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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Matt Morrow 0:39
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.
Brandon Burton 1:01
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Our guest for this episode is Kim Casko. Kim has been the president and CEO of the Iowa City Area Business Partnership and September 2016. Prior to that Kim worked for AT as an organizational effectiveness program manager. She also held positions as assistant director for Change Management at the University of Illinois, Career Advisor at the University of Maryland, and management consultant at Price Waterhouse Coopers originally from New York Kim holds a bachelor’s degree in management and psychology from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in higher education administration from Northwestern University in Illinois. Kim currently resides in Iowa City with her husband John dog, Rocky and cats. Omi and Tanis. She serves on the boards for the Iowa City Area Development Group Iowa city downtown district Mercy Hospital and ACCE she’s quite proud of that last one. Kim is passionate about leadership development at the individual team organizational and community levels. She enjoys anything food related, sitting on her front porch and making project plans. Kim, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.
Kim Casko 2:36
Sure, well hello everyone. And thanks Brandon so much for having me on. It’s so good to meet you want to be here today. Pash something interesting about myself. I guess. One of the the jobs that wasn’t highlighted in my bio is that I did a part time stint at our local animal shelter. When I first moved to town and learned a lot for that job. From that job. I got a passion for rescue animals. And you know, oftentimes in my current role, there’s just some parallels in terms of animal animal behavior like herding cats, right? Redirecting dog behavior that actually comes in handy in the current job. But out of that job, I did get a my dog rocky that you referenced in my bio, who came into the shelter with all four legs, but one was badly damaged and the shelter bed had to take it off. And then I fostered him and never gave him back. So three legged dog named Rocky and then about a year ago now I rescued a cat and her pack of kittens from our neighborhood and had them in my office for about six weeks, which was interesting. And then one of keeping the mom and one of the kittens that’s only in Tanis.
Brandon Burton 3:55
My youngest daughter would love to have a cat and one of some of our best friends. You know, it got a litter of kittens, and they keep trying to tell us my wife is severely allergic. So it’s never gonna happen or else you know, my wife would have to move out of the house. So my poor daughter, you know that she was in a tough spot. That’s right. She would love nothing more than to have a cat but yeah. Well tell us a little bit about the Iowa City area business partnership just to give us an idea of, you know, size, scope of work, staff budget, just to give us some perspective before we get into our discussion today.
Kim Casko 4:32
Sure. So we are Chamber of Commerce. we’ve rebranded and changed our name in 2022, the Irish city area business partnership right before COVID hit, which is a whole nother story, but we’ve had approximately 750 members. We’re located in Iowa City and downtown Iowa City which is the home of the University of Iowa. We are the only chamber in our county which is John In County, which is approximately 155,000 people, it’s the fourth most populous county in Iowa. Our budget is approximately 875,000. And we have a staff of five full time awesome team members. And we’ve got two folks on part time contracts. And it’s actually great because they’re folks from one’s from our CVB. So we’ve got a little bit of staff sharing going on. And she’s supporting our community leadership program. And the other is from this our Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, which is a chamber economic development group to the north. And we’ve got someone helping us with our advocacy work there. So have some good friends and partners in terms of staffing support.
Brandon Burton 5:46
Very good. I like that idea that those part time contracts and being able to leverage abilities with other organizations. And I think it kind of leads well into our discussion for today, our topic will be we’ll be discussing our main topic today being merging organizations for a stronger community. And I think there’s multiple ways to go about this different types of organizations that might be worthwhile looking at a merge together. But I know you guys have recently got approval for a merge. So we will dive into more of that story and how that came to be as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Kim, we’re back. Before the break we’ve mentioned that you guys just recently got approval from your board to to move forward with a merger tell us who’s the merge with how did that develop? How did it come to be and you know, where do you see the need for this to develop this way?
