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Simplification in the Chamber Space with Cindy Williams

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Brandon Burton (00:01.262)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is Cindy Williams, CEO of the Cartersville-Bartow County Chamber of Commerce, where she works every day to build a stronger business community. With more than 20 years of chamber leadership experience, Cindy’s passionate about bringing people together to solve problems.

Help local businesses, develop future leaders, and strengthen the workforce. Her collaborative approach has helped create meaningful partnerships and opportunities that support long-term economic growth throughout Bartow County. Cindy is a Georgia certified chamber executive, a graduate of Leadership Georgia, the Institute for Organization Management, and the Georgia Academy for Economic Development. She’s also served in leadership roles across the state, including as past chair of the Georgia Association of Chamber Executives.

Cindy, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Cindy Williams (01:15.616)
Okay. Well thank you, Brandon. What an honor to be asked to be on your podcast.

It’s great to be in the company of many other chamber executives. And as I’ve listened to a few of your other other episodes, I find that it’s quite helpful, of course, to listen to what others are doing and to get inspiration within the industry. So I’m sure we all, I speak on behalf of all of us in the industry. Thank you for what you’re doing to put good content out there for us to lean on each other in a new way and learn from each other. Yeah, so I grew up in North Georgia and really my background is marketing.

That’s what I studied marketing specifically in the business space. But like so many others, never ever dreamed I’d end up in the chamber world because who knew what that was, you know, when you’re in college. But landed my first job also in the northeastern part of Georgia, and then just really fell in love with it. And it’s really been my entire career. Did a few internships and things otherwise to gain some like event experience and different things. But something fun about me is chamber.

Work is all I have ever done for a professional career. So 20 years now doing that, and it’s all I’ve ever known from two different chambers.

Brandon Burton (02:29.74)
I’m always curious. Out of college to entering the chamber world, how did that transition happen? How did the opportunity present itself?

Cindy Williams (02:37.439)
Yeah, so I undergrad as I said was marketing. I did have an MBA and when I started doing my job search back closer to I’d moved back in with my parents, you know, because I didn’t have a job lined up as soon as I graduated. And my dad as I’m just exploring, really not even looking in the same area because to me success looked like going somewhere else, right? It was not gonna be next to my hometown. But at that time in that region, there were three chamber positions that were open and my

Dad came home one day, he had been talking to someone out in the community and said she should think about you know the chamber world. So I asked the question, what do they do? and looked into it. And it was honestly the event side of chamber that intrigued me because I always thought I would do event marketing. So, like so many, that’s what I saw and that’s what I knew of Chamber. But then as I applied and the one position, you know, it was offered to me, I realized how fun is it that I get to use all aspects of my business degree.

not just marketing, which was certainly a big piece of it in the community that I was in because they were heavy tourism. And so I think that’s probably why they selected me for that role because of the tourism marketing piece. But as my career has gone on and of course transitioned to Cartersville and Bartow County, I do honestly love that all aspects of business I get to dabble in in some way.

Brandon Burton (03:59.867)
Yeah, no, that’s great. I know there’s a lot of chambers out there thinking, can we get rid of all the events? And you’re like, Yes, pretty well. That’s right. That’s right. So before we dive into the topic though, tell us a little bit more about the Cartersville Bartow County Chamber to help give some perspective, the size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of set up the conversation.

Cindy Williams (04:05.069)
I’m gonna help with that. That’s what we’re gonna talk about today.

Cindy Williams (04:22.891)
Yeah, perfect. So our community we serve the entirety of Bartow County, which is in the northwest part of Georgia. And so it’s about a hundred and twenty thousand in population as far as community size. That translates to us. We just surpassed the 1,000 member mark. So we just had a big celebration. Yeah, thank you. We’re super excited about that. revenue, we’re just over, or budget size, just over a million dollars each year. And so staff is six.

Brandon Burton (04:40.506)
Congratulations. Yeah.

Cindy Williams (04:52.815)
Total of six individuals, but that basically means that each department has one person. So, you know, while we are fortunate, I know there are many chambers out there who would love to have six. we do still, I I would say, you know, we have to do a lot with a little since we only have currently just just one person running each sector of our chambers. So yeah, that’s us.

Brandon Burton (05:14.17)
Yeah, very good. That definitely does help to get us ready for our discussion today. And and like you said, having six staff. you know, some listening might be super jealous to be able to have six staff and and yet you still feel like you’re understaffed because that’s just the nature of chamber work, right? There’s always the bigger, more auditious thing to go after. So very good. Well today we’re gonna focus our conversation around how things can be simplified.

Cindy Williams (05:24.877)
Yeah.

Cindy Williams (05:31.691)
That’s right. It’s so true. That’s right.

Brandon Burton (05:42.725)
Within the chamber space, which I think for those listening, their ears are probably perking up because they would love to have things maybe just slow down a step and be a little bit more simple to manage everything. So I’m excited to dive into this conversation as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Cindy, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today we’re talking about simplification in the chamber space. So

I’m sure there’s been a know several sources, things that have come across your your desk, your plate, your mind space to make this topic be something that stands out to you, where you’re like, you know what, and let’s pay attention to this, let’s see what lessons there are to learn here. What are some of those key things that are standing out to you when it comes to simplifying things in the chamber space?

Cindy Williams (06:34.338)
Yeah.

Well, I’ll start with you’re exactly right that I d I’ve had resources, right? I’ve I’ve read up on this, I’ve learned on this, and and really all that we talk about today is gonna be based on a book that I read. It’s called Why Simple Wins, and it’s by Lisa Bodell. So that way, anybody listening, I highly encourage check out the book. If you like what you hear today, it’s gonna give you really a lot of resources in that book. But it I’d asked for that book for Christmas one year because I’m a person that just genuinely

Loves self development, professional development, learning, and I’ve learned through my career that some of the best ideas and practices that put into place come from my reading of this kind of content. And so when I read the book, basically it so resonated with me as I know it will for many in that we live in a world of addition, right? And so we’re all we’re constantly stressed for time, and how do we fit everything into our busy schedules? And what happens is we keep

Adding to our plate. And we think that’s glorious and we think that’s wonderful and it makes us look like heroes and we’re that’s right, productivity and we’re multitasking and we’re doing all the things. But the way the author presents it is there is something beautiful about subtraction, right? And it is so true that at the end of the day, when you think about subtracting things from your schedule, it allows you to then focus on the things that matter, to have joy in the work that you’re doing.

Brandon Burton (07:40.57)
Productivity, right? Yeah.

Cindy Williams (08:04.959)
To pursue the activities that matter the most to you and support the mission of the organization. So there’s a lot of personal satisfaction. And really, when you even when you say productivity, productivity can go up because you’re not so bombarded and inundated with the 500 million things that are keeping you from doing what really matters, right? So genuinely, probably so far you’re like, yes, yes, Cindy, that’s what everybody says, and I’ve heard these things before. But I can

Say that the toolkit and resources that are provided within the book genuinely helped me to start making changes in that regard. And so what it asks you to do is really take an inventory and ask the right questions: what are you doing that is consuming the most time? Just period. What tasks are you doing that are consuming the most time? And there is a full diagnostic chart that is provided that you can go through to identify.

The areas of the business, right, that seem to be occupying a lot of time or not have simplicity in their processes. And that will help you get a framework of is it our communications where we are complex and we’re adding more things to that than really need to be? Is it perhaps in our strategy? Is it in our HR practices? Because even though I know people would say we don’t even have, you know, an HR department, your chamber exec is typically, you know, HR.

As well as legal, as well as all the things. So, yes, while the book takes the approach of any business, it’s not specific to chambers, you can certainly dial that down just a bit. So, I love the process is that it’ll ask you, What are you currently doing? And does that add value? And then from there, you can look and say, Okay, what could we do? How could we either simplify this process? How could we cut this process, or perhaps even

Even outsource the process. There’s a normal, a lot of different ways, of course, that you can go about that. So that’s kind of the framework of how it starts. And I’ll add this, Brandon, that what we did, I read the book myself. I was inspired, and so we took a day with our team after it was not necessary for them to read the entirety of it. But I took a day and we, you know, got somebody to run the office, we sat down and we went through the entirety of the questions.

Cindy Williams (10:34.445)
Right. And said again, each person from their own framework was able to say what types of things are occupying the majority of my time, what types of things do I not enjoy doing, right? Because in especially in smaller chambers, we are agile enough that we can sort of move things around to somebody who maybe their strength is more in that area, such that that adds to productivity and doesn’t overly complicate the processes. And yeah, we went through that.

And we had conversation and dialogue once everybody had a moment to really reflect and think about what this looks like. And then we talked about each of those areas. So it was open-ended. Put anything down. It doesn’t even matter if it seems super far-fetched. Just write it down and then let’s talk about it. Because with a team that sees it from all different angles, it was amazing what people said, either we don’t even need why are you doing that? I didn’t even know you were doing that. Why are you doing that? You don’t even need to do that. Or, my goodness, I’m all

Brandon Burton (11:31.672)
I’m doing that too. Yeah.

Cindy Williams (11:32.927)
Yes, that’s the other thing. Or I why are you doing that? Because I’m doing that. Or we’re going two different ways. We could, you know, pull those together. So so many cool areas of opportunity by going through that process.

Brandon Burton (11:46.427)
So much value there. I think about so recently I did a presentation about creating a chamber flywheel. And one of the things that we talked about, so I likened it to like when you pull the string on a lawnmower, right? There’s a flywheel in that, that that effort should get that lawnmower started. And then there’s a system within there that keeps it running, right? So so many things that we do at the chamber are that first action of pulling that string.

And when you think about how many of those actions are just wearing you out, that are just wearing out your staff, you’re not getting the return on that effort that you’re putting in there. And it’s like when it when it’s not a well-tuned system and you just keep pulling that string over and over and over again, it just wears you out. But if you have a system that goes along with that effort that you’re putting in, then i it should amplify. You know, whatever you’re doing should be amplified through.

Cindy Williams (12:40.663)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (12:44.246)
systems, which I’m a a huge proponent of integrating systems, which you may touch on that as well as part of this with figuring out what needs to be subtracted and simplified. So I love that you got your team together. You go through these questions. You’re able to see, yep, why are you even doing that? I’m doing that too. Let’s simplify like that alone has a ton of value just right away in that I’m gonna say brainstorming. That’s probably not the right word, but

Cindy Williams (12:48.673)
Yes.

Cindy Williams (12:57.911)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cindy Williams (13:06.253)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (13:11.726)
Just getting in the same room and talking through all those questions. what’s kind of the next iteration after getting the team in the room together?

Cindy Williams (13:20.79)
Yeah.

Yeah, so what we did was we formulated our list, right? Some things that we could easily just make decisions on or some things we needed to go back and look at. And I I really if if you’re good with it, let’s go ahead and dig into like what some of those things were, right? Because I think this will resonate with chamber folks too. So one example was at the time our membership director what what was sucking up the majority of her time, right, was ribbon cuttings because we’re in a growing community. You heard the size already, and she said, by the time I go

Early to the ribbon cutting, we celebrate with the business. Ours were kind of over the lunch to hour, just so you know, people could more easily get there. And then she stays till the end. She’s like, I and we’re doing two at least a week, if not more, in some cases, trying to limit them to two. But she said, I’m spending so much time doing that, and then going back to the business to take their photo. I mean, it’s genuinely, and you heard me say she’s a department of one, and so that’s it. All the time that she’s dedicating to that is taken away from.

All the other tasks of recruiting members and retaining members, you know, otherwise. So we said, okay, let’s think about this. How could we make that time like what would what processes or what things could we put in place to help with that? So the first thing we said is, why what about a joint ribbon cutting, right? And I don’t maybe others are already doing this and we were just like behind the eight ball or something, but we knew that we had a lot of home based businesses, right, that didn’t have a location that they could host their ribbon.

Cutting. We also felt like people take advantage of a ribbon cutting because in our case there was no additional fee to do that. You just it was included with your membership. So, side note, my first thing was let’s start charging because that way if people don’t want it, then you know they they’re not gonna pay for it. But if it’s given and they just say, sure, I’ll do it because it’s free, why not? But my board didn’t that’s right, that’s right. I will say my board didn’t quite go for that.

Brandon Burton (15:12.706)
And extra busy work. Yeah.

Cindy Williams (15:18.761)
And so we haven’t gotten there yet. They said, No, no, we’re still gonna contend. I said, Okay, pair and no I still think you should recommend it to your board, see what they say. Yours may be different than mine. But

Brandon Burton (15:23.022)
Good idea though.

Cindy Williams (15:30.698)
If not that, then we realized we do have businesses that quite candidly they don’t want to host a party. They don’t want to provide the food and beverage. They don’t want to pull together. I mean, we were genuinely do the guest list, but they also invite their people. They just want the photo, right? Like they just want the social media love. This is what we figured out. And so we offered two different alternatives to what we call our traditional ribbon cutting, which is what we were doing with everyone previously. The first is a joint ribbon cutting, such that every couple of months,

Months we batch, you know, and it doesn’t have to be a home-based business, but we oftentimes find that it is somebody who doesn’t have brick and mortar in our community. And we go around the room and they have a little table set up and they talk about their business, and we have a backdrop, and everybody has their moment to cut the ribbon and snap their photo. And right there, we have six to eight ribbon cuttings that would have been probably 12 to 16 hours worth of time that are condensed to about two hours worth of time. So brilliant. The other thing that we offer

Was you know just a self-led ribbon cutting, not hasn’t quite been as popular, but it’s available to where if you don’t want to have your ribbon cutting at the times that we set, you know, for our ambassadors to show up, then you can just come and get the ribbon and scissors, get your staff a photo. We’ll still post it, we’ll still submit it to the newspaper. But chambers staff doesn’t even have to be there. You just do it on your own time and send us this stuff. And honestly, we’ve had a few people take advantage of that because again, they did not.

care about the party, they just wanted the media attention. So that was a good example of time saving and good for the customer, good for the member to give them options.

Brandon Burton (17:13.944)
I love that there’s you know multiple ways to get to that simplification with that example with the ribbon cutting. personally I like the idea of paying for it. I mean it doesn’t even have to be a big fee. It could be very minimal, but you just you pay it if you wanna if you want the the service. but the the idea of of batching and having that group ribbon cutting, because also you think of the time of all the people that are taking time out of their day to come to the ribbon cuttings, and if they can come and be there for eight businesses all at once.

Cindy Williams (17:23.767)
Did you? I did you? Yeah.

Brandon Burton (17:43.701)
and get to know them all like that’s a huge savings for them. I imagine you probably get better turnout for rhythm cuttings when you can leverage it that way. So a lot of value in that simplification step. Were were there other examples that came out through your this discussion with your staff?

Cindy Williams (17:56.275)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that’s a good example of programmatically something that changed, right? internally, communications is always a big one, and I think this would resonate with anyone, right? Is our simplification in our communications. And so we looked at well and reporting, so I’ll kind of tag those hand in hand. one individual that she runs a lot of reports for actually for our CPA, so for our monthly reporting, she would

Was running reports, exporting to Excel, sorting, pulling this, doing that, all the things. I mean, I said, How much time is that taking you each month to pull that one report? And she’s like, It probably takes about an hour to do all of the things and finagle it to get it, you know, to where it needs to be. Simultaneously, our business operations manager was also running some reports, and so going to the CPA, she just had like three and four reports, and yes, there was some overlap and all that, but again, sitting down and talking.

About the process when our digital media director, which sounds weird, but she’s very techie, so she was pulling some of the reports. That was her, like, this is just like eating up a ton of my time. And she’s she literally said in the meeting, I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it, but this is what came to mind. Like, I I know we still we just have to run the reports, right? Well, once we started talking about it, we realized our database system, there is a single report that you can press a button that would do all the things that both employees were doing.

Cindy Williams (19:33.536)
And when we send it to our CPA, like, are we crazy? Or would this one report that requires us to do absolutely nothing except run the report would work for what she needs? And she’s like, Yes. And then it’s easier for her, and there’s less mistakes because again, she’s not pulling from multiple resources. So I go back to so much of it is I really think dedicating the time to the conversation just to pull out those things that may even

Brandon Burton (19:51.044)
Yeah.

Cindy Williams (20:03.459)
even seem wild at like there’s no way we could ever do anything about this. But I guarantee you when you put heads together from your team, you’ll get some really cool ideas of like, yeah, there’s a better way.

Brandon Burton (20:14.756)
Yeah, I love that the answer is right there. And you just push a button and you get what you need. As you’re describing it all to me, I’m thinking, you know, AI can do this. AI, AI can, you know, pull all those reports in like 30 seconds. And you could probably even set it up with a timer. So, you know, the same date every month, the report’s delivered and you get you know everything you’re looking for. But so much to leverage, you know, when you think when you add AI into the equation of simplification, it opens up a ton of opportunities.

Cindy Williams (20:18.184)
Yes yes

Cindy Williams (20:23.658)
Yeah.

That’s right.

Cindy Williams (20:35.253)
So true. So true. Yeah.

Cindy Williams (20:41.889)
That’s right.

Which admittedly when we started this process, I’m not saying AI didn’t exist, but it was prior to really that being adopted, and we’re still, you know, learning how to adopt and things to do as well. But yes, it’ll be it will be, has been game changer in a lot of ways, you know. But I think also you have to be careful with those things because technology, we think it always makes things easier, but those are the things you really have to pause and say, does it does it really make it easier? Like especially with the human element of crafting and

Brandon Burton (20:48.75)
Early. Yeah.

Cindy Williams (21:12.955)
Yes, the answer is a hundred percent yes in many, many, many cases. But you also have to be careful with technology that it’s not overly complicating and you’re adding more human time to polish and craft and you know, do that sort of thing besides just making it your life easier and more streamlined.

Brandon Burton (21:27.812)
Yeah. Yep. So even for the brainstorming aspect, like you got your team together, so much value in getting them together and and see the holes and see the overlap. But I’m curious it have you taken that and brainstormed it into to AI and be like, here’s certain systems, here’s where we’re seeing some shortcomings, or we like to simplify this process just to see what suggestions are that are there.

Cindy Williams (21:52.428)
Ooh no, but that’s a great idea. That is a great idea and something that we absolutely need to do. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:01.06)
I think early on with AI I was like, you’ve got to be really careful, right? Because you didn’t know like it would hallucinate a lot. And now I think it it’s getting so much better that it’ll even just for the the ideation of processes and so forth can really be helpful. So very cool.

Cindy Williams (22:05.291)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cindy Williams (22:14.443)
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. And I you know, going back a little bit to that communication piece, s it’s very some very, very simple things that we we actually killed our staff meeting. And some people may be like, You did what? But when we discuss I know, right.

Brandon Burton (22:32.056)
Yeah.

Cindy Williams (22:33.803)
Like there’s probably books out there that would say don’t kill your staff meeting, you know. But we we met once a week and it was on Monday mornings. And again, when it when people are honest and transparent and leadership says through the process, you need to say what you want to say. Nothing is off the table. I give you permission, whether it’s about me, the organization, this is all about a new culture for us. And so yeah, somebody said, Yeah, staff meetings are horrible. Like we spend half the time just chit-chatting from the weekend.

Brandon Burton (22:37.22)
Great.

Cindy Williams (23:03.747)
You know, I’m ready to go on a Monday morning. Like, I want to get some stuff done. So, what we did, we killed the staff meeting, and now we have team huddles. So, we don’t want to lose that connectivity to who’s doing what and what’s happening in the organization. But when somebody has an update on a project, let’s say, or introducing a project, we’ll do a huddle. We usually put it on the calendar for 15 minutes. It sometimes can go a little bit over, but those are fast and they’re focused, right? And it just is it pops up when it pops up, it’s not like you have a stand.

Meeting that you may have nothing to talk about. We went to staff doing some general reporting, basically in the membership and event space that requires a little bit more regular communication. They just send out like a brief report to the staff. You know, here’s what’s going on, so we don’t stay out of the loop of that. And we also introduced, I mean, we had Teams, but we probably weren’t using Microsoft Teams, but we probably weren’t using it to its max capacity. So we kind of trained on, look, if you just have a quick something,

Just put it in teams and be done. You know, that’s one less email to process and don’t feel obligated to reply. Thank you to every email. It’s just more emails to consume, right? Don’t go back and forth. Just God, you know, we know, especially internally, you don’t have to acknowledge every email or say thank you to every email. Permission to not reply.

Brandon Burton (24:20.708)
Yeah.

That’s right. Yeah, that that’s a a pet peeve, even in a text message or something, it’s like you give a reply, someone is seeking answer, you give a reply, and then it’s the thank you or the thumbs up and the extra and meanwhile your phone’s going crazy with all these other things. It’s like just eliminate the extra, you know, that that tail end of things. so yeah, getting rid of the the team meeting and I love the the idea of using technology, doing the team the the huddles, and there’s nothing to say that if

Cindy Williams (24:36.301)
Right.

That’s right.

Brandon Burton (24:52.992)
something bigger comes up and you need to gather the team, you can still do it. It just doesn’t have to be every Monday morning, right? So

Cindy Williams (24:59.051)
That’s right. That’s right.

Brandon Burton (25:01.954)
Are there any other valuable lessons that you got out of the the process of of simplifying?

Cindy Williams (25:08.543)
Yeah, I mean I think

We there were other examples, right, of things that we transitioned. the the major kind of overarching thing I would say, because you know, we started out talking about events and how we do so many events and and you know, the you do have to be a little bit bold. Some of the examples that I’ve given today are very internal to the organization. Those are quite candidly, I understand, a little bit easier because they’re not affecting anyone else, right? It’s just internally and we all agree and we all give the thumbs up and we’re ready to go. When it comes to programs.

Programs and events of the organization. Yes, understand some of those things are a little bit more difficult. There might be some different layers of governance and depending on how their chamber is structured, you know, what you have to go through. But I would say it takes courage and it takes boldness. And truly, if you keep in mind that doing less of what is just keeping you air quotes busy, then you can do more of what matters. And I know that’s a message we hear in Chamber of Professional Development all the time.

But it is true and it applies to programs and events as well. We we quick example was our youth leadership program. It was I think it was seven months in totality, seven or eight months, full day with the students. Our survey results were saying they were just bored to death for most of the time. Like they they felt like they were just sitting in classroom. So we from that we took a hard look. We didn’t kill the program, right? It’s not always you have to kill the program.

But we shortened the length. We made it five months instead of seven. We do half days instead of full days. And we’re winning. Like they love it. We’re able to occupy their brains. You know, we’re doing some really cool things. We’re not just filling dead space or whatever. And and it gave time back to staff coordinating the program, which in this case really was more of a byproduct, but it’s a win-win-win for everybody that’s involved. So, this yes, this process can really make you.

Cindy Williams (27:11.087)
You think about your programs and events as well. And I I truly encourage, you’ve got to measure those. Are they providing value? Are people and are people showing up? Because if they’re not, they’re not providing value. And if five people or ten people are showing up and that’s you know two percent of your membership, then you probably want to rethink that as well and give yourself space to innovate with new things.

Brandon Burton (27:34.683)
Somewhere in the history of mankind, I guess somebody thought we need to exchange time to learn things. Like you talk about this l this youth leadership program. And it’s like you gotta get them in a classroom, you’ve got to spend so much time, and we overlook, you know, the value, the impact that’s being delivered in that time. And oftentimes you can deliver that in a fraction of the time and then have them apply it, right? Get out and they’re gonna learn so much more as they’re getting out there and applying it. So

Cindy Williams (27:46.653)
Yeah.

Cindy Williams (28:01.485)
So much more.

Brandon Burton (28:03.724)
Love that example. well Cindy, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask you, what kind of tip or action item might you leave for the listener who’s trying to take their chamber up to the next level?

Cindy Williams (28:05.111)
Yeah.

Cindy Williams (28:18.027)
Yep. Yeah. I’m a I’m a I’m a firm believer in this subtraction method that it will go a long way. It’s not always about more. That leads to burnout, that leads to doing things that are not adding value to the organization. And so what I would say in this case is first and foremost buy the book or

Look it up again, it’s Why Simple Wins by Lisa Bodell. there’s some great videos online and stuff too. If you just wanna, you know, get an overarching look at what that looks like. But again, I remind folks there’s a there are tools and resources. There’s a toolkit actually provided within the content that can lead you in that space. And I just say pull the team together, just do it, just take a half, you don’t even have to be a full day, just just take it could literally probably be in a staff meeting. There are some short and sweet ways to get started.

and then you will be amazed at the areas that are very complex in your organization that are bogging people down and causing them strain. or you yourself. I mean this applies to all of us and yeah, I just I I say go for it.

Brandon Burton (29:23.62)
I’m even thinking as you give that explanation that even putting it out maybe a week ahead of time and say, Hey, we’re gonna have a discussion about this, think about it during the week and then when we get together as a staff, the the ideas are flown, right?

Cindy Williams (29:33.793)
Yes.

Absolutely, yes.

Brandon Burton (29:39.31)
Well, Cindy, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers. So I’ll ask you, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Cindy Williams (29:48.739)
Yeah.

Get excited about it, and I know different chambers do different things, if you will. We all have a general mission to serve business, but that looks and feels very different. I’m excited about it because I tr what I see is if chambers of commerce are really listening to the conversations in their community, listening for pain points of their businesses, you know, that what what’s happening, the world of business is always evolving. Like, and so if we

We evolve with them and we’re always coming up with solutions to problems or challenges that the business owner is either saying or not saying. That’s a big part of it. What are they not saying that you hear you hear that and you say, I can solve that for them? They don’t, they’re not even asking me to do it, but I can do that. And I think it’s exciting because as long as we continue to innovate, make space for innovation in our organization to answer those challenges. I think the future of chambers is bright, but I do think.

That we have to stop, and events is kind of the number one. We have to stop doing things just for the sake of doing them, and we have to stop just putting on hundreds of events and programs if that’s not truly what the community needs. Do some of that, I’m not saying kill all of them, do what needs to be done, but make sure everything in that benefits list is adding true value to the business community.

Brandon Burton (31:14.862)
Love that. Love it. well Cindy, before I let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you. Where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect?

Cindy Williams (31:27.052)
Yeah.

So again, it’s our chamber is the Cartersville Bartow Chamber. to connect with me, obviously can reach out. my email is cindy@cartersvillechamber.com . I love conversations about this stuff if you can’t tell. So, you know, if somebody’s out there and they’re struggling a little bit or want to kind of bounce ideas off of each other, I learn from other folks as well. Hey, even more so, if somebody has something to add to this that I can take from it, call me, let me know. I’m always on the journey to simplify and do things.

Brandon Burton (31:42.976)
Yeah.

Cindy Williams (31:58.223)
you know that are more valuable. So would love to have conversations with anybody interested in this space.

Brandon Burton (32:03.77)
Very good. We’ll make sure to get that in our show notes and make it nice and simple to connect. But I appreciate you, Cindy, for setting aside some time and joining us here on the podcast to share some of these lessons that you’ve learned that you’ve been able to implement at your chamber to help simplify and and I’ll say add more value to everything that you’re doing. I think there’s so much benefit in that. And just thank you for for joining us and sharing that with the audience today.

Cindy Williams (32:30.378)
It’s been fun. Thank you for having me.

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Podcasting for Membership and Revenue Growth with Dave Tabor

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Brandon Burton (00:01.356)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Dave Taber. Dave is the Executive Vice President.

a business partnership with the Colorado Chamber of Commerce where he leads membership growth and builds relationships with some of the state’s top business executives. Since 2017, Dave has hosted ProCo 360, a podcast featuring world-class Colorado entrepreneurs and business leaders. The show has been what’s named as the best Colorado business podcast every year since 2021. What began as a passion project has become a powerful membership engine for the chamber featuring CEOs,

founders from organizations such as Ball Corporation, Outside Magazine, Boom Supersonic, Savory Spice, and several Colorado unicorn companies. Before joining the Chamber, Dave founded Taper Interactive, a digital products company that he later sold to a NASDAQ buyer. He earned his business degree from Drake University and his MBA from University of Colorado. But Dave, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening.

and if you would, share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Dave (01:25.944)
Sure. Happy to be on and thanks Brandon. this is fun because I, know, being in the podcast world, I was actually looking for like who’s, who’s podcasting to reach chamber executives and your chamber chat came up and yeah, Brandon. So it’s like, wow, this guy’s, you know, doing it. You’re consistently reaching that audience. So kudos to you and to your listeners. that’s great. And, and so yeah, glad to be on and a couple of fun things about me. one from the.

Brandon Burton (01:38.434)
Okay.

Dave (01:54.32)
Avocation side, of course, you know, I love podcasting already but earlier in my career I was I’ve been both a college and a professional mascot and that sort of travels with me wherever I go People feel that that’s kind of an intriguing and fun background And yeah, I do Love podcasting. I did a personality deal, you know, you go through these like which which personality? Trait is this or that this or that until finally you get boils up to my top

trait is curiosity and that has sort of fits perfectly with the sweet spot of podcasting. That’s what sort of drives, all my podcasting interests. So anyway, that’s me.

Brandon Burton (02:36.083)
Absolutely. So I’m curious, would we recognize any of your mascot roles?

Dave (02:41.133)
Well, I was the Drake Bulldog and then I was the Denver Bronco. And so that, that is a separate story and it’s already.

Brandon Burton (02:45.472)
Okay. I should have asked if you’re allowed to reveal it. I know some mascots, they’re not allowed to reveal it, so.

Dave (02:52.567)
Well, after you’re done, you can, but it is sort of a funny experience as you’re walking through a parking lot carrying your, you know, this massive head and that kind of stuff. And people, you know, obviously they see who you are then, but it’s fun.

Brandon Burton (03:06.412)
Yeah, yeah, that is neat. Well, tell us a little bit about, so you’re coming from a unique position, both from the Colorado Chamber, but also the Proko 360 podcast. So tell us a little bit about the Colorado Chamber, just to kind of set the stage. Usually, I mean, obviously it’s State Chamber, but just give us a little bit of background. But then if you can shift and tell us about Proko 360, where the idea came from, kind of where you got into podcasting. And I’d love to just hear that background.

Dave (03:35.685)
Yeah, sure. I am with the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and most of your listeners are familiar with local chambers of commerce. The Colorado Chamber is a state chamber of commerce. Every state, virtually every state has one. And the role of the state chamber is much more focused on advocacy. It’s a broad-based business advocacy organization, essentially a lobbying organization that unifies all of the business sectors for one business voice for their state. So that’s our main focus of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.

it’s grown quite a bit and in a world where private enterprise or capitalism is viewed more more cynically, our role as state chambers of commerce is really important. And there is an intersection with larger chambers. A lot of the local chambers are getting into advocacy. And so there’s quite a bit of, I think,

I guess, a momentum towards having business leaders get involved in managing the business climate within which they operate. So that’s part A. Part B is the podcast. And I don’t know what made me to get into it, but years ago, I’ve always wanted to be a radio talk show host. I know. It was just sort of one of these things I wanted to do. And I did that for a year. I actually got some money together from sponsors and bought, like you hear these info commercials on Saturday morning and stuff where people buy a whole.

Brandon Burton (04:46.434)
Yeah.

Dave (04:56.93)
long show about whatever it is they’re selling. Well, I bought an hour. Yeah. So Brandon, I actually bought an hour of time for a year. and I was fortunate to have some friends in the business community said, yeah, whatever Dave, we’ll pay for it. And so then I had, I had guests come on live on Saturday mornings to do is what is now become Proko 360. But I got to tell you, it sucks to get up every Saturday morning and get into the studio. And, I decided as podcasting right became, it was just emerging.

Brandon Burton (04:59.76)
yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:21.366)
Hehehehe

Dave (05:25.552)
I’m like, I could just do this whenever I feel like it and I could have every Saturday morning. So, um, so Proko 360 went quickly from one year on a live radio, which is kind of fun. It is exciting. Uh, but to something that was better for my lifestyle.

Brandon Burton (05:28.524)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:40.366)
Yeah, and I can imagine the stress of trying to do it live every week too and then you got, you know, you can’t go on vacation or you can’t…

Dave (05:47.173)
Brandon, it’s kind of fun though. well, that stress. Yeah. I mean, we’d be up in the mountains, for example, for the weekend and I would drive down Saturday morning. I’d leave at like five in the morning, come down, do my show, drive back up. So that is a hassle, but it is kind of fun that live, that live deal where like, you you got to go to commercial in like 27 seconds. So what do you do? And so that part’s fine.

