Greater Gainesville Chamber 2020 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Eric Godet Sr.

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

Episode 82 — Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce 2020 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Eric Godet, Sr.
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Eric Godet, Sr.
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.242 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.
00:29.354 Brandon Burton
And now your host. He loves watching football at any level. 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. This is episode 82 of Chamber Chat Podcast, and is also our 11th interview in our 2020 Chamber of the Year. ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. And our guest today is Eric Godet. It's Eric Godet Sr. President and CEO of the Greater Gainesville Chamber in Florida. If you happen to be new to listening to Chamber Chat Podcast, I'd invite you to check out our Get Started page at ChamberChatPodcast.com/start. And there you can find some resources for some nondues revenue ideas as well as our free podcasting free chamber podcasting guides so you can get started with your own chamber podcast. Again, that's at ChamberChatPodcast.com slash start. So as I mentioned, our our guest today is Eric Godet of the Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce. And Eric was named the president and CEO of the Greater Gainesville Chamber in December of 2018. Under his leadership, the chamber continues its mission to facilitate economic opportunity. Business success and community progress for the Greater Gainesville region. Eric has served the community for many years. Prior to accepting the chamber position, he worked as vice president of organizational advancement for Haven Hospice. Eric was also founding member of RTI Surgical, working as a change agent within the operations, marketing, distribution, donor services, and communications departments. Eric has a long history of leadership within the chamber, having served as interim president and CEO, Chair of the Public Policy Committee, Chair of the Council of Economic Outreach, and Chair of the Board of Directors. I'm excited to get into my discussion today with Eric to learn more about how the Greater Gainesville Chamber is standing out to be considered as a Chamber of the Year finalist. We'll get
02:53.258 Brandon Burton
Into that discussion 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/cc for more information and to request your complimentary cost savings analysis from the experts at Swypit. The first twenty chambers to respond will qualify for free equipment to get set up. Again, visit ChamberChatPodcast.com/cc to start swiping with Swypit. All right, Eric, we are back. If you would please take a moment to say hello to the chamber champions out there that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
04:12.93 Eric Godet, Sr.
Well, Brandon, thank you so much for having me on the Chamber Chat. It is truly an honor. I will share something about myself. I was actually born in Nashville, Tennessee, but grew up in the Bahamas. My parents moved there when I was two years old. My dad and his family is from that area, and so we have family throughout the islands. It was truly an honor and a privilege growing up there. But when I was 14, I was shipped to boarding school up in Nashville, Tennessee. Up there in the mountains, not in Nashville, but in Sewanee, Tennessee, between Nashville and Chattanooga. Up there by the University of the South, it was the St Andrew's Sewanee Academy where I was at. And it was really an incredible place, totally different than the Bahamas, but still have many of my best friends that were from there and we stay in very close contact to this day.
05:05.462 Brandon Burton
Yeah, imagine the climate is very different from Tennessee and from the Bahamas. But where in the Bahamas did you grow up?
05:13.11 Eric Godet, Sr.
I grew up in Nassau. It's it was really neat. It's different than it is today, but there are tons of tourists and but we have family throughout. So many of what we call the family islands are our favorite. My favorite place was the Abacos, but since the hurricane last year we haven't been able to go back as frequently as we like, but you know it's great having family that close.
05:38.698 Brandon Burton
it's nice to have a good reason to go hang out in the Bahamas too. So can't complain about that. So let's let's take a moment and have you share with us a little bit more about the Greater Gainesville Chamber, kind of give us a better perspective where you're coming from with the size, location, budget, staff, just so we can all get get an idea of of kind of your background at the chamber as we get into our discussion.
06:05.026 Eric Godet, Sr.