Kim Casko 9:30
Sure. Well, the the best way for me to answer that is actually to tell a little story here. And actually the story starts in 1901 so bear with me will join me quick here but I’m in 1901 was when the chamber was first established. It was established as the Iowa City commercial club and then eventually evolved to become a chamber of commerce. And then eventually He developed, you know, sub committees and one of those sub committees was the Tourism Committee, which got spun off in the mid 1980s. That is now our CVB. And that’s because a hotel motel tax referendum was passed. So that their their own 501 C six entity, we also had another committee of the chamber that was the Economic Development Committee, that also spun off in the mid 1980s, as I think happened with a lot of chambers, and so that they could focus on recruiting businesses to town. So those two entities spun off. And then I think as many of us know, like, as time you know, moved along, like those, those two entities, CVB, economic development organizations focused externally bringing visitors bringing businesses to town. But over time, you know, within those industries, they realized, well, if you build it, they will come, you know, and focusing more on developing the community and making this a great place for visitors to come to and for businesses to establish themselves and grow here. And so, you know, over time, they start focusing more on that work. And, and chambers have always been involved in that that space, quality of life and placemaking. And so, hence, a lot of our community development work started to overlap. Simultaneously, we had a couple of other economic development entities that started cropping up in the 2000s. One was the Iowa city downtown district, which is a self supported municipal improvement district. And then the other is a regional partnership between our economic development organization and a combined chamber eto to the north, to create regional focus on talent attraction. And so you know, the space, the economic development space in the work, we do just started to shift and become more and more about community development. So we actually, in 2018, and it’s been explored even a couple times before 2018, as we hear from our past chairs, in terms of bringing together our organization and our economic development group, it’s a 2018 was the last time we looked at that I’ve been in this role since 2016. So it was kind of early in my tenure. And we decided not to move forward on a formal merger at the time, because there were several things going on in the environment, one of which was kind of bringing together this regional group. And, and so we decided not to do a formal infrastructure kind of remodel, but we decided, well, let’s start aligning resources in terms of sharing staff sharing space, we moved in with our economic development group, who’s called ikat by the way, if you hear me referenced up, that’s the Iowa City Area Development Group. We moved in with them in 2019, we, you know, we’d said, Okay, we’re, we’re going to start aligning our programming, we’re going to look at establishing a community vision, all of that. And we did, you know, attempt that that last one, but you know, heard from some of our stakeholders, like, oh, no, that’s not, that’s not your role to do the community vision thing. And, and so, you know, we shifted to focusing on on just education and working through that, then 2020, we all know what happened to the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, you know, we realized our organization’s us icad Are our downtown district, or CVB, are all sending out, you know, I’ll try to compile information and sending out information to our key stakeholders, and it’s all the same, you know, like, there’s a lot of overlap. And then and there’s a lot of overlap and the information. So we all just, you combine our marketing and comms team and started to, you know, really worked together on that. And then we stood up what we call the project better together initiative, and rally the steering committee, you know, across the community, to just do emergency recovery type things. And we just did a ton of work together through that time, not just communications, but giftcards campaigns, morale boost for our health care workers, all the things that a lot of assaulted. And so and through that we just learned, like really, you know, we call the project project better together. But after 2020 20, we’re like, Well, we really are better together, and we just prove that we have you know, greater impact. And so that then led, you know, in 2021, we looked at okay, so what now what, what is greater? Should we consider more formal alignment between these entities and what does that look like? And simultaneously, we also thought, now might be the time to come back to establish a community vision, you know, a vision for our future. We decided to prioritize that and focus on the vision work first, which we did in partnership with Rebecca Ryan, and we were able to launch that vision pot this past summer, which we call the Better Together 2030 All envision plan. And so once we kind of have that under the way then at the start of this past year, we started looking at alignment knowing okay, we’ve got the vision now, what does that mean for our organs? decisions and how we support that. So that’s where we started exploring that. And then ultimately proposing to our boards this past November, that to move forward on formally merging, you know, into a single entity, the business partnership, and I can, so the chamber and the economic development group, and we got a vote of approval from both of our boards to move forward now on doing the design work. So sorry, that was a lot of scarring. But
Brandon Burton 15:25
no, you know, no, so there’s, there’s a lot to unpack there. Right? I mean, it’s, you did a good job of condensing it down from 1901 to 2022. Now, right. So you had mentioned in 2018, that the, as you evaluated it, you didn’t see the need for a formal remodel of the organizations. So what do you think the key factors were from 2018? to Now I know there’s a pandemic in the middle there, but and opportunities to align resources and other ways. But what would you say were those those key identifiers that said, you know, what, now is the time that we do you need to look at making a formal remodeling of the structure at the two entities?