Brandon Burton (06:12.268)
Yeah, it definitely teaches discipline, I imagine.

Dave (06:15.864)
Yeah, it’s fun!

Brandon Burton (06:17.558)
Yeah, so I’m excited to dive into this episode with you because obviously you have the chamber background. I understand the chamber world and everything that it has to offer from the state chamber perspective. But also bringing in podcasting and seeing how podcasting has benefited the chamber and how it can really amplify what the chamber’s doing and get the messaging out there. So we’re going to dive in much deeper on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Dave (06:41.402)
Good. OK.

Brandon Burton (06:44.814)
All right, Dave, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break today, we’re diving in on how a podcast can really benefit a Chamber of Commerce. And I know you’ve been doing ProCo 360 for a while since 2017. So coming up almost on a decade now. So congratulations on the persistence, but tell us a little bit about how has the podcast helped to feed the Colorado Chamber? know they’re from what

Dave (07:00.758)
I know, a long time.

Brandon Burton (07:14.818)
understand they’re two separate entities but tell us about that structure and how they work together.

Dave (07:17.124)
They are Proco 360 is my own labor of love. It’s a sort of, guess you’d call it a side business of mine. And, but I’ve used it as a tool to drive, you and I were talking earlier, essentially prospective members to the chamber and it’s been extremely effective. In fact, I do keep track. I’ve got a spreadsheet where I keep track of the companies that started out where my relationship started in the studio with these guests.

and then became members and recurring members. And the revenue count now is at $950,000 that is generated for the Colorado Chamber of Commerce starting in the podcast studio, converting them into members and then recurring members. And that’s a pretty good number, including some additional sponsorship I’ve generated over a million dollars from ProCo 360. And the weird thing is when I talk to people, the first thing they say is,

Well, how many listeners do you have? And that’s really almost irrelevant, which is mind boggling. Yes, Brandon, it’s mind boggling that it is. You’re right. And I will say that there’ve been, I don’t know, over 50,000 downloads, but when you think about it over the timeframe, like Joe Rogan, he gets that in an hour. So it’s not about the number of people who listen. It’s about the.

Brandon Burton (08:16.152)
Right? Exactly.

If you’re Joe Rogan, it might matter, but for the average Joe, it doesn’t.

Brandon Burton (08:36.322)
Yeah.

Dave (08:41.454)
the niche that you’re reaching and it’s about the relationship acceleration that happens between me and the person in the studio. And it’s been remarkable. I’ve learned also how in conducting an interview in studio, how I can authentically tee that up into a conversation around membership later. So there’s some techniques that I’ve developed and some approaches that I’ve used that like,

Brandon Burton (09:06.094)
Yeah.

Dave (09:11.46)
This, I didn’t mean for it to start this way, but it has definitely evolved into a very valuable tool.

Brandon Burton (09:17.678)
And I imagine the people you’re having on the show, the businesses you’re interviewing, like you mentioned before, it’s all about curiosity, right? You’re trying to learn about their business, what makes them successful, what makes them tick. You’re not coming into it as a sales pitch saying, how can we angle this and make, you know, have them become a chamber member at some point? I wouldn’t assume. I mean, maybe, maybe there’s been times, but.

Dave (09:26.618)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (09:40.201)
I will say, Brandon, that there are questions that in context help decide and later help them decide that it might be a fit for them to become a member of the chamber. Yes, it’s nuanced and it’s well considered. But my background is as a CEO, you mentioned that I started and sold a tech company. That’s true. And so as I talk to my guests,

Brandon Burton (09:56.291)
Yeah.

Dave (10:09.206)
Every single interview is different. It’s based on my curiosity. It’s based on what might stimulate them to have a good time talking with me as opposed to, you think about what journalists will ask. They tend to be typically formulaic questions and I’ve stayed away from those. My objective is that during an interview that a CEO of a company will say, Hmm, that’s an interesting question or huh. Let me think about that. And they smile and they’re stimulated.

Brandon Burton (10:37.603)
Yes.

Dave (10:39.246)
That kind of engagement, yes. And it creates a sense of peer to peer, attraction that makes them receptive to a later conversation about what else I’m doing.

Brandon Burton (10:40.27)
plant those seeds.

Brandon Burton (10:54.754)
Yeah, and I think that’s very, very well said. And I’ll say even starting with Chamber Chat, I kind of had a roadmap, but I could see where I wanted things to go.

If your experience is anything like mine, you can have a map, but it doesn’t mean you’re gonna go stick on that road, gonna go all over the place, but ultimately in that same direction, right? But different surprises will come up, different opportunities come up, you see different ways to leverage the platform that maybe you didn’t think of originally.

Dave (11:17.658)
Yeah, yeah.

Dave (11:29.434)
That’s so true, Brandon. I mean, you probably have seen things from Chamber Chat that, you know, you’ve like, huh, well, that’s a nice accident.

Brandon Burton (11:38.39)
Yeah, yeah, a couple times. Yeah. So I’m curious, with the format of your show, how do you go about choosing guests? you do you pull from chamber membership? Do you specifically go for businesses that are not members? Is it a mix? What what’s your approach like?

Dave (11:41.048)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave (11:56.539)
Well, because Proko 360 is my own podcast, I have to be careful. I think because I certainly don’t want to infringe on the relationships that the Chamber has with its members and even a lot of those members that I’ve brought to the Chamber. So it tends to be arm’s length. It is arm’s length actually, because I never want to create any sort of misinterpretation about how the relationship is going. So new members often do start at Proko 360, but it never goes the other way.

I’m very careful about that. I think the beauty of, you know, some of your listeners is that they’ll either they already have their own podcast or they can create a podcast if they wish to use it as, as a mechanism to create new relationships. And then, then that complexity piece is gone. So I think, and I’m working with another chamber now in a consultative fashion to help them monetize what is already very successful podcast.

but hasn’t been monetized whatsoever. And I’m like, you guys, you got way more listeners than I’ve ever had. Like, you could do this. And so I’m teaching them how to monetize what they’re already doing successfully.

Brandon Burton (12:59.043)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (13:08.844)
Yeah, and I want to touch on that, but first I want to rewind a little bit and you talked about some of the other benefits that have come from podcasting and specifically building that trust or accelerating that trust much quicker and some of the other.

Dave (13:21.168)
Yep.

Brandon Burton (13:25.484)
benefits, even monetary benefits that have come from it, as you’ve seen membership with the Colorado Chamber and being able to track it to, I you said about a million dollars in revenue to the Chamber. And that’s not, like you’re not gonna look at those metrics, those vanity metrics, like you mentioned with how many downloads you get and that sort of thing. However, things may look a little bit different once you start going after sponsorships where

Dave (13:34.97)
Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton (13:53.487)
I know from my experience, a lot of sponsors, that’s what they’re asking. Well, how many downloads do you get? how do you navigate that between seeing where the potential is both ways, but also being able to provide to the potential sponsors what they’re looking for and what they expect?

Dave (13:58.331)
That’s right.

Dave (14:10.178)
Yeah, that’s a pretty smart question actually, Brandon, because I’ve had to really change messaging around sponsorship. I’ve had a lead right out front. In fact, there was a company I’ve recently had a sponsorship conversation with where I reached out to the CEO as a bank and he said, I want you to talk to my marketing person. I said, no, marketing people don’t understand what this is about. They want to know how many listeners I have. They want to know.

You know, they’re, they’re basically, they get paid to create impressions and they don’t get paid to create accelerated relationships that lead to clients. And so I’m like, no, not going to talk to your marketing person. And I used to do that and try to help them understand that this is different. And it’s just like apples and oranges. They don’t. So as I talk with potential sponsors, now I’m very careful and saying not about, not about how many years, like if you want to get in the room.

Brandon Burton (14:44.312)
Yeah.

Dave (15:08.868)
with a half a dozen of your best prospects, I can help you. And if accelerating those, you know, three year and five year sales cycles into six months is something that you want, then I can help you. And so I’ve really had to be very firm in my own determination, right? To only look at things that would be a great fit.

Brandon Burton (15:23.854)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (15:35.181)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

From the Chamber Chat perspective, I do kind of a similar thing because some companies, they to have you talk to their marketing person and all that. And it doesn’t really resonate to that degree, but we’re all familiar with Chamber conferences, whether it’s a state conference or something larger, ACCE or regional conference. different vendors are trying to get in front of Chamber professionals at these things. But a lot of these conferences happen once a year, right?

Dave (15:56.794)
Yep. Yep.

Dave (16:07.002)
That’s right. Yep.

Brandon Burton (16:08.592)
to get on a podcast like this and be able to be in front of all that audience or at least a good majority of that audience on a weekly basis. I mean, how much more bang for your buck? Because I’m not trying to pin one against the other. There’s definite value with both, but it leverages each other.

Dave (16:23.504)
But you’re exactly right. I mean, really think about how many, in your case for chamber chat, how many decision makers are there that can decide, make a $10,000 decision, for example, quickly. A thousand, you know, across the country, you know, maybe 5,000. So like you don’t need a big audience. just, your sponsors to your point need the right audience. Right. So.

Brandon Burton (16:43.032)
Yeah.

Dave (16:52.909)
and helping them understand that sometimes is a challenge, right?

Brandon Burton (16:57.41)
Yeah, yeah, it can be.

Dave (17:00.184)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I know.

Brandon Burton (17:01.932)
Which I think leads us well into the next point that I wanted to touch on. You had mentioned that you’re, you’re helping a chamber or some chambers right now with being able to figure out how to monetize and they’ve, they’ve got podcasts that have a much greater base, maybe you can say than what, what you currently have, what maybe I currently have, but they haven’t monetized it yet. So you’re having these conversations, coaching, helping them figure it out. what does that look like as you try to walk them through that process?

Dave (17:22.894)
Right. They do. Whoops. Is that a question, Brandon? Sorry, I lost you.

Dave (17:32.078)
Oops, one of us lost the other.

I guess we’ll stand by and we’ll let Riverside fix it.

Brandon Burton (17:42.062)
So we’re, I think we’re back. Did that totally cut out when I was asking the question?

Dave (17:42.394)
Brandon, you’re breaking up and I don’t know if it’s on my end or your end.

Dave (17:51.186)
can you, are you, are you back with me? Hello? Okay. Could you, would you like to re-ask the question and we’ll start over? I don’t know what happened. Okay.

Brandon Burton (17:54.701)
Yeah, I am. Can you hear me? Yep, absolutely.

So you mentioned before, you’re currently working with chambers, multiple chambers on being able to monetize their podcasts that they currently have. And some of these chambers have much larger, much larger audience than what you have. And you’ve been successful monetizing yours. What does that look like as you work with these chambers, provide the coaching, the direction? What’s that experience like?

Dave (18:29.508)
Yeah, it’s a, I’m new to this because I’m actually leaving my day to day job at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce at the end of July. and I, I’m want to focus on doing exactly what you and I do, Brandon, which is podcasting and helping others do, accomplish what they accomplish, need to accomplish through podcasting. So, so I’m new to this and, and I’m figuring it out. The chamber that I’m working with now, they do, they have a really significant audience.

And there’s a lot of pieces that go into figuring out, or actually not so difficult to figure out, because I think I’ve figured it out, but how to shift from where they are to actually monetizing. One is that I’m working with a CEO to have a different sort of persona online so that as he’s meeting with folks as his guests, Brandon, that they are seeing him as an authority as opposed to an interviewer.

That’s really important. And so there’s some techniques that we’re working on with that. You can imagine kind of things that I’m thinking of,

Brandon Burton (19:29.346)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (19:36.812)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s interesting because that’s not a point that I would have thought about to be working with the CEO and changing their persona and how they interact online.

Dave (19:40.026)
I mean, that’s, go ahead.

Dave (19:47.683)
It’s really important. They can still be authentic. And yet, you know, there’s something I’ve, I’ve talked about at a seminar that I gave, among my peers at state chambers of commerce. like, stop people thanking people for their time. Like if you weren’t thanking people for their time, you’ve put yourself in a role of supplicant and the idea of being diminished in the room with your guests, for example, doing a podcast, like they should see you as a peer.

And establishing that sense of presence with the person you’re working with in the studio is what, you know, very subtly and very effectively allows you to elevate the conversation to something more important later. And, and so we’re working on those kinds of techniques. We’re working on the kinds of companies that you bring in to studio. We’re working on the kinds of people that you bring in to the studio. And we’re also working on the techniques during.

Brandon Burton (20:30.914)
Yeah.

Dave (20:45.112)
a podcast interview that, your guests find stimulating and that an audience would find interesting. one of the big mistakes that we see, and you probably see this too in podcast is that, hosts that haven’t been particularly well trained essentially let their, just like you are, letting, let their guests ramble, forever. And, you know, so there are things to do to manage how the experience works that

Brandon Burton (21:06.57)
Yeah.

Dave (21:13.688)
generate respect and generate audience interest. so those are the things we work on.

Brandon Burton (21:19.148)
Right, so when you touched on the point about being seen as peers, know, whoever’s hosting the show with whoever they’re interviewing.

is such a valid point because I can think back to the first few episodes that I ever did and I’m nervous as I’ll get out and I’m interviewing, you know, chamber CEOs and, they’re, you know, people that I’ve looked up to throughout my career and here they are, you know, on my show. And then, you know, over time that kind of shifts to where, you know, people are asking to be on the show and, you know, they really look up to, you know, what I bring to the chamber world. And it’s like, there’s been a shift, but the shift really is just, it’s your mindset.

right? And how you look upon things and get past that they call the imposter syndrome, right? Feeling like you don’t belong here, you don’t really deserve to have the voice there. And so I think that’s so wise to hit that head on.

Dave (22:04.09)
Yeah, for sure.

Dave (22:12.61)
It’s really fun and the, and you’ve experienced it and I’ve experienced it and it’s really fun, to do that because, it’s not that hard and you can help, you can help someone you’re teaching. I’ve been able to help this one already to understand that he can still be authentic. It’s just, he’s got a position of self differently. So it’s like, okay.

Brandon Burton (22:38.368)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So those are some of the techniques. As far as when you look at sponsorships for a podcast, you think of it as a normal like pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll kind of a presentation or would you look for sponsors for different segments or is it like everything is in the chamber world that depends on the chamber?

Dave (23:04.496)
Ha, you know what? It is kind of a fluid thing. The first sponsors I got, I got back for the radio show and that was about, you know, these people liked me. They wanted to help me and I just asked them. That was it. There was really, there was no benefit for them other than supporting me. And, but then as I got some banks to sponsor and some other things that was about at first,

Brandon Burton (23:20.28)
Yeah.

Dave (23:31.683)
It was about reaching this niche audience of people who care about, in my case, Colorado business, high growth, Colorado companies. And, now as I’ve refined what I can, what I can do, and how we can serve a sponsor. I’ve refined that message to what you and I already talked about, is ratio relationship acceleration. But the other piece that’s so important and is alignment. So when.

a company sponsors Proco 360, they can, like I’ve created graphics now that say, know, a XYZ company hosted episode or something like that. And there are different variations of it, which is why I’m a vague. the, so they get to then push that out to their audience saying, we’re so glad we could support high growth Colorado companies and, you know, and, and you should listen to this episode. So they get to demonstrate.

Brandon Burton (24:18.766)
So.

Dave (24:30.648)
a really strong differentiation in a market that’s hard to differentiate. For example, you ask a banker what makes them different and every banker says the same thing. You know, we’re big enough to provide all the services somebody needs and we’re small enough to care, blah, blah, blah. They have so much trouble differentiating and right, you’re laughing, you know this. so, right, right. And so the exactly that’s exactly. And so giving them a way to authentically differentiate

Brandon Burton (24:41.422)
I’m sorry.

Brandon Burton (24:50.945)
What makes you different? They all say the same thing. I love it.

Dave (24:59.086)
is a very, very strong tool.

Brandon Burton (25:01.346)
Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s such a great idea too, to be able to have.

the sponsors, provide them with resources to be able to leverage their ad spend with you and being able to show that they’re an influencer in that space, that they care about the space, and really draw a little bit more attention to them. It kind of puts a ball in their court, which makes me a little bit nervous, if I’m being honest, because I’m like, how are they going to do this?

Dave (25:28.526)
You should, that’s pretty smart actually, Brandon, to mention that because if they don’t execute on that, they don’t get the full benefit. And so I can lead the horse to water per se, right? I give them the graphics, I give them, and they’re sized for different social media platforms. But if they don’t do it, they don’t get the benefit.

Brandon Burton (25:48.653)
Yeah, yeah, well that’s a great tip there. What else have you learned through your podcasting journey that as you think for a chamber that maybe is looking to either start a podcast or maybe they already have a podcast but they’re trying to monetize it, they’re trying to extrapolate the value from having the podcast, what have you seen that you think would be valuable to share with the audience?

Dave (26:16.464)
what I’m, I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if I’m right about this. think I am, but I’ve used really significant discipline about who I bring onto the podcast. And to your point, you know, you do it long enough and people start asking to be on it. Right. And so it’s really important that I filter the guests so that they maintain the niche that I’ve built, which is high growth Colorado companies. So I’m very flattered. get emails frequently and I know you do.

you know, asking to be on podcasts. And if they don’t build my brand as a platform for high growth Colorado companies that are really like successful, then I have to say no. And so that’s sort of one of the guidelines that I use. The other one that I’ll say has been very effective for me is that I don’t do any, boy, I’m picking up some background. Are you?

Brandon Burton (27:03.906)
Yeah

Dave (27:16.056)
Okay, I’ll just keep going. sounds like.

Okay. I’ll just pick it up from here. The, the other thing that I’ve decided in my own head, Brandon, is that before I do any interview, I do enough research and I do enough prep to, to only move forward when I’m excited about it. So I do a fair amount of prep and it does take me some time, but I think it, it definitely shows up in, in the experience for the guest. And then in my happiness with the episode, I can say that I’ve never done an episode I don’t like.

Brandon Burton (27:51.503)
Yeah. So as far as the guests that you choose to be on the podcast, like you said, filtering through that, a lot of the emails and requests that I get, you can tell they’re written by AI. They’ve never listened to the show that I made. So those ones are easy to filter out. But the ones that I’m thinking about more so are

Dave (28:04.559)
gosh, that’s so annoying. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:12.972)
maybe those high level investors with the chamber that they feel a sense of entitlement maybe. You know, we’ve paid so much money and we should be a guest on the podcast. And a lot of them may have no interest in being, but I’m just saying, we all know those businesses that have the egos that want to be on because they spend so much money. Any advice on how to help filter that or have a policy on guests that you have on the show?

Dave (28:25.22)
Yeah.

Dave (28:28.976)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (28:38.596)
You know, again, Proco 360 is separate from the Colorado Chamber, and yet I think I’m qualified to answer this question. Look, if you’ve got a top investor and they want to be on, it’s probably smart to do it. So the key is that it needs to be somebody that fits whatever model you’ve determined is yours. So if you have CEOs and founders, then, you know, having a vice president of community affairs is not the way to go.

and so it really decides, it really depends on the model that you’re using. I, I’m really careful that like, I know who in a company and it’s the founder of the CEO that I interview in another chamber of commerce. might be somebody different. but it needs to be, it needs to follow a format that allows to your point, Brandon, this, they say, we want our, our community affairs person. Well, look, here’s the model of the podcast. We’d love to have you as your CEO available. Let’s do it.

So I think, or whether it’s CEO or whether it’s whatever, head of the region, head of the city, you know, think having some format allows you to, make that choice.

Brandon Burton (29:42.85)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:50.755)
I think that’s a wise piece of advice. I like to ask on behalf of listeners who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item that you leave with them as they strive towards that goal.

Dave (30:07.052)
I think that the number one thing is to, you’re, if you’re referring specifically to using a podcast to doing it, Brandon.

Brandon Burton (30:17.102)
I just in general, but I love that we’re on the podcast topic. So yes, let’s answer it that way

Dave (30:21.932)
Yeah, I mean, it’s a.

I think the number one thing is if you decide that it’s something that you want to do and you’re not yet doing it is it’s not difficult. Uh, it does take time. And Brandon has already talked to me and shared, you know, you’ve shared with me a tool that you use that I haven’t started using yet. Uh, and I’m, think I’m going to switch to it, so make it even easier, but it’s, it’s work. And so I guess my, my advice is if you decide you want to try this.

maybe create a series and just decide, hey, we’re gonna create a series of five and don’t call it a podcast yet because you look at a lot of chambers and you look at a lot of companies and they have a tab on their website that says podcast and you open it and there’s like three from five years ago. Like no, so let’s just, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think the tip is if you’re curious about it, start it as a series, just decide you’re gonna sell it.

Brandon Burton (31:13.058)
Right, I’ve seen a lot of those, yeah.

Dave (31:22.988)
sell it to a sponsor for five, you’d like, want to do a series of five and give it a shot and see how this goes. And then if you decide not to do any more, okay, you’ve got a series, you can park it and there’s no embarrassment. There’s no sense of like what happened to this thing, but if it goes well, then you just keep going. But I, you know, rather than, I think it’s a nice baby step. That’s fun and doable, inexpensive, and just makes sense.

Brandon Burton (31:46.989)
Yeah, I think I would align perfectly with that. One piece I might add to it is, you be careful on what you name a podcast. A lot of Chambers are like, it’s the XYZ Chamber Podcast. And it’s like…

The general public doesn’t even know what a chamber does. So they don’t care about your podcast. So, but if you talk about, you know, XYZ business stories in this community or something like that, know, entrepreneur, entrepreneurial podcast and true crime are two of the most downloaded, most listened to type of podcast. So be, be a methodical about that.

Dave (32:05.722)
That’s interesting.

Dave (32:18.448)
Huh.

That’s interesting, Brandon. Yeah, that’s really thought provoking. Yeah, that’s cool. You and I need to talk about that more.

Brandon Burton (32:30.7)
Yeah. Well, Dave, there’s a question I ask everyone I have on the show specific to chambers. But how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their future going forward?

Dave (32:43.408)
Yeah. I think we’re at a very interesting time for chambers. Excuse me. going to cough. Excuse me. I think we’re at a very interesting time for chambers. And I mentioned earlier, and I just finished listening to a book by Ken Langone called I Love Capitalism. And he’s the guy who started Home Depot. It’s a great, great story. And it’s very entertaining. Aside from that.

we really have it reminded me that we’re at a time of growing cynicism around business and around free enterprise, which to me is a shame. It just is, it just is. And the opportunity for Chambers, I think, is that as there’s growing cynicism towards business, the cynicism is most accentuated when industry silos want to do their thing. So the home builders want this, the hospitals want that.

The insurance companies want this and to the extent that industry silos want something specific, they’re viewed with even more cynicism. And so the role of the chamber, I think, is to unify these what were silos and be a strong business voice for a prosperous economy. And that’s really strong messaging. It’s not just messaging, it’s an authentic way to help our communities become stronger, is to…

desilo these interests and speak on behalf of a healthy economy that creates opportunity for constituents. So that’s where I see things.

Brandon Burton (34:16.694)
I love that. I think that’s such a great description and synopsis of how you view the future of chambers and their purpose. Before I let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information or anything you want to share or point listeners to before we depart.

Dave (34:37.904)
Yeah, if you’re curious about how to use a podcast to drive membership, you can check out mine. It’s Proco 360. That’s P-R-O-C-O 360. And you mentioned naming. Honestly, if I were renaming it, I wouldn’t do that. I would use something else. a number of years ago, branding was the whole thing. But Proco is short for Pro Colorado. 360, the idea that in Colorado, people’s lives are more than singular in dimension.

But if I have to explain the name, it’s not a great one. but it’s stuck. People recognize it now. And so that’s when I’m, you know, I’m sticking with it. So, but anyway, proco360.com and dave@proco360.com. So you can reach me that way. But if you want to listen to some of the podcasts and consider for yourself, if what I’m saying resonates to you, you can listen to a few podcasts. can choose some that seem interesting to you. And then, you know, perhaps you’ll know better where I’m coming from.

Brandon Burton (35:09.56)
So, thanks.

Brandon Burton (35:36.301)
That’s great. We’ll get that posted in our show notes as well.

And in correlation with this episode, I also wanted to announce for a while for several years since 2020, I’ve had a chamber podcasting guide. I now have a totally revamped, a new title too, just podcasting for chambers. And it’s much more relevant to the tools that I’m using today, the things that will save you a lot of time and headache versus what was used back in 2020. So as you can imagine, technology changes, continues to evolve.

So there’s a new guide. So go to chamberchatpodcast.com slash podcasting to get that. But it’ll also be in the notes for this episode. But Dave, this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate you taking some time to be in to be with us and to share your insights and your experience from having a podcast and what’s important for everyone listening who’s interested in podcasting, learning how to monetize the podcast. So thank you.

Dave (36:35.918)
Yeah. You know, it’s fun to be on it. I, I’m glad that we connected because I’m guessing that there are ways that, you know, we can cross pollinate and help one another’s audiences. So, I like your podcast and I, I appreciate, what you’re doing.

Brandon Burton (36:46.538)
Absolutely.

Brandon Burton (36:51.427)
Thank you, Dave.

Dave (36:53.627)
You’re welcome.

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Running a Chamber as a Business with Tammy Bracewell

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Brandon Burton (00:01.228)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your chamber members and your community. Today we’re joined by Tammy Bracewell. She’s the president of the Florida Association of Chamber Professionals. Tammy began her career in 1989 with the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce. I’m partial to that name, where she served in multiple leadership roles before becoming president and CEO.

A position she held for 13 years. Since 2015, Tammy’s focused her work fully on leading the Florida Association of Chamber Professionals, supporting chamber leaders and professionals across the state of Florida. She holds both the IOM and Florida Certified Chamber Professional Designations and has been recognized as FACP’s Executive of the Year. Under her leadership, the Brandon Chamber was also named Florida Chamber of the Year. Tammy brings a ton of chamber.

Experience, a deep commitment to the profession, and a passion for supporting her peers to today’s conversation. But Tammy, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Tammy Bracewell (01:21.228)
Okay.

Well, Brandon, it’s my pleasure to be here today. as you said, I love chambers. It’s it’s what I live, eat, breathe. but about outside of that, one thing that a lot of people don’t know about me unless we’ve chatted a l a lot is that I also own a restaurant. So my husband and I. So I think I approach things a little bit differently now than I did w sometimes when I ran my chamber because I am now signing the front of the check instead of just the back.

So I think that has actually helped me to work with chambers and to help them look at things from the perspective sometimes of their business owners and not just from the chamber side. So I’m a I’m a small business owner.

Brandon Burton (01:52.418)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:07.82)
Yeah, there’s so much value to that, and I wish every chamber leader out there could have an opportunity to to actually run a business itself, and some have, but it brings a ton of value, which really leads well into what our topic is for today. So before we get into that though, I’d love for you to tell us, especially those who are maybe outside of Florida

Or those who are in Florida who haven’t gotten, you know, tied in with the Florida Association Association of Chamber professionals, what is it all about? What do you offer? What’s the programming look like? Who do you serve?

Tammy Bracewell (02:44.115)
Happy to do that. FACP, as you said, is a statewide organization. Our mission is to advance excellence in chamber management. So by providing we have annual conferences, we do monthly advocacy training calls. we serve chambers from the hand handle to the keys and all of their needs are different. So in addition to the conferences, the advocacy calls, we have 14 regional meetings each year.

I do a survey every week on a topic that I feel would be beneficial for our members to have the answer to. They send me those ideas of if they have a question. Sometimes I come up with a question that I think they might want to know the answer to. We also provide monthly webinars on topics relating to all things related to chamber operations. So it’s just a plethora of tools that they can have in their toolkit.

Brandon Burton (03:45.535)
That’s perfect. That’s a a great great synopsis and a great service that you guys are providing there for the the chambers throughout Florida. today we’re gonna focus our our topic of discussion around

running your chamber as a business. So I’m excited to get into this topic, especially with your business background with running the restaurant and and taking the experiences and the perspectives you’ve gained throughout your your career in the chamber industry to really dive into this topic as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Tammy, we’re back. So, as I mentioned before the break, today we’re going to talk about running your chamber as a business. So, it kind of in the introduction, you talked about what a great value that is and signing both the front and the back of the check now. So, instead of just the back of the check, as you previously may have done. But what kind of lessons do you see be that correlate between running a business and running a chamber that may be

Maybe the average chamber leader misses or overlooks that could be valuable for them to pay attention to.

Tammy Bracewell (04:53.675)
Well, I think w well let’s let me step back a minute. When I ran my chamber, we were very entrepreneurial.

and so it it be it came very naturally to me, even though I didn’t own a business then, I guess I maybe had the mindset. My family family was self-employed, so I grew up in a in a self-employed household. So I think I always had that mindset. But you know, chambers sometimes think, well, I’m a nonprofit. Well, you are a nonprofit, but you can still make a profit and you should make a profit. And so, you know, you sh if you wanna be the business, the voice of business in your community, you really need to run your chamber.

Brandon Burton (05:23.352)
Mm-hmm.

Tammy Bracewell (05:30.881)
if it were a business. you know, have a finance have a budget, have a strategic plan, have a business plan. do the things that businesses do. And I think that if you can put that hat on of what what are your chamber members going through and run your business that same way, it makes a huge difference.

Brandon Burton (05:56.503)
Yeah. So you’d mentioned when you were at the chamber you ran it as kind as an entrepreneurial mindset type of chamber. how does that translate into what you do at the chamber and how you operate and what you offer?

Tammy Bracewell (06:11.285)
Well, at at my chamber, which as you know, I as I you mentioned I was there twenty four years, we we were publishers, which maybe isn’t timely right now with everything, you know, with AI and and everything being electronic, but we were publishers, we were landlords, we had tenants, and so it was multifaceted and I think that chambers have to find that need in their community that they can serve and provide that service. You don’t want to compete with your members by

By any means, but you know, just being able to run it as a business, see where your revenue streams are, where opportunities that you can offer. There’s might be a niche in your community that isn’t being filled. you know, a lot of chambers do things like certificates of origin, things that provide non-duge revenue and provide a service that’s needed. Not that that’s for every community, because I think that’s what people need to realize: that one size does not fit all. You know, every community is looking for something.

different from their chamber and it’s up to the leaders of that chamber whether it be the board from a strategic standpoint or that the staff from a you know boots on the ground standpoint to figure out what those services are that that their members need. Just like if you’re gonna open a business, you’re going to do some research and say is this business going to be viable? Or is there a a customer base for it. So I think that the chambers need to take that same mindset that businesses use.

Brandon Burton (07:39.555)
Yeah. Unfortunately some chambers are really good at keeping secrets. you mentioned the certificates of origin and it took me a long time working with chambers before I even realized that there’s chambers out there that offer certificates of origin. And I’m like, where’s this been the whole time? Like and that’s not the only thing that they keep secret, you know. Maybe they have a notary on staff, maybe that they have other business services that they offer that the general public doesn’t necessarily know about.

Tammy Bracewell (08:05.91)
That’s right.

Well, and one of the things that we did also, we had some extra office in our s in our building that wasn’t used and I found that there were a lot of home based businesses that, you know, maybe they worked out of Starbucks during the day for their Wi Fi, but they wanted to have a more private meeting. We would just allow our members to come in and have, you know, use the space. They could reserve that office for an hour or two. And it provided a great value to them to have a location. Obviously the person they were meeting.

with knew that wasn’t their office, but that was okay. It gave them a professional place to meet. And it also, chances are if they were bringing another business owner in, an opportunity for us to speak with that business owner as well. So I think you just have to look at at ways that you can serve that it’s mutually beneficial.

Brandon Burton (08:53.55)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:59.03)
Yeah. That idea was a an idea ahead of its time, I would say. I mean, now you see chambers all over that have that that meeting space. Maybe you can rent out a boardroom or you just maybe there’s a shared office space. Yeah, I I hear a lot of chambers doing that.

Tammy Bracewell (09:13.408)
Yeah, we were kind of on the cusp, I think, of a lot of things that on the cutting edge of offering things that made perfect sense to us then and and thankfully still do now.