Absolutely. The Greater Gainesville Chamber is located here in the wonderful city of Gainesville, Florida, which is in Alachua County. Our largest entity or engine, I would say, in our area would be the University of Florida. And we are centrally located within the county and surrounded by eight other municipalities, eight other cities. So eight other mayors, eight other groups have that input within us. We have a staff. Of 18 individuals. I would say we're majority women within our chamber. And probably about 50%, 50-50% in terms of diversity. We have African Americans, Hispanics, we have an Asian, you know, we have combination of a variety of ethnicities within there that tried to really represent our business community. We within that scope. Try to make sure that we're serving everyone. And so we call ourselves the Greater Gainesville Chamber because of the mere fact that we have focused in the past years on these outlying municipalities and we share with them we are greater because of them. Those other cities with all their unique Attractions that they bring to our community as an entity here in North Central Florida. One of the things I like to share with people, we currently have a budget about 1.2 million is what we work off per year. And we're a chamber that's 50-50 in terms of membership and investment. And so it's been really an ideal situation for us because we can work with our economic development alongside. Our chamber initiative and mission where they work seamlessly together. And for our county and a neighboring county, we are the economic development engine for that. And so it helps clear a lot of hurdles and makes things a lot easier by having that seamless transition and the work with our board. We currently have a board of about 46 individuals on there, and we're just so excited to be able to serve our local community.
08:24.642 Brandon Burton
That is great. A couple of those things that stood out to me just as you're talking about your staff and the different backgrounds and ethnicity and diversity is being able to have that synergy and get everybody to work together towards a common goal and interest, even with differences being there. And to see that carrying over, as you mentioned, having nine cities within your area that you account for in your geography of what the the Greater Gainesville covers and to have that synergy kind of refocused to really make the greater Gainesville area greater by work pulling everybody together and and working towards those common goals. So I think those great insights, whether or not you you realized it when you said it, they really stood out to me and resonated well with me. But let's look at the the Chamber of the Year finalist process. The I guess looking more specifically at the synopsis that were submitted with your application. Would you mind taking us through those highlights and kind of sharing those highlights with us?
09:31.598 Eric Godet, Sr.
Absolutely. I would gladly do it. So the first synopsis is transforming Greater Gainesville. we call that our TGG program, and with that it was a true community strategy with over a hundred and fifty stakeholders with meetings and research and it was designed to elevate our region's economy. We were very focused on how do we bring our community together to get a vision of what we would like to see our community look like. And overwhelmingly, people wanted us to transform our community, especially from an economic development standpoint. I share this because we have the University of Florida, which is the largest employer, then we have our region's probably largest VA that exists, probably between Florida, Georgia, going down to You know, the Virgin Islands and that kind of stuff, just one of the largest VAs in this area. And so you have that large government and state presence from a federal and state level. And those are wonderful attributes and great jobs, but we wanted to focus on more diversity of technology, manufacturing, and those kind of jobs. So we created what we called targeted industry clusters. And from this targeted sector analysis, we focused on advanced logistics, advanced materials, agriculture life science, humanities. We also, when I say humanities, it's with our human life sciences and software IT. Our focus with that is we knew if we hit those sectors, we would be bringing great quality jobs to our area that can really help individuals buy homes, take care of their families, and that level that quality of life. We're very excited by our Transforming Greater Gainesville initiative because it brought everyone in as a stakeholder. We got to focus on the attributes of each community in terms of how they can really help us. But more importantly, it did wonders for strengthening our communication, especially within the business community. And so it's through that communication we were able to really push this initiative. And the best thing about it is.
11:52.128 Eric Godet, Sr.