Kim Casko 16:16
Yeah, I think that’s a great question, and one we’ve reflected on and that we get a lot, like, why didn’t you do it in 2018. And, you know, I think that, again, our peers that I kind of work in on this joint venture with the entity, and the county to the north, on doing kind of a regional economic development group. And so that was, I think, creating some stress and some complication. And knowing too, you know, we were getting, there’s just a lot of thing, things on both of our organizations plate, and we thought, well, doing a merger is a lot of work. And so maybe we don’t go that route, but like we we need to start kind of aligning some of our work working more collaboratively. You know, all of that, you know, which is what we did actually have a slide in our presentation that we share with our boards in October, from 2018, it was directly plucked from the PowerPoint we did in 2018. Was that said, like, you know, okay, we’re gonna, you know, we’re not going to formally merge, but we’re going to increase our partnership, we’re going to co locate, we’re going to share staff, we’re going to strengthen our partnership with our CVB in our downtown district, we’re gonna launch a vision plan for our community, we’re going to focus on this big vision and this slide I have up then it’s like, done done and done. Like, we’ve, we’ve done those things. And we did that organically by working, you know, two together. And so it’s, again, the question of So what now what, and I think what the past two years proved out, is that there’s just a lot of overlap, in, in what we do, you know, not in not just from the back office, but certainly the back office. And, you know, as we saw with our marketing communications, like, you know, this is Rob pushing out the same stuff, like let’s, you know, combine our team. So that was really the first proof point. But, you know, I think also in terms of the work we’re doing, to support, you know, businesses of color, you know, both of both AAS and ikat are engaged in that work. And so oftentimes, we’re saying us in the business partnership, or partnering to create this inclusive economic development plan, and, you know, in business partnership in the ikat are focused on Workforce Solutions. And so, you know, that was another area workforce that I had, you had led the charge, typically, you know, on that, but as we saw from the pandemic, the impact on small businesses, that was exactly the challenge there too. So So we needed to do more on workforce, and hence needing to align that with our peers. And so there’s just more and more overlap, not just in back office, but in the mission focus work. That just we thought, you know, there’s now’s time in now’s the time to to really just consolidate that so that we can have greater impact. And our teams like both of our organizations are in really even stronger places than we were in 2018. And have really great, really great set of team members that are working together. So it just, there’s also a little bit of a gut feel like, now’s the time to do it. Yeah. And it’s been talked about so many times before, it’s like, at some point, it’s never like always at that time, because it is going to be a lot of work. But you know, at some point, I think he had to pull the trigger on it. So it
Brandon Burton 19:32
made it sounds like you kind of had a four to five year kind of runway to kind of the ideas kind of out there. You’re working together in more formal settings, but not a formal restructure. And then you’re able to see where those resources align where the messaging aligns where the the synergy really lines up, to be able to say like you said with the slide done down into the you have these Yeah, missions that you set out to accomplish, and they’re done. And it’s like, okay, we can work well together in instead of having the redundancy of two separate organizations doing the same thing. Let’s make this a formal deal.
Kim Casko 20:13
Yeah. And we could certainly do that. Because we did get challenged on that, like, well, you guys are doing all this great work together as separate entities. So why not just continue that way? We’re like, yes, key stakeholder, but behind the scenes, you don’t see like, the mad scramble and the exhaustion, duplication, and, and all that stuff, like, we could work so much more, you know, if efficiently and effectively behind the scenes to be able to do more, you know, like, and I think just the, the combined entities, the larger entities that are able to consolidate some things and be able to afford, like, having someone who’s focused on data, or someone who’s focused on TDI, you know, versus having each entity have to, you know, hire that and try and afford that. So there’s just so many things, but behind the scenes that are that our stakeholders don’t see that, you know, free kind of rewire align, those those cables will just create, it’s about it’s just about creating capacity and about greater impact.
Brandon Burton 21:12
Right, so, so as you look back over the last five years or so, where do you see some of those initial discussions happening? Was it driven by the board? Was it something that, you know, ikat, or the chamber was like, hey, maybe we need to look at more of a formal partnership, or a merger, or, because it can always be a little bit awkward, you know, if, if you go to icad and say, Hey, we need to, we need to merge together a watch out, you know? You got to date for a while, you got to make sure everything’s just right. But hopefully the board ends up driving that conversation. But how did it develop on your end?