Brandon Burton (09:25.58)
Yeah. so y you mentioned being able to as even as a non profit to you should still be able to make a profit. It really just matters when you file your taxes as far as your status goes. But other than that, operate as a business. So with running the restaurant, what what else stands out to you that you’re like, you know, I wish I had this kind of perspective when I was running a chamber?

Tammy Bracewell (09:51.831)
Hmm, that’s a good question. I I think what came to my mind and and I don’t like to bring up this topic because I think we’re all like, I don’t ever want to hear about COVID again, but i it it it r resonated with me during that time when

especially in a restaurant, you know, we in Florida we were fortunate that we weren’t shut down as long as some other parts of the country were. But even in parts of Florida, I noticed the difference with how quickly organizations and communities were coming back open and and getting back to normal. And

I noticed that we were open and I was seeing businesses open all over the state. But a lot of our chambers were still at home with their doors locked. And I I finally just said one day on one of our calls, you know, I’m gonna take off my chamber hat for a minute. I’m gonna put on my my chamber member hat. And

having trouble that I’m out here navigating this new normal and you guys are still locked up and closed. I know you’re got information, but I need you to be back and open and operating as normal again too. So I think just having t it it made me realize that that sometimes chambers and other organizations I’m not at all being critical of chambers because you know I love chambers. Sometimes they aren’t necessarily

Brandon Burton (11:02.37)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:23.374)
That’s right.

Tammy Bracewell (11:26.262)
following the pulse of their members. And so I said, you know, you guys have to open back up again. You got to get back in your offices. You got to be open because your b your businesses are open and they’re looking to you and you’re not there. You’re you’re sending information, I’m not being critical, but you’re not physically in your office. And they’re like, you know, you’re probably right and you know but follow the pulse of your members.

Brandon Burton (11:29.464)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:49.582)
That’s such a great

Yeah, that’s such a great perspective, great example because I think chambers across the country were doing what they felt like was the right thing to do. They’re trying to, you know, follow guidance, you know, that they were given by we’ll say the higher ups by government agencies. Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (12:09.164)
Well and of course, you don’t ever want to do anything that you shouldn’t do. But when you see your business community, it’s it’s it’s been approved, people are back in business, they’re opening their doors, you need to kind of follow follow the pulse. Do what’s do do what your members are doing.

Brandon Burton (12:13.218)
But

Brandon Burton (12:19.085)
Yeah.

Yeah. So to your point with following the pulse rather than just what’s popular or what you see others doing, what are how do you read that pulse? And I know there’s surveys and they’re, you know, you talk to members, but to really get a good feel for the business community in your you know, in the any given community, how do you really get that pulse?

Tammy Bracewell (12:46.976)
think you have to get out of your office some see what’s going on talk to people just go out visit some of your members some of your small members large members retail office industrial whatever it is that you have you know identify those that would be a good representation of your overall membership and go out and see what’s going on with them you know oftentimes

Brandon Burton (13:12.301)
Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (13:15.016)
if you ask a business how theirs how what their challenges or you know, they’re a little maybe maybe a little bit hesitant to tell you that they might be struggling financially or they might need something. But if you say, what do you find in your industry, they’re a little bit more likely to open up and say, Well, I think our industry’s struggling with this right now. so I think just being able to have the conversation that allows them to be comfortable.

Brandon Burton (13:31.534)
Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (13:44.104)
and not making them feel that they’re giving information that is might be a little embarrassing at times or, you know, just make it general.

Brandon Burton (13:52.323)
Yeah, I think that’s great advice. Just to almost put yourself in their shoes into how they would answer these questions. How’s it going to make them feel? Is it coming from a place of concern and the chamber is here and can actually help? Or is this going to shine negative light on me as a business owner? Or is it embarrassing? Does it show that we’re you know struggling? What what kind of you know light does that shine on the business? And you want it to be a good experience, you want it to be honest feedback, but

There’s ways you can phrase things, there’s ways you can approach topics that will keep it comfortable, that’ll keep it natural, that’ll keep it trusting, I think is a big one. it’s a great example.

Tammy Bracewell (14:34.752)
Good.

Brandon Burton (14:36.714)
are there I’m curious with with you leading the the Florida Association of Chamber Professionals, if there’s any kind of trends or anything that you see amongst chambers and you know through Florida that I I know we all rip off and duplicate, so these trends may have come from other places, but what kind of trends do you see that are interesting to you, that are kind of top of mind, that are worth talking about and mentioning to for those listening?

Tammy Bracewell (14:55.616)
Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (15:05.878)
think all that I you know, we all love R and D, right?

Brandon Burton (15:09.208)
That’s right.

Tammy Bracewell (15:09.404)
eight, but I’m seeing a lot more collaboration, chambers thinking regionally versus trying to do everything on their own individually. I think being able to share resources is key. I even have a few chambers that have discussed and and are looking at options of how to do some shared back office expenses.

Brandon Burton (15:36.152)
Yeah, right.

Tammy Bracewell (15:37.361)
maybe they don’t need a full-time bookkeeper or and and there’s another chamber that doesn’t need you know have that need as well. So they’re collaborating and saying, can we do some shared expenses? collaboration on programming and events. I’ve even seen some full blown mergers. but I think everyone is looking at

How do we continue to evolve with the use of AI and all the information that is available to people right now? How do we harness that in a way that is positive and to be what AI can never be? I think we have to learn to use it effectively, and that has been a focus of our conferences. We’ve been touching on that for the past four, and we’ll continue to do so to educate chambers again, stay

Brandon Burton (16:20.727)
Yes.

Tammy Bracewell (16:34.686)
stay ahead or at least stay on with level with your businesses and where they are and if they’re not there yet to help bring them along because it’s AI is here and we all know that whether you love it or you hate it it’s here and so you know learning how to to use it to effectively lead your chamber and then finding areas that it doesn’t serve that you will still be needed more than ever.

Brandon Burton (17:01.474)
Yes. Yeah, the the AI aspect I think is so important. In fact, Craig Turner’s the one that connected us and I know he’s spoken for you and presented on AI. but it’s important as you’re leading the businesses in your community to be at the forefront of the technology, to be able to understand. Cause if your chamber’s not using it and your members are

Tammy Bracewell (17:09.536)
There you go.

Brandon Burton (17:26.354)
they’re not gonna see any relevancy, any impact that the chamber can make if you’re not keeping up with with the other business trends. So I think that’s a huge one. I’ve also I

Tammy Bracewell (17:36.877)
That’s correct.

Craig will tell you, you know, and and I’ve been working with him myself on this, you know, chambers are we’ve always been overwhelmed and with so much that we want to accomplish with the amount of staff that we have. And so, you know, we need to try to embrace AI as much as we can to allow to give us tools to free up our time, right? Let’s use it to do to automate things that, you know, database cleanups and things that you could do easily.

through that that we were spending hours and then free us up to be able to go out and do the things that our members need us to do, without spending so much time doing clerical things.

Brandon Burton (18:21.644)
And I think the more a chamber utilizes it for those kind of tasks, like the database cleanup and those repeatable tasks that you do over and over again, as you are out visiting your members, as you’re interacting with your members and they’re talking about their struggles, all of a sudden you’re at a place where you can make the connection with what AI can do to to solve answers, and then it it puts you in a position of being an expert to be able to help them solve their problems.

I I also wanted to touch on what you shared about with the collaborations ’cause I’ve seen

From mergers to even, you know, within a community, you know, a chamber and a maybe economic development and tourism, you know, all coming together as one entity for a lot of those same reasons. The shared services, shared staff, shared expenses. but what jumped out to me when you were talking about that was chambers sharing some of these same like the example you gave with the bookkeeper. So it made me think of if we’re trying to run our chamber as a business.

And you have a bookkeeper who’s seeing how a chamber’s managing finances, not that the bookkeeper needs to, you know, air any dirty laundry or anything, but if there’s something out there that is effective, why wouldn’t they say, hey, have you tried this?

This is working well for other chambers. And you know, it it would be great to have that insight from a bookkeeping perspective to be able to help keep your business or your chamber upright and and floating in the right direction. any other trends or anything that stand out to you that you want to make sure that we touch on?

Tammy Bracewell (20:03.18)
Yeah.

right now those are what I’m seeing people just being creative. and you know, I always tell them I think we’re going with the the AI and and everybody thinking, well we don’t you know if if a business I just had a conversation just this week with a local chamber. They’re like, well, you know, there’s businesses coming in. They don’t really need the EDC right now. They can find everything they want to find on the internet, you know, and I’ll and you know, how do we how does the EDC adapt to that? And

And I think the same thing holds with chambers. You know, AI can provide information. They cannot provide the connections and the access and the collaboration that chambers can provide. And so

You know, I think right now I’m seeing people looking at how do we how do we make that good blend? You know, how do we make that personal connection that chambers are better than anybody to be that connector and that catalyst for the things that they want to happen. So, you know, I think I I’m just seeing people be a little bit more creative and looking, thinking outside the box of how they can do things.

Brandon Burton (20:54.604)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:01.218)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:06.211)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:13.858)
Yeah, to your point, I AI is great at doing research and getting that information, but I don’t know that it’s ever gonna change the mind of a NIMBY. You know, somebody who says, Not in my backyard, but a chamber economic development corporation can. They can bring the facts, they can show what the economic impact is gonna be, and it’s gonna be from a perspective that betters the entire community and not just a a skewed focus on whatever the prompt was that was given to that AI model.

Tammy Bracewell (21:40.204)
Exactly. Yes.

Brandon Burton (21:41.909)
So I love that. Keep keep chambers doing what what the the human touch needs to be there for, make those connections and and really make things more valuable. well Tammy, I like asking on behalf of those listening who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive towards that goal?

Tammy Bracewell (22:07.894)
Well, I’ve touched on it a lot and I still really believe that

The change change is coming. It always has been, right? And you know, don’t sit in your office in a silo. Get out there, talk to your members, find out what their needs are, and and be the catalyst for that change if you can. Because instead of, you know, saying well this is how we’ve always done it, let’s not protect what we’ve always done. Let’s enhance it and make it better and and to serve the people who who need that service because chambers aren’t going

Anywhere. They just had to evolve. As we’ve always done. You know, this is with the invention of the internet. Remember, I mean, it was just like, you have this internet, nobody’s gonna need a chamber. Yes, they do. They still need a chamber. We just have to continue to use the technology and the services that are available and and to be there for our members in ways that technology cannot. So, you know, get outside, talk to your members, find out what their needs are, and just continue to be that catalyst. And you know, I always go back to to Dave.

Brandon Burton (22:54.7)
Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (23:13.112)
kill these three C’s, right? And they are relevant. You know, how many years ago was that? And it remains relevant today. So, you know, continue to see ways that you can be the catalyst for change and convene the people together or be the champion for the change that’s needed in your community as it continues to evolve. And businesses continue to open and their needs are changing too. So just because the service that they wanted from you five years ago, they may no longer need that. Their business has evolved

Brandon Burton (23:15.32)
Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (23:42.985)
evolved too. So you know be be in contact as much as you can and find out what what they need from you because they don’t buy networking events, they don’t buy breakfasts, they buy connections, they buy customers, you know, they buy what that what’s in it for them, not what your what your benefits are. No, it find out what they need. And

Brandon Burton (23:44.674)
That’s right.

Brandon Burton (24:07.054)
Exactly. I didn’t mean to cut you off, but yeah. i i I I love that thought and as the as your members grow.

Tammy Bracewell (24:10.282)
No, you’re perfect.

Brandon Burton (24:18.112)
Obviously chambers serve members of all different sizes. So they should be able to grow and you still should be able to have offerings for them that make sense that help them to continue to grow. And and I spoke at this the Texas Chamber conference or talked about sponsorships. And really when it comes to sponsorships, it’s more than just having a logo, you know, that’s displayed somewhere, but it’s how are you helping to align this business as being a thought leader in

Tammy Bracewell (24:25.184)
What?

Brandon Burton (24:48.276)
you know, whatever the the thing is that they’re sponsoring. a golf tournament may not be the best example, but there’s other programming out there that you get a sponsor for that really shows them as being a thought leader for helping drive the future pipeline for for workforce in the community. You know, that that would be one example that a lot of businesses, if it’s positioned that way, would want to be a part of that. So I love that.

Tammy Bracewell (25:15.648)
Yeah, size does not fit all with sponsorships, Brandon, you know. I’ve always and I tell people that all the time. Instead of saying we need, you know, we’re want you to pay twenty five hundred dollars to be the sponsor, say we are gonna provide you this opportunity.

Brandon Burton (25:20.332)
Right.

Tammy Bracewell (25:32.82)
to be in front of this many people, to talk about your service, to, you know, create relationships, that’s what they’re looking for. They don’t necessarily want to hear that they’re being the sponsor of something.

Brandon Burton (25:45.324)
Yeah. Yeah, there’s a few people out there with egos that want to see their logo you know, plastered everywhere. And and you’ll sell them too, but for most people.

Tammy Bracewell (25:51.181)
Hi.

When I see my restaurant logo up on a chamber event, that makes me very happy. but at the same time I also wanna know that the people at that event are going to know that I’m a good community steward, that I wanna support my community, and that they’re likely gonna come and eat at my restaurant sometime, right? Because I was there. So I think the ultimate goal is, you know, is giving the benefit to the sponsor and making sure that they have every opportunity.

Brandon Burton (25:58.671)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:15.436)
That’s right.

Tammy Bracewell (26:23.822)
while they’re there. And one size doesn’t fit all. You know, different companies look for different benefits. So I think that’s important is looking at what does that company need from that sponsorship.

Brandon Burton (26:24.781)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:31.842)
Yeah, exactly.

Brandon Burton (26:38.294)
Yeah. Well, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tammy Bracewell (26:47.838)
It’s brighter than ever.

I I as I said, I think that the chamber few the chambers will be around. They’ve been around and they will continue to be around. they just need to evolve and use the resources they have available to them. And I I feel confident, you know, we’ve evolved through the years. when I first came into the chamber world, I remember, you know, the I’m old, okay, Brandon. The first the first fax machine we got, we’re like, my gosh, we have a fax machine. What does this do? You know, and

Brandon Burton (27:14.05)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:19.939)
Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (27:20.078)
I remember taking facts off my the facts I had to go to lunch and I threw it on the dash of my car. I came back, it was all black. I’m like, duh. You know, but we’ve we’ve c we’ve seen change through the years and we will continue to see change. And, you know, chambers have the ability to connect people like no other and that will never go away.

Brandon Burton (27:27.39)
It’s black.

Tammy Bracewell (27:42.048)
the need for connection and no matter whether what type of business you have, you need that connection to get to get to customers, to guests, to clients, whatever it is that you’re looking for, you need that connection. And that’s where chambers can continue to thrive and provide.

Brandon Burton (27:58.091)
Yes, I I totally agree. And I’m so glad the internet didn’t wipe out chambers, you know, in the early nineties. So that’s right. That’s right. Well, Tammy, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or where they want to come and get a great meal. Where would you point them and what’s the best way to connect?

Tammy Bracewell (28:07.02)
It was gonna happen, you know, so we’re still here.

Tammy Bracewell (28:23.99)
Well, you can reach me at director@facponline.com or +1 (800) 226-3269 or on my cell phone. I answer that too at (813) 310-7689. I also

tell people I I one of the privileges that I have and not only working with chambers across the the state I also have the privilege of working with my peers across the country by coordinating our bi-monthly calls and we’ve often chatted about you know we need to go to each other’s conferences and see what we’re doing so if anybody watching this in the chamber world would like to come to Florida in November or May we’d love to have you

Reach out. we don’t limit our attendees to Florida chambers. So if somebody from another state wants to come on, come on and see us. It’s beautiful in November. if you’re in central Florida and you want a good meal, my restaurant, I don’t do plugs, but since you asked, I will tell you it’s called the Crooked Bass. It’s Crooked Bass Grill and Tavern. We’re located across the street from Crooked Lake, and it’s it’s a very crooked lake, that’s why it’s named that. But we are it’s a seafood and steak restaurant. We’ve

Brandon Burton (29:29.738)
Yeah.

Tammy Bracewell (29:41.838)
had it for almost eleven years. So that’s seventy-seven years in restaurant years just so you know, it’s like dog year.

Brandon Burton (29:45.058)
Very good.

Brandon Burton (29:48.782)
Well, I hope to get there sometime and and try out the restaurant. I’ve heard great things.

Tammy Bracewell (29:53.782)
Well Craig’s been there, so you’ll have to come with Craig sometime.

Brandon Burton (29:57.378)
That’s right. Absolutely. Well, Tammy, this has been fun. I appreciate you spending some time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast and bringing your your insights and experience to the conversation. This has been a fun one.

Tammy Bracewell (30:05.472)
My pleasure.

Tammy Bracewell (30:10.881)
Thank you. I’m glad and I thank you for the invitation.

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Member Retention System with Angela Kubisky

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Brandon Burton (00:42)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the show I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your chamber members and your community. Today we’re joined by Angela Kabisky, Executive Director of the Milburn Short Hills Chamber of Commerce in New Jersey. Angela brings more than 25 years of experience in chamber management, membership development, and community engagement.

In her role, she leads efforts to strengthen programs, outreach, and connections among local businesses. Before joining the Milburn Short Hills Chamber, Angela served as the Executive Vice President of Membership and Marketing at the Morris County Chamber of Commerce, where she helped launch and grow the Women in Business program into one of the chamber’s signature offerings. She’s also the founder of Attention on Retention.

Where she trains and coaches chamber and association professionals nationwide on membership growth and retention strategies. Angela brings a strong belief in the power of relationships, collaboration, and community building to today’s conversation. Angela, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Angela Kubisky (01:58)
Hello, Brandon, and all of the listeners. Thank you so much for inviting me to talk a little bit about the Milburn Short Hills Chamber of Commerce. I’m very passionate about chambers overall. And to share a little bit about myself, I just want to start off by saying that I am a chamber champion through and through. I actually started I actually started

Brandon Burton (02:20)
Love it.

Angela Kubisky (02:22)
my career in banking. I had a 25 year

career in banking and it was very successful. I worked really hard, very tirelessly, to climb that corporate ladder and get to an executive level position. And when I reached that executive level position, one thing that I was able to do was to join the Morris County Chamber of Commerce where I worked for 10 years. And before joining that chamber I had never had any exposure to chambers or even networking for that matter.

And when I joined it, I was so impressed with the culture, the members, the way that they delivered value to their organization, that I decided to become a volunteer leader and really help them grow the organization. And by doing that, it really injected a lot more energy into my banking career because I was able to land a lot of new clients from the local chamber to grow the credit union that I worked for.

And it turned out that I became more passionate about chamber leadership than I actually did about my banking career. So I

Brandon Burton (03:32)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (03:33)
took the leap and I said, that’s it with the private sector, that’s it with my banking career. I want to be a chamber executive. I want to help all businesses to grow. And I just found it fascinating that the chamber would give you a platform to meet all these amazing business leaders that are in B2C or B2B businesses.

learn about their business and then they would be open to getting advice from me on how to grow their business. So it really was a twenty year journey with the Morris County Chamber of Commerce, first as a member volunteer for 10, and then as a chamber leader. And so that journey ended in twenty nineteen, the year before COVID. Wow. Was I was was

Brandon Burton (04:18)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (04:19)
I shocked what happened to chamber leadership during COVID. That was a really

Tough nut to crack, but I had left because quite frankly, Brandon, I was evented out. We did three hundred events a year and I was at almost every single one of them. That doesn’t count the number of events that the members had that I had to go to or wanted to go

Brandon Burton (04:41)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (04:42)
to, but I was invented out and I said, you know what, I’m in a position where I know how to lead a chamber really well. We were very successful. I wanted to help other chambers.

lead their organizations and that’s when I started attention on retention, which I know is the core of our conversation today. But you did ask me to to to share a fun fact about myself, which is honestly

Brandon Burton (05:06)
Wells.

Angela Kubisky (05:07)
I am an avid hiker. So my last hike was ten miles. It was up in the Catskills, New York. And we actually wanted to s do a five mile hike because in the summertime it’s a little tough.

to do ten

Brandon Burton (05:21)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (05:21)
miles and we got lost in the middle of the hike. And we only had

Brandon Burton (05:24)
So it became ten miles.

Angela Kubisky (05:26)
like eight ounces of water left and it was really scary, but we found our way back to the finish line and we made it through. But what a memory we created. I love hiking. I love the outdoors. My husband and I have a camper, forty two foot camper. We keep it up in the Catskills and we go every weekend. So today’s Friday. I’m looking forward to spending the weekend up there.

But g again, thanks

Brandon Burton (05:49)
Awesome.

Angela Kubisky (05:50)
for having me. Looking forward to talking about retention.

Brandon Burton (05:53)
Yes. I love i the term you used, event it out. I think that’s a a term you’re coining that others listening are like, Yes, that’s what I feel. So it’s not burnout necessarily, but it’s event out.

Angela Kubisky (06:05)
Yeah,

I just needed a break and I was so blessed that when I made that transition to be an entrepreneur because of the relationship that I had built through the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute of Organizational Management, which I’m a graduate of class of two thousand and eighteen, as well as the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives, I had built enough relationships where I was able to get enough clients to keep the revenue flowing in.

And with COVID it really opened up different opportunities to help with the virtual aspect of chamber leadership. So but then this opportunity with Millburn Short Hills came up and I decided to settle into this role. It’s part time. I’m at the end of my career, quite frankly. I only have two years left before retirement. My husband and I

Brandon Burton (06:57)
Okay.

Angela Kubisky (06:57)
will be going on the road full time, selling our house, taking our dogs and exploring the

Brandon Burton (07:00)
Use that camper all the time, yeah.

Angela Kubisky (07:03)
country. So

But I’ll never stop being passionate about chambers. I once heard a chamber executive say that chambers are gonna be a thing of the past, they’re a dying breed. I one hundred thousand percent do not agree with that at all.

Brandon Burton (07:20)
Yeah, yeah. Me neither. That’s why we do the show. So tell us a little bit more about the the Milburn Shorthills Chamber to help give us an idea of the size of your chamber, the scope of work you guys are involved with, staff, budget, to kind of set the perspective as we as we set the stage for our discussion today.

Angela Kubisky (07:38)
Sure. So we have about a hundred and twenty members and there is an opportunity for us to have like a thousand members because the business the businesses in the area that are not members of our chamber are definitely future members of our chamber because the previous to me leading the chamber, they never really had a chamber leader that had the level of experience that I have and nor the training.

Brandon Burton (08:06)
Right.

Angela Kubisky (08:06)
So when you are empowered with training, experience, and support, there’s nowhere to go but up. So we are really growing at a fast pace. I’m onboarding an average of five members a month and I’m looking forward to continuously retaining those members because after ninety days, if you don’t pay your dues, you’re out. I don’t I don’t

Brandon Burton (08:28)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (08:29)
care if you are promised to pay, you’re out. You need to be out.

And because I’m so passionate about retention and building relationships, I am constantly calling, emailing, using some kind of touch point with my existing members to understand what does the next three months look like for them in terms of engagement. So if at the point of invoice I know they’re not gonna pay, I will get rid of them off the books. So our annual

Brandon Burton (08:55)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (08:56)
budget is about fifty thousand dollars a year. It’s not high.

We do three events a month. All of them are included with your membership. So there’s no extra ticket prices for when you join. The revenue comes from two sources: your dues and sponsorships, and that’s it. So I’m looking to evolve that, but I need a bigger chamber in order to really make that happen. And in terms of the Milburn Short Hills area.

If you were to Google Millburn, you will find out that it is the number one town in the state of New Jersey for having the best school system. It’s a very

Brandon Burton (09:38)
Okay.

Angela Kubisky (09:39)
affluent town. A lot of the people who live there work in New York City on Wall Street and make over a million dollars a year because they’re living in one point five to four million dollar houses. And they are not

They are not typically my members. My members are the businesses and they typically live someplace else. So

Brandon Burton (09:57)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (09:58)
I wish that my members had a left enough enough revenue that they could share with me like that, but that’s not who my members are. It’s just where I’m located. there’s

Brandon Burton (10:08)
Sure.

Angela Kubisky (10:09)
a lot of storefront. We compete with a business improvement district called Explore Milburn Short Hills. They get a lot of sponsorship dollars.

we are friendly, but we would like to be more collaborative with them. And I am the only staff person and I don’t have any contractors, I have a board of directors, about nine people serve on our board, and my current board president works for a jewelry company inside the mall at Short Hills, which is a very fancy mall in our area of New Jersey, and he’s been remarkably helpful and supportive of my ideas.

Brandon Burton (10:44)
Very good. That definitely helps as we get into our topic today, which we’re gonna cover retention and and specifically paying attention to retention. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Angela, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today we’re focusing on retention. And I can tell you have a a huge

Affinity for retention. It’s a you got a big heart for it, it’s something you get excited about. I know we had a phone call prior to this, and you were just so excited to be able to talk about retention. So tell us what are some of these retention strategies. I guess, first of all, why is retention so exciting for you? And then what are some of these strategies that you’ve seen be successful when it comes to retention?

Angela Kubisky (14:17)
So one of the things that I’m always talking to my members about is how they’re nurturing their relationships with their existing clients because once you land a client, a lot of sales professionals who are also chamber executives are looking for the next client. Like who else can I onboard to help our business grow? But I I want them to have a mindset like mine where we’re investing a tremendous amount of energy and resources

into our existing clients, our existing members, deliver them the most value immediately so that they would be someone who can evangelize our brand and our offerings to people in their network. So I’m always measuring how am I delivering value to this member and how do they perceive that value and what are they saying about it. So if

A member joins our chamber, I am immediately working with them one-on-one to learn what is important to them in terms of getting a return on investment. And I learn every single day from different members of what is important to them. It may not be that we have the best event in the region. It may be that we have the best member profile for them because it’s helping them with their SEO. A lot of times when I Google a member’s name,

I’m the first thing that comes up in their Google search because they’re on our membership directory and that has value. So learning

Brandon Burton (15:47)
Absolutely.

Angela Kubisky (15:48)
learning about the members’ expectations is critical in any retention strategy. So my first thing is am I building a great relationship with that member? Do they like me? Do they like our chamber? And who can I introduce them within our chamber to help them with their organization?

I mean, I’m very relationship focused and I want our members to be the same. We want our members to connect, collaborate, and refer each other business. And if they’re not going to have that type of mindset, then it’s not going to be a good fit. And I know that not every single member is going to have the time nor energy to want to invest in building relationships. And that means that

I probably will spend less time with them and more time with the ones that have that mindset because they’re gonna be the ones that to to refer business to our chamber.

Brandon Burton (16:42)
Yeah. How often do you come across somebody when you do those one on ones and you ask that question about what’s most important to them, you know, what do they expect out of the membership? how often does it happen where maybe you have a hard time matching what their what their value is or how they would measure value to what your programming has to offer? Are you able to to always fit it in somewhere or are there times where there’s not a great match?

Angela Kubisky (17:07)
You know, it’s such an interesting question because the members who aren’t matched up with our philosophy of relationship building and showing up and referring business to each other don’t usually want a one on one with me. You know, I can’t even get on the phone.

Brandon Burton (17:27)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (17:27)
I was I was I onboarded a new member this week, which I almost fell off my chair with the email that I got because

We were going back and forth on email so much about the grand opening ribbon cutting. And I was like, Can we just get on the phone? Can we just have a conversation? And they were

Brandon Burton (17:45)
Well.

Angela Kubisky (17:46)
like, No, we can’t. B blatantly, no, we’re not gonna get on the phone. No, I’m not able to talk to you. No, no, no. So I I already

Brandon Burton (17:55)
Why not?

Angela Kubisky (17:56)
know that that member is only joining for the grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony, and they will be a drop member in one year. And quite frankly

I’m okay with that as long as I know going in. I will

Brandon Burton (18:09)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (18:10)
try to nurture that relationship every now and then, but it’s pretty easy at this point in my career to be able to identify people who are in or only putting their foot in to see the take the temperature of how cold the pool is or how warm the pool is, and then people who are completely out. And I think what we all need to do as chamber executives is spend the most time with people who are in.

figure out how to deliver value to them, they’re gonna stay and they’re gonna refer as business.

Brandon Burton (18:39)
Yeah. I I think there is opportunity with those that are dipping their toes in too to see, you know,

Angela Kubisky (18:43)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (18:44)
what what is the climate like here, what is this chamber thing all about? ‘Cause a lot of people have no idea what a chamber does.

But they’re told, you should be a member of the chamber. So they join. And then it’s like it then it the the onus is on you, right? To be able to show this is the value we provide. Here’s what we can do for you, here’s how we can help your business. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with somebody, you know, checking the temperature, but then it’s it’s time to jump in and show them where the value is, right?

Angela Kubisky (19:10)
Yes,

and for our chamber the value is in is in building relationships with the members and luckily I have a lot of members. I’m actually at sixty-five percent engagement, which is really good. Like

Brandon Burton (19:23)
I don’t know. Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (19:25)
a hundred and twenty-five members and sixty-five percent of them are engaged, meaning they’re showing up at least once a month for an event. And for the ones that are not showing up, I’m calling them and I’m letting them know what they missed out on and

And I’m also asking their permission if I can make an introduction to someone in our chamber. Members love formal introductions on email, especially when you hyperlink a LinkedIn profile or when you hyperlink their websites. And then those members get together and they learn and grow from each other, and then they always remember where that source of introduction came from.

You know, when I worked for the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and when I worked for myself, I noticed that I was unique in making introductions. I didn’t realize that there wasn’t a lot of people doing that on a regular basis. I used to have a goal at Morris County to make three introductions a day. And they’re strategic

Brandon Burton (20:23)
That’s awesome.

Angela Kubisky (20:24)
and there’s a lot of thought that goes into it. And the email that I used to write myself before AI came

was very deliberate in the language because I wanted people to understand the the strength of the person that I am introducing you to, why they have so much value to our chamber and to their clients. And if you were to meet this person, I think there’s an opportunity for you guys to collaborate. And I think that word collaboration has a very big meaning, a much bigger meaning than what people really think about when they hear that word. So

Brandon Burton (21:01)
Yeah. I love

Angela Kubisky (21:01)
I’m big on that.

Brandon Burton (21:02)
I love that approach and there’s so much value to that to where somebody’s not engaging, you notice that and you reach out to them and say, Well, if you’re not gonna come to me, we’re gonna come to you and show you where there’s value. So here’s an introduction, somebody who can help your business grow, help you be more successful. I’m curious as you make those introductions, are you telling the other party that hey, I’m gonna introduce you to this person, or is it yeah, yeah.

Angela Kubisky (21:24)
Always. Always. I always have for permission

because the chamber brand is on the line when I make an introduction. So if I said Brandon, I want you to meet Mary. And and I tell and I tell and I tell you why Mary’s

Brandon Burton (21:35)
Yes. Yep. And then Mary drops the ball.

Angela Kubisky (21:41)
so great. And then Mary never gets back to you, that reflects on me.

Brandon Burton (21:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (21:46)
So I call Mary, I call Brandon, I tell them each why.

This introduction is going to have value. What I would like to see come out of the meeting. And I would also like feedback. Would you give me that respect and the courtesy of giving me feedback of why that meeting went well?

Brandon Burton (22:01)
Great.

Angela Kubisky (22:02)
And then at one of our events, I’m always encouraging our members to share their wins for the month or the week. And if a win is someone that you met that you never had met before through the chamber and that meeting went really well, tell us why.

So I bring a lot of visibility to the introduction system that I have so that people want more introductions.

Brandon Burton (22:25)
Yeah, that’s awesome. So you talked about spending a lot of time with the these members that you see that are engaged, that are in with the chamber. What are the some of those ways that you delight them? What are ways that you keep them engaged, keep them coming back? What are some of these other tactics that you’ve incorporated?

Angela Kubisky (22:44)
Eyes wide open. Eyes wide open, Brandon. You have to know what’s going on in your members’ life. So I’m following them on social. I have Google alerts set up for some of the one some of the members that have a lot of revenue coming into our chamber from sponsorships. Like if I have a member that is religiously sponsoring our events, I am going to be hyper aware of what’s going on in their world. So I would set up a Google alert on that member.