It just brought huge credibility to the chamber because we were so successful. When we looked back at it, we had a goal of three thousand five hundred jobs within those sectors that we wanted to make happen. And our results at the end of that period, we had already achieved over five thousand and twenty-one jobs in that area, with another two thousand two hundred and fifty in the pipeline within those sectors as we end it. What was really great about that, we wanted to have two hundred and fifty million in CapEx at that time. We achieved over 277 at that time in investment in the community. We wanted over a billion dollars in regional investment. And we achieved that and blew that out the water. And what really made a difference is in addition to those original 3,500 jobs we wanted in that sector, we had a total of over 12,627 jobs. And what really made up that factor were a lot of retail jobs that we didn't See coming and expect. And what was really exciting about that is because those were areas that many of our businesses considered weaknesses in our community, not having the supporting amenities and opportunities in the shopping and the stuff in our community. And we saw an explosion happen in our community at that time. So not only did we transform the number of jobs and the businesses that came to our area, we transformed the look. So if you go on certain streets like Arch Road, Newbury Road, the new The new retail outlets and stores and live work play communities have just blown up and soared. And it's incredible with big names throughout our nation that are now here, that weren't located here before, that really makes it so exciting and a place of pride for us to drive and take people through and show. And so for us, it was really one of those exciting moments of really not only transforming it from an economic standpoint in our community. but also from a physical standpoint that you can also see.
13:54.058 Brandon Burton
It's nice like you mentioned those retail jobs that came along with it that weren't necessarily expected. But I think sometimes those retail businesses have that that crystal ball to look into to see where that growth is gonna go. They used to say you could follow McDonald's and see where new franchises were opening up and then that's where the the trend of growth would go. I don't think that's the same with McDonald's today as it used to be, but some of these other retail businesses I think they have access to some of this data that that maybe we all need to tap into and see what is it they're looking at to see where the growth is going to be granted. Yeah, I d I'm not trying to to put aside the the hard work you guys are doing too to help stimulate that growth because that's very important what you guys are are working on. Well
14:41.58 Eric Godet, Sr.
Yeah. Go ahead. You bring up a good point. I was just gonna say that encouraged us to not only continue to reach out to the retailers and a lot of developers in there, but to create a stronger relationship where we exchange more information now with our large retailers and expanders and developers in these areas to let them see what we're seeing and they open up and share with us what they're seeing. And it just helps us protect. our region and strengthen our region and prepare for what's coming. You know, created dialogue which didn't exist before.
15:18.604 Brandon Burton
Yeah, no, that is great to tap into that resource. A lot of times we look at the the public private partnerships, but look at the the chamber to the you know, the retail sector partnerships too. That's a great insight. what is your your other synopsis that was submitted?
15:37.678 Eric Godet, Sr.
So our other synopsis was really a unique situation. And just to give a little background to this, it's one that's tied into public policy. We call it our power up public policy initiative that we had there. And to give a little history of what was going on, we had a lot of strong advocacy type issues and stuff that were out there. And we did a great job representing the business community. And sometimes we could probably be a little heavy-handed, maybe, you know, a little tough on some of our local city government folks or whatever. And we have really put out a strong initiative against them that was tied to one of our utility companies that's run by our city. The utility company itself does an incredible job. The concern was really the finances and the resources. How they were being spent and the continued raising of rates and taxes tied to this on the business community. And so we put out a huge documentation in terms of the facts and powering it up, sharing the information that was out there, getting everyone to understand and with a lot of data. And it really rubbed a lot of our city officials the wrong way. And to that point, it was so adversarial that when I came on board, I didn't even think some of them wanted to talk to me or even take the phone call or the meeting or whatever. And you know, it was one of those things I said, look, it is what it is. We're putting it to the voters, they're gonna decide. And that's it. That's the best form of home rule, letting the voters decide, you know, and why would we not work on other initiatives because of this? And with the dialogue and they I guess they realized I wasn't going away and I was gonna keep making We trying to build this relationship and talk to them. And I know it's not gonna happen in a vacuum, so they knew they couldn't shake me. And what I really found out are their initiatives and concerns that they wanted. And many of them tied in with what the business community needed and wanted also. And so when we look at education, our school system, we looked at what we call our I3, putting children first. It was our infrastructure on investment and initiative, their infrastructure investment initiative, which we call I3.
17:59.468 Eric Godet, Sr.
