.538 Brandon Burton
Yeah, great point. So in your humble opinion, what what makes the Vail Valley partnership stand out amongst other chambers and maybe it has something to do with programs that you offer or just the way that you do things that maybe a traditional chamber wouldn't necessarily do?
21:10.36 Chris Romer
Yeah, it's a great question and I appreciate the opportunity to to talk a little bit about our focus and our our organization. And and we we are pr every chamber is a little bit different. we are we're probably more focused on programming than many chambers. We don't do any public consumer events. We do events Aimed at business education and leadership programming and and things like that. But we are not an event chamber. We are very focused on providing meaningful programs. So I think what probably separates us from many chambers is the fact that we are program centric. We are in the business of problem solving. And all of our programs that we have developed, we have Eight or nine signature programs that we do, ranging from the Workforce Housing Coalition and CareerWise Youth Apprenticeship Program that I talked about, but also healthcare programs, also lodging rating system programs, and many other things that we do, air service development programs, all designed around solving problems that face our business community. So we you mentioned in the introduction that we won the Chamber of the Year in 2016. And again, that's quite an honor. And we appreciate ACCE and the judges recognizing us as a finalist again this year. But we really used the 2016 opportunity of of being a winner to completely really use it as a springboard to transform our organization in an even bigger way around the problem solving. So I think that's our focus. Every single thing that we do is around how do we solve a community problem. And if we cannot frame our programming and our events and our efforts around solving a community problem, we don't do it. So I think that's the probably the difference is we're not we're not chasing dollars on events. We're not chasing dollars on sponsorships. We're chasing dollars, if you will, through programming and having a direct, tangible
23:33.796 Chris Romer
community benefit and ROI to the businesses that are investing in our programming.
23:39.106 Brandon Burton
That's right. And it also mentioned earlier in this episode the reference of you being on Chamber Chat Podcast before in episode twenty-one, where you talked all about forming those member needed programs. And if anybody wants to hear, I think we went through you know a handful, probably I think three different programs in that episode that you highlighted. So encourage people to go back and listen to that and and see what Chris is talking about, about figuring out what those needs are in the community and then creating programs. to fill that need. It's a a great example that you guys are doing there in the Vail Valley Partnership.
24:14.85 Chris Romer
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
24:16.566 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Now as the country, the world is trying to get through this COVID pandemic, I know it hits every every community a little bit differently. you had mentioned how in Vail, you know, such a high percentage of your economy is driven on tourism. Do you mind sharing what some of your plans would be to to lead your business community through the economic recovery from the impact of the the COVID COVID pandemic?
24:52.6 Chris Romer
Course, I'm happy to. And I would suggest that this is the opportunity, this is an opportunity and probably the opportunity for most people to be the to be what chambers were built to be. Right. It's it's the opportunity for chambers to step up and really shine as community problem solvers and non non involvement value. The opportunity for chambers to have non-involvement value for their members is a big is a big deal. And I would encourage everybody to embrace what that means. So for us specifically, we were one of the first, we were probably the first in Colorado and one of the first chambers to begin economic recovery efforts. We started our economic recovery Task force led by the chamber in partnership with our county on March 13th. Our first meeting was on March 13th. That was that was pretty early in the process. It was before Colorado was designated an emergency area, before most states were our ski resorts were closed on the 15th. So we were a couple days ahead of our ski effort, our ski mountains being closed, which obviously is our driver of the community. And we've really focused on four efforts. Number one was relief. How do we get how do we get moving forward? How do we get the initial efforts and the initial advocacy at a federal level, at a state level, et cetera, out to our business community, things like the PPP and the EIDL loans, et cetera. the second component of the economic recovery is the reopening. How do we how do we reboot our economy? How do we help? our businesses with guidelines and with information. We've built a variety of industry task forces to again the the chamber being the bridge between government and industry, but letting industry develop those guidelines and develop those operating procedures and share them up to government so that public health and government entities can sign off on those rather than government telling business what they need to do. That's been very successful for us on a on a countywide
27:15.53 Chris Romer
level. Number three is the recovery and reinvention. How do we how do we build and give people the the programming that will be needed during the recovery effort? How do we support businesses through the reinventing and the changes that they're going to need in their operational components? And the last part of the economic recovery that I think will be an ongoing effort for communities and for chambers is around the idea of resilience. How do we help build resilience? So we've done a number of things. We've built business toolkits. We've partnered with our local newspaper on an open for business component for businesses to go in and list their all of their operating hours and promotions. Our newspapers running daily ads with what business hours are open and business spotlights for our members. We've done two different business impact surveys and really partnering with our SBDC and our college and numerous others around webinars and insight series, just like a lot of chambers have. I think what we're probably unique with is our task force efforts. and the fact that we've modeled out a complete two-year recovery program with objective objectives, actions, and tools for for each step along that process and keeping in mind that a lot of our inherent community problems and challenges that we've had for a long time, if it's housing that I mentioned, or if it's healthcare, transportation, etc., all of those things are part of our resilience plan because we don't want our elected officials and our government leaders to forget about the community challenges that existed pre-COVID while they're so focused on the short-term recovery efforts. We're we're working really hard To ensure that our long-term efforts that we've been focused on for so long remain at the on the radar and at the forefront. So we continue to be active with things like housing and healthcare and transportation and workforce, now more than ever encouraging them to really double down and use this economic ice age, as I call it, in this economic recession. We have over 20% unemployment in our county.