So when they do a press release, I’m like the first to know. If they’re not sending it to me, I’m the first to know. And then I’m calling and emailing and congratulating them and also bragging about it. On social, I do a lot of tagging of our member stories, sharing their member story. But you know, if a member has a job opening and it’s on their website, I know that a lot of chambers have job banks on their website, but

I take it a step further and I figure out ways to help them with getting the candidates that they need. So I want our members to think of me as an extension of their staff. And luckily

Brandon Burton (23:47)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (23:48)
I have the time because I have a smaller chamber and there’s a lot of chambers that don’t have that kind of resource to be able to deliver that kind of value. And then they’re scratching their head saying, Why is my retention rate low? I think that when we go the extra mile and we pay

really close attention to what’s going on in our members world will find that it actually gives us a return on on our i on on investment for us because they’re gonna be more in invested in our success.

Brandon Burton (24:18)
Yeah, absolutely. I love just being able to to pay attention, like you said, eyes wide open and then take these take these things to the next level, right? And and that’s

Angela Kubisky (24:26)
Yeah, and I always like

to ask members, what is your biggest challenge today? What are you doing? What’s happening today in your industry, in your business? And not a lot of people are asking them that question. So when they hear it, they’re like, well, let me think about that for a minute. And they always have an answer. And then usually that challenge can be something that I might be able to support them with.

Brandon Burton (24:52)
Yeah. I was gonna ask, as you pose that question to your members, do you see trends where they’re answering similar things? Like for example, I know other chambers will ask similar questions and they they hear that workforce having a a workforce pipeline is a struggle or child care is a struggle because their employees can’t show up on a regular basis because they can’t figure out child care. Or do do you see consistency or trends in that feedback that you get?

Angela Kubisky (25:19)
I I do see some consistency, but I also see a lot of unique answers. And what I love about being a chamber executive is that you have a lot of relationships in this role, or at least you have the option to build a lot of relationships in the role. And you can find a person in your network, whether it’s in or outside the chamber, that you can introduce them to to help them with that challenge. It’s not so much of me solving

the challenge, it’s who do I know in my network that can help them solve that challenge. Yes.

Brandon Burton (25:53)
Right. Yeah, I like that response. So part of it is strengthening those relationships with those that are in your network already, right? So y you know, you dig your well before you’re thirsty, before you need to tap into that relationship. So talk to us about that. And what are you doing to to build and strengthen those relationships before you need to call

Angela Kubisky (26:13)
Yeah, so

Brandon Burton (26:13)
on

Angela Kubisky (26:14)
so I use the word nurture a lot, you know,

Brandon Burton (26:17)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (26:17)
and I love nurturing relationships through every single touch point I can and I am super sensitive to each and every touch point and I also document almost every touch point with the exception of text messaging on in my CRM. So I’m a big

Brandon Burton (26:34)
Okay.

Angela Kubisky (26:35)
CRM enthusiast.

And I believe that if it’s not documented in your CRM, it’s not done. It didn’t get done. It never happened. It’s a phantom thing. So I leverage my CRM every single day and I look at the communications tab to see what kind of engagement I have with that member. We don’t have the best memories as humans. We’re not like robots, right?

So when you tell me something today in a week, I’m probably not gonna remember it because so many other th so many other people told me things. But if you told me today that you registered for a conference in your industry and you were traveling a thousand miles to get there and it was a big deal for you because you needed coverage, you needed to plan and the content that you were gonna learn and bring back to your business was gonna be instrumental in your strategy to grow.

To me, if you’re gonna share that information with me, I’m putting it right in my CRM. And then I’m going to create a follow-up on my calendar to circle back with you a couple of days, maybe even a week after you get back from your conference. And I’m gonna ask you, how was that experience at your conference? Did it meet your expectations? I’m telling you, not a lot of people are doing this. So when you

Brandon Burton (27:54)
No.

Angela Kubisky (27:54)
actually do this, you stand out.

And you nurture that relationship in a way where people start to get more invested in your success and the chamber success. I can’t tell you how many chamber executives I have met that do not document touch points. How could they possibly remember everything? It’s impossible. So if we document the touch points and we follow up and we make it a point to make it part of our normal behavior, we will see the rewards.

Brandon Burton (28:24)
Yeah. I’m a big advocate of having systems.

Angela Kubisky (28:24)
I also I also am very

old school and use handwritten notes for nurturing relationships. So one of the things that I’ve been doing for decades is I buy like cards with on the front of the card just has our chamber logo and then I write whatever I want inside the card, stick it in an envelope, put it out there. On the top of the card, I write the person’s name going down.

And then next to each letter of their name, I will write an adjective that reminds me about them. So for like for your name, Brandon,

Brandon Burton (29:00)
Okay.

Angela Kubisky (29:00)
for B, I might write bright. For R I might re might respected. For A, I might write adventurous. And then I tell them w I tell them in the note card, this is how I see you. You are a remarkable person. And we are so delighted that you’re part of our community.

And thank you so much for spending 20 minutes on the phone with me to share some of the challenges that you have in your business. And I hope that you will lean into your chamber membership more and more to see that you could get the get the resources that you need to help you solve those challenges. People call me or text me and say, my God, I got your card. It was such a nice thing for you to do. No one does this anymore. And they’re right, they don’t.

Brandon Burton (29:44)
Yeah. I was gonna say that in in today’s age where everything is digitized, to have that tangible human connection is so valuable. but I’m sure that gets recorded in your CRM too. Yeah, mailed a card to so and so this day and you know, get get those things recorded.

Angela Kubisky (29:59)
Are

you ready for what let me tell you how I get it recorded? I take a picture because I never remember what I write, right?

Brandon Burton (30:06)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (30:07)
So I take a picture of what I write, I upload it to the CRM in the communications tab. When they call me and tell me why they love the card so much, I’m like, I don’t know why they love the card so much. I don’t even remember

Brandon Burton (30:17)
You pulled up.

Angela Kubisky (30:19)
what I wrote. I could reference the the content of the card and be like, yeah, that’s right.

Brandon Burton (30:26)
Such a good idea.

Angela Kubisky (30:26)
Because you know,

when when you’re dealing with so many people you don’t even remember stuff about them. It’s so

Brandon Burton (30:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (30:31)
hard to keep track of everything, especially at my age. So I I

Brandon Burton (30:34)
Yeah.

Angela Kubisky (30:36)
am a big believer in documenting everything.

Brandon Burton (30:39)
So I’m I’d mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of having systems to make things work.

Angela Kubisky (30:43)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (30:44)
If you don’t have a system, things fall through the cracks, people get forgotten. So having a system like you do where things that you know get recorded, you set those triggers that give you reminders this to follow up and it it makes people, you know, notice that they’re being noticed. you’d mentioned earlier

With the introduction emails, you said before AI came in. So how can AI play an effect in building and nurturing these relationships? I imagine there’s a fine line where you gotta you walk with when it comes to AI and nurturing, but I can also see it being a very useful tool. So how do you implement it?

Angela Kubisky (31:24)
So I use

I use a paid version of Chat GBT. I know there’s a lot of different resources out there, but this platform has worked very well for me. So what I do is let’s say I’m I’m introducing two members, right, to each other. I don’t want to take the time to tell the the people why I’m introducing them. So I tell AI. I go right into chat and I

Copy paste the URL of each of their LinkedIn profiles. I copy paste the URL of each of their websites. I tell chat why I feel this is a good introduction. I say, chat, I need you to read their websites, read their LinkedIn profiles, understand why I think it’s a good introduction, and write an email introduction linking everything up. And it comes right back within what? A nanosecond. It’s amazing.

Brandon Burton (32:18)
Right.

Angela Kubisky (32:20)
I copy and paste it, put it in the email. I I have the type of CRM where I could put a BCC URL so that it’s documented in both of their in both of their profiles on my in my CRM. And there you go. Chat is so smart. I could never be as smart as that person.

Brandon Burton (32:39)
Right. Well, you you

gotta be able to utilize it in a right in a good way.

Angela Kubisky (32:44)
Yes.

A and and I think a lot of people don’t realize that chat will read websites. They will read LinkedIn profiles and they come up with amazing content. And I love that about it because it’s it’s a streamline for me. I it cuts down the time of the email. I used to spend hours on this. Now it’s I spend minutes.

Brandon Burton (33:06)
Yeah, yeah. I love that. Well, Angela, as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you share with them as they strive towards that goal?

Angela Kubisky (33:22)
A tip or action item I think is to slow down, number one. Chamber executives are in the fast lane. And they’re going eighty miles an hour. And when you go eighty miles an hour on a highway in New Jersey, it’s very typical, by the way. I don’t know how it is where you are, but in New Jersey, eighty miles an hour is a normal speed in the fast lane on on a highway. Yeah, right? So

Brandon Burton (33:44)
You might be going slow in New Jersey. I mean, I’ve been there.

Angela Kubisky (33:48)
I would like to recommend that the listeners slow down, get get into the right lane, go fifty miles an hour because you’re gonna see things that you’re never gonna see in the in the fast lane. And when we’re in the slow lane and we’re really present with the member and we’re really present at the event and we’re completely engaged and we’re willing to be a better listener, the results that we’re gonna get from that behavior.

Will help you with your retention. It will help you with your own mental health to be able to find ways to really enjoy the journey because there are times in a chamber executive’s life where it gets very overwhelming, you get burnt out, you get frustrated, you feel like you don’t have enough help, and you can get down about that. And it happens to all of us, but

We need to recharge and then after the recharge, we need to slow down. And the task that you have on hand, it will get done. Give yourself time, but make sure you put a tremendous amount of thought and energy into the task you’re working on. And don’t worry about the next task. It’ll get done. But give the one in front of you, give the member in front of you, give the event in front of you all your effort and then move on.

That’s the that’s that’s the advice I’d like to share.

Brandon Burton (35:17)
Yeah, I love that visual, that analogy of driving down the the freeway. And sometimes, I mean, even just another perspective, if you can be a passenger instead of the driver, so it’s one thing to slow down, you’ll notice more, but if you have a staff member, a board member, a volunteer, somebody who can drive

the event that you’re putting on and you can be a passenger and have your eyes open and just take things in more and be more present. There’s so much value that comes from that. So I love that that example, that visual that you shared.

Angela Kubisky (35:48)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (35:50)
I like asking about the future of chambers and how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Angela Kubisky (35:57)
think the future of the chamber world is stable and I think that we will only be as successful as we believe we will be. So if you have a mindset that chambers are gonna be a thing of the past, you’re right. If you have a mindset that chambers are going to continue to grow, thrive and help businesses thrive, you’re right. So what are your what is your belief system? Mine is that chambers are never going away.

We will always be there for our businesses. And I just find that the more we collaborate with the business improvement districts, the special improvement districts, the economic development corporations, the larger chambers, I think the better we will be. And collaboration doesn’t always mean mergers, it just means let’s let’s play in the sandbox

Brandon Burton (36:48)
Together.

Angela Kubisky (36:49)
really nice together and figure out a way to support each other and help each other.

Brandon Burton (36:54)
Yes, absolutely. Well, Angela, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to who may want to reach out and connect with you. Where would you point them and where what would be the best way to connect?

Okay, I’ll ask it again. Yep. Yep. So Angela, I like asking

Angela Kubisky (37:10)
Can you please repeat that? So I’d like

Brandon Burton (37:15)
for any contact information. I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about your retention strategies or or anything else that that they might want to ask. Where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect?

Angela Kubisky (37:29)
I would be delighted to hear from your listeners. If they want to give me a call or send me a text, my phone number is 973-270-8855. I’d love to connect with other chamber executives, professionals, salespeople, to help them figure out ways to develop strategy to grow their organization or even just to chat to give each other support. I’m very open to that. So 973-270-8855. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

Brandon Burton (38:03)
That’s perfect. We will get all of that in our show notes to make it nice and easy to reach out and connect. But thank you so much for setting aside some time to join us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, for sharing your experiences, things that are working for you. I think you shared some great ideas that others can take and implement in their organizations and see some great results. So thank you.

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Create a Future Ready Workforce with Rick Pearce

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Brandon Burton (00:01.068)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today, we’re excited to welcome Rick Pearce President and CEO of The Chamber of Commerce, serving Middletown, Monroe, and Trenton, a role he’s held since June of 2013. Rick is a passionate connector and advocate for business, education, and workforce development.

Through his leadership, the chamber has strengthened collaboration among employers, schools, legislators, government partners.

and community organizations at the local, state, and national levels. He’s been instrumental in launching innovative workforce initiatives such as Manufacturing Month, Health Care Month, the Workforce Institute, Pathways to Professions, and Skills to Careers, all designed to help students discover local career opportunities and better understand the skills needed for long-term success. Rick also helped shape the Future Ready skill set, a framework developed in partnership with the Manufacturing

and healthcare leaders to identify the essential skills high school graduates need as they enter the workforce. That work has influenced classroom learning and employer engagement throughout the region. Before joining the chamber, spent 23 years in corporate training and special event planning. He’s a graduate of Miami University and the U.S. Chamber Institute of Organization Management, and he’s completed leadership programs to the U.S. Chamber Foundation. Rick, I’m excited to have you with us

today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening. And if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Rick Pearce (01:49.413)
Yeah, Brandon, thanks for having me on. I haven’t done too many of these in the past, but I am looking forward to it. A little part interesting, know, as everyone will share with you that’s in the chamber world, when you’re in the eighth grade or so, you don’t raise your hand and say, you know, I’d like to be a Chamber of Commerce executive. The career kind of picks you after a certain period of time.

Brandon Burton (02:13.538)
Thanks

Rick Pearce (02:14.821)
So the last 13 years have been extremely fulfilling, extremely challenging. And as everybody listening knows, you know, I’m going through the same challenges they are. So it’s been fun. I guess the most interesting thing is my wife and I have an interesting hobby that doesn’t really associate itself well with chambering. we…

Brandon Burton (02:37.855)
Okay.

Rick Pearce (02:38.625)
We enjoy throwing a couple of legs over the motorcycle and traveling the byways of the state and the tri-state area. So we’re located in the southwest corner of Ohio between Cincinnati and Dayton. So it’s extremely easy for us to get on any country road to make it to Indiana, to make it to Kentucky. So it’s not unusual for us on maybe on a weekend to hit both all three of those states in one day.

Brandon Burton (03:04.713)
Okay, well that sounds like fun getting out on the open road and enjoying the time together.

Rick Pearce (03:09.541)
It’s extremely therapeutic. Yeah. However, this spring has not cooperated well with us, so I’ve got a heck of an inch I need to scratch.

Brandon Burton (03:13.13)
I can imagine.

Brandon Burton (03:22.54)
Yeah, need to get some of that decompression out, right? Well, tell us a little bit about the chamber to help us set the stage. Let us know about the size of the chamber, staff, scope of work you guys are involved with, budget, just to help us understand where you’re coming from.

Rick Pearce (03:25.337)
Yes.

Rick Pearce (03:40.581)
Yeah, so we’re 109 years old. We go 110 for next year, found in 1917. We were originally founded as the Middletown Area Chamber of Commerce. Then as time went through and probably sometime in the early 80s, we merged with two other communities, Monroe, Ohio, which is just south of us and Trenton, Ohio, which is just west of us.

And then that we became the Mid Miami Valley Chamber. So we’ve gone through several name iterations. The name we have today is probably the longest name of any chamber in the state and or the country. The Chamber of Commerce serving Middletown, Monroe and Trenton. So I get a lot of flack for that when I have to introduce myself anywhere that my, the name of the chamber just keeps going and going and going. Because of where we’re located in Ohio, we’re extremely industrial.

Brandon Burton (04:32.529)
and

Rick Pearce (04:39.449)
We have a still working steel mill, was originally known as Armco Steel, founded here. It then changed names to AK Steel in the 90s. And then more recently, Cleveland Cliffs, a mining company out of Cleveland, purchased it. So they’ve probably had that mill for maybe two or three years. Probably one of our largest employers.

Brandon Burton (04:43.352)
Okay.

Rick Pearce (05:08.997)
We used to have a lot of paper in Southwest Ohio, both above us in Dayton, Ohio, Middletown, and then below us in Hamilton and Cincinnati. As you know, the paper industry almost doesn’t exist here anymore. We still have a few. We have a paper facility as a member that does recycled towel and tissue. We’ve got plenty of water here, which would, it’s conducive to the paper industry.

You know, as you mentioned earlier with the future ready skillset that we worked with, we worked with manufacturing and healthcare, which probably makes up a good 40 % of our membership. So that kind of gives you kind of an idea. There was only a staff of two of us. So you’re, you’re, you’re talking to 50 % of the workforce here. I think, I think chambers and I’m going to say this, I’m extremely understaffed, but anybody who’s listening knows they’re understaffed as well.

Brandon Burton (05:45.302)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (05:55.169)
All right.

Brandon Burton (06:05.038)
That’s right.

Rick Pearce (06:06.797)
But we get by what we can do, what we can try to get done. COVID taught us that we needed to cut a few things. So as I told the board, as we move forward, we’re gonna cancel out a few things. We just hope you don’t notice it because there’s only two of us. We have to spend our time very diligently on what we do.

Brandon Burton (06:28.578)
Yeah. What would you say the programming is that moves the needle the most? it all around workforce development or are there other areas of programming that you guys focus on?

Rick Pearce (06:39.577)
Well, we focus on three, we got three focus areas, Advocacy and government relations, which I think all chambers should be getting into. I think they need to learn a little bit more about that and understand it. I don’t know how active they’re going to be, especially with limited staff, but they still need to know their state representatives, their state senators, all of the paid staff, so to speak, or their representatives at the state level.

the attorney general, the lieutenant governor, the governor, know, secretary of state, all of those positions have area reps and the area reps know if they go to the chamber, they get one stop shopping and reach a lot of businesses at once. We have an active committee that meets monthly and we basically just get informed of what’s going on. Our last meeting talked about

a big push to get rid of property taxes in the state of Ohio. Of course, everybody would like that, but there’s a lot of consequences that come along with that. So advocacy government relations is one. Future ready workforce is the other, which is where we spend a great majority of our time. And the third focus area would be leadership.

Brandon Burton (07:42.574)
except the state, right?

Rick Pearce (07:57.69)
which is how do we grow the next generation of leaders and get them ready to not only become more involved with us and the communities, but also work within their organization to climb that ladder. So we send them through an eight month leadership program, two hours, once a day, once a month for two hours, and then we send them on a tour of a facility and or the community so they can

better get to know who they’re serving.

Brandon Burton (08:31.95)
But for today’s episode we’re gonna…

Brandon Burton (08:39.16)
future ready workforce. So I’m excited to learn much more about that area programming and work that you guys are involved with as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Rick, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break,

Today we’re diving in on how to create a future ready workforce. I know that’s one of the areas of focus for your chamber. As we record this, it is the end of the school year for most of those high school students out there. I’ve got a graduating senior this year. Yesterday was her last day of school. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart, seeing my kids getting ready to enter the workforce.

Rick Pearce (09:00.581)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (09:22.948)
What is your approach or how have you guys approached building a future ready workforce?

Rick Pearce (09:28.869)
Well, it’s been a challenge. When I first started Institute in 2014, I was six months on the job and I was fortunate enough to be sent to Western Institute or West Institute out in the University of Arizona. So that’s the first week in January. So while everybody’s cold up here, was nice weather there.

Brandon Burton (09:47.809)
Yeah, West, yeah.

Rick Pearce (09:58.704)
So one of my instructors shared with us, if you don’t know what to work on, go back and ask your members and they’ll tell you. So I made a phone call back to our office and I asked Ann, who was running the office at that time, and I said, you know what, call the top 20 employers, get some appointments, and then when I get back, I’m gonna meet with them to figure out what their pain points are. And Brandon, they all had the same pain point, which was workforce. Now, that ran the spectrum of what their challenges were.

But basically, they had a hard time finding employees to fill jobs. So at that point in time, I mean, there really wasn’t a place to turn in 2014 or 2015 to try and get answers. Bowling Green Kentucky was doing a good program down there just outside south of Louisville. And there’s several huge manufacturing.

places down there. think they still have a Whirlpool maybe manufacturing plant down there. So I kind of guided, kind of went by their guide for a while and I did a lot of research. The national

Association of Manufacturers put out a guide that kind of helped. So I used that for a while. We brainstormed it with the board. And then what we came up with with these with these focus areas and that was one of them. So back then we called it Education and Career Path. Sometime along 2018, maybe 2019, the U.S. Chamber Foundation Center for Education and Workforce

was putting together a program called a Business Leads Fellowship. Had to do with workforce type issues. So I submitted an application, got selected. I was about 35 chamber executives at various levels, which were local chambers, regional chambers, and state chambers. And they kind of shared with us a lot of the research behind No Child Left Behind, and then the second iteration of that, which I’m going to forget.

Rick Pearce (12:13.485)
And kind of shared with us that, you know, the challenges with education and getting those students prepared for the workforce. So I came back and asked a few of my co-chairs and then the board. I said, you know what, we got to do something with this. So one of the things that we decided to do, Brandon, is I brought together manufacturing and healthcare and I sat them in a room for 90 minutes and I asked them three questions. And the three questions were.

What’s the characteristics of your best employees? What’s the characteristic of your worst employees? And what’s the characteristic of an employee that you’re gonna need in 10 years? So we continued to meet monthly and that took us a little over a year to come up with the list. My co-chair at the time worked at very high levels of education in Oklahoma and in state of Ohio.

Brandon Burton (12:50.478)
Thank

Rick Pearce (13:10.649)
And he said, Rick, do you mind if I sit in on that meeting? I’d like to hear what’s going on. And I said, sure, Bob, you can do that. So if he’s going to do the research for free to figure out who else is doing this in the nation, I’m going to take him up on it. So as we got to close the end of this, after about a year, he said, you know what? This aligns very well with an organization near Boston called the Next Generation Learning Challenge. At that point in time, I was ran by

a guy by the name of Andy Calkins and we did spend some time talking with him a number of years ago. And he said, your stuff aligns with him about 90, 95 % of the time. And he said, it took them about $100 million of Bill Gates’ money to come up with those answers. So we use Andy’s categories of how we put the skill set together.

Brandon Burton (13:51.461)
That’s what I’m trying to say.

Rick Pearce (14:05.155)
But while I was in those training programs with the US Chamber Foundation, that business leads fellowship, I heard a lot about college and career ready, college and career ready, college and career ready. And I said, you know, I said to myself, said, you know, college is a way to a career. It’s not a career. I said, one of the things we got to focus on is giving these students the skills that are needed to

Brandon Burton (14:28.376)
Thank

Rick Pearce (14:31.045)
work past any challenge or any roadblock they might have in their life. So we need to make them future ready. So I really just developed the name future ready and it seems to be catching on. I wish I could have trademarked that. But that was in 2018-2019 when we came out with that future ready skill set.

Brandon Burton (14:38.306)
Yes.

Rick Pearce (14:55.183)
So I shared that with the businesses that participated. I even contacted businesses that weren’t members, told them what we were working on, asked them if they could sign off on it, and they did. And we just keep moving forward with it. It’s not rocket science. Anybody who’s listening could probably determine what that future ready skill set is. They could probably guess 10 of those skill sets that are needed.

and in the workforce today. So it’s been fun.

Brandon Burton (15:28.398)
That’s been fun. That’s quite the journey there. I love that you started with going to Institute and then the of the light went on when you were at Institute.

of being able to see where, these areas of focus need to be and be able to go back to your, your members and say, what do we need to be working on? And I think in every community, the answer is going to be slightly different, but I think most communities, at least what I’ve seen as a trend, you know, doing nearly 400 episodes now, the podcast is that a workforce is an issue across the country. So if you’re not involved in some degree, you probably should be, or ask your, if you’re

members, what should we be involved with? But it seemed to put you on a good trajectory as far as building a future-ready class of students coming out of school.

Rick Pearce (16:21.093)
It did. So Institute did set us on a very different trajectory than what we were, and then more specifically with the workforce part. So I would recommend to anybody out there that has not gone to Institute, do some research, find a location near you or close, learn a little bit more about it. I think chambering is a great career.

It’s a great industry. just recently heard we have our annual meeting in January and I wanted to put some interesting quotes in some of our marketing materials that put out and one of them really struck me and I don’t know who said it but I’d like to give them credit. If you want to change your community for two years run for mayor. If you want to change your community for 20 years work with a chamber.

Brandon Burton (17:21.326)
I love that.

Rick Pearce (17:21.551)
So what we do is long term. It’s what we call an infinite game. We’re in it for the long haul. People change places, players change, faces change. And once you get on a path, you need to stay on it and you need to fix it. as people understand what we work on out there, it takes a long time to get.

Brandon Burton (17:47.938)
Yeah.

Rick Pearce (17:48.453)
And you may never reach the end, but you’re going to make things better.

Brandon Burton (17:53.583)
That’s the thing, chamber work, it’s perpetual work. You keep working towards it and you never quite solve the problem, problems just evolve, right? So you keep pace with it and try to keep up.

Rick Pearce (17:56.805)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rick Pearce (18:01.797)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (18:05.972)
So I’m curious with the building the future ready workforce and skill set. Do you guys have any data points or ways of tracking kind of where things were before and then tracking? Cause you’re coming up on what eight, nine years or so of focusing on this, this work. What it’s enough time to be able to look back at it and see some success stories or see businesses that have benefited because of the

effort and the time that you guys have put into helping develop a future ready workforce. Share with us some of those success stories and the results that you’re seeing.

Rick Pearce (18:45.477)
Yeah, sure, Brandon. I’ll start with our partners first, and then hopefully we’ll get to some numbers. But when we first got into this, we brainstormed, how are we going to do this? And as the listeners know, Chambers of Commerce are not set up to track post-high school graduates. We’re not set up to find 18, 19, and 20-year-olds.

So we focused on K through 12. And the reason we did that is we know where to find them. They’re in the building. Now, COVID threw that off for a little bit. They probably set us five years back, even though it didn’t last for five years. We had a lot of momentum going into that. So we worked specifically with our K through 12 schools, mostly the high schools, because we wanted to get those kids ready. And it was extremely challenging. It was about the time

One of our past governors had written a law that each of the high schools needed to hire a college and career instructor. So some of the schools, some of the districts had a college and career structure and instructor and some didn’t. So it was extremely difficult in the early days to try to figure out who our contact was and what it was that we wanted to really do with those students to introduce them to various careers.

Brandon Burton (19:47.758)
Thank

Thank you.

Rick Pearce (20:14.021)
So when we put together the Future Ready skillset, I stopped that around to our four public school districts, talked to their board chair and their superintendent, and shared with them that I wanted to make a presentation during the summer of 2019 to encourage them to adopt the Future Ready skillset into their already state minimum graduation standard.

Brandon Burton (20:38.774)
to know how we get the station to move in a more specific way.

Rick Pearce (20:42.885)
Though I had two districts adopted immediately, the largest district that’s were in Middletown City Schools, the superintendent shared, I’ll get to it in my next strategic plan. And one school is one district is still contemplating it. So I got a phone call or an email probably in January of 2020, right before COVID was announced.

And he says, I’m ready to start the next strategic plan, get your businesses ready. So we brought them together. And then what they did was they brought the future ready skill set to life within their district and within the classroom. So I guess the first positive was we were able to influence a school board to adopt the skill set as their new strategic plan. And they’re now in their fifth year of it. So it’s now just going to be part

Brandon Burton (21:36.654)
I’ll see you.

Rick Pearce (21:39.394)
of their DNA. So we’re extremely proud of that. So if I can just continue on that line, they started rolling this out in K through five, then they slowly took it to the junior high a few years ago and they rolled it out to high school last year. They also got a new principal last year and I wasn’t going to bother him so he had things to do so we’re set up sometime in June to meet.

to figure out how we work a little bit closer with them and closer with the students to get them introduced to the various careers that Middletown and Southwest Ohio has for them so they can start to be ready to enter the workforce. We haven’t seen this type of challenges in our country since World War II, since all those young men went to the Pacific and went to Europe to fight World War II for us.

Brandon Burton (22:21.163)
and

Rick Pearce (22:32.773)
And then what ended up happening then is a lot of those women as Rosie the Riveter entered the workforce. So I don’t know the answer to solve the workforce issue other than we got to get the students ready. We got to get them flexible. There’s plenty of careers for them to choose. I guess the main point, Brandon, being a lot of us didn’t have enough kids.

Brandon Burton (22:58.668)
Yeah, that’s right. takes a while to build that back up,

Rick Pearce (23:01.818)
And it takes 18 years to manufacture a workforce.

Yeah, so the first part to answer your question, was a long-winded answer, but we’re extremely proud of the fact that we were able to influence a school board for them to say, okay, this is what the business community needs. Let’s answer this. It’s been a challenge working with the bureaucracy of education because they also have to deal with the bureaucracy of the state education level.

Some of that has changed a little bit. I know that our state level used to be the Ohio Department of Education. They’ve changed that to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. We are way ahead of the curve on this introducing students to it. they actually, Middletown City Schools actually made a class called Passport to Tomorrow where they actually recruited their best elementary teachers to help deliver that subject matter just like they would gym and music.

So part of my job is with the context within the business community is bring the business community into those classes and put together interactive learning experiences for those young students so they can kind of understand what that business does. I know we have an aeronautical corporation in our community called Magellan Aerospace. They make muffler systems and missile fins.

Brandon Burton (24:23.278)
I’m ready.

Brandon Burton (24:27.246)
We may have a process that we can do something about this.

Rick Pearce (24:30.927)
for the government and airlines and jet engines. And they were doing a little exercise with the kids, the second and third graders. So they just decided to put together balsa wood, wooden airplanes. And then as the kids got older, they made paper airplanes. And these kids got to understand what they did. Now, as the student gets older, in the sixth,

Brandon Burton (24:48.606)
Airplanes. Yeah.

Rick Pearce (24:58.789)
sixth, seventh, eighth grade and into high school, they dive into those areas a little bit more deeper. They may even get a tour. So we’re trying to really break down those barriers between business and education and get business in the classroom and get education out of.

Brandon Burton (25:15.926)
Yeah, so.

Rick Pearce (25:16.781)
It’s been a long road, and it’s been very satisfying.

Brandon Burton (25:20.012)
Yeah, so I was going to ask how many school districts you have to work with and sounds like about four and I’m sure there’s

Rick Pearce (25:25.629)
We have four public school districts. We also have two private schools. And we also have a credit recovery high school. So we try to work with all of them. It can be a challenge, especially with just two of us in the office. I wish I had the budget to hire a workforce person to do this for me, but it didn’t work out that way.

Brandon Burton (25:32.75)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (25:47.415)
Yeah, so my next question goes to is there a formal curriculum that’s being developed by these school districts and then once school districts adopt this future ready mindset workforce.

Rick Pearce (25:55.92)
There is. There is a formal passport to tomorrow curriculum that they did put together for this. The next step of the program, when they rolled this out into high school, they put together, Brandon, what was called a program of study. And what they did was they mapped the classes that they were teaching minus reading, writing, and arithmetic.

to the six career fields that I think almost all public school systems are using to identify the various career fields that you can get into. Now underneath of those career fields are industry clusters or career clusters and there’s 16 of those. And I think those are universal no matter what district you go to or what state you go to for public education. I think they’re all using the same six fields and 16 clusters.

Brandon Burton (26:56.398)
Okay, so once a school district or school adopts this programming, how involved does a chamber have to be in implementation and seeing it through and follow up? What does that look like?

Rick Pearce (27:12.569)
That is a full-time job plus.

Brandon Burton (27:15.106)
Yeah.

Rick Pearce (27:16.613)
We work very closely with the districts. I would have to say in my position and a lot of the chamber executives out there know this, that most of what we do aligns a lot with an economic development person at a city, county, municipality. Those are the people that we really work with a lot. Mine, I got two of them. Those are the ED folks and then these are the superintendents and the people in the classroom.

Brandon Burton (27:34.68)
Yes.