We had started out with a lot of other initiatives in there and whittle them down and we as a community decided on the Putting Children First Initiative. Our schools, the physical component were in need of much repair. We have incredible scores that were coming out that people are all excited about and grades and stuff and AP scores and what our students locally were doing. And academics is a big deal here, and a lot of these kids are, you know, children of professors at the university. So that's to be expected, but the facilities were lacking substantially. And so with that, we created this initiative that we took to the community, and we were also very supportive of a children's trust initiative that was going on at the same time. And with this, we really created a lot of dialogue and a lot of goodwill through the community and with the city and the county governments because there wasn't going to be a municipality that wasn't touched. There wasn't a family that wouldn't be touched, there wouldn't be a community that wouldn't be touched. we're a hit with our contractors and our building group here because they realized there's gonna be a lot of money on the table to build these things. And so which was so exciting to see the whole community and we wanted it to go to local contractors. And so it was really a great initiative, but what we watched is a whole transformation of trust, relationship, and growth that by working together we can accomplish so much more. And part of my conversations that I would have with our elected officials. during that adverse time was like there are so many things that we agree upon, so much more than what we disagree. Let's focus on taking care of those and we all win. And these other things, we'd be amazed how they take care of themselves. And so it was the beginning of a huge launch and a transformation. And it was one that happened so quickly that it was really stunning to even some of our board members. So we had one of our leaders on our board on our executive committee was We're having a retreat thing and he was really adamant, Well, I'm not buying that they're on board and they're they believe that we're working together. It's just so adversarial unless I hear the mayor come out and say himself what kind of
20:07.852 Eric Godet, Sr.
How would you feel if they gave us some money? Well, if they're giving us money, that would be a whole different story because they left and weren't members of the chamber anymore. I said, Well, not only have they both rejoined the chamber, but they're the biggest donors that we have in our newest initiative as we look forward to moving and identifying what sectors we need to focus on training our students for future jobs that's going on right now. And we before we even made that whole asking thing public, they had made the largest commitments and we had already received the money, you know, and one and then she's like, Okay, well then I changed my position.
20:44.554 Brandon Burton
That's right. Money talks. Yeah, it shows that support.
20:47.734 Eric Godet, Sr.
It does. And so for us, it was just a confirmation that we were doing the correct thing. We were making sure that we knew the best way to serve our business community was to have all hands on deck that impact the business community. Because if we have groups that are adversely impacting business in our community, I my focus was you're adversely impacting your tax base to do the things you want to do in the community. And that's why we work together. The more successful our businesses are and the rate of growth we're having. the more tax revenue to do what you need to do and help our community to grow and flourish.
21:25.166 Brandon Burton
That's right. I think probably one of those outcomes that maybe wasn't sketched out in the initial planning for power up public policy, but a beneficial outcome is I'm sure these city officials, elected officials are now willing to take your phone call and and probably even look forward to talking to you.
21:45.08 Eric Godet, Sr.
You're absolutely right. It's the amount of communication is amazing. the amount of text that I had, even this morning with the city manager and the county manager, the back and forth is amazing in our commissioners and it proved to be really fruitful during this challenge with COVID nineteen.
22:05.624 Brandon Burton
That's right. That's the way it should be at open communication. But Eric, I wanted to ask you, wha as being considered as a a chamber of the year finalists, a lot of the the chambers throughout the country can look to you as a as an example of the things that you're doing at your chamber, but personally, what do you feel makes the greater Gainesville chamber stand out? What are some things maybe that you're doing that other chambers might not be doing?
22:31.854 Eric Godet, Sr.