29:39.48 Chris Romer
So the need for workforce focus and the need for business resiliency is has never been more important as it is today.
29:49.004 Brandon Burton
Yeah, so just a a quick summari summarization of those four points again. They're they're all ours. Chambers.
29:56.59 Chris Romer
I know. I we're we're so predictable in in regards to that. And for so for us, the four components of our recovery plan, number one is relief, number two is reopening, number three is recovery slash reinvention, and number four is resilience.
30:21.344 Brandon Burton
And I'm gonna make sure that gets in the show notes as well, because I think that provides a template for other chambers to kind of work with and they may choose different words, but you know, the overall message and and the the meaning behind that recovery effort I think is there. And they can see the best way to to implement some version of that back in their community. But Chris, what would be Maybe one action item or one tip that you could share with the the chamber champions that are listening that they could take back to their chamber to to really help them you know, take their chamber up to the next level.
30:57.762 Chris Romer
I think that the one tip I would give to people, I think chambers across the board do a really, really good job of listening to their members and listening to the needs of their community. I think every chamber exec that's listening to this, every chamber exec across the board does a good job of listening. I think the thing that the chambers that I look up to and the chambers that I admire, the thing that they do differently is that they take action on those things. I think that would be the takeaway that I have is don't just listen to your members and to your community. Listen with the intent to act. How do you act on and how do you develop programs around? How do you make the connections for? How do you act on listening? I think we do as an industry, like I said, a great job of listening. I don't know that we do a great job of acting. on that. So that would be my takeaway is really consider how you can act on what you're hearing, be it and again, specifically to the chamber industry. How do you build programs around those things and monetize it and support your organization? I think there's a huge opportunity for chambers right now in the midst of of COVID to build those kind of programs and have a meaningful impact on your organizational sustainability as well as on your community.
32:25.432 Brandon Burton
I l I love that answer to take action. I think like you said, a lot of chamber executives, chamber professionals out there are very good at listening. And then it kind of falls into that paralysis by analysis and not having that courage or the direction to just take that action. And once you can see what that need is, just go for it. Take the action and run with it. Great.
32:47.576 Chris Romer
Yeah, and it's it yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. It's it's a huge opportunity for chambers, like I said.
32:54.518 Brandon Burton
So I know I had asked you this question when when I had you on the show before, but as we look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?
33:06.286 Chris Romer
I'm really bullish on on Chambers as we move forward. I think that the opportunity for Chambers to be that community problem solver and the need for Chambers to be that catalyst and convener and champion for for business interest has never been more important than it is today. And it's our time to shine. It's the time for for Chambers to really provide that non-involvement. value where where members don't need to say to you anymore, I don't have time to participate in your in your programs or in your events. because the value of the chamber is not around your programs and events. It's around the impact you make in your community. And I think that the the time is now for us to do that. So it's it's it's a stressful time. It's a financially challenging time for many. I understand that completely. We're not immune to the potential challenges as we move forward around membership retention and businesses going out of business and and all the rest of it. But I really do think that the chambers that figure out how to be action oriented and build those, that advocacy network and build their voice around value without involvement are going to come out of this even stronger than they've ever been.
34:29.186 Brandon Burton
I and I think it it takes some creativity to provide that value without involvement, but it's there. You know, just explore those options, listen and and take the action. So Chris, for those that are listening that would like to maybe follow up with you on things that you've presented here today in our discussion or about how you're doing things at the Vail Valley Partnership, what are the best ways for them to reach out and connect with you?
34:57.406 Chris Romer
The all of my contact information is listed on our website at Vail ValleyPartnership.com. Vail ValleyPartnership.com. and feel free to connect with me on email, phone, social, LinkedIn, any of those. I'm I'm more than happy to engage, to answer questions, to have a little talk or whatever the case. So Vail ValleyPartnership.com under our staff list has all my contact information.
35:25.08 Brandon Burton
That is perfect. And we will update that in the show notes. At again, that'll be found at Chamber Chat Podcast, Chamberchat Podcast dot com slash episode seventy-seven. So all the all your contact information will be there. And I will say just a little bit on a a personal side, you mentioned the social. If anyone's looking for a good laugh, see what Chris puts up on Facebook.
35:50.858 Chris Romer
I try to have some fun with it. Thanks, Brandon. I appreciate it.
35:53.794 Brandon Burton
That's right. Well, Chris, thank you again for spending time with us today. I really do appreciate it and I wish you and Vail Valley Partnership the best of luck with Chamber of the Year.
36:03.426 Chris Romer
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
36:06.432 Brandon Burton
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