Rick Pearce (27:44.248)
I mean, they’re almost like workmates of mine. I wish either I could put them on my payroll or I could jump on their payroll, one of the two, but we do spend a lot of time with them. My job, at least with the specifics to the passport program, Brandon, was to recruit what they call the Ready 100, which was roughly 100 businesses that are endorsing this program. And endorsing means…

They help the students and the instructors create an interactive learning experience, especially for the junior high, or especially for the elementary kids. Excuse me. And then in high school, give them more information on specific skills and specific positions that they have. And then when they graduate school, they guarantee those individuals an interview.

They don’t guarantee them a job, but they will guarantee them an interview. So we spend a great deal of time trying to get the businesses into the classroom. Now, since this is a new program or a new line of thinking for the businesses, it’s been an extreme challenge for them to identify somebody in the business that can go and visit these schools and talk to the students.

Brandon Burton (28:42.979)
Right.

Rick Pearce (29:08.069)
because businesses have been so slim probably since 01, since 9-11. And then we’ve had the economic collapse of 06, 07, 08. We had COVID. So the businesses are used to running lean. So they just don’t have extra people to do this. If I could wave my magic wand and click my heel three times.

I would wish for each one of those businesses to have a few individuals who just went out and talked to the students in the schools.

Brandon Burton (29:42.6)
And I could see where the work is never ending.

Rick Pearce (29:45.99)
never ending. If I can continue, I’ll just close my thought with this, with that program of study and mapping the classes to those six career fields, it’s very timely that you and I are having this conversation because I had two large meetings this week with our business community that I wanted them to start thinking about identifying the appropriate individuals within their organizations.

to start entering the classroom for next school year to start delivering specific topics to those students related to those career fields. So I’m meeting with a group of high school counselors later today at Middletown High School to kind of solidify and finalize what those kind of plans look like for next school year for those businesses to come in and actually help the instructor and or instruct the class on certain topics.

within that field. So that’s kind of where we are today.

Brandon Burton (30:51.054)
That’s awesome. I love hearing the impact you guys are making and the movement that’s happening in your communities there. As we begin to wrap up, wanted to ask on behalf of the, I’m sorry. Go ahead, I want to get that thought. I was going to say.

Rick Pearce (31:00.452)
Yeah, so.

Rick Pearce (31:05.605)
No, no, go ahead. Yeah, the close it. I’ll close this out Brandon with this because I know you asked about the numbers. We don’t have the numbers yet. What we’re trying to identify is with when this was rolled out five years ago to the K through five students. I’m asking the district, are they tracking it?

Are they tracking how well the students are learning? Are 75 % of them learning it? Are 80 % learning it? So they’re pulling those numbers together for me. Obviously, the biggest number in my simple mind and my simple world, would be how many seniors are going to get hired on June the 1st? And will they still have those positions a year later?

That’s what I think is the tall tale sign is everything working. How many kids are hired and have they retained those jobs for at least six months to a year?

Brandon Burton (32:05.078)
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a great, great metric there. So for those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you leave with them as you depart?

Rick Pearce (32:21.157)
Call me. Call me so we can have a discussion. It’s been a long road. I’ve got plenty of holes in my walls in the office where I’ve knocked my head through the plaster. Every once in a while I make the mistake of knocking my head against a brick wall, so I’ve got some nodules on there from that. So I can save some individuals from hitting the pitfalls and becoming aggravated because we’ve already been through them.

Brandon Burton (32:22.946)
Yeah.

Rick Pearce (32:48.101)
the things to do and the things not to do. Happy to talk to anybody about how to get something like this started or making it better. And of course, they may be doing something interesting that I don’t know about that could help me.

Brandon Burton (33:01.358)
That’s right, that’s right. So I like to ask everyone I have on the show, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brandon Burton (33:22.195)
I’d like asking everyone I have on the show, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Rick Pearce (33:30.725)
Is that a direct question to me?

Brandon Burton (33:33.216)
Yes. Yeah.

Rick Pearce (33:34.47)
Wow. You know, with all the resources that we have available to us, Brandon, and I know you’ve done work with ACCE and you know all about them, they came out with that, second rendition of the Horizons report, which is 2035. I think if Chambers looked at that research and looked at that model and kind of

Brandon Burton (33:50.734)
I’m sorry.

Rick Pearce (34:05.411)
determine if that’s a path to pay attention to. I think chambers become extremely critical in the future. I think for a while we’ve lost our flair. We’ve obviously had to do more with less, which is extremely difficult. With the transient society that we have now and people moving and changing jobs and moving states and changing areas, it’s hard to find those homegrown people that…

really want to make their community better than what they found it. I think our stock and our value goes up into the future because we do represent the business community and I think in this day and age, business should be running things. They know how to solve problems, they know how to run lean, they know how to just get things done. over the last number of decades, we’ve seen that

Government doesn’t do a very good job of solving problems. The business does an excellent job of solving them. So we need to leverage that. And trying to talk with our business leaders to get them engaged can be a challenge too, because they’re so stretched for time and time poverty that it’s hard for them sometimes to get engaged. But the work still needs to be done.

Brandon Burton (35:09.643)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (35:24.782)
Yeah, I love that answer. So you had mentioned as a tip to have listeners reach out to you. I’d love to give you an opportunity to share the best way for them to do that. What contact information would you like to share? Where would you like to point listeners who might want to connect with you?

Rick Pearce (35:43.161)
Well, easiest way Brandon would be pick up the phone and call. 513-422-4551. Ask for Rick. If I don’t answer the phone, just leave it. If we’re not here, leave a message. Love to talk with you. That’s probably the easiest way.

Brandon Burton (36:14.636)
That’s perfect. We’ll be sure to get that in our show notes for this episode and make it easy to connect with you. But Rick, I…

Rick Pearce (36:21.285)
I could also share an email address with you if you like, if people would like to use that as well.

Brandon Burton (36:27.16)
Sure. Yeah, go for it.

Rick Pearce (36:30.349)
That would be Rick, R-I-C-K, at thechamberofcommerce.org.

Brandon Burton (36:40.078)
I’m glad you didn’t have to get the URL with the entire chamber name in it.

Rick Pearce (36:40.942)
Now I.

Rick Pearce (36:44.741)
No, I get lot of flack for it because I’ve heard from a lot of people said, man, I’m not quite sure how you got that domain, but let me know if you want to sell it.

Brandon Burton (36:52.854)
That’s right. That’s right. Well, Rick, this has been great having you on the podcast. really appreciate you coming on here and sharing your insights, your experience that you’ve had, especially as it comes to building a future ready workforce is so important. And I know those listening are getting a lot out of it and seeing ways that they can implement and scale for their communities. So thank you again for just for coming on here and sharing these insights.

Rick Pearce (37:19.759)
Well, you’re welcome, Brandon. I’m happy to share and thanks for answering my call and letting me share a little bit. And it’s been a pleasure talking with you.

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2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Howell Area Chamber with Janelle Smith

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Brandon Burton (00:00.962)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. And today we’re joined by Janelle Smith, president of the Howell Area Chamber of Commerce in Livingston, Michigan.

Janelle leads initiatives focused on economic development, entrepreneurship, workforce development, and community growth. With more than a decade of chamber and economic development experience, she’s known for building innovative partnerships and programs that strengthen both businesses and communities. She was named one of ACCE’s 40 under 40 honorees in 2024. She’s an IOM graduate.

and she completed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Business Leads Fellowship. Janelle brings strong passion for collaboration, leadership, business growth to today’s conversation. But Janelle, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast.

First of all, huge congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a Chamber of the Year finalist. That’s quite the accomplishment. But I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to the audience and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Janelle Smith (01:24.118)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for the introduction, for having me on your your show. It is quite an honor, and we are just really, really excited about the opportunity. so to share a little bit of something, a little something about myself, something interesting. I actually have a background in fashion design. So I think that that is something that not too many people know about me, but that’s what I went to school for. So my

In fine arts, and I think that I used to say, and I was actually thinking about this yesterday, but I used to say that being in the chamber industry allowed me to be creative and still kind of exercise that creative part of my brain, but I really think what it boils down to is building things. So I think in this role we get to build some really amazing things within our communities. So beyond the creativity component, I’m still actually constructing things, and whether they’re tangible.

Brandon Burton (01:53.858)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (02:20.694)
or not there to have impact and outcomes. So I think I think that it translates really well and it’s it’s been fun.

Brandon Burton (02:27.659)
Yeah. You don’t see that on many chamber resumes. You don’t have fashion design as a background. But I think that the parallels you’ve drawn to it, you know, the joy that comes from creating, I think there’s great power in that. So that that is neat. It’s a interesting background. well, if you would tell us a little bit about the Howell Area Chamber, just to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Janelle Smith (02:33.216)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (02:45.74)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (02:56.546)
So the Howell Area Chamber of Commerce is located in Livingston County, Michigan. we are the largest chamber in the county, and we have a really strong focus on economic and community development, workforce development, and really entrepreneurship. So we’ll talk a little bit more about entrepreneurship when we talk about.

Submitted for ACCE Chamber of the Year. But we also we have about six full-time staff members that work with us, a few seasonal and part-time staff members as well. We’ve grown significantly in the past six years. We’ve almost tripled our budget, which now is about 1.4 million annually, and that does include our foundation. So we have a foundation that we leverage as well in a lot of the different

and programs that we provide to the Howell area and Livingston County community.

Brandon Burton (03:52.322)
Very good. That that definitely helps to to set the stage. And I love that you guys have the foundation are utilizing that. Is that primarily around workforce development or economic development? Leadership.

Janelle Smith (04:04.076)
A lot of leadership through our foundation and a lot of community events are driven through our foundation, some economic development as well. but right now mostly on a leadership education side.

Brandon Burton (04:17.557)
Okay, very good. So on these Chamber of the Year finalist episodes, I like to spend the majority of our time talking about the program that was submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. So we’ll take a quick break and when we get back we’ll dive into that program.

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Janelle Smith (04:34.529)
Awesome.

Brandon Burton (04:36.203)
Alright, Janelle, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll we want to dive in and learn about the program that you submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. It’s always neat to learn about these programs because they’re obviously making impact in your community to be able to stand out and kind of rise rise to the top to be a Chamber of the Year finalist. So if you would just introduce to us what the what the program is that you all submitted on your Chamber of the Year application.

Janelle Smith (05:04.16)
Absolutely, yeah. We submitted the Livingston Business Hub. So the Livingston Business Hub is really a business resource and a central access point for entrepreneurs and businesses within our community to support them in their endeavors, help them grow, and ensure that they have the access, the tools, and the support needed to do so, and that includes a a community.

This all started and I’m gonna kinda go back to the very beginning because I think that that’s really critical to how we got to where we are today. And the Livingston Business Hub was really born out of COVID. So back in

Towards the end of 2020, decided to strategically plan. I think that a a lot of us during COVID and throughout COVID were spending a lot of time just trying to keep the plane in the air, so to speak. And we knew that we had to be really forward thinking about what was going to be happening to our community and our businesses when this you know thing passed and when we were on the other side of it. And I think the word of the year for many years was pivot, pivot. And

Brandon Burton (06:16.075)
Yeah. Yeah.

Janelle Smith (06:17.844)
you know, I think we all kind of got sick of hearing that, but at some point I know I was like, do I even say it? so we we knew that we had to really look at how this was going to shape our community and what the chamber’s role in that was gonna be. So we worked with our board

Brandon Burton (06:20.001)
You’re bringing back bad memories, no. Right.

Janelle Smith (06:39.298)
We engaged over 60 stakeholders and community members, chamber members, non-members across several different industry sectors. I want to say we had that roughly six industry sectors that participated in these focus group discussions. And in that, it was clear that we needed and that there was a strong gap in business support services. And this really came from that reinvention of.

You know, we started to understand that individuals within our community were really refocusing their efforts. You know, a lot of people were laid off, lost their jobs, they started restructuring their lives and reprioritizing what was important to them. So based on the feedback that we got through those stakeholder focus groups sessions, in partnership with really reviewing kind of what we know and what we’ve been through before, so analyzing what happened.

recession era and two thousand eight two thousand nine and what we saw and what we predicted is that there would be a strong entrepreneurial renaissance. So in that and but also understanding that small businesses truly are the backbone of our

Economy, our regional economy, our state economy, and truly our our national economy. They they are what our economies are built on. And so, how could we support that gap and those needs to ensure that we have a strong and vibrant ecosystem here for entrepreneurs and business owners? So that’s when the vision for the Livingston Business Hub was born. And so it was a lot of discussions, a lot of analyzing the data, and then outlining like

We want to see with this. it started, you know, people are like, well, what is this? Is this a an incubator? Is it

Brandon Burton (08:30.455)
Right. Is it a physical space? Is it digital space? What yeah, what is it?

Janelle Smith (08:33.3)
Yeah. So like what is this? So that’s when we really started putting the pieces together and

It started with concepts, we had drawings, and this was a really big stretch for us because I think as chambers and especially coming out of COVID, we understand that our resources, we need to maximize all of our resources, especially at that time, you know. and so it was it it was a financial commitment and a financial investment that our board was very dedicated and committed to because we we understood that the potential impact that this could have.

locally. So we invested in renderings. So it did become a physical space. And so it’s your technical support, but also all of those wraparound services as well. So the Livingston Business Hub actually resides within the Howell Area Chamber of Commerce. Through the renderings we reconstituted what our building looked like and how we would continue to serve businesses within our region in a in a way that supported their needs. So we created a co-working space.

We created, we actually have our own podcasting studio today that’s now accessible to members and anybody that’s a part of our hub programming. And so they can come in and we can give them all the tools that they need to be successful. So we invested in his renderings and we started creating that vision of like, okay, what does this look like from a programmatics perspective? And really identifying like what the biggest needs were gonna be.

we aligned a lot of resources and started telling the story and sharing this with our regional partners. So we had regional partners that were involved in this and critical to the success. So one of those being Ann Arbor Spark. We had a board member who was part of our economic development entity at that time, which is Ann Arbor Spark, and

Janelle Smith (10:30.36)
Very much into she was very intimate with the project and she really helped us kind of move the needle and and also connect us with some different resources as well. So as we were looking at this and then and then we had some other board members that were like, Hey, you know, I really think that you should talk to so and so. So we really leveraged the community to move this forward. We listened.

we heard and then we put the ideas into action when that those gaps were identified. So we lined this all up and then we’re getting ready to start construction and we’re like wow this is a huge capital investment. This is gonna be a big and heavy lift. So how can we how can we do this? How can we move this forward? Well again

decided that this was critical to supporting our community here and fostering that entrepreneurial ecosystem in realizing that you know that that the success of those entrepreneurs really is gonna be the success of our and the prosperity of our entire region. And so they said let’s move forward. We dipped into reserves to actually start construction.

So we started construction and we continue to look to opportunities to leverage partnerships and we actually go ahead and

Brandon Burton (11:58.36)
interrupted the question. I’m I’m curious. When you said you tapped into reserves, so like what time frame is this? Is this like twenty twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three? Okay. I was gonna say tapping into reserves in twenty twenty would be super scary and it still could be scary even in twenty twenty three. So

Janelle Smith (12:06.84)
Twenty twenty three it was I think twenty twenty three. Yep. Yep, so

Janelle Smith (12:16.834)
Well it was really scary because when you know, we were coming out of COVID, I like our our budget had decreased by almost fifty percent. And so to build that back and to build I mean, at this time, our staff was a staff of two.

Brandon Burton (12:25.718)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (12:32.308)
So this was a a big, a big undertaking. So we you know we just did it and kept the the whole vision of this and the purpose and the potential impact at the center of it. So we moved forward and entered into construction and

Brandon Burton (12:32.567)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (12:37.718)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (12:56.694)
That was fun. I’ve never done that before. So I think like as a chamber professional, it’s kinda you you never know like all of the different hats that you’re gonna wear and I’m like, okay.

Brandon Burton (12:59.007)
Yeah.

That’s one word to use, yeah.

Janelle Smith (13:09.56)
So and and through this, you know, we we had tenants, so we started shifting our model a little bit too. So we’re looking at ways that we can continue to diversify and support a thriving organization. And we were able to do this by officing

Brandon Burton (13:12.257)
That’s right.

Janelle Smith (13:29.088)
sorry, offering office rental space. So we were were working around tenants and their schedules and a lot of construction dust. And in late twenty three we were able to secure a grant in partnership with five other ecosystem partners. And so this is what really got us over that last hurdle and it was truly transformational to what we were able to achieve. So we

Brandon Burton (13:39.266)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (13:58.475)
basically launched pretty immediately our hub websites and our opening up of our co-working space we were able to outfit the space with furniture furnishings and the the podcasting equipment and gear interactive boards so people could come into the space and leverage it to their needs and that was again another gap that we were

realized in in these conversations is that people really enjoyed working in a hybrid environment and people also didn’t. And you know, but th there were a lot of

employers that still weren’t allowing their staff to come to an office space or said no you we’re gonna keep you remote so we wanted to make sure that we offered the capacity to support them in what they were doing as well so by offering our our

This rental space by offering conference space by offering just small meeting space and a place to to just get away from that work at home environment for those that need more of that professional atmosphere and in that cultivating a strong sense of community. So that’s been kind of like the core piece of this as well is like how can we cultivate a sense of community amongst entrepreneurs? And that’s when this started to

Really shift and gain some legs. So we have worked with a few different service providers to focus on specific program areas that support entrepreneurs in early stage development of their business and to help them really gain clarity on what it is that they’re doing, what it is that they’re selling. Because I think one thing that we have learned or know about entrepreneurs.

Janelle Smith (15:55.637)
Is that they are here to do the thing. They are in the business to change and shape the world in a different way.

And that’s what they’re good at. They’re you know, they and so it’s kind of all of those other things of like how do they communicate that? How do they make sure that they’re monetizing their offers, knowing and understanding their value, getting crystal clear on who their target market is, and really being able to able to zone in on those things. So putting those programs in place and developing that we were able to work with our partners to market.

This program to entrepreneurs across the the region. And we were we enrolled over 90 entrepreneurs within the program and they went through five different program tracks. So we focused in on AI, knowing that that was gonna be a huge component of impact and the way that businesses operate. And then we created a lot of group

Learning opportunities as well. So working with our program providers to provide cohort sessions so they can really learn from each other and can continue to grow that entrepreneurial community because we also know that entrepreneurship can be very isolating. And so you know, giving our the entrepreneurs

Brandon Burton (17:15.821)
Mm-hmm.

Janelle Smith (17:20.7)
and our clients that are going through these programs, a space and place to connect with others, it helps them kind of navigate and learn from each other. I mean, you know and

I know that some of the best learning, you know, when we’re going to either IOM or some of these state conferences, it comes from each other. And so I think the same is true in business and entrepreneurship. And I think that entrepreneurs and these early stage businesses are willing to work with each other and the understanding that their success is ultimately our success. And it’s kind of that mentality of a rising tide lifts all boats. So we’ve been able to do that really, really well.

Brandon Burton (17:39.202)
Right.

Brandon Burton (17:52.705)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (18:00.235)
well. And in addition to those tracks, we also have one-on-one coaching and then online business courses. We of also offer a lot of different HR human resource trainings and quarterly forums. So those are a lot of the different program tracks that we’ve been able to offer through the hub and it’s truly been transformational for some of our businesses that have been through that.

Brandon Burton (18:26.645)
That’s awesome. So y you have the physical space, you have the the hub, the co working space, but then you have the programming aspect of it as well. with the the programming part of it, is this is it open to any business, any you know, aspiring entrepreneur throughout the county, or is there an application? What did how do they get involved?

Janelle Smith (18:47.436)
Both. So yeah, yes and all of the above. So this is open to anybody. and I think that so with certain programs there is an application process. So we have to make sure that we’re aligning the participant with the correct programs and making sure that they’re a good fit for the programs because there is a commitment level. I mean some of these cohorts run six months and we want to ensure that those that are going through the program are committed. There’s also

Brandon Burton (18:50.539)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (19:17.37)
So with the grant that we received, what was really exciting about this is that accessibility. So there is a fee for these programs, quite a significant fee. Yeah. And but with the the grant that we received, we actually built program into it. So that was built into our budget.

Brandon Burton (19:27.937)
Yeah. There should be. Yeah.

Janelle Smith (19:40.023)
So if a business met one of four criteria through the application process, they were able to receive the training or go through one of our courses at no cost to them. So that that’s where it became really transformational. And I think some of the things that stood out to me was hearing from actually met with one of the businesses today, was that she was actually in the process of contemplating closing her business.

She was a she is a marketer and she really was like, Do I go back to bartending? You know, I don’t know if I can work for somebody, but I’ve always loved bartending, like just really ready to throw in the towel. And she went through one of our growing and brilliant business cohorts, and at the end of the cohort, she had more than double.

and was getting ready to hire her first employee. So that was really and just excited about doing her work again. So I think that that that was really amazing. And then we had another participant that went through the grow difference maker boot camp and for for him,

He was a painter and he he was quoted on a quoted a job or and somebody kinda came back and said, Well, you know, I can I can do sixteen hundred and he he brought this to his difference maker boot camp and they talked to him they the group kind of Yes and so and so and he went back and ended up landing the job at sixty nine hundred. So

Brandon Burton (21:12.865)
I negotiate. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:21.533)
Wow. Wow. That is awesome. I love those stories. So you

Janelle Smith (21:25.558)
Yeah. man, I do too. Like those are the things that I can thrive on.

Brandon Burton (21:31.829)
Right. So you said there’s been over ninety that have enrolled in the the programming. you had also mentioned about you know getting getting the word out there for these aspiring entrepreneurs, these new businesses. is the programming set for certain times of the year? Are you continually taking applicants? Like how does that work? Okay.

Janelle Smith (21:52.341)
It’s ongoing. Yes, it it is all ongoing. it’s rolling. So roughly every two months or so, but we have so many different cohorts going at a time that it’s just really, you know, once we get a group of like five to ten individuals together and we roll with it. So and and that’s really based on

Brandon Burton (22:05.1)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:14.743)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (22:17.092)
the service provider’s recommendation. They can typically tell based on those applications that we receive how committed individuals are going to be to the programs. Because it that that’s a huge value add is being able to connect with those other entrepreneurs and businesses.

Brandon Burton (22:31.479)
Yeah. So my next question is, who do you have facilitating these cohorts and who how does a curriculum get put together for it?

Janelle Smith (22:40.93)
Right, so we work with a select group of service providers that are partners to the Livingston Business Hub. So we have agreements in place with them. and these are programs that have been vetted and then

Truly for us felt transformational. So they hit on all of the components that we identified as critical to the success of filling those gaps for entrepreneurs throughout that process. So these were programs that were already in existence, so to speak, but we aligned them with

So that way the hub is providing more of the central access point. When we were going through this process, it was really like asking the question of how can we be that one-stop shop for business? I think, you know, opening a business can be really overwhelming. And like I said, you get into business because you want to do the thing. You don’t want to necessarily run the business or

Brandon Burton (23:40.311)
Think about accounting or the marketing aspects or all that. You wanna go do the thing. I get it.

Janelle Smith (23:45.313)
You wanna do the thing. And like I and then a lot of entrepreneurs they really don’t think about like managing people either. So I think like that’s something that’s built into a lot of this curriculum is how to c maintain that human element. And so I think that that’s been a huge win for a lot of these programs as well.

Brandon Burton (24:05.643)
Yeah, that’s awesome. and these these are the stories that really make an impact, right? When you’re able to see these businesses are on the verge of closing and now they’re thriving, they’re growing, they’re hiring. You you see yeah, businesses where their income is directly affected by the the curriculum, what they they learn, these experiences they go through. It’s it’s amazing. It definitely makes an impact.

Janelle Smith (24:31.18)
Right. So and I I think that’s that’s really key is like I I think too when you’re looking at community and and potentially facing you know, the challenges facing their businesses potentially shuddering and being able to turn that around and playing a s a small role in that. I think that that’s been really rewarding, coming out of this and and seeing it

To evolve, and I think that’s another key piece of this is that it is constantly evolving. So we’re still we’re constantly evaluating the programs, we’re constantly evaluating what is valuable to the individuals going through the programs. We’re excited to be introducing a new mastermind. So we’ll be introducing a new mastermind course in addition to really leveraging the podcast space that we have. So this will be the next step to one of our difference maker boot camps, is individuals will actually be learning.

Brandon Burton (25:18.358)
Yeah.

Janelle Smith (25:24.922)
like why you would want to start a podcast, how you can deepen and shit speaking to you, yeah. so and then also, you know, get the hands on tools and training in our space. And that’s all wrapped into their their six month cohort or within the program. So we’re actually gonna be launching that one here at the end of July.

Brandon Burton (25:30.251)
I love it.

Brandon Burton (25:53.048)
That’s fantastic. Yeah, it’s not for everybody for sure, but there is definitely value in having a podcast and being able to build that authority and recognition and it gives credibility in in the marketplace. So lots of value there and I’m glad that’s that’s built in to what you guys are offering.

as we start to wrap up, I wanted to ask on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive towards that goal?

Janelle Smith (26:24.898)
Honestly, I think really just engaging with your community and listening. I think listening was key to what we did and that’s not a hard thing to do.

getting the right people around the table and having a very honest conversation about what their challenges are, where are the opportunities and leveraging appreciative inquiry for it too. So that that’s been really fun is like how can we be the best version of ourselves? And that’s something we consistently ask. That’s part of our core values is how you know to make the best better. So I I think that that is a key factor in really having transformational impact within your community.

Brandon Burton (27:09.813)
Yeah, absolutely. well I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers. So how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Janelle Smith (27:22.326)
Yeah, I think that’s a great question.

Brandon Burton (27:24.877)
You guys had great vision with this project, so let’s see let’s see what your vision looks like for for chambers.

Janelle Smith (27:31.809)
I think chambers have to keep innovating. I think that they have to keep evolving and I think that listening is key in that and that really just stepping up and stepping in and knowing when to do that because chambers are natural conveners and I think that we know how to put the pieces in place, but I so I th I think that’s a piece of it. But really leaning into building a framework.

And building a system and putting something in place that solves a long term problem, or creates a solution that’s that’s beyond programming. So I think, you know, as we look at chambers, it it’s it is evolving in in a place that

We’re more than just ribbon cuttings and community events. And there’s a huge value proposition and value add when we’re solving critical business issues like workforce development, talent attraction, housing. and then

the tools and resources that businesses need to succeed and thrive and that is economic development. And so I think really looking at those pieces and figuring out what the chambers, what your chambers role is in that within your community. And I think that that starts with listening and engaging and then really being proactive in those solutions.

Brandon Burton (28:58.369)
Yeah. That listening definitely helps to create that vision so you know what direction to to g move in your community and every community will look a little different. So well Janelle, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about the Livingston Business Hub or anything else you guys are doing there at the Howl Area Chamber, where would you point them and what would be the best way to for them to connect with you?

Janelle Smith (29:24.04)
they can absolutely visit our website at howell.org. you can also reach out to me directly, jsmith@howl.org, and I’d be happy to set up a time to meet, talk more, or you also follow us on social. We got all sorts of things going on. Livingston Business Hub apps also has its own website, so I can it drop that over to you too. I think it’s just livingstonbusinesshub.com.

Brandon Burton (29:39.477)
Right.

Brandon Burton (29:49.206)
Okay, very good. We’ll get that in our show notes and make it easy for people to find and reference and connect. But Janelle, this has been fun having you on the podcast. It’s exciting, you know, for the accomplishment of making it to this big stage. And wish you and your team best of luck as Chamber of the Year.

Janelle Smith (30:07.545)
Awesome, thank you so much.

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2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Eugene Area Chamber with Brittany Quick-Warner

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Brandon Burton (00:00.966)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and you’re joining us for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist series. And today we’re joined by Britney Quick Warner, president and CEO of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce. Brittany leads bold regional efforts around housing, workforce development, downtown revitalization, and civic leadership.

She recently spearheaded Elevate 2028, raising $5 million to support an ambitious regional economic development initiative, and co-founded Act Now Lane, a cross-sector coalition focused on making homelessness rare, brief, and non-reoccurring in Lane County. Known for her tenacity, big ideas, and ability to bring people together across sectors, Brittany’s a strong advocate for smart, business-friendly policy and a more prosperous future for Eugene.

Brittany Quick-Warner (00:51.063)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (00:58.122)
Brittany, welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. This is a treat to have you back and congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a a Chamber of the Year finalist again. say hello to the audience and if you would, you know, share share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you better.

Brittany Quick-Warner (01:09.452)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Hello everyone. Thank yeah, thank you so much. I am quite honored to be chatting with you again, Brandon. this was fun. We were a finalist a few years ago and we’re excited to be invited to apply again and see some of the initiatives that we launched a few years ago actually have, you know, some data and results and outcomes behind them that we’re pretty proud of. So

We’re we’re honored to be here.

Brandon Burton (01:40.187)
It is neat when you can see these ideas grow some legs and really start making a even bigger impact in your community. so I look back and it was, I think, 2022, episode 184 that we had you on last as a a chamber of the year finalist as well. So if anybody wants to go back and check that one out. but I do like getting an interesting fact about all the guests that come on the show. If there’s something that you’d like to share with us so we can get to know you better.

Brittany Quick-Warner (01:44.33)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Brittany Quick-Warner (01:54.264)
Ha ha ha.

Brittany Quick-Warner (02:00.238)
There you go.

Brittany Quick-Warner (02:10.122)
my gosh. I well I am currently pregnant with my second kiddo. whether that’s interesting or not, it’s kind of dominating my life at the moment. So I feel rather uninteresting, I guess is the I guess is the the summation there. yeah, I yeah, totally, yeah. No, I I’m originally from the Kansas City area. I moved to Eugene about 14 years ago and

Brandon Burton (02:16.039)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (02:27.676)
Just building a human, not interesting at all, right?

Brittany Quick-Warner (02:37.538)
Haven’t looked back. I love this area, this region. And yeah, just I I like the opportunity for a challenge. We have a challenging business climate in this state and so much potential. So keeps me waking up every day.

Brandon Burton (02:53.83)
Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. well tell us a little bit about the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce just to set the stage for our discussion, help us get have an idea of the size of your chamber, the type of work you guys are involved with, budget, staff, just to help give that perspective.

Brittany Quick-Warner (03:10.062)
Yeah, absolutely. So our chamber is celebrating our 125th anniversary next year. so I’ve been a part of this community for a really long time. we have two entities that have kind of consolidated financials. our Chamber of Commerce, and then a few years ago we launched a 501c3 kind of quasi foundation and economic development organization.

Brandon Burton (03:17.928)
Thanks.

Brittany Quick-Warner (03:36.66)
so the combined kind of budget for our two organizations is around four and a half million. we are, I guess, just shy of four, if you’re looking at net revenues there. So we have about 16 full-time positions within our organization that focuses on advocacy. so we have a pretty robust advocacy operation, member services, of course, like a lot of chambers and supporting.

small businesses and business expansion in the community and then economic development. So that five one C three that we establish onward Eugene is really the economic development arm of our organization.

Brandon Burton (04:16.606)
Yeah, that definitely helps to give perspective. And I like that. So as we get into the topics and the programs that you submitted on your Chamber of the Year application, those listening can you know think about the size of their organization and how they can scale it one way or the other to make it fit. But being that this is a Chamber of the Year finalist episode.

Brittany Quick-Warner (04:29.707)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brandon Burton (04:38.32)
I’d like to spend most of our time talking about the programs that were submitted on your application so we can learn more about their origins and how you guys have grown and evolved and continue to make an impact in the community. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brittany Quick-Warner (04:38.421)
Mm-hmm.

Brittany Quick-Warner (04:54.381)
Excellent.

Brandon Burton (04:55.738)
All right, Brittany, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re gonna dive into the programs that you submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. And I know the first one has to do with a homelessness initiative. if you’d like to tell us what that program’s all about and where it got its origins and and the vision that you guys had for it and how things are unfolding.