I think one of the things that we try to do is really focus on having a large impact in our community, really being essential to the engine or as a catalyst to make sure we're moving forward in the proper direction. And I believe all chambers desire to do this and are working to make that happen. But what we do is really drill down more. And look at to really anticipate what's happening, what changes out there. And with us, we want to focus on we're watching exponential growth happen in our community. Now we've seen this happening prior to COVID 19. We started this year, and it's probably one of the most successful years. I talked to our retailers, it can be. Anyone from an owner of a shoe store that's been around for 30 years to a tech company, they were having a record January, record February. They're on pace. It was amazing what was going on. And we saw as the chamber, we were on a record pace. We were listing a hundred new jobs per week happening in this community and dealing with a lot of focus coming in. So we saw this exponential growth happening. And we wanted to make sure that we're prepared for it. So we started working on three major goals that were tied around opportunity, talent, and place. And as we focused on our opportunity, we wanted to make sure how can we promote economic growth and diversification to create quality jobs for all of our residents and all skill levels. And we wanted to do this because we knew that by creating a stronger region. And better lives together, everyone can do well. We know that there's an abundance of resources because we watch what happened, everyone's aware of the transformation that's happened in our community, but how do we position? So that's where we started the focus where we've got the city and the county that made the large commitment to make sure we're looking at the skills needed and doing a study in terms of the jobs we need to have our students being prepared for in this community. We also wanted to look at how do we help.
24:51.542 Eric Godet, Sr.
Adults pivot because the jobs that were in existence before won't be here five years from now, we were thinking. Now we have to ramp that up as we reopen our area, you know, and restart that we have to accelerate that because the exponential growth has changed already. One of the biggest examples is talent, and we talk about talent. There was such demand for talent. We were at our lowest unemployment. But we wanted to make sure we wanted to attract and retain our skilled individuals so we can build a world-class workplace. One of our challenges before was really getting middle and senior level skilled individuals. Because of the university and Santa Fe College, we were bringing in a lot of entry-level folks that were incredible and make those and meet those needs. And so we started looking at a new approach and researching. What's the greatest percentage of people we see that move into our area and come back? There were people who had either lived here before or individuals who were alumni of the university and knew the area and were watching what's happening and were excited about what's happening. So for us, it was instead of taking a shotgun approach and using Monster and all these other groups that are out there, Indeed, et cetera, and maybe even spending a lot of money on a headhunter, we started partnering. With our business community, the University of Florida's Alumni Association, and we created an entity that we call StartupGNV. And it was startGNV. And through startGNV, we focused on really identifying individuals that met the skills for the openings that we had in these senior and mid-level management positions and targeting them. And we found out that to be extremely successful. And so we were pivoting. In that direction from a talent standpoint. When we looked at place, we wanted to create a more vibrant, attracted, and livable community for all of our current and future residents. Well, one of the things we've experienced recently is the advent of the live work play areas that are cropping up all over our community. And these are a hit with our startup companies, these are a hit with our tech, manufacturing, bio, and what's really neat is.
27:15.362 Eric Godet, Sr.
We realized we need to focus on ramping this up from a place standpoint. One of the things as we dug in, we found out that our county is one of the largest landowners in our city. And this has happened over decades of acquisitions. nothing recently, but it's still been there. And I talked to the city and the mayor, I'm like, Do you how much money's being off the tax rolls because it's, you know, with the county? We need to get this in private hands. And so there's a whole plan and study and group to come and how to change that and really be a catalyst to enhance what's already happening organically. And so for us it's being prepared for exponential growth that we know that's coming, but we have to lay the foundation in place and keep our community abreast and communicating with them on how do we prepare and how do we in a safe, smart, step by step Process, build our way out of this COVID-19 experience and get back on the path that we were prior to it.
28:21.442 Brandon Burton
That's right. So that kind of goes along with my my next question. You talked about the that exponential growth and the hundred jobs a week before, you know, pre COVID nineteen. what are some of your plans as far as leading in the recovery of the economic impact from from COVID nineteen? how do you see that unfolding?
28:41.678 Eric Godet, Sr.