Kim Casko 21:57
Yeah, so that’s, it’s been really interesting. So we actually saw back in 2018, the way it evolved, actually was from a survey and did a member engagement survey. Because I was kind of new in my tenure wanted to find out more. And, you know, we asked our members what they would value most. And by and large, the, you know, the top three things they would value the most is just impact, you know, on community community development work, creating, you know, attracting more businesses to town. And like, a lot of those things were things that our peers at ICANN were leading. And so and I shared the results of the survey, actually, with a group of pastures that I still meet with, and they’re the ones who kind of brought it up saying, well, maybe we should really explore merging, so and then it was mainly staff driven from there. And then again, like we were the ones that made the decision, like, well, let’s kind of pause on this and, and not do it formally yet. So then we are the ones it was mainly staff driven, you know, coming out of that experience in 2020 2021. We’re the ones that put it back on the table with permission, you know, we checked in with our, you know, exec committees, like are you okay with us, you know, exploring this, and we set a deadline, like, Okay, we’re going to explore it and present something back this fall, you know, as a proposal, so we got the board’s blessing to go ahead and do that. But by and large, it was led, you know, by by staff, which is a little bit, you know, we’ve heard and talking with some other combined entities, they asked us that question like, and they were like, just make sure you get your board along, too, because oftentimes, it is, you know, board trivet driven. So now that and we’ve done, we’re doing kind of a two step process here in terms of, you know, we got a vote in November, and was essentially, our boards voted on a resolution of intent to merge. So basically, they’re now giving us the blessing to design the merged entity, and then we have to take it back for a vote, hopefully, May June timeframe for them to actually bless the merger. So we’re not merged yet. And now is the place where we’re, you know, we’re setting up a merger Advisory Council that’s made up of both of our board members to help drive this because I think it needs to be a balance of both. You need to have staff in there, but you need to have also our board members or key stakeholders groups, you know, helping to drive it and, you know, we also want to involve our members investors to, you know, via surveys, focus groups, you know, get their engagement and feedback that way. But you’re right, there is kind of that, that that balance,
Brandon Burton 24:31
right. So, you’ve mentioned a couple times that there’s a lot of work involved with making the merge happen. So I don’t want to scare away you know, people that feel like a merge needs to happen with their chamber and another organization but at the same like, you have to follow you know, what your mission is the chamber if it aligns if it works, so I don’t want to scare him away, but can you help paint a picture of what the work is? involved, you know, as far as what you’ve seen so far, and what you anticipate, you know, through this intent to emerge to fully execute it.
Kim Casko 25:09
Yeah, well, a couple of things there. Um, you know, I’ll share how we’re approaching it. I don’t know if there is one, right approach. And no, it’s, I think always going to be. But the way we are trying to approach that, because knowing, you know, we’re taking this on top of everything, like we want to maintain, if not continue to increase service levels. So we’re very much aware of that. And so, with that being the case, we’re like, okay, we’re stealing some things from kind of an entrepreneurial world, like, what’s the minimum viable product? Move forward? Like, we kind of want to do this by July one, which is an aggressive timeline, but our, but I had their fiscal year, their next fiscal year starts July one. So there’s a little bit of a sense of urgency, which I think is good. Yeah, um, but we’re trying to chunk off like, Okay, what absolutely do we have to have, you know, to get approved, knowing that this is going to evolve. And I think if you talk to any other entities that have gone through this, they say, just that, like, it may take three years for it to feel fully kind of like where you want it, but you start somewhere, and it evolves. And so, so let’s kind of make sure we understand like, well, you know, what is that, and that makes it a little bit more manageable. And the way we’re approaching is, is kind of like two streams. One is a very organic kind of ground upstream, in terms of like, let’s just get our teams together. I mean, we’re located in the same space, but we have an office space in the lower level, and our icad peers sit in the upper level. Some things we don’t see each other. So last week was merger kickoff week, and we threw everybody together, like, okay, let’s be both do Monday, stand ups, let’s do it together. Like from henceforth, we’re doing our Monday morning stand ups together, we had a merger working session where we just checked in on our team members to see how they’re doing, you know, what the change and talk about, you know, what this, what this means, and what this looks like, and what their concerns are, and all of that, and then start talking about, have everybody review their roles, like, understanding each other’s work at the individual role level, and where’s their low hanging fruit and opportunity, and let’s start kind of establishing work teams and, and so there’s that piece of it. But then there’s also the other parallel track that really comes from our boards and the merger Advisory Council in terms of what is this new entity, you know, going to look like your mission vision values, like the key functions, and we want our teams involved in designing that too, you know, and, and our key stakeholders as well. And so kind of figuring out that future state, and also the kind of the, which steals a little bit top down, and then the bottom up of like, the current state and just kind of moving along, okay, and taking the mindset of okay, what do we need to get done in the next 30 days in the next 90 days? And I think that getting in that framework in that rhythm makes it more manageable?