Brittany Quick-Warner (05:17.889)
Yeah, absolutely. So the the synopsis that we supported or that we submitted is called Acton Al Lane. This is a a joint coalition that we founded a little over a year ago. that was actually kind of the the second step in a a longer term initiative that we actually launched back in 2021 at our chamber looking at the homeless crisis in our community. So Eugene is the largest city

in Lane County, the county that that we reside in. And as a county, which is our our full MSA, we have right around five thousand individuals who are unhoused at any given time in the community. And that number makes us one of the highest, if not the highest, per capita for the size of community that we actually have. And so we

largest per capita in the country. so it’s it’s it’s a conversation that dominates or a topic that dominates most conversations that I have in the community. It it somehow always kind of comes back to our homeless crisis. And in 2020, we know a lot of communities face this, but because of the global pandemic and the shift in the way that communities were able to actually shelter people, the unhoused homeless crisis

so folks who were not able to find shelter just became a lot more visible and prevalent. And we had homeless encampments popping up across our community in our commercial and industrial areas that were really starting to just create tension between consumers and businesses and employees and those encampments. And so we were hearing about it a lot from the chamber and a lot of businesses asking, what’s the chamber doing about this? Like what’s our role in the conversation?

Brandon Burton (07:15.112)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (07:15.647)
And to be honest, most of those conversations or most of the my response to most of those questions is like we don’t really have a formal role in this. We aren’t necessarily being engaged. There’s not really a seat at the table for businesses in this community when it comes to this conversation. And so I went to our board in early 21 and I said, you know, we’re a membership-based organization. And the number one thing that I talk to our members about is homelessness. And we don’t have any say or we don’t have any kind of

engagement in that issue. And so our board talked a lot about it and we kind of weighed different options. And I like to to share sort of how we get to where we’re at is, you know, we kind of looked at one option was just getting really mad and loud and marching down to City Hall and kind of pounding our fists on the table and saying, you all need to fix this. but if I was being honest, I don’t I didn’t think that was going to be very effective. I think without some real engagement and understanding of the problem and actual solutions to propose

Brandon Burton (08:04.007)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (08:13.975)
I don’t think we were gonna actually make an impact in that way. And so, our our organization has some core values that we live by. One of them is bold leadership. And our board really said, look, it it’s one of our values that we lean into these hard conversations, that we engage in authentic ways and we try to find solutions. And so that was the lot harder version. They said, Let’s go deep and let’s actually figure out what’s the root cause of this. Why is our community sort of

Brandon Burton (08:17.98)
I’d agree.

Brittany Quick-Warner (08:43.363)
facing this intractable problem here and what’s already happened that hasn’t worked, what’s working, how do we how do we scale some of the solutions that are effective in our community? And so the much harder version of the two options that we put in front of the board, but definitely the right one. And so that kind of launched almost a six-month process where I actually myself went out and talked to over 200 community members.

nonprofit executive directors working in this space, public officials, police and and public safety officials, talk to unhoused individuals themselves, trying to understand. And I asked all of them, I said, Look, you’ve been engaging in this system, what’s working, what’s not working? If you had a magic wand, what would you do? And to be honest, we heard from a lot of the nonprofits in our community, especially the service providers who frankly are funded.

through our county and through our cities, that they had a lot of things that they would change about the system, but they didn’t feel like they could be the ones to actually voice that because of the funding model and because of the way that they were engaging as a service provider. And so they were actually pretty welcoming of the chamber coming into this, sort of as a third party, right? We were never gonna be a homeless service provider in our community. But we could ask some hard questions about why, why are we in this? Yeah.

Brandon Burton (10:02.258)
Yeah.

It’s like you’re doing the research to to be a supportive agency to help.

Brittany Quick-Warner (10:09.213)
Exactly. I I told folks I felt like an investigative journalist for that six months and ultimately it ended up with a whole lot of information and had a a member who said you need to write a report about this, which was not our intent when we started out, but we just need the rest of the community to understand this a little bit better. And so we at that point issued a state of the homelessness crisis report where we basically just summarized what we heard.

Brandon Burton (10:15.023)
Right.

Brittany Quick-Warner (10:35.735)
From all of these service providers and community experts, and then paired that with best practice research. and then we essentially put out a few recommendations. And one of them was that we really needed a cross sector coalition where more voices could be at the table in a problem solving mode. and especially the business community. Like we wanted to be a part of determining what’s working, helping to find innovative solutions, et cetera.

And so we first started by launching a business leaders task force where we brought business leaders in to help educate them on the issue. I’m a firm believer that there’s nothing more annoying than walking into a room of folks who have been doing this work for a really long time and you don’t know enough about the problem and you rattle off a bunch of ideas that they’re like, Yeah, of course we’ve already tried that. Right. So I wanted our business community, I wanted them to be educated enough to actually.

Brandon Burton (11:27.666)
Right. Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (11:31.969)
to actually hang in these conversations and to truly find innovative ideas that haven’t already been tried. and so we had that business leaders task force for a couple of years, which is really about educating kind of a broad business leader base. and we had over a hundred business leaders who over the course of a year, two years engaged every single month just trying to dive in deeper into this topic. Ultimately that paired with the service providers that we that we

we’re working with, we launched this cross sector coalition. So Act Now Lane is that coalition. it’s backboned by the chamber. So we have we’ve done the fundraising to staff a full time person who is essentially running that coalition. but the folks on that committee are business leaders, service providers, city and county government, our universities at the table. we have some philanthropy

representation. So it’s a good kind of group of folks who are willing to rumble with some of the hard questions that frankly in a community that is dealing with a crisis this big, if you can’t rumble with some of the political realities and some of the difficult decisions you have to make, we’re never actually going to move forward in this. So that coalition work is the synopsis that we that we provided and and kind of dove in deep to those the progress that we’ve been able to make together.

Brandon Burton (13:00.03)
Yeah. So I’m I’m curious because you have a a great perspective. You know, when you when you mentioned you don’t want to be, you know, the new person that comes in the room is like, have you tried this? And like, yeah, we’ve tried it twelve different ways, right? but being able to build this coalition and have people from so many different backgrounds, what type of solutions are you seeing come to the table? What what kind of innovation is there that that you guys are coming up with with this coalition?

Brittany Quick-Warner (13:08.413)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (13:26.977)
Yeah, so we’ve kind of the first thing I guess what we started with was understanding kind of the how how to organize and and communicate the challenge that the community was facing or the community was feeling. So we you know, we heard a lot of things. I heard like obviously the growing unhoused population, the public safety challenges that this crisis is

in some cases creating for individuals who are housed, but frankly, unhoused individuals are the victims of more crime in our community than anyone. And they deserve to have that that protection as well. But the thing that actually I think concerned me the most was this sense of hopelessness that people felt that we could even do anything about this. And that’s kind of where we started. I wanted to I wanted to address the fact that the broader community felt incredibly hopeless.

Brandon Burton (14:02.782)
Sure.

Brittany Quick-Warner (14:23.807)
About the future of this crisis for a lot of reasons. One of which is that they were just, they, they didn’t understand what we were even doing, right? What were we doing that worked? How were we making sure that we’re we’re engaging in the right activities? And so one of the causes of that was just the mass confusion of all the people who were involved in it, right? We have hundreds of nonprofits in this space, the city, the county, et cetera. And so we did the work of taking

Across the city of Eugene, the city of Springfield, which is kind of our our sister community, and in Lane County government, we had over a dozen plans that addressed or touched on how we were addressing the homelessness crisis. So if you have 12 or 14 plans to the community, you have no plan, right? It’s just chaos. They can’t exactly they can’t comprehend that. So

Brandon Burton (15:14.012)
Right. What’s the direction, right?

Brittany Quick-Warner (15:18.753)
We didn’t want to start from scratch and create a new plan, but what we did is we took all of those plans and we synthesized them down into one roadmap so the community could see as easily as possible what it where is the alignment in the work that we’re doing across jurisdictions. That roadmap really broke it into three different areas. The first is housing and prevention. We did a lot of research and a lot of understanding that the core of any homeless crisis in a community,

really goes back to the lack of housing. So it’s about the cost and the vacancy rate of housing in your community. There’s a lot of data that has validated that. And so we know that in order to solve our homeless crisis, we have to solve our housing crisis and our housing shortage. So that’s a big piece of it. The second category of activities is really around public safety and services. How are we making sure that on the streets, people have access to services and that we have created a clean and safe environment for the community.

And then the last is around communications and kind of system improvement. So within each of those buckets, we have some very specific activities that we’ve engaged in. On the housing side, it’s really about policy. So we’ve had we’ve created shared policy agendas across multiple organizations to advocate at the state and local levels for ways to break down housing barriers.

development barriers for housing. And so there’s a lot of work in that space. Our community has really kind of been seen as an innovator in some of the alternative sheltering, which in some cases is categorized as transitional housing. And so we have a lot of folks from across the country who come and visit some of our shelter providers who have created these really unique alternative housing solutions. So

Brandon Burton (16:57.011)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (17:10.699)
That’s a space that we’re proud of the work that’s being done. And it’s a way to help make limited dollars go further to actually find some stability for people. in the services space, we actually launched a workforce program that’s been really rewarding. So we, the chamber, partnered with a handful of our shelter organizations to identify individuals who are willing and ready to try to find employment and to get their feet back under them.

through employment. And we worked with organizations across the community to create workforce training programs that were specifically designed to work for someone who is living in a shelter, who has inconsistent or no transportation, who really doesn’t have the capability to be in a full-time program. They need the flexibility to have their wages kind of stay within a certain band. So there’s just a lot of of

A lot of considerations for someone who’s in a shelter to actually get back into the workforce. It’s more complicated than it seems. And so we worked, we have now four different programs across the community that have anywhere from six to twelve week training programs where the shelter residents are going in, getting trained on specific skill sets. So we have a warehouse training program, we have an industrial sewing training program, we have a bicycle repair training program.

Brandon Burton (18:37.009)
Okay.

Brittany Quick-Warner (18:37.933)
So these are really unique opportunities where someone who is unhoused can now learn a new skill set. And then we’ve paired with employers to once they’re through those training programs to be able to kind of slowly evolve back into employment within the community. And so that workforce program is a part of this Acton Lane coalition. And we have, you know, over 70 people who’ve graduated in the last couple of years. And yeah, some who have found housing because of that.

Brandon Burton (19:02.142)
That’s awesome.

Brittany Quick-Warner (19:06.497)
financial stability. So that program is just one that we’re really proud of and frankly is pretty easily replicable. I think it’s something that other communities could look at and it’s a way the chamber can really engage in a program that feels authentically connected to the business community.

Brandon Burton (19:19.806)
Yeah. And I can see that being a huge barrier, especially when somebody is looking for employment and they go through the whole background check process. And if if you can provide training and then have businesses on board to help, you know, on ramp them into employment, it’s such a a better way to help bridge that gap and get them back into employment. So I love that. Yeah, you guys are making great strides there.

Brittany Quick-Warner (19:27.371)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (19:38.155)
Yeah. Yeah, and just more sustainable. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (19:46.419)
So I don’t want to spend all of the time on that on that synopsis, but I think we could. Let’s let’s shift gears over to your second synopsis. It was submitted on your application around the voice of business. If you can tell us what that’s all about.

Brittany Quick-Warner (19:49.161)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (20:01.355)
Yeah, this one, this one I feel like some communities I think can relate to the challenge that we’re trying to solve for and others, I think luckily on their end maybe don’t have this challenge. But Eugene and Lane County has just a pretty poor business climate. we are constantly struggling and and kind of pushing back against our government and political partners.

About what it takes to actually have a strong local economy. the as a state, Oregon ranks 49th in business friendliness on on these kind of annual CNBC rankings that are created. And so we have a lot of work to do as a state. And our community is kind of a a a testing ground for a lot of those, frankly, non-business friendly policies. So with that in mind, you know, our chamber has really

Brandon Burton (20:40.966)
Well.

Brittany Quick-Warner (20:57.717)
struggled and grappled with over the years, how do we change the course of this conversation? And frankly, we talked to a lot of business leaders over the last couple of years and said, look, if we’re not gonna do what it takes to get more businesses involved to really raise, to raise this issue and raise this red flag, who’s going to do it for us, right? It’s not, it’s not going to be some elected official that we’re gonna find that saves us that steps in and and

Brandon Burton (21:19.069)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (21:25.783)
convinces everyone else that this is the right thing to do. So with that in mind, we launched this five-year strategic initiative, Elevate 28, and engaged about 80 investors who frankly had been pretty apathetic about our community. They had stopped kind of investing here locally. Their businesses were contemplating leaving town, but they’d been longtime, you know, business community members. And we said, we need you to invest in this initiative. And the the number one goal

Is for us to really try to attack this business climate issue. And so within that, we launched this Voice of Business program. It really kind of has four different pillars, if you will. the first really is around helping to educate business leaders about the political process. if you will, I think there’s just like a lot of

It’s just mystifying to some people about like how would I get engaged and who is my local city councilor and what are the issues that city council or a county commissioner actually decides on and how could I influence them? So a big education component. and then we knew that we needed to try to convince people to run for office who have a business literacy. right now we have very few, if any, elected officials that represent us that have a business background. And so

We know that that’s a challenge and that we need to find better representation. And so we kind of went yeah. Yeah. So we dove in deep on that. We launched a political action committee so that we could financially support candidates who were ready to run. we have a pretty robust candidate endorsement process that we go through. and we essentially put together a a toolkit, if you will.

Brandon Burton (22:51.518)
It’s almost like who you’re gonna sacrifice, right?

Brittany Quick-Warner (23:15.883)
For individuals who are interested in running for office for them to understand what that even looks like. Because most of the time as I talk to someone about running, I can get this close to convincing them if we’re just talking about what it means to serve and what they would be doing. But the second we have to talk about how you actually get there and you have to run a campaign, they’re like, peace out. That sounds terrible. Right. So, and we hadn’t had any resources to help kind of shepherd them along. And so

This initiative really was us leaning in to build out the resources and the scaffolding to actually help someone stand up successfully a campaign. And so that was a big pillar of the work. Another part was just helping our business people build relationships with our current elected officials. So we know that we’re not gonna nor do we intend to completely flip a city council, right? That’s not at all our goal. We know that some of the folks who are sitting there.

They just need to understand business better, right? And we have a responsibility to help them do that. And so we’ve created really structured ways for business people to have regular ongoing relationships with our city counselors. so we have a liaison, a business liaison program where we’ve matched business leaders up with city counselors. They have standing monthly meetings, we’re having small coffee chats and just trying to build relationships, right?

I would like any of my counselors to have a Rolodex of business people that they could call at any moment when they have a policy that they’re contemplating about. And so that was a big a big component of it. and then the last was getting people actually out to city council or county commission to testify because we just didn’t have a voice in that public sphere. Our city, our our chamber staff were always there. but we were such a small voice amongst

Brandon Burton (24:43.442)
Yes.

Brittany Quick-Warner (25:07.127)
Frankly, a pretty activist-driven community. And so we knew we needed to have a stronger, kind of steady and consistent presence at those city council and county commission meetings. So bringing in business leaders, training them on what that looks like, and then kind of orchestrating a really steady engagement within those kind of public settings as well. So all of this together is our Voice of Business program. And just like year over year kind of tracking.

The engagement, we were able to increase business leader engagement by 220% from one year to the next, as far as the individuals who are willing to kind of step up and meet and put themselves out there for these different pieces. So it’s it’s kind of taking that bread and butter work that chambers have done and really putting it on steroids and figuring out how are we more intentional about actually

Brandon Burton (25:58.206)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (26:02.145)
facilitating and orchestrating that relationship building as opposed to just hoping that it happens organically.

Brandon Burton (26:08.68)
Yeah, you you guys definitely have your work cut out for you as far as the business environment goes.

But I love the these steps that you’re taking and and even going as far as to create a pack and to be able to endorse candidates and help people and get educated on how to run. And building those relationships with the elected officials is so huge because and I’ve said it before, a lot of these elected officials are smart individuals, but they’re smart in their area of competence, right? They don’t necessarily know the ins and outs with the business climate. And to be able to build those relationships and help educate them, most

Brittany Quick-Warner (26:13.653)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (26:20.833)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (26:35.467)
Yeah, exactly.

Brandon Burton (26:43.368)
Most of them can be a quick learn, you know, once they once they can understand what’s going on.

Brittany Quick-Warner (26:45.291)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the programs that we launch within that space as well is called the Get to Know Industry Program. this is what happens when you have like programs that have like a random brainstorm session and they move into like operation. You’re like, wait, we didn’t rename that. Yeah, so get to know industry, it is what it is. but so this is where we’re taking our really our key traded sector industries. So the ones that we know.

Brandon Burton (27:03.806)
We just spun that up. Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (27:15.189)
Are generating the most economic output for our community and pulling together industry leaders in that space and putting together a really intentional program where those industry leaders can help our elected and community officials get to know that industry in a way where they can then represent them better at the council table. Right. And so, in my perfect world, any of our city counselors or elected officials or public officials.

Should be able to rattle off the top of their head the key industries in our region and what their economic impact is and the number of jobs that they represent, et cetera. That is so far from reality in our community. And so we’ve now had this with four different industries. we have kind of a rotation of about eight that we’ll do throughout the throughout the year.

Brandon Burton (27:47.998)
Yeah, absolutely.

Brittany Quick-Warner (28:04.789)
And we usually partner with an elected official to kind of co-host it. So they actually have a buy-in to the program and that helps bring some of their peers to the table. But we get the elected officials out into the businesses. They sit usually for a panel discussion and then kind of a broad discussion, then to do a tour of the industry, et cetera. Again, it’s a relatively simple format and program, but it’s been transformational because most of these elected officials have never set foot into a manufacturing plant.

in our community. They just haven’t had access to it. And so just that program alone has already started to build those stronger relationships. So elected officials, it’s, you know, it’s demystifying business for them, just like we have to demystify public engagement for the business community. So it’s been a a really fruitful program that we hope to see grow from that as well.

Brandon Burton (28:56.744)
Yeah. Maybe another spin-off or pillar is math classes for some of these elected officials to go into how a business runs and how taxes implement, you know, how they affect how businesses run and wages and you know, salaries and benefits and all the things that often get mandated. So yeah, whole nother thing.

Brittany Quick-Warner (29:04.621)
Ich

That’s exactly

Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:18.29)
Well, Brittany, it sounds like you guys are making a great impact there in Eugene and and doing the the very best you can. I’d love to ask the question, especially as a chamber of the year finalist, for those listening who are trying to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you leave for them as they strive towards that goal?

Brittany Quick-Warner (29:38.081)
Yeah, great question. I think I maybe had the same answer when you asked me this three years ago. So so what I will say is when I got into this position and the the CEO position back in 2017, our chamber had six staff people. We had just under a million dollar budget. and we had a pretty small body of work that we were engaged in. And

Brandon Burton (29:41.776)
Okay.

Brittany Quick-Warner (30:06.143)
I knew we had more potential. I knew our community needed more out of us. but frankly, as an organization, we weren’t really set up to be able to scale and expand the work that we’re doing. I was introduced to the entrepreneurial operating system, the EOS system, by Jane. She was in Michigan West at that time. Jane Clark’s fantastic, we adore her.

Brandon Burton (30:24.184)
US, yeah.

Brandon Burton (30:29.0)
Jane Clark, yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (30:33.325)
actually it was about a year into my CEO position, I was sitting in ACCE conference and that’s that summer, and I was sitting in the CEO session. And at that point, I I came into the CEO position in a kind of traumatic experience. Our our CEO long time passed away. I was 30 years old. I was not at all ready or felt myself to be ready to do this. I literally never even supervised someone before.

Brandon Burton (30:49.053)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (30:54.776)
What am I doing here? Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (31:01.877)
And so I was desperate for some organizational development kind of resources. And I read every leadership book that’s been written ever that year. Like I was just like, I have to find something that works for me. She introduced me to EOS and it it’s like I went to church. Like I literally feel like I had a come to Jesus moment. I’m like in tears in this meeting. Like, Jane, you just saved me. she literally gave me her book. I read the whole thing on the airplane ride home from that conference.

Brandon Burton (31:09.74)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (31:18.908)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (31:28.509)
Wow.

Brittany Quick-Warner (31:29.973)
And from then on, we’ve utilized this EOS system. And I will say, like we self-implemented in the beginning. We’ve had some resources and help along the way. because we didn’t have a lot of resources to kind of hire somebody to come in and do that. And, you know, I would I would argue we’ve probably done about an 85% job, a B plus job at getting all of the components implemented. But the thing that we were able to do really early on.

Was to really clearly articulate what’s our 10-year vision? What do we want to be in 10 years? And in that process, we said we want to have a $4 million budget. This process really talks about how revenue as a nonprofit, we shouldn’t be scared of thinking about what revenue is it gonna take for us to actually do what we want to do in the community. we knew we wanted membership growth, we knew we wanted to be a chamber of the year finalist. That was one of our goals. and then finally.

Brandon Burton (32:17.672)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (32:24.262)
Awesome.

Brittany Quick-Warner (32:25.345)
Fast forward, we’re a couple years shy and we’ve already surpassed those goals. we wanted to have 10 staff, we have 16. so it was just like this really transformational program for our for our chamber that helped us organize internally, really get clear on what our goals were, identify the things that we needed to do to support the community better, and then make sure that we hold ourselves accountable to doing that. And so

I know what it feels like to be a chamber that’s like, I know we could do more. I have, you know, I don’t have enough people. I don’t have enough money. the other thing about really clearly articulating what are the resources I need to do what I need and having a stretch goal, having it bit be that big, hairy, audacious goal is that it helps you get more creative, right? If you’re just kind of thinking about incremental improvements, you kind of get to fall back on the easy things. If you’re thinking about a big jump, like how do we get from one million to four million dollars in revenue?

It forces you to get more creative, to think outside the box, to really hone in on the things that help your chamber like truly have a value proposition for your community. And so, yeah, I mean, we would have never imagined starting this 501c3 and establishing an economic development arm. Like there were so many pieces that because we were not afraid to think big and to kind of get really creative, it has helped us.

Brandon Burton (33:27.358)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (33:54.219)
get to a place where we can sustain this level of work and support our community in this way.

Brandon Burton (33:59.229)
Yeah. Well and I’ve heard it said before the revenue is a direct result of the impact that you make. So if you weren’t making the impact, the revenue wouldn’t be there. So I’d I love that tip. That’s that’s right. That’s right. well I I love asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers. So how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brittany Quick-Warner (34:05.579)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And vice versa. You have to have that revenue to make that impact. So it really does go hand in hand. Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (34:25.661)
It’s such a good question. I think and again, it’s it’s interesting being from a community where I feel like we’re always trying to convince people why business is a good thing. for me, it’s it’s still it’s still that role. Like we really there there needs to be someone in the community who is a champion for for you know free market business expansion and growth that like truly

Brandon Burton (34:36.412)
Right.

Brittany Quick-Warner (34:55.045)
results in prosperity for everyone in your community. And if your chamber is not thinking about it in that way, I think we will become irrelevant. You know, I think that some of the transactional work that which our chamber still has a lot of those programs and things as well, a lot of those transactional programs, they just slowly become obsolete, either because someone else in the community has picked it up or it’s replaced, right? Like by social media. We don’t, you know,

Brandon Burton (35:23.165)
Right.

Brittany Quick-Warner (35:23.829)
It’s just the world changes. And so the places where chambers can find themselves driving a bigger conversation, those are so much harder to replace. and the access that we provide and the amount of information that we have access to that we can then give to our members, that cannot be undervalued. I think being the place where people trust we’re paying attention.

We’re not afraid to have hard conversations. we are willing to step in and wade into issues that maybe haven’t been traditional chamber issues like homelessness. I think that’s where we become more relevant. We’re become more authentic partners with more different types of organizations in the community.

Brandon Burton (36:01.618)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (36:09.628)
Yeah, I love that answer. well Brittany, as we wrap things up, I wanna give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or learn more about these programs, these initiatives that you’ve talked about today, where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect?

Brittany Quick-Warner (36:18.081)
Yeah.

Brittany Quick-Warner (36:27.863)
Yeah, absolutely. So our website, Eugenechamber.com. always a work in progress, but a lot of good information that you can find there, including my contact information. but I my one of my favorite things about the chamber industry is just the sharing culture that we have. And so we do not gatekeep any of this work. And I have been the beneficiary of so many other chamber executives who have been willing to sit down with me and share with me.

What’s working in their communities and how they’ve solved some of these problems. So reach out, brittanyw@eugenechamber.com. I am always happy to have that conversation.

Brandon Burton (37:01.522)
That’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes. But this has been a great conversation. Can definitely see the the impact and and you’ve got a spirit and excitement about you as you talk about these programs. So that that means that you know there’s life behind them and I I love that so much. But thank you for for setting aside time and and being with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast and really shining a light on the impact that you and your team were making there in Eugene. We really appreciate it.

Brittany Quick-Warner (37:11.883)
Hehehehe

Brittany Quick-Warner (37:18.093)
Yeah, thank you.

Brittany Quick-Warner (37:27.873)
Yeah, well, thank you for what you’re doing too, Brandon. It’s fun to tell these stories and I learned so much from listening to everybody else’s. So thank you.

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2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Toledo Regional Chamber with Wendy Gramza

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Brandon Burton (00:00.93)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. And today we’re joined by Wendy Gramza, president of the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Wendy has served as president since July 2014, after more than a decade as the Chamber’s executive vice president. Throughout her career with the Chamber, she’s also led small business initiatives, including serving as vice president of small business and director of Small Business Development Center. Of the Small Business Development Center. She’s a graduate of the University of Toledo and holds both the IOM designation from the US Chamber of Commerce and the CCE designation from ACCE.

Wendy brings deep chamber leadership experience, strong community involvement, and passion for supporting business growth to today’s conversation. But Wendy, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. First of all, congratulations to you and your team for being selected as Chamber of the Year finalists. It’s a great accomplishment. But I would love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Wendy Gramza (01:22.755)
Why interesting about myself. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. And yes, it is truly an honor. and I’m very grateful that we were selected as finalists. it is not just it may sound cliche, but there are so many thousands of great chambers across the country. and any one of them could be a finalist in you know in any year. We just have chambers that have such strong programming. So extremely grateful to be just representing

our industry this year as as one of the finalists for Chamber of the Year. Something interesting about me, I think our your audience, because it’s Chamber people, this will resonate with them. When you go into the Chamber World, you never are quite sure like where that’s going to take you, where you might find yourself. So I didn’t realize when I started my career in the Chamber that at one point I would be a regular at the Pentagon and because of some of the work that we were doing

doing and that would get to be a passenger in an F-16 fighter jet. And I’m gonna leave it at that. I wasn’t a really great wasn’t really a great passenger. You can probably understand what I’m talking about. I won’t go into any great detail. But that is just an opportunity that I never would have had if I weren’t part of the chamber industry and was very unexpected. If you would have told me that years ago that that’s that would happen, I would have said you’re crazy.

Brandon Burton (02:23.79)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (02:29.432)
That is pretty cool.

Brandon Burton (02:39.395)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (02:52.676)
So that was that was one of the highlights of of my career thus far.

Brandon Burton (02:53.208)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:57.74)
Yeah, and that’s an experience you can’t pass up, no matter what the the short term side effects might be.

Wendy Gramza (03:01.431)
No, I tried. Actually I tried. I turned them down for many years and then finally our our base commander said, I’m taking you up myself. And I said, You’re gonna be sorry and he probably was. But it was it was a lot of fun.

Brandon Burton (03:05.378)
I don’t really.

Brandon Burton (03:18.114)
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the Toledo Regional Chamber to give us an idea of the size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work you’re involved with, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Wendy Gramza (03:31.3)
Sure, absolutely. So Toledo, if people don’t know, is in northwest Ohio, about 50 miles south of Detroit, but in Ohio, not in Michigan. we have just over 2,000 members. we’ve got an MSA that covers three counties. It’s a just over 600,000 people, so not a not a huge metro by a lot of of a lot of standards. we’ve got 25 staff people in a bunch

Budget around 3.6 million that fluctuates from from year to year given grants and some other things that we might be doing in any particular year, but usually between that three and a half and and four million dollar budget mark.

Brandon Burton (04:15.886)
Sure. Now are you guys involved with economic development or tourism or strictly chamber or what’s the Okay.

Wendy Gramza (04:21.315)
So we are strictly a chamber, officially, but of course we have very, very close relationships with our economic development agency that we actually helped start about 25 years ago. so even when when organizations are separate or not officially connected with the chamber, you can usually trace back to the chamber having some involvement in that organization being stood up or expanded or or something of that nature. we’re very work very closely with our convention and visitors.

Bureau, Downtown Association, and like many chambers do. So we work very closely with all of those organizations, but technically we’re all separate.

Brandon Burton (05:01.132)
Yeah. As you should, you know, work with all those other organizations closely, but it’s good to know your organization specifically just to help give context for our discussion today. So with this being a Chamber of the Year finalist episode, I like spending most of our time and our conversation today around the programs that were submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. So we’ll take a quick break and when we get back, we’ll dive into those programs and learn all about those.

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Wendy Gramza (05:05.069)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (05:09.6)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (05:29.027)
Sounds good.

Brandon Burton (05:31.146)
All right, Wendy, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re gonna dive into the the programs that you submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. if if you’d like to introduce what the the first program is that you’d like to address, we can cover that and and tell us about the origins and how it’s evolved and and what it’s become, the impact it’s making.

Wendy Gramza (05:52.73)
Sure, absolutely. So it’s always hard to just pick two, right? but that’s what they make us do. So that’s what we do. So one of the ones that we picked was what we call our benefits bridge. and that is really our our way, our our solution, if you will, to a talent problem that became very evident to us as we worked very closely with our businesses who were ha it’s it’s softened a little bit in the last two years, but

Brandon Burton (05:58.435)
That’s right.

Wendy Gramza (06:22.763)
even prior to COVID and then directly after COVID, really having trouble finding finding staff people. And then even when they found staff people, we’d hear a lot about they don’t want to be promoted, they don’t want overtime. and you know a lot of people made some made some wrong you know could came to some wrong conclusions about why that was, right? people just don’t want to work, blah blah blah. We really started to dig in. And what we found was this

Benefits cliff that we were starting to hear about is real. And it’s a system that we created to help people, and it now really is holding people back. And so we felt that if we were we created the system, we should be able to fix the system, right? And we started doing that, you know, in our community, in our state, and then we’re hoping that that that really is something that spreads across the country with the help of one of our U.S. senators, Jon Husted. So again,

People will immediately after they’ll get a raise, they immediately lose all their benefits before they even see that increased paycheck. And it really just becomes a math problem for people, right? So if I work another day and I make another $300, but I lose $3,000 in benefits, guess what? I’m not going to do that, right? I can’t afford to do that. So we put some funding in place by working with our county. And you can imagine when we came to our county.

And said, hey, we want to help people get back into the workforce by extending their benefits. They were like, wait, who are you? You can’t be the Chamber of Commerce saying these things to us, right? We’re like, no, no, no, we are really, because it’s keeping people from the workforce, and that’s affecting our members. So they agreed to put in some money, and then the state found out about it, and they agreed to put in some money without us asking, when does that ever happen? And so we have some money for a pilot program. we had

Brandon Burton (08:08.045)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (08:22.359)
We have about 60 people now in the program. That changes on a regular basis, so it could be higher than that. We’re only a year and a half in. A hundred, over a hundred have asked about the program, but only 50 qualified for it. The other 50, we were able to not just say, hey, sorry, you don’t qualify for this program. We were able to connect them to other resources in the community that they did qualify for. And one of the reasons that we think we’ve been successful in getting people to reach out and apply.

Is because we’re working through the businesses. So the businesses they know who those people are who don’t accept promotions, who don’t take overtime. So they were able to reach out to them and say, hey, this program might be for you. I think that’s really the difference maker for us, is that we’re we’re working with businesses to identify who those folks are. And so we’ve got about 60 people that are in the program. And what we do is smooth out or create that bridge. So provide some funding to them.

So they can take that promotion, they can work that overtime, and there’s a pathway to reducing their benefits that comes with some coaching so they can see their way out of it. Like what does that look like at the end of this time period? I’ll be bringing in enough money that I won’t need those benefits. Right? So they understand and they have somebody that coaches them and helps them figure that out, right?

Brandon Burton (09:48.013)
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. Aside from the the the the money aspect of it, there’s a comfort zone that comes, right? When you’re in a place of employment and you’ve got your benefits, you get used to the pay.

what else can you do to help them create a vision of a greater future? And I think that goes to what you’re talking about now with connecting them with some coaching and whatnot. But talk just a little bit more about that, about helping them create that vision of a a better future for themselves.