Well, that's a really great question, Brandon. And what we did is when COVID nineteen first happened, we were at the forefront in sharing the CISA guidelines from the federal government on the essential businesses. And so we created with our county a process on how individuals can send applications through our county website and get reviewed as a essential business and you know how does that interpret based on the federal guidelines and what's been initiated by our state. And the final authority came down to our local county. And I think in the first week we had over like 300 that we helped push through that system. Every week there was another initiative and the next week we were focusing on getting through the SBA program, all of our groups tied in and applications and stuff filed and really making sure we were present. And we just want to continue the dialogue and communication. As we move out of this, we've been feeding the information to our local county and city officials on how to make sure we are pushing all the latest phases information to our county and city officials. And through leading that, one of the first things I shared with them was letting them know that hey. We have a call coming this afternoon from our governor, because I got a message from his office, you know, and then we got it through our Florida chamber to let them know. Being the conduit of information and dialogue, as soon as the president's report came out on the phases, making sure that we're at the table sharing that with them. As soon as the governor through the state making sure we're there. And so from that, being that conduit of information and that facilitator of bringing everyone together. And more importantly, on our website, sharing information and creating different templates and tables and pages, you know, a business component with COVID-19, together, what's happening in the community, which restaurants are open and being served, you know, EAT GNV, you know, it's all of these things, FEED GNV, working and bringing our restaurant together to feed our homeless.
30:51.532 Eric Godet, Sr.
Being at the forefront of all these initiatives and apart and bringing the community together and recognizing those wonderful things that are happening, we're really using best practices to share with each industry group. So I'll give you an example. Some of our restaurants here have taken this opportunity to totally redo their place. They pulled up the carpet, they've removed stuff out of off the walls, they cleared up the debris and clutter. Many some of them have even removed the booths so that they can have more table space in between to create the distance and have it there and there. Add extra areas so that takeout can take out. We've watched some groups that barely did any takeout. If they did, that's the majority of their business. They're doing more in takeout than they were doing with sit-down. And so they're re-looking at how they're gonna continue to operate. You know, so it's we're trying to bring best practices and thinking ahead and encouraging Encouraging our community to pivot. We cannot do things the way we were historically. Another example would be a large multinational company like nationwide that nationally recognized that 98% of their workforce was working from home. And the level of production they were getting from the people working at home were better than what they had in their office. So why would you spend more money to keep these huge campuses and huge buildings and have people travel daily? When you're getting better production if they're at home. They pivoted. And a couple of weeks ago, one of their attorneys was telling me that, hey, they got a call that they won't be going back to the office. Things are changing. They're, you know, everyone still has their job. That's not a problem. But they're gonna close down 16 locations across the country and just keep the headquarters, I think, in Columbus and another one in Des Moines. And that's a huge savings for them. But the beautiful thing is they made this pivot and increased production. So I just think these are the kind of things that you know we have to look at as communities and be prepared, like those two examples, to pivot.
32:58.158 Brandon Burton
Yeah, it it's interesting, the whole environment of the workforce, the office space, it was all set up pre-technology era, you know, where we didn't have internet necessarily when the traditional office space was set up, the cubicles and, you know, offices and things. And it takes something like this, like a a global pandemic, to take a a look outside the box and say, you know what, there may be other ways, maybe even better ways to accomplish the same goals. w with a slight different, you know, restructure of how things look. So I think that nationwide example is very interesting, very insightful.
33:37.506 Eric Godet, Sr.
Yeah, it's one of those things. Why would you pay more more money for less production?
33:42.722 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. so Eric, as as we get towards the end of this and and starting to wrap things up, I wanted to ask you if there's you know one action item, one piece of advice that you could share with the the chamber champions out there that are listening to help them take their chamber up to the next level.
34:07.39 Eric Godet, Sr.
Say the most important thing is really listening, listening to your community and truly hearing what they're saying. And for me, it was really an opportune moment when I first came in. Because I don't think too many people wanted to hear from me or whatever, it gave me an opportunity to hear from them or what was on there.
34:34.323 Brandon Burton
Whether you want to or not, right? Yeah.
34:37.76 Eric Godet, Sr.
