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A Podcast for Chamber Professionals Posts

Leadership Programs with Debra Orner

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Debra Orner. Debra is the Vice President the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce in Pennsylvania. She began her career with the Cambria Regional Chamber in 1998. She’s responsible for the Chamber’s external operations including events and programs. And among these is her professional pride and joy the John V Gunter Community Leadership Initiative. Prior to coming to the chamber, Deborah worked in public relations at St. Francis University and on the staff of the late Congressman John P. Murtha. Debra is past chair of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce professionals, and has served on his board of directors since 2012. She was the first non CEO to be elected to this position. She has served as chair at the PACP professionals and leadership conference since 2013, and is also a member of the communications committee. Debra is also an IOM graduate. Locally, Debra is at the vice president of the Johnstown United neighbourhoods, which began as a community project of the leadership program. She also serves on the board of directors of several other local organizations. Debra, we’re excited to have you with us today here in timber tap podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Debra Orner 3:25
Thank you, Brandon. As mentioned in my bio, this is my 25th year in chamber work. Never thought I’d have a job that long. But once I started, it was just it was just Kismet. And I love doing it. I can’t imagine doing anything else. And my chamber friends actually like to joke that I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight years old because that in the summer of 1977, our city suffered the third devastating flood in our history. And one of the things that came out of that was an advertising campaign that