Wendy Gramza (10:10.15)
yeah. Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (10:18.745)
Well, and you know, we have great resources in our community. So it was just about pulling in those resources that we’d already been working very closely with with some other programs that we were doing, our industry sector partnership, which that could have been one of our programs, but we had to pick two. but we had already built a relationship with all of those social service agencies, and so it was really easy to pull them in and say, Hey, you help people with financial literacy. We want you to be part of this program and you help people

with homelessness and we want you to you know to be part of this program. So we have a whole cadre of services that we make available to those individuals. And we and again like any good chamber program, right? You can’t create everything on our own. We can’t also all of a sudden become experts at that. We pulled in the experts in our community who already have been doing that around our community. So that’s really again the strength of it is not trying to do everything on your own but trying to pull the

those resources in. So people might say, well you didn’t bring anything new to the table. We did because if people don’t know about resources or if they don’t feel comfortable reaching out, they might as well not exist for that person. So we feel good about putting that in front of them and and making them feel like yes this is for me. I can I can make this call and I I’m going to get this assistance.

Brandon Burton (11:29.496)
Right. Yeah, exactly.

Brandon Burton (11:41.217)
Yeah. So with a program like this, you had mentioned that about half of the applicants didn’t qualify for the program. What kind of qualifications are there? What kind of things do they need to to be able to I I assume it has to do with certain type of employment or maybe certain industries or things like that. What what are the the qualifications for somebody to get into this program?

Wendy Gramza (12:01.783)
Yeah, it mainly had to do with you know what their what their salary was, what their household income was. It it was it’s really fine financially based. ’cause some people might, you know, might have thought and again, they didn’t even have the benefits that we were talking about. So it just, you know, again, people that just kinda weren’t weren’t really a match for the program. So I can’t I I don’t have the specifics that, but yeah, there’s there’s a formula kind of

Brandon Burton (12:25.048)
Yeah.

Sure. Sure.

Wendy Gramza (12:31.707)
based on their income, their household income, some of those sorts of things that they, you know, they may not have qualified for. Because maybe they you know they weren’t gonna lose more in benefits that they were earning. They might have lost some benefits, but right. So it was really around like people who had, you know, childcare, which is a really, really costly if you lose that benefit. So you know for people maybe didn’t have that, the numbers didn’t didn’t didn’t really pencil out that they would they would really

benefit from the program. But like I said, we were able to help them get other resources to help themselves.

Brandon Burton (13:03.416)
That makes sense.

Brandon Burton (13:07.404)
Yeah. So you said there’s about sixty people in the program right now. What is the what is the length of the program look like? So aside from the financial aspect of it, you pr you’re providing the coaching and this mentorship. Is it over a period of several months, a year? What what’s the length of the program look like?

Wendy Gramza (13:11.587)
Mm. At least sixty.

Wendy Gramza (13:26.113)
Yeah, so of course everything like right when you know we want to make sure that the funding’s sustainable so pilot programs are are a little bit difficult. so we’ve been we’ve it’s a two-year program, so we’ve got like two years to get people through that before we can, you know, after that, if the program’s not renewed or it’s not made statewide, then you know, we might not be able to so we want to get those people in early and give them that that two-year cycle. For some, again, based on their situation, it might be a

a shorter time frame where they they won’t need they won’t need that assistance. So the course is steeper for some people than for for others.

Brandon Burton (14:02.026)
Okay. is this being funded through

Yeah. is this being funded through a foundation or through the chamber directly?

Wendy Gramza (14:13.269)
Actually it’s being funded through our county and our state. So the chamber, other than our expertise in marketing the program, that yeah, that funding’s coming from public sources.

Brandon Burton (14:18.295)
Okay.

You’re putting everything together. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (14:26.914)
Perfect. Very good. Anything else that we need to know about the benefits bridge before we move on to the next slide?

Wendy Gramza (14:33.509)
I don’t think so other than again it’s getting statewide and it’s getting some national attention. So our US Senator is looking at providing some federal funding for the program and piloting in a in a couple of states, which we of course would assume that Ohio will be one of them since that’s the the state that he covers and that we’ve we’ve we’ve shown some good good progress with the program. So we’ve got that recipe.

Brandon Burton (14:59.17)
Yeah. Well I see I see this being a program that can change lives when it gets them, you know, over that hurdle of that fear of getting out of the comfort zone and opening up a new world of possibilities for these employees. So yeah, it is.

Wendy Gramza (15:13.877)
Absolutely. And it’s generational too. So I mean that’s that’s what really is important to us.

Brandon Burton (15:21.152)
Yeah. Well let’s let’s shift into your other program, which I know is around talent and workforce as well. You guys are are focused on talent and workforce, which is awesome as any chamber should be. But tell us what the your other program is all about.

Wendy Gramza (15:36.344)
Yeah, so again, just stemming from you know asking any business member from sixteen forward, and I think we were hearing it a lot more than some of our traditional economic development agencies that you know they brought in a big company and they would be able to find the workers that they needed because they might have you know be at a different pay scale. Since we represent a lot of small and medium, specifically manufacturers, we were hearing very early on

From them, hey, we understand how the system works, right? We bring somebody in with no skills, we teach them the skills, we pay them what we can, and then once they gain those skills, they’ll leave us and go to a bigger company, and we’ll go back and grab somebody that doesn’t, you know, have have you know skills and you know and so on and so forth. Right. We start over again, we know we can’t compete with the bigger companies, and we feel you know, that we feel good about that, right? We’ve taken somebody that didn’t have any skills, gave them some skills, and now they’re able to work for, you know, a GM or you know

Brandon Burton (16:23.64)
Start over again. Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (16:36.187)
A larger versol or a larger company. Well, they started seeing early on in you know 25 or 15 and 16, there’s nobody, there’s nobody at the other end of that pipeline for us to train. So that’s why we really started thinking about this tight labor pool, tight labor market, how we could help, you know, pe train people, you know, what what what was holding people back? where were the positions, you know, because we heard anecdotally.

can’t find a welder to save your life. And then we’d hear, you know, you can’t find a nurse to save your life. Okay, well that’s those things are probably all are true.

Brandon Burton (17:13.804)
I hope you can find a nurse to save your life. Right. Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (17:15.857)
Well well yeah, sorry, pun intended, I guess. but so we really started to look at okay, like do we not have enough nurses? Do like what we can’t just take this anecdotally. So we put together a program where we used some other organizations, Kale, which is the Center for Adult and Experimental Learning, and I can’t remember the name of the other organization, forgive me, and said we really need to know what’s going on in our labor market ’cause it’s different.

Here. It’s different everywhere, right? We’re we’re you know, still a lot of blue-collar workers, so you know, a lot of manufacturing, a lot of skilled and unskilled, so a little bit different here. So, what’s really going on? So, we use data, a whole lot of data. We involved a whole lot of partners, a lot of our members to figure out what’s the current state of our labor market. And we actually just redid that post-COVID because the initial study was pre-COVID, and then everything got worse.

Brandon Burton (17:48.738)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (18:15.637)
And then got better. so we just just recently sort of updated those numbers. But that that study turned into a strategy, and I think that was the real difference. It wasn’t just like, hey guys, here’s the information. It was no like, okay, let’s first of all let’s gut check this. Went back to our members and said, Here’s what the data says, is this is this what you’re seeing? And we could have good discussions about why or why not. that’s when we really leaned into some

non-traditional sources of finding employees leaned in heavy to veterans, leaned in heavy to returning citizens. We have a whole program about that that we could have we could have talked about. But all of those things were born out of this talent alignment strategy. And it wasn’t a strategy just for the chamber. We created a macro coalition where we pulled in all of our partners and said, okay, here’s the data. Let’s sit down together and figure this out.

You know, the nursing was a good situation where we looked at or a good example of a situation where we looked at how many nurses we were graduating in our programs, and it was more than what our need was. So supply was outpacing demand, yet we knew that’s not what was happening. So what is happening? Well, the nurses are getting trained, but they’re leaving. They’re going to be a traveling nurse or they’re they’re going somewhere else. So then you can dig in, and that’s when then we pull in our industry.

Industry sector partnership that we have in healthcare and say, all right, guys, we may or may not have a salary issue here, right? Because we’re graduating more than we need. And so that’s just kind of a glimpse into these really deep specific conversations that we would have with our industries about, you know, help us help you, right? Like we really need to dig in and find out the why. And if we fix that why, we fix it for everybody. Everybody’s okay with competing, but nobody wins when there’s nobody to compete.

Brandon Burton (19:51.459)
Right.

Brandon Burton (20:08.43)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (20:15.163)
compete for. And that’s really been our our strategy and our our mantra about let’s create a talent pipeline and then people can compete. But everybody loses if there’s nobody in the pipeline.

Brandon Burton (20:28.056)
Yeah. So I like how you you take the data and then it’s like, okay, what do we do with this now, right? You create the strategy and it’s leading to these discussions, like you mentioned the example with nursing where, you know, maybe there’s a a salary discrepancy here.

What what comes out of those discussions on the back end? So as you have the data, you’re implementing a plan, you’re having the the tough conversations with the different industry sectors. I imagine that even though there’s data and evidence that there’s probably still gonna be some pushback, there’s gonna be some

Wendy Gramza (21:02.403)
Yeah, and the sal the salary one what like is well that’s a great one to point out because it was very easy to see what the problem might be. A little harder to get everybody on board to necessarily like fix that, right? What’s what’s the fix? but at least now they know what the issue might be. They know that we you know, we’re not gonna go out and train more nurses like we might have done had we not looked at the data and really been honest with no, we don’t need to train more nurses. We need to keep them.

Brandon Burton (21:16.513)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:32.216)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (21:32.42)
And so then, you know, a lot around you know talent attraction and retention, a lot about talking to people about our quality of life and cost of living, because you know, a dollar earned here is different than a dollar earned, you know, in Chicago. So how do we really start to tell that story? So that was something that the community could do. you know, and when it comes to the manufacturers, we realized too that a lot of people were thinking that manufacturers

Manufacturing is it’s dirty and it’s dangerous and it’s not. So that turned into a campaign of promoting manufacturing as a career in the school systems, both to the students, the guidance counselors, the teachers, and the parents. And so we’ve we’ve, you know, a whole bunch of programs and things have been created to get people more interested in going into manufacturing. We created some of them, some of them were created by our partners.

Brandon Burton (22:27.757)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:31.65)
Yeah. I would love to know the level of psychology. I’m sure there’s a study that’s been done somewhere to look at, you know, graduating high school students or graduating college students that feel like they need to leave the community that they grew up in to find a career because the grass is always greener somewhere else when there’s a lot of opportunity where you’re from.

Wendy Gramza (22:48.141)
And

Right, and you’re always dealing with that, right? Like every community deals with that. It’s just like a trade imbalance, right? You know you’re gonna lose people ’cause they wanna go and see other places, so you also have to have an importing strategy as well. And so that’s led to a lot of work that the chamber’s been doing in in attracting and retaining talent. And that’s that’s a whole nother conversation that we could have.

Brandon Burton (22:53.634)
Young one.

Brandon Burton (23:12.8)
Right, absolutely.

Wendy Gramza (23:13.635)
But that’s how it just it’s all it all fits together. And I’ll tell you, we’re looking right now at the labor market is softening. How much and for how long? And what does that mean for our programming? Is it still relevant? Do we need to change things up? Do we need to add, you know, different things? we were just just talking to somebody, and this was actually in a in another state, they applied for a job and were told there were 12,000 other applicants. So just that quickly, I I think we’ve seen we’ve seen that labor market softening.

In certain areas. We’re still not seeing that a whole lot here when it comes to manufacturing. There’s there’s still a shortage, but it has softened. you can find a welder, right? It might take you a couple of months, but they’re out there. So we just need to make sure that we’re reacting to the needs of our business community. You know, is this a blip? Will it go back? You know, we’re just we’re really trying to get our arms around what the future looks like. So we make sure that we’re we’re poised to meet to meet the next.

Brandon Burton (23:44.909)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (23:56.834)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (24:13.475)
challenge that businesses are having. It’s not always going to be labor.

Brandon Burton (24:15.764)
Right. Well, and and to your point with the market softening, the labor market softening, I wonder how much of that is the the influx of AI and you get a lot of slop online and when that many people can you just throw out resumes or apply or have bots do it for them or whatever, you get a lot of slop out there. So filtering through all that and figuring out the best way to process process everything to find those good candidates is gonna be a whole nother skill set.

Wendy Gramza (24:36.195)
Right.

Wendy Gramza (24:40.921)
Right, right.

The other thing we found out too that that was kind of interesting in the healthcare field, that the as as things softened a little bit, they would still keep the job openings posted. And you know, we’d call and be like, Okay, you and well no, we’re those jobs really aren’t available. Well then why are they so we’re like this is the data that we rely on to tell us what the labor market’s doing and you’re skewing it by posting positions you’re not really hiring for. So that’s been some interesting conversations with some of our our memories

Brandon Burton (25:00.973)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (25:12.507)
numbers as well.

Brandon Burton (25:13.75)
Yeah. And you know, my wife just went through this about eight months ago and that very thing. She’d apply for a position and no, sorry, it’s already been taken. Well, why is it still up here, you know?

Wendy Gramza (25:24.321)
Why is it still posted? Yep, exactly. Yep. Yep.

Brandon Burton (25:25.4)
But yeah, so that’s frustrating. But I’ll I’ll tell you what was super helpful was those who did job postings and said we’re taking applications up until this date and then we’re gonna assess and make our decision by this date, you know, of who we’re gonna interview and move forward with. And that helped give a lot of clarity to job applicants to be able to figure out where they want to apply and where they wanna put their attention.

Brandon Burton (25:53.465)
So as we as we start to wrap things up, Wendy, I wanted to ask you on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you leave for them as they strive towards that goal?

Wendy Gramza (26:10.925)
think one thing that our industry has done so well and I have to give a shout out to ACCE because any chamber that’s not a member of ACCE make the investment do it. you know it is if you’re a smaller chamber you don’t pay as much as the larger chambers do. So and they work really hard to make sure that things are relevant to chambers in all sizes. So that would be the first thing that you need to do ’cause you get so much out of that. And then really if you are a member and you’re not paying close attention to that horizons.

Initiative that was so compelling when it came out the first time, and now they’ve done they’ve done a second generation of it, if you will. That should really spark your thinking. You’re gonna go, yes, I agree, I’m seeing this. and it gives you some some practical things to think about. It’s not going to give you the answer because the answer is different if you’re in Miami versus Toledo or Tulsa or wherever. but you know, lean into lean into the association, lean into other

chambers who are willing to help and lean into that horizons because it’s really going to help you frame really you know what it is that chambers should be doing and you know get get a lot of sleep and drink a lot of liquids because what we’re doing is not it’s not easy it’s not tangible you know I still have I was actually just talking to a friend of mine and she’s like I don’t mean to appear stupid but I don’t really really understand what you do and a lot of people don’t right and

Brandon Burton (27:25.73)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (27:40.652)
And we know all the reasons why that is, because we don’t sell pencils, right? Or pen’s the pen, I guess. You know, here, buy this, here’s how much it costs, here’s what it’ll do. That’s not what we’re selling. we’re selling solutions, right? And we’re selling success, and that’s harder for people to grasp. So it’s not it’s not in it’s not an easy endeavor, but it’s one that’s needed in every community. So keep the faith.

Brandon Burton (27:40.962)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:04.664)
Yeah. Absolutely. well I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers. I know you just mentioned the Horizons Initiative as well, but as we look to the future of Chambers, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Wendy Gramza (28:20.288)
you know, it’s

It’s always changing. and boy if I had the answer to that, you know, I wouldn’t have to work anymore.

But it is a little bit of reading the tea leaves. And so you have to look at those things that are signals of what’s happening. and you and even if you can’t recognize it before it happens, you’ve got to be ready to like pivot. And I think that’s what chambers are really good at and I think that’s what’s going to keep us relevant. you know, we’re we’re a machine with a with a with a recipe, with hopefully no in our case, we’ve got some money in the bank, so we’re not

You know, when something happens in our community, we’re not like, gosh, we’re you know, we can we’re sustainable, we’re gonna be here in five or ten years. And I think the most important thing is really getting your community to recognize that and to lean into that and to be ready to partner with unusual partners. Like, you know, we’ve partnered with you know the health department even before COVID. We were partnering with the health department when we had some water issues in our community, you know, partnering with you know, our

county commissioners that a lot of times you know we didn’t see eye to eye with just thinking about those sort of unholy alliances that are really going to be important if chambers are going to stay relevant. And they can work. You can agree to, you know, we still disagree with our county commissioners, you know, when they want to spend money or they want to increase taxes, but we agree with them on the benefits cliff and that we’re working together to fix it. So we agree on that and we disagree on the things we disagree on.

Brandon Burton (29:46.114)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (30:00.687)
Wendy Gramza (30:03.125)
So I think we can’t to be successful, you can’t lose sight and just completely say, now I’m I’m working with this group, so I’m gonna say yes to everything they do. No, you’ve still got to be able to pull back and go, no, you know what, that might be in the best interest of business, but this is not. and I think it’s really important if we’re going to be be relevant that we, you know, just to summarize, we are willing to have entertain partnerships with groups that normally historically we would not, but that we still understand.

Brandon Burton (30:17.752)
Yeah.

Wendy Gramza (30:33.115)
that sometimes we’ve got to stay true to representing businesses because it’s really easy to let a lot of these social issues pull us off task.

Brandon Burton (30:41.838)
Yeah. I think that’s such a great point that you’d made. So first of all being a problem solver, but also not letting those those I’ll say minor disagreements create a barrier to being able to find agreement and synergies in the future. So that’s a a great example.

well Wendy, I’m gonna give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Toledo or about these programs you discussed today. Where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Wendy Gramza (31:12.781)
Well, and you know, like I said, ACCE is a great way to connect the conferences and I swear they’re not paying me for this. or you, right? the conference is coming up, that’s in New Orleans. Who doesn’t want to be in New Orleans in July, right? It’s gonna be, you know, balmy. my husband’s going and still claims he’s gonna golf while I’m in the session, so I think he’s crazy, but how that works out. But again, I’ll be at the conference in a couple of weeks. and then you can certainly reach me by email.

Brandon Burton (31:27.512)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (31:34.054)
Good for him. More power to him.

Wendy Gramza (31:42.725)
It’s wendy.gramza@toledochamber.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Brandon Burton (31:52.216)
Very good. We’ll get that in our show notes for this episode and make it easy to connect. But I’ve thank you for spending time with us today and highlighting these programs that are making a great impact there in the Toledo region. And I wish you and your team best of luck as Chamber of the Year.

Wendy Gramza (31:57.475)
Great.

Wendy Gramza (32:09.764)
Great, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

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2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Greater Des Moines Partnership with Tiffany Tauscheck

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Brandon Burton (00:01.015)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year finalist series. And today we have with us Tiffany Tauscheck. She’s the president and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership.

leading the transformative economic community development efforts across the 13 county region. Since joining the partnership in 2015, she has held key leadership roles and she’s driven major strategic initiatives. She serves on numerous national and regional boards and has and has been recognized as a national and international leader, receiving multiple awards. Tiffany has achieved her CCE, IOM, and her CDME designations.

Tiffany Tauscheck (00:46.348)
If I can go and just wait for items on the

Brandon Burton (00:56.387)
She is a Drake University alum and passionate advocate for regional collaboration, placemaking, and building a stronger future for Greater Des Moines. But Tiffany, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. First of all, big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a Chamber of the Year finalist. That’s awesome. But I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening. And if you would, share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Tiffany Tauscheck (01:26.964)
You got it. Well, thank you, Brandon, so much for the invite to join you for the Chamber Chat podcast. really excited, of course, as always, to connect with all of our chamber peers across the country and really looking forward to connecting with them at our ACCE annual convention that’s coming up. So I’ve worked at the Greater Des Moines Partnership for 11 years, three years as president and CEO, but prior to this, I was in community development in a different way. So I actually worked at the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

for about eight years prior. So what used to be a focus on tourists is now a focus on talent and economic development. So we always say today’s tourists are tomorrow’s talent. And I’m just proud to work alongside a great team to drive that work.

Brandon Burton (01:55.993)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (02:10.243)
That’s right. It’s very connected, right? Yes, absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Greater Dem Partnership to give us an idea of the size of the organization, staff, budget, scope of work you all are involved with, and and anything else that will help set the stage for our discussion today.

Tiffany Tauscheck (02:12.448)
It very much is, yes.

Tiffany Tauscheck (02:30.389)
You got it. So the Greater Des Moines Partnership is the regional economic development and talent development organization, and we leverage public policy as a supporting strategy for our work. We now represent 13 counties throughout central Iowa, and we have a really unique model. So we’re funded primarily by our 400 plus investors. So these are organizations that are investing in our work to strategically act activate upon the needs.

that they see needed and possible throughout the region. We are the largest regional business, economic development, and talent development organization in the state of Iowa. Part of what makes us so unique is that in addition to our investors, we also represent 25 affiliate chambers of commerce. So we have a really unique model. It’s a dual membership model. So 25 local chambers of commerce are affiliated with us, and therefore their members are our regional chamber members.

Meaning that collectively we have seventy two hundred regional chamber members throughout the the regional footprint that we have here in Greater Des Moines, making us the second largest regional chamber of commerce in the entire country.

Brandon Burton (03:42.554)
Huge. I mean, literally, that’s huge. That’s awesome. Very good. Well, on these Chamber of the Year episodes, I like to spend the majority of our time talking about the programs that are submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Tiffany, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, today we’re going to dive into the programs that you submitted on your Chamber of the Year application. And

Tiffany Tauscheck (03:45.197)
Yes. Thank you.

Brandon Burton (04:12.417)
I know you just alluded to one of them being your dual membership model affiliate program, but tell us more about that, how that model works. I’m sure there’s many chambers out there listening to this right now that are saying, what? Rewind, how does this work? Tell us more. How does this how does this dual membership model work for you guys?

Tiffany Tauscheck (04:32.671)
You got it. Well, fun fact, we actually do receive calls or emails almost on a weekly basis from chambers across the country that are curious about the model and how it came to be, how it’s so successful, and how we keep everybody in the boat, so to speak. So this really, really began in 2009. So credit goes to many of the leaders who were with the partnership even even prior to me joining the partnership, who established this dual membership model. So in 2009,

Brandon Burton (04:47.224)
Yes.

Tiffany Tauscheck (05:00.665)
They established this new model, which had 16 affiliate chambers of commerce. So today we’ve really grown and focused over the last three years on that regional collaboration and continued support. So we’ve been able to up that number to now 25 affiliate chambers. So there are 25 chambers that are part of us and affiliated with us, representing more than 7,200 regional chamber members throughout the Greater Des Moines Partnership region that we represent.

So one of the reasons that this was originally established, and of course we continue to fine-tune and and it’s a very dynamic situation always, right, in Chamber World. So we’re always evolving and shifting and changing to to meet the needs of of the leaders and the community overall. One of the things originally was that need for collaboration in 2009. Well, now fast forward to today, 2026, there continues to be an even heightened need for regional collaboration.

We also know and hear from our affiliate chambers of commerce that they have a lot of interest in learning from us, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, related to governance models, best in class processes and shared services. So that’s something that we provide as well is those shared services and support so that every chamber that is affiliated with us is able to be as strong as they can be. And part of the benefit of this is that not only are they

As their own unique chamber stronger, they’re able to service their members stronger, which is great because as we all know, the stronger all of our businesses are throughout our footprint, the stronger our entire region is. So we’re taking this as yes, a collaborative approach, but also a very unique and targeted approach to help support those local chambers and being the best that they can be for their members.

Brandon Burton (06:56.969)
out to me as the shared services. So I’m curious to see with twenty five other affiliate chambers that are part of the organization, what services are shared and is it different for each organization? It what’s that dynamic look like?

Tiffany Tauscheck (07:12.813)
So there are currently two chambers that because we just rolled out this new shared services model. We currently have two of the 25 that are leveraging our team to support them with their financial work. So we have a team of experts in finance and accounting. And so they are they are essentially working with and supporting those chambers so that they don’t have to hire their own staff related to finance and accounting work.

Additionally, we for all 25 chambers of of commerce, we have meetings where we go through basically best of class procedure, best in class procedures. So this could include governance, it could include onboarding your board of directors, it could include onboarding a new executive director or even hiring a new executive director or any other HR function. So as you think of it, we really are that that arm to best support them so that they can do their work.

Knowing that our chamber leaders are pulled in many, many directions and they’re in high demand. we know that chambers are unifiers and they are doing really great work in each of their communities. So our job is to support them so that they can do their best work in each of their individual communities. But we also know because we represent rural, urban, and suburban chambers, that some of the issues are different in each of the areas, but many of the issues are and opportunities are actually the same.

And so there may be a chamber in one area that pursued a solution or an opportunity that another chamber could learn from. So our job, we’re connecting them and helping them learn from each other, one another, and building that peer support through this dual membership model. One other thing that I want to call out, which we’re really proud of, is earlier this year we announced for the very first time there is a new, new, new dual membership model.

That we’ve established with ACCE. So this means that all of our regional and chamber affiliates, all 25, automatically now get to be members of ACCE, which we all know in Chamber World how important ACCE is to the work that we all do to help be catalytic leaders in each of our areas of of the region.

Tiffany Tauscheck (09:35.435)
So this is another way that we’re connecting them to resources to ensure that each of our chambers are best in class.

Brandon Burton (09:46.8)
Yeah. so there are negotiations that need to go on as you bring on an affiliate or or things like that with with partnering with ACCE. that that’s one thought. And my other thought is are you dealing primarily with staff at these other chambers or do you have to interact with their boards too? What does that look like?

Tiffany Tauscheck (10:08.577)
These are great questions, Brandon. So essentially we work our way through the process and because we have added some other chambers recently, we’re very familiar with the process of onboarding a new chamber and making sure that we’re working not only with their staff, but also with their board leadership. And that’s something that we have found a lot of success with is ensuring that we’re not only supporting the the board and the staff, we’re supporting them as a whole and making sure there’s that strong understanding.

of clarity of roles between the two. So that’s something that we work through with each of those chambers as they’re onboarding, but also as there’s transitions at the board leadership level. So it’s not unusual for our team to go and present to their board, whether it’s at a board retreat, or we have team members who are dedicated through our regional community regional community integration strategy to go to their board members, go to their board meetings every time that they meet if

Brandon Burton (10:41.23)
Yes.

Tiffany Tauscheck (11:08.043)
the chamber is up for it and be there as a as a listening ear and also to provide support and of course to share back what we’re hearing from other affiliates throughout the region and what the partnership is working on as well. So that continued connectivity is really, really important. But you, you are right. It is very, very important to have clarity of roles and a strong understanding going into this this relationship, what the benefits are and how we can best support one another and to have those continual

touch bases which we of course have built in with each chamber to their liking.

Brandon Burton (11:42.608)
Right. I can see huge value, especially with the board retreats, as you mentioned, to be able to have the the expert, as they say, right, is the person from out of town to be able to come in and be able to share those best in class practices and and teach them how to how to be an effective board. I think there’s so much value there. So I I love the idea that that regional collaboration and it looks like you just continue to find new ways to grow upon it and add more and more value. I love that.

Is there anything else that we need to know about that model before we move on to the next program?

Tiffany Tauscheck (12:17.409)
The other thing I’ll just note is that because of this model, we’re able to leverage our government policy council or GPC as we call them to not only have investor input on our state and federal policy agenda, but also our affiliate chambers and their voices are introduced and part of that entire process, knowing that we are a nonpartisan organization. We are consensus-based and consensus driven.

So having GPC and having not only our investors but our affiliates at the table and having these conversations about state and federal legislation is very, very important to the advocacy work that we’re doing for our overall region.

Brandon Burton (13:00.205)
Yes. And to be able to go and say here we are representing s you know over seventy two hundred businesses, right? It it’s huge. It’s a that’s awesome.

Tiffany Tauscheck (13:05.717)
That’s right. It is. We do a fly-in every year to DC. it’s called DMDC. this this last year we flew in 175 leaders to meet with our members of Congress and talk about our legislative priorities. So we talk a lot about the importance of one voice, one mission, one region.

Brandon Burton (13:16.62)
Awesome.

Brandon Burton (13:26.381)
Yes, I love that. Well let’s switch topics to the other program that was submitted on your application. If you’d like to introduce that one, I believe it has to do with the career readiness.

Tiffany Tauscheck (13:39.424)
You got it. Yes. So this is called the Legacy Project Career Ready Collective. And this is the third year of this of this initiative. And it really started, and I have to give kudos to Joe Christine Miles with the Principal Foundation. She’s the executive director and she shared with me a few years ago this idea that she had to help support high school students through the Principal Charity Classic. And in those conversations and hearing her vision for what could be

I, of course, got really excited about this opportunity and brought it back to our partnership team and specifically the talent team here at the partnership. And they said, absolutely we can do this. So our team has collaboratively built this curriculum and built this entire program from scratch based off of a vision of a very, very exceptional leader that we have here in our region. And through that, the Career Ready Collective, or CRC, we call it for short, has just continued to grow. So

on year three now, we have about 400 high school students that are participating in this program that’s all about career readiness and helping career with career pathways, helping these students see a path for them here in our region or anywhere in the state or where they’re where they’re participating in the programming. And part of why I say that is because for the first time ever.

we now have the Career Ready Collective expanding not only throughout the state of Iowa, but we’ve added a site. And this year it’s also in St. Paul, Minnesota. So really excited to have this growth. We now have six sites for the Career Ready Collective. So we have Cedar Rapids, as well as Pella, Newton, Perry, St. Paul, and of course, Des Moines. So really excited to see that continued growth and to support.

students on their career pathway.

Brandon Burton (15:36.142)
Yes, that is amazing. So I hear other chambers that do some sort of a career readiness program and usually they’re dealing with one or two school districts maybe as they’re doing this. I’m curious it regionally, how many school districts and interstate now, how many school districts do have to work with to roll out this program and introduce it to these high school students?

Tiffany Tauscheck (16:00.13)
Benny. what I do know is that last year we had sixteen schools just in the Des Moines proper area that were participating in the program. So there is a there’s a lot of coordination. We’re able to do this in part because we’re working very closely with either the local chamber in each of those areas, like St. Paul, Minnesota has been a wonderful partner being brand new this year. But also we’re working with the community leaders and

number of volunteers and business leaders from each of those communities because what we want to do is ensure that not only the student learns from one another and learns from their peers and learns from the curriculum that our team has built, but we also want to make sure that they’re connected to business leaders and help see how they could pursue opportunities, whether that’s through work andor volunteering in their own community. So one other piece that we did is we built out this curriculum in close partnership and collaboration.

with the Ray Center. So the Ray Center is based at Drake University and it is focused on character counts and civility. And that’s those are two areas that we want to make sure that we’re helping those students understand expectations of employers of civility and showing up for one another with character and and in a way that is both adding trust and value to the organization.

Brandon Burton (17:25.967)
Can you kind of visually or I guess verbally walk us through what a site looks like? What does that entail when a student shows up there? what’s the interactions look like at one of these sites?

Tiffany Tauscheck (17:47.02)
You got it. So we have several sites that are in person and several that actually satellite in so that they can see what’s happening, not only happening there it live in person at their site, but also see what’s happening at the Des Moines location, which is housed, of course, a principal financial group given principal charity classic support of this programming alongside Salmon’s Financial. So the students will arrive, they’re served lunch.

which is a really big deal for these students in the summer to have that opportunity to connect and have a great meal with these new friends and peers that they’re getting to know. But we also ensure that there’s programming for every one of these sessions. So we line up speakers to give presentations, whether that’s on financial literacy, whether that’s on networking and how to show up in a room, how to

work the room, how to give your elevator pitch and your 30-second overview of of you as a student and what you would like to do with your future. All of these sorts of skills, we are teaching them through the curriculum with help and support from speakers that that we’ve hired and brought in and of course vetted through through all those processes. So the students are learning from experts. They’re then testing their knowledge and skills with workshops on site.