And listening to everyone, not just the largest, not just the most influential individuals in the community, but you know, the smaller places and the less influential businesses, the less the communities that are smaller in in number, and making sure they understand that you truly care and that you're there for them. And once that trust is earned, it is amazing. what information they will share to help you make your job as a chamber so much easier to be successful. It's kinda like, help me help you. I don't know the challenges you have. I need you to share them with me so that you know our team can think and work and come up with solutions on how we can help and be of assistance. And I think the more seamless your organization is, the better. We have an advantage by having our economic development group inside our chamber and we work hand in hand. And with you know the revenues being about the same from each, it helps so we can prioritize together and move in a seamless manner. And I think that's the best thing. First, I would say listen, find out what the thoughts are, concerns and issues, because by listening you make an impact by individuals knowing that you care and you care about their perception, their thoughts, and being diligent to follow up and keep that communication in place as you deliver on that.
36:21.918 Brandon Burton
I love that. Not just listening, but really showing that you care and and completing that communication with the follow-up. I think that's something that gets missed very often. So I appreciate you sharing that. So Eric, one question I I'd like to ask everyone that I have on on Chamber Chat Podcast is as we look to the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose, how do you see that going forward?
36:49.292 Eric Godet, Sr.
I really believe and I've always had that chambers were very influential and very critical to a community. And I didn't recognize this until it was probably about five years ago. I was at a rotary meeting, and they had an individual from Germany that came and spoke to the chamber. And I can't remember what town it was in Germany, but he shared that every business. Has the first joined the chamber before they, you know, can register with the town. And I was like, wow, that's wow, amazing. And I didn't understand why. And I was chatting with him afterwards, and it was because he was saying, look, it's so important that we're on the same page and we create a unified front when we work with our communities, that it's been the best thing in their community and their type of growth. And I recognize If we took the approach that every business is a chamber member, we have financial chamber members, non-financial chamber members, but they're all members because we're out there advocating for them and on their behalf. And we will help any of them. And the beautiful thing about it is that approach helps us all win. And so our VP of membership, he says here, hey, there are Current chamber members that are financial, and there are future chamber members that are financial. And for us, it's one of those things that we continue to focus on showing the value that we bring to our community every day. We've gotten called, even in the midst of this crisis, COVID-19, of people wanting to join our chamber because of the information we've been putting out and sharing. And they all say, I didn't know the chamber did this. I didn't know the chamber did that. I didn't vote, you know. And so for us, I think, especially in this rebuilding phase, as we look at it as a nation, I think it's more important. And so my dialogue with our civic leaders is so important to make sure that they understand the concerns and have a voice as a conduit and make sure I can put them in plu in touch with the members that can share exactly what they're feeling and let them know that we are here truly representing and
39:15.608 Eric Godet, Sr.
Like I tell the city manager, the more successful we are as the business community, the more successful you will be to achieve all those goals and transform our community that you would like to grow.
39:28.658 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. Well, Eric, I wanted to thank you for spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, sharing your your leadership and insight with us. I think you've truly brought a lot of value. And I'd like to give you an opportunity for to put out your contact information in case there's listeners that would like to get in contact with you about how you're doing things at the Greater Gainesville Chamber or just to continue this conversation offline. what would be the best way Or best ways for them to reach out and connect with you.
40:01.774 Eric Godet, Sr.
Absolutely. Well, I can I'll give you my email address. That is egodet@gainesvillechamber.com. And you can reach me at three five two three three four seven one zero zero. That's three five two three three four seven one zero zero. Email again E G O D E T at Gainesville Chamber dot com.
40:39.106 Brandon Burton
That is perfect. I will get that updated in the show notes for this episode as well. So if somebody's driving or hopefully they've got somewhere to be driving to by the time they hear this, but that show notes page will be found at chamber chatpodcast.com slash episode eighty two and we'll have all that in there. But again, Eric again, thank you so much for for sharing your insights with us. I truly do appreciate it, and I wish you and your chamber the best of luck with the The Chamber of the Year.
41:09.838 Eric Godet, Sr.
Thank you so much, Brandon. We are truly honored to be considered a premise.
41:15.19 Brandon Burton
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