Brandon Burton 27:59
So in this question, it may be a little bit premature in your current situation, but as far as staff goes with the two organizations, do you just imagine or anticipate through maybe attrition or just, you know, seeing where different responsibilities and your things live with different different positions to take on different loads are kind of shifting, they’re already sharing some of those responsibilities, I guess, across the two organizations, but how do you maybe anticipate or see the staffing situation playing? Uh huh.
Kim Casko 28:37
Well, one, both of our teams are currently understaffed doing multiple jobs. So and are amazing, we’ve got really amazing team members right now. So we’ve kind of shared with them, like, we don’t want to, we don’t want to lose anyone. So there’s that. And they’re just a dream team to have right now in terms of, you know, they’ve got, they have what we need in terms of kind of shaping what this looks like, you know, and there are some areas where there is some, some duplication, like, you know, in marketing comms like an event plan, but again, like, so many people have so many, you know, you’re doing event planning, you’re managing the facility, you know, you’re doing three taps in one. And so like, can we start parsing that apart and figuring out like, some people may be tired of what they’re doing. So what do you want to do? So we asked our teams last week to share out, you know, just their current role, but like, what are your passion skills, you know, and to start kind of thinking of, okay, where are my people want to go and what might this look like? And so, you know, we feel really, really good about that. And when you look, it really seems like when you look at it, you know, the duplication like where there’s almost as you’ve got two presidents you know, so as kind of setting the example like my myself and my peers are just committed to like, we’re committed to like seeing this, this merger through and figuring out what that new And it looks like and what roles are needed and what that top CEO role is going to look like, we’ve got to design that. And then you know, we’ve recommended to our, to our boards there and it’d be ultimately up to them the merger Advisory Council, but to do a search for that role and figure out what is the right leader we need in that space. And so we’re kind of trying to design is agnostic of ourselves and our egos and personal intentions. And
Brandon Burton 30:24
I think it goes back to the our title for this episode emerging organizations for a stronger community, so not for your own ego or not for your own personal situation, but for the stronger community. It helps having a board behind that that helps them make some of those decisions as well. So but it came as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you for the chamber listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? Or maybe is considering Emerg? themselves? What tips or action items might you share with them to help them accomplish those those goals?
Kim Casko 31:06
Yeah, I think, you know, just leverage. This is my first experience, kind of in the chamber profession, and I’ve just been blown away by the amount of support, you know, in the profession, and, you know, between things like, you know, this great pop podcast that ACCE the association Chamber of Commerce, execs, and just lean on. I mean, for me, I got a lot of inspiration around, you know, mergers from hearing what other, you know, organizations have been doing, you know, greater Topeka partnership, the one Spartanburg in you know, just in hearing those interviews and leaning on those leaders, calling them up, like, how did you do this? What was your project plan? And like, that’s just been tremendous, you know, for us, and to be able to leverage that that also makes it when you go back to like, workload, makes it feel a little bit more manageable and doable.