So they’re getting to put into action what they’ve experienced and learned from those leaders. And then after the sessions, we also have surveys. So we’re able to hear from the students on what did they learn? What are some of the takeaways? What could we do better or differently too? Because we all know continuous improvement is really important for all of our programming as well. So we’ve been, we’ve been really pleased to see that there have been a number of students that have said,

That this program literally changed their lives. And they I’ve had two different students that have said that unsolicited over the c last two years. And that is because number one, the first student said that they did not see for themselves opportunities as the way that they were presented to them throughout the sessions. They didn’t know those opportunities existed, and they didn’t know that they were going to be able to personally bring that kind of value to an employer.

Tiffany Tauscheck (20:03.775)
until they heard it and experienced it firsthand. And the second student that said that this program changed their life said that they didn’t know that there were opportunities such as scholarships available for them to pursue. So that’s something that we’ve also provided those connections. And we know that many of these students after they go home, after the session and they’re talking to their friends or talking to to others and potentially family members about their experiences, we know that we also need to keep those connections with them long term.

Brandon Burton (20:26.091)
Okay.

Tiffany Tauscheck (20:33.963)
So one area that we’ve added on this year is we now have student ambassadors. So these are students that have already been through the program prior that are now coming back to support this year’s cohorts. And they’re showing up, they’re connecting with these students and helping them again see their paths through this program, but also longer term in the future. So that piece of mentorship is also really, really important. We’ve seen an increase of 45%.

Brandon Burton (21:00.353)
So

Tiffany Tauscheck (21:02.981)
in students s being involved in this program over twenty twenty five, which is really, really exciting.

Brandon Burton (21:05.059)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:09.815)
Often. I love you know, exposing these students to opportunities throughout, you know, locally, keep the talent there locally. I’m always curious, especially when working with high school students, about how do you get the word out? Are you working with the counselors, the guidance counselors of the schools? I mean, how do you reach that demographic in a meaningful way to be able to drive interest and and to have them actually show up and participate?

Tiffany Tauscheck (21:38.446)
That’s a great question. We’re working with the schools. So the school districts, the schools, the school counselors, teachers, word of mouth. We’re also working with employers. And we’re also working with a number of nonprofits who have internship opportunities, that they’re also making sure that their interns are aware of these opportunities. So want to call out too that we now have for 2025, we reached 34 high schools.

And we have eight nonprofit education partners. So those are folks that did help us with the recruiting, but also helped us with delivering the curriculum. so it does take an all hands on deck. It’s something, frankly, Brandon, I’m talking about in every single board meeting. I’m talking about as I’m out presenting around the community, and I know our team at the partnership is doing the same because we see the potential in these students and we want to help them see the potential in themselves.

Brandon Burton (22:33.391)
Yeah. Well it’s just so valuable to workforce in general throughout the region to to keep that talent local and help them discover the opportunities that are there right before I love that. Sounds like you guys are making a huge impact with the the CRC program.

Tiffany Tauscheck (22:51.511)
Thank you. Yes. And I didn’t even mention, but the students actually get a stipend for their time. And so that’s another area that’s really helped build this momentum is that they’re paid for their time. And that means a great deal to them and shows again that that ownership piece. And it also helps with their their families buy-in and support of of the program as well. So that’s been another element that we’ve that we’ve created as part of the the creation and implementation of the Career Ready Collective.

Brandon Burton (23:21.711)
I’m ready to ship my kids there from Texas to participate. So that’s awesome. Well, I like asking on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level to see what kind of tip or action item you might provide for them, especially given the status this year as a Chamber of the Year finalist. What what would you offer to them as they strive towards that goal?

Tiffany Tauscheck (23:24.311)
Huh we’ll take them.

Tiffany Tauscheck (23:48.216)
Well, probably no surprise as I am a huge advocate for regional collaboration, and that’s something that the partnership has grown over time and needs to continue to steward forward. I believe in I believe in that collaboration across chambers and making sure that you’re picking up the phone, you’re building those relationships, certainly at ACCE, but also any other opportunity that you have to connect with a chamber leader. I guarantee you that we’re still gonna learn from one another whether

You’re on a different coast, a different area of the nation, have a different size of chamber, different budget, different staff. We can always learn from one another. And what I have found is that the chamber leaders are they are wonderful leaders. They want to do the right thing. They want to help one another and they want to make their community even better. So pick up the phone and continue to build relationships.

Brandon Burton (24:37.229)
Yes. And I think there’s a a great value in building your own network or your tribe as some call it. because I think even going about building that regional collaboration, it inevitably somebody new is going to come into the mix, a new chamber executive, new present CEO, and they may not

be from the chamber world. They may not understand how just how collaborative and how open the chamber world is to sharing ideas and really working together. So being able to have that network to be able to help swallow up these newcomers to help them understand this is how it works is so valuable.

Tiffany Tauscheck (25:15.369)
It it really is. And that’s something, you know, even at the partnership that we’re we’re doing in our day to day work inside the market is connecting legacy leaders with up and coming leaders with students. It it really does matter and we believe that we’re going to be stronger together.

Brandon Burton (25:31.991)
Yes, absolutely. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers. So Tiffany, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tiffany Tauscheck (25:43.864)
Well, I would love it if other chambers adopt also this dual membership model that we’ve created in their own region. And I understand it it can be it can be a lot to navigate through that. And we are here to help them. but I believe that dual membership model really is the future of our chambers across the country. And also adding in that dual membership model up to ACCE, we’re already seeing great value in it, and I believe others would as well.

So kudos to ACCE for their innovation and being willing to adopt this really, really new idea. I really do believe it is the future. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:22.263)
Yeah, that’s awesome. I should have asked earlier, but do you have to use a certain like a special kind of CRM or certain settings within the CRM to be able to work a dual membership model?

Tiffany Tauscheck (26:32.837)
that’s a good question. We so we use Chambermaster and with that we have it set up so that every chamber that is utilizing Chambermaster has their own account, but we do have a unique way through Chambermaster with their help and technical support where we have it set up so that there is that feeding back and forth and that all of those chamber members are showing up on our website in addition to each individual chamber’s website.

Brandon Burton (26:36.367)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (26:49.133)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:58.147)
Wow, I’m sure that was a feat to overcome. So good job.

Tiffany Tauscheck (27:01.611)
We have a lot of great team members and as you know, so much of it it it it’s able to happen because you’re surrounded by a great team, right? And I’ve been very fortunate to work alongside really wonderful people and to have followed in the footsteps of those who created a really strong foundation for us.

Brandon Burton (27:10.351)
It’s right.

Brandon Burton (27:19.091)
Absolutely. Well Tiffany, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about this membership model or anything else you guys are doing there at the Greater Des Moines Partnership. Where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to connect with you?

Tiffany Tauscheck (27:36.203)
You got it. Well, on LinkedIn or social media, my handle is love DSM. No surprise there. so just L-O-V-E-D S is my social handle. LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and other social, but those that’s my primary. And then also emails, still great. ttauscheck@DSMpartnership.com. So just my first initial last name at DSMPartnership.com.

Brandon Burton (27:43.32)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (28:04.141)
That’s perfect. We’ll get it in our show notes for this episode. But this has been great having you on the show and being able to have you highlight these impactful programs that you guys have implemented and and really seeing where you’re moving the needle there regionally, not just locally, but throughout the region. You guys are are doing a great job and wish you and your team best of luck as Chamber of the Year.

Tiffany Tauscheck (28:27.362)
Thanks, Brandon. Appreciate you taking the time to lift up these stories and wins. Thank you.

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2026 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Greater Mason City Chamber with Colleen Frein

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Brandon Burton (00:01.006)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the show I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist series. And today we’re joined by Colleen Frein, president and CEO of the Greater Mason City Chamber of Commerce.

Colleen joined the chamber in 2015 and was promoted to president and CEO in 2023. She brings a strong background in leadership, communications, and community engagement, including a decade as an award-winning multimedia journalist in Iowa. Colleen holds an MBA from the University of Iowa and has earned both the CCE designation and the IOM designation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She is also active in statewide chamber leadership and community development work.

With a particular passion for expanding access to child care for families. Her career reflects a deep commitment to advocacy, collaboration, and building stronger communities. Colleen, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. First of all, huge congratulations to you and your team for being selected as Chamber of the Year finalist. But I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit.

Colleen Frein (01:17.784)
Thank you.

Colleen Frein (01:27.254)
Sure. So I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to share more about our chamber and just to chat with you. I love talking chamber. I mean, don’t we all? It’s the best about. you know, I was you asked me to think about something interesting about me. and so I’m gonna go with I have been an a non professional, so absolutely amateur.

Brandon Burton (01:35.214)
Right.

Colleen Frein (01:50.991)
power lifter for several years now. I started back in 2018, I think. and unfortunately I kind of say that with sadness because I hurt my shoulder six months ago and had to have surgery on it. So I’m not powerlifting much right now. But but yeah it’s kind of a fun way for me to work out the aggression after a long day of chambering. and also a fun way to keep in shape and running after my son.

Brandon Burton (02:07.65)
no.

Brandon Burton (02:14.209)
Yes. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:19.641)
That’s right. So do you compete? Like do you go to the competitions?

Colleen Frein (02:22.048)
I used to, yeah. Yep. So I would compete. Again, very amateur. Really the competition was just to give myself a goal to work up to. And just to be clear when we say power lifting, I’m not talking about the spray tan, that kind. It’s just lifting a bunch of weight and putting it back down.

Brandon Burton (02:26.563)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:35.437)
Right. Not bodybuilding, it’s powerlifting. Yeah.

That’s right. So my daughter, she just graduated high school, but she was a power lifter all through high school. And it’s a awesome sport and I love seeing girls and women, you know, participating in it because there I think there used to be a stigma around weightlifting and it’s something that is good for everybody. So until you hurt your shoulder or

Colleen Frein (02:46.914)
That’s fantastic.

Colleen Frein (02:55.884)
Yes. Yes. There’s that like women shouldn’t get bulky and it’s you won’t. And I mean if you do, good for you. That is a source of pride. I never got to that point. But no, it’s definitely a fun and it’s a lifelong sport that you can do forever unless you have to have shoulder surgery and then it’s a minipopause. So

Brandon Burton (03:05.539)
Yes, that’s right. You’ve overcome the challenge. That’s right. That’s cool.

Brandon Burton (03:23.085)
That’s right. That’s right.

Colleen Frein (03:23.638)
I’m powerlifting one pound right now, which is really sad.

Brandon Burton (03:27.183)
Now because I know the sport, do you lift equipped or unequipped?

Colleen Frein (03:32.947)
unequipped. Yes. Yes. I’m just plain Jane.

Brandon Burton (03:34.465)
And equipped. All right. Very good. That’s yeah, that’s real strength. So awesome. Well, tell us about the Greater Mason City Chamber. Give us an idea of the size of the chamber, staff, scope of work you guys are involved with, budget, just to set the stage for our discussion.

Colleen Frein (03:41.42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Colleen Frein (03:54.317)
Love to. So the Greater Mason City Chamber of Commerce is celebrating a hundred and ten years this year of existence. we are one of the older chambers. and we are proud to say that we still have several

Members who have been with us the entire 110 years, which I think is pretty remarkable that there are businesses that have been in business that long, not just our chamber. we have about six hundred and fifty chamber members. and probably much like many other chambers, we’re really proud to share that about 70% of our membership.

Brandon Burton (04:17.392)
Amazing.

Colleen Frein (04:28.878)
has ten or fewer employees. So while we know that the big guys are the ones who write the big checks, the big work that we do is on behalf of our smallest members. And that has really been a focus for us in recent years is making sure that we are supporting the ones that are one to ten employees and are really just trying to get through their business day every day and make payroll at the end the week.

Brandon Burton (04:51.236)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that definitely you know helps to kind of get that perspective to understand who the the businesses are that you’re serving and the programs and the the work that you guys are about. on these Chamber of the Year episodes, I like to focus primarily on the programs that get submitted on the Chamber of the Year applications. And being that you guys are a finalist this year, you guys are kind of

Top of your game. So we’d love to learn from those who are doing great work. So we’ll take a quick break and when we get back, we’ll dive into the program and and learn more about what you guys are doing and make an impact in your community.

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All right, Colleen, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re gonna dive into the the program that you get submitted on your chamber of the year application. I believe it has to do with child care. So if you want to give us the introduction, what is it about? Where

How did it originate? How has it evolved? And the impact it’s making in your community. We’ll we’ll go from there.

Colleen Frein (05:53.795)
Sure. And I have to say, Brandon, it does occur to me that this is really good practice for our interviews coming up. for chemically. So I appreciate that. so Childcare Works is the synopsis that we submitted for our chamber of the year application. Childcare works is a program that launched four years ago actually.

Brandon Burton (06:00.289)
Absolutely.

Colleen Frein (06:16.576)
It was really an effort to try to solve the really difficult challenge of child care shortages in our region. if you can remember back to twenty twenty to twenty twenty one was really when we started thinking about this. this was coming out of the pandemic. So during the pandemic there was a lot of extra funding put into child care, kind of as an emergency stop gap, right? specifically in twenty twenty to make sure that our

our firefighters, police, hospital, the ones who were working on the trenches had childcare and could go to work and support through that through that crisis. but then coming out of it, what we found was childcare centers didn’t have the staff any longer that they used to have, because they had lost staff due to a myriad of reasons. One, they didn’t have as many kids under their care and people left the workforce during COVID. So

childcare centers had lost their staffing and in the meantime people were going back to work and needing that care more and more and it kind of became and then they lost all of that extra funding that had come is that emergency funding that came during COVID. that ex kind of expired, went away generally around twenty twenty one, at least in our state. And so they were really in a difficult position and and what that looked like in our county is that

Well, our childcare workers were making very low wages. We did a survey at the beginning of this program and found they were making about nine dollars an hour starting wages, which is not enough if you are taking care of a family and you know, have kids at home or even if you’re just single and trying to make rent every week or every month. it’s not enough. So they weren’t making much money. Hard to recruit people into an industry when wages are that low.

and our centers were in a really difficult situation where they couldn’t take on more kids because they didn’t have the staffing. and the staffing they did have were working overtime, over time. Most of them were working fifty, sixty hours a week just to fill and to make sure they could care for the kids that were there. at the biggest kind of crisis point in our area, we got to a point at the end of twenty twenty two.

Colleen Frein (08:30.028)
where our largest center was closing classrooms every week. So, you know, the the first week of the month they would close the infants, second week they close one year olds, third week they close two year olds, etc. and for parents who have multiple children, which many of us do, that means you’re trying to find childcare for your children for multiple weeks every single month. That’s not something that allows for you to work in a in a consistent manner.

and then that what that meant was some of our workforce outside of childcare, a lot of times it was in financial institutions, they were losing workers because they needed to be home caring for their kids. So we were really in a difficult situation. and it’s something that we had all been talking about for years, and I think many communities still, I mean I think most communities are probably still talking about the childcare crisis, but solutions were harder to come by.

everyone has ideas, but at the end of the day, how do you get more workers into a center? We have to raise their wages, is what it came down to. this didn’t come just chamber, I should say. So stepping back, this wasn’t just the chamber that created this solution. this was a partnership between the chamber, our county public

said public works, public health office. So County Public Health was the other kind of main leader on this. And then our school system, our a couple of our larger child care centers, childcare resource and referral, which is a statewide organization that supports child care child care providers, and the community college and our YMCA. And I’m probably and our EDC was the other partner that we had in this. So we had a lot of great people that came to the table.

and said we have to figure out a solution. We were really fortunate to receive a grant from the Du Beaumont Foundation to kickstart this progress. So if there’s kind of a lesson number one that we received or we learned from this, it’s look for that grant funding, right? And be creative about it. So the grant that we applied for was a public health grant that was specifically to solve a public health crisis in your community. which

Brandon Burton (10:35.141)
Yeah.

Colleen Frein (10:44.822)
Many people might not think of childcare necessarily as a health crisis, but but we were able to frame it in a way that we we all know it it really is. It it causes parents to not have the money that they need to buy food if they aren’t making the wages they need, if they don’t have care for their kids and they have to stay home, it brings them, you know, all the things we know about child care. so we were able to frame it in a way that they said this is unique and different and they funded us $100,000.

Brandon Burton (10:48.612)
Yeah, right.

Colleen Frein (11:13.562)
to kickstart us, which was incredible. and the cool thing about this grant, I will praise them up and down, is it really had no parameters. The grant funding was provided and the outcome was try to solve the problem and we’ll give you the resources to help you along the way. Right. There was no like you have to do this by the end or like show us what your outcome is. It was just show us that you’re making progress.

Brandon Burton (11:13.794)
Brandon Burton (11:32.312)
That’s awesome. Yeah.

Yeah.

Colleen Frein (11:41.895)
so it was incredible. and actually kudos to ACCE. we had a partner from ACCE that was there throughout the process as well to help people who didn’t have chambers already working with them on these public-private partnerships to think about how to get the business voice at the table because that’s so important. So that’s how our program was really kickstarted was through this great work of people who cared, getting this grant that really kickstarted our effort and then

Digging down and having those resources to try to think about solving the problem. Again, we found wages were the problem. Wages were the challenge that we were facing. So the solution that we came up with was a wage supplement bonus of $2 an hour for every childcare worker that earned $20 or less in our county. And that’s most of them. Most childcare workers are not making more than $20 an hour.

and we intended to kick start fundraising at the end of twenty twenty two and launch in twenty twenty three. but got really fortunate again we just kind of there’s a piece in there that is you have to be ready when the luck happens, right? so as luck would have it, in September of twenty twenty two the state of Iowa had extra extra covet funding, extra ARPA funds, and they decided to spend it on child care. And they said anyone with a basically shovel ready idea.

let us know and we’ll fund it. at the time it was gonna be a a one to one match and we said that. but the thing is we had to fundraise as much as we could by the end of September. Whatever we had fundraised by the end of September they would match one to one. so we had about two and a half weeks, which is wild. And we hadn’t even like formalized our plan, right? so we were ready ish when the when the magic or when the luck happened. but we just went for it. We said, you know, we’re never gonna be

Brandon Burton (13:26.638)
A race. Yeah.

Colleen Frein (13:38.211)
fully ready, like we just have to start. And so that was really where chambers come in. We have the relationships with those businesses. And I just started door to door basically going to the folks who I knew were already interested in this space and asking them to to help fund this. And it was kind of a whim in a prayer, right? We had no knowledge that this would work. We thought it would. we didn’t know if it would be able to be funded for you know how for how long, but we just said

Put your trust in us. Here’s the research we’ve done. We think that this is the best solution that there that’s out there. And we were able to raise about 250 wait, I’m off on that. because we got six cents. So we raised about three hundred and twenty thousand dollars in those three weeks that we had there. So incredible. Like our businesses stepped up, which was just amazing. and then the state.

unfortunately there weren’t a lot of other communities that were able to come up this quickly with proposals. So the state ended up funding us two to one match. So we received six hundred and forty-four thousand dollars to kickstart this project. and so for three years, that’s what we did. We paid our workers a bonus of two dollars an hour. every paycheck they get that bonus. We are we were careful to make sure that it said in there that this is a bonus so that it’s different from their wages.

Brandon Burton (14:44.272)
Awesome.

Wow.

Colleen Frein (15:04.922)
but what we found is in this now almost three years since we launched, staffing has gone up at our child care centers by about 25%, which is an incredible increase. Our wait lists are down about 70%, give or take on the week. and we haven’t had to close classrooms. one of the other great things that we added into this was in order to qualify for this bonus funding, the centers had to be quality-rated in our state.

And so when we started, we only had three centers that were quality rated, but within a couple of months, the other ones got on board and got themselves quality rated. And now all of the centers in our county are it’s called IQ 4K quality rated. So really kind of an extra boost of not only are we increasing the volume of care, but also the quality of care that we’re measuring in our

Brandon Burton (16:01.572)
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love getting that background and and you’re right, when when a a worker’s not you know, earning enough wages, then you start making compromises and it really does become a public health issue because they’re making you know, maybe they’re skipping medications, maybe they’re buying poor quality food or you know, more highly processed food, or all the different things. You make compromises.

Colleen Frein (16:23.39)
Maybe their housing situation isn’t what it should be. It’s yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:26.776)
Yeah. So kudos to you guys for thinking outside the box and how to apply that as a public health concern. so do you guys have a foundation there at the chamber that these funds are going into? Are they going to the cham yeah?

Colleen Frein (16:38.466)
We do. We do. Yep. So this all was funneled through our chamber foundation. We’ve had a foundation since two thousand one, so about twenty five years now. and this is what it’s used for, right? Is really we try to the things that don’t fit elsewhere, and are these kind of

not or what’s what I’m looking for? not just nonprofit but charity of a charitable funding is that’s where this really fit nicely into and that was a great bonus for the businesses that invested is that this was through a foundation that they could use this as a tax write off. They w they were doing good in our area too. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (17:05.968)
Right.

Brandon Burton (17:17.722)
It’s a tax write off.

Brandon Burton (17:21.912)
Yeah. Which leads into my next question at the fundraising. I that’s super impressive to raise three hundred and twenty thousand in like two and a half or three weeks or so. what was the approach? How’d you guys go after it? And did you have a short list of people to call or what was how’d you guys do that?

Colleen Frein (17:38.531)
Well, I think it all kind of begins with the relationships, right? So because we had been in this child care space for several years prior, and talking with our members about it, I knew

which businesses already felt like this was a priority. We had businesses but but basically we’re we’re feeling that like we want to do something but we can’t do it. We’re not gonna open a child care center. We’re not gonna we’re not gonna be the ones that find the solution but will help fund a solution. so you know the the first thing was setting up those giving levels was kind of scary at first because I wanted to go big and there were some that were in

Brandon Burton (18:04.205)
Right.

Brandon Burton (18:09.88)
That’s right.

Colleen Frein (18:22.03)
Our committee that we’re not used to doing those big asks. but I felt that we had to ask big and what’s the worst thing that could happen? We get shot down, right? so our largest employer in town, Curries, that was really supportive of all of the work we do at the chamber, but especially the work that we had been doing around child care, they were the first ones, and they were actually my first meeting, they were the first ones to step up and

Brandon Burton (18:33.241)
Yeah.

Colleen Frein (18:50.562)
commit to fifty thousand dollars a year for three years. So that was kind of our big fish and once we had them on board and put their name on everything, we were able then to go and kind of

gauge the investments that we were asking based off of what Curries had given and then how others were feeling on it. We had a lot of meetings. I split them up primarily between myself and our partner over at CG Public Health. Kelly took on quite a few of the meetings as well. but really it was just

Going back to those relationships we had, we weren’t going in with a cold ask in that way. You know, we we had been having that conversation for a while. So now it was coming with we have a solution, we have matching funds, and we need you to make a decision like this week. So I actually think that

Brandon Burton (19:39.088)
Right. Right.

Colleen Frein (19:41.583)
worked to our strength because I think that what we have found since is when you have a timeline and you say I need you to make a decision this week they make that decision. When you don’t have a timeline and you say we’d like this money, can you let us know? Sometimes then it has to go through corporate processes and da-da-da-da and it can just get lost in you know time kills deals. So I think that the short timeframe really works in our favor.

Brandon Burton (20:09.232)
Yeah, absolutely. And childcare really is it’s a workforce issue too. So if you go to those those big employers and they can see making that investment is gonna be a direct you know investment in their business as well by being able to have a stronger workforce.

So I’m curious with this with the funds going to the foundation, you have the matching funds that came in. is there an estimate at how long these funds will last with the two dollar an hour bonus? Or is there a way to kind of perpetuate that longer? What what’s the plan look like?

Colleen Frein (20:40.994)
Yeah, so we knew going into this that it was not sustainable for us to be giving two dollars an hour in perpetuity. that was one of my sticking points from the beginning. you know, our role as a chamber is to be looking out for our businesses and I felt very strongly

you know, while I’m passionate about finding solutions for childcare, I don’t think that businesses should be shouldering the brunt of the burden alone. And so from the get-go, we made sure that A, it was a three year commitment, and our goal was in that three years, we would start teetering down how much was provided to the as a bonus and the centers would absorb that additional funding so that organically their wages would go up while our bonus kind of dropped off. and that’s what we’ve been able to

have happen. So we started teetering down last fall to a dollar and we are currently at the fifty cents an hour right now and our centers have been able to absorb that difference in there and make sure those wages were sustained. Because our you know the whole thing going into this was they needed the staff in order to have the kids in order to have the money so that they could pay the staff. So it was this big circle. So basically we kind of inserted the money.

Brandon Burton (21:48.078)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (21:52.45)
Injected there, yeah.

Colleen Frein (21:54.632)
and hoped that the rest of the circle would would work.

because at the end of the day we face, you know, economic changes and right now we’re in a time I don’t think that if I was going out to these businesses and asking for as much as I asked for three years ago that I would have gotten the same responses and I couldn’t you know it’s we’re just in a different economic time, it’s less certain. and so I there was a lot that was timing in in how this worked out. so we’re teetering down and we’re actually in the

process now of moving to a semi-annual bonus format instead. So now that the wages have been brought up to where we think is at least a more sustainable living wage, if not an actual living wage, that part has been solved. We still want to support. So we’ll be doing semi-annual bonuses starting this fall.

Brandon Burton (22:40.976)
Yeah.

Colleen Frein (22:52.12)
to support workers that who’ve been there for six months or more. So really supporting those the retention pieces of it. so we’re hopeful that that

Brandon Burton (22:57.626)
Like that. Yeah. Have that longevity aspect to it. Yeah.

Colleen Frein (23:02.644)
Exactly. Yep, and we have found some long-term supporters of this program, some foundations that want to support the work we’re doing that work in the child care space as well, who are committing to a longer term investment in that way. So we’re excited for that. We know that will be sustainable longer and and we’re excited about how what we’ve done has really already changed that influence. I should also say some of what we’re doing.

Has no funding at all were tied to it. We also created a program through this called Childcare Ready, which is in our high schools, and basically it’s a six-month credential program that is available for high school juniors and seniors, and they spend that six months doing all the training they need to work in a child care center. So they get their background screens, fingerprints, CPR, they do all of the required testing and everything that you would normally do once you get hired.

And sometimes takes several months before you could work one-on-one with kids. So they go through all of that at the high school, and then as part of their training, they do interviews with all of our centers and are able to start working in our centers at that point. So we’re trying to also create a pipeline of people working in the industry in addition to the pay aspect of it too.

Brandon Burton (24:19.023)
Awesome.

Brandon Burton (24:25.998)
I like that it’s not just the one the one focused, right? It’s it’s the one focused to kickstart it, then you’ve got the long-term vision, you’ve got the pipeline feeding into it. So you guys are definitely committed to the work. so I’m I’m trying to think for the chambers listening who it maybe they didn’t, you know, jump on the boat in 2022 when there was, you know, the the funding out there that was floating around so freely, right?

Colleen Frein (24:29.283)
Yeah.

Colleen Frein (24:48.575)
All the money was there.

Brandon Burton (24:51.088)
but for somebody who’s still seeing that childcare is an issue in their communities, there’s nothing to stop them from doing you know fundraising to follow some site some type of a pattern like that. But I imagine there’s still some grants out there in certain states and you know just look around to different organizations, but the there’s there’s answers out there as long as you you roll up your sleeves and get into it, right?

Colleen Frein (25:03.982)
Completely.

Colleen Frein (25:16.342)
Yeah, and I think the big takeaway that that we found with this was we kind of just tried it.

You know, we spend a lot of time thinking about solutions and kind of weighing back and forth and will this work or won’t this work. but we just kind of jumped in and said, We’re gonna try it. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. but we have to do something. We have to stop the bleeding is kind of what we kept saying. And so I think we spend a lot of times in meetings, right? Where we go back and forth and try to think of solutions and then we push that off to the next meeting. and in this case we just said we just have to go. And I think

that really was a big lesson learned is sometimes you just have to jump.

Brandon Burton (25:59.119)
Yep, that’s right. Absolutely. Well, I like asking on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you leave for them as they to strive towards that goal?

Colleen Frein (26:14.114)
Yeah, you know, I think that one tip that I would have in kind of reframing back to our synopsis that we shared in this way, but this goes across all of the work that we do, is really just make sure that you’re having conversations not just with your board, but with your members on a regular basis about what your priorities are and what their priorities are. and that those conversations aren’t just happening, you know, once a year when your annual report goes out or at your annual meeting.

You have constant, constant touch points. I’ve heard recently that you used to have to put something in front of somebody seven times for them to register, now it’s like 21 times, maybe more. So you really have to, you know, get that out there. But that’s how that’s how you’re able to do things at a fast pace when you need to, because it’s not the first time they’re hearing about the issues you’re working on, or it’s not the first time you’re hearing about the issues that they’re facing. this is something that’s been building, and you’ve already built that level of trust that they understand you and you understand.

Understand them. And I know that you know communication is not something that is new to chambers. This isn’t a novel idea, talk to your members. But I think it’s about being really diligent about it and making it a priority and thinking about it. My predecessor, Robin Anderson, who you talked with years ago when we were up for this award before, she used to say 10 before 10, make 10 touches before 10 a.m. with people. And that doesn’t just mean responding to the emails that are piling up in your inbox.

Brandon Burton (27:30.926)
Yes.

Colleen Frein (27:44.088)
the 10 intentional touches with people who you know you need to reach out to or that you want to reach out to. And I think that that’s a really important thing to do is just being intentional about your communication.

Brandon Burton (27:57.371)
I love that advice. That’s so valuable. And if you do that, the the 10 before 10 method, that’s gonna really chart your work for you too, because you’re gonna get that feedback and know what needs to be done and what your community needs. So well Colleen, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and what your outlook is. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Colleen Frein (28:02.764)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Colleen Frein (28:22.668)
You know, I you know, of course, going back to ACCE Horizons, our Horizons report, it I think that

In my mind, the most important role of a chamber is as convener. That’s how we were able to succeed in our child care works effort was by convening the right people to the table. But it’s not just about convening for certain projects, it’s convening for joy. It’s convening for purposes of knowledge and education and putting the right people together when you need to have those conversations. And I think chambers are uniquely situated

to know who should be in the room and who should not. That’s a very important thing.

Brandon Burton (29:04.676)
Yeah. That’s just as important. Yeah. Yeah.

Colleen Frein (29:07.598)
And and how to tactfully tell people when they should not and why, and not lose friends in the process and how to tactfully tell people you need to be here, and not to force them into the room, but to open that door and and make them feel valued and understood why they should be in that space. So so I really think convening is it is at the heart of everything we do.

Brandon Burton (29:31.716)
Yeah, I I couldn’t agree more. And very well said. well I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how the Greater Mason area chambers or how the sorry, how the Greater Mason City Chamber is approaching things, especially with child care or anything else. where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to connect?

Colleen Frein (29:55.619)
For sure. Well, of course, go to our website, masoncityia.com. We got a whole new refresh this year, so you might just also enjoy checking out our newly done website on

Brandon Burton (30:04.908)
It is a pretty slick website. I was on it this morning. It looks very nice.

Colleen Frein (30:06.944)
you thank you. For those of us who have been through website redesigns recently, it’s a long process, but well worth the effort. you can find my contact information on there, but you can also just email me cfrein@masoncityia.com is my email. our cell phone or not our cell phone our phone is on there as well but emails usually or you can find me on the socials. I’m on LinkedIn.

Brandon Burton (30:12.747)
Yeah.

Colleen Frein (30:36.848)
find me on there. I’m fairly active as much as I can be on there too. And I do really enjoy meeting and chatting with other chamber professionals around the country because I think we all have so much we can learn from each other or just commiserate with each other.

Brandon Burton (30:52.748)
Yeah, that’s right. Sometimes that’s what you need is a good therapy session. So that’s perfect. Well, we’ll get your contact information in our show notes and make it nice and easy to connect. But thank you so much for putting aside some time and joining us here on the show and really highlighting the impact you guys are making there in Mason City. I really appreciate it and and congratulations again to you and your team. And I wish you guys best of luck as Chamber of the Year.

Colleen Frein (30:56.366)
Yeah.

Colleen Frein (31:18.306)
Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to share.

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