Brandon Burton 32:04
Yeah, that’s perfect. And you mentioned like in Greater Topeka Partnership, I’ll link my my interview with Matt Pivarnik, as well. So it gives another perspective how they came about it. And for anybody who’s who’s serious about looking at a merger, there’s, there’s things to be learned for sure. Well, Kim, as we look to the future chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Kim Casko 32:36
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things I remember learning about early on when I started in 2016. And I think it was at the ACC convention was just the study that the was the Western Association of Chamber of Commerce sects that did that study, and on branding and came out with, you know, a couple things, one that you everything you need to do needs to tie to the benefit for the overall community and not just the business community. And Sherry And Kelly and her team at ACC always speak to that to like, it’s about community impact. And I think that’s still very much in very much relevant. Because the, the, it’s all about tackling those community community problems and challenges and opportunities, and we’re the group to do it. And that goes back to the waist, and like the three C’s and our role as catalysts, you know, for business and community growth, the convener, you know, across sectors and being the champion, like, that’s how we do the work. Yeah. And like, I think that’s still like, very relevant, if not even more so today. And I think into the future, because the problems we’re trying to tackle are really hairy problems. And, and it takes like that cross sector, public private, nonprofit, collaboration, and like, we’re the only ones in the space doing it. So and I think that’s, you know, very, very much needed. And so I mean, it’s part of why we changed our name to partnership, you because it takes that work. It takes partnership, and it takes collaboration. And if you think of that word, you know, it’s got the word lab in it, just experiment experimental. It’s got the word labor, and it takes work. But that’s really, I think that’s a skill set of ours, and that’s going to be critical in the future.
Brandon Burton 34:20
Yeah, no, I, I liked the name change, too. I think we’ve talked about on past episodes, we have named changes from Chamber of Commerce to something like a business partnership. I think it just keeps the relevancy, you know, where the focus is. And I think, I don’t know, maybe 100 years ago, 150 years ago, Chamber of Commerce maybe had a different meaning a different maybe it was more in the vernacular of, you know, meaningful words. But now I think more of a business partnership makes a lot more sense for a lot of communities.
Kim Casko 34:56
It does I mean, it does, but I will tell you this Probably be a whole separate podcast. But like, I will tell you like it’s it. We’ve had a tough time getting it to stick. I mean, when we launched it when the pandemic hit, but too, it’s longer. It’s tougher to say. And so people really struggle. And so I we are quick to say, No, we’re still Chamber of Commerce, because I think there’s still a lot of value for the brand. That space, I want to make sure people know, like, No, we’re still we’re a chamber of commerce. And so I think that’s still important, but like, people have an easier time saying, so it’s
Brandon Burton 35:28
your chamber of commerce chambers.
Kim Casko 35:31
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So people often ask us are like, what? It’s like almost the number one question we get, like, what’s the new name of the entity going to be? And one of our team members came up with this great acronym. They’re like the I was city area business and Development Association, which if you spell them look at the possible acronym, it spells out, I see a badass. Already curse on your podcast. But I think it’s brilliant. Working they were going with, they were like, you cannot have that as
Brandon Burton 36:10
I can see the logo right now.
Kim Casko 36:13
Perfect. So I’m really advocating for that.
Brandon Burton 36:21
But it came, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may be considering a merge or when I gain more the experience that you’ve gone through, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?
Kim Casko 36:34
Yeah, happy to connect with anyone, you know, on this, either, whether you’re considering it or you have done you want to compare notes like, so you can? Yeah, all of it. Well, we need a support group. I’d love your support group that we went for all for that. So you can reach me at Kim@IowaCityArea.com. Or my cell phone, which is 773-633-7700. I know that sounds like a spam. It is easy to remember. And then the merger, I’m going to share my Berger website here that are currently being put together which has been really yeah, really helpful for folks. So that’s IowaCityArea.com/merger, which has FAQs out there a video and we’ll just kind of hoping to keep that site updated.
Brandon Burton 37:30
That’s perfect. And well, we’ll get all that in the show notes for this episode. So people can get on there and check out the merger page and see, you know, all the updates and everything you have going on there. But, Kim, I’m glad we’re able to have you come visit with us on Chamber Chat Podcast and share this experience and the development and how things are going down with this, this merger in your your chamber. And I think it takes a little bit of vulnerability to say, you know, here’s what we’re going through and where we came from. And so I appreciate you putting that out there for us.
Kim Casko 38:04
Yeah, yeah, it takes a lot of that, you know, across the board. We talked exactly about that with our team members last week about vulnerability, vulnerability and navigating that and navigating this transition. And so I’ll share with you some of the other resources were using to to help with that. But yeah, appreciate being able to talk about with you today.
Brandon Burton 38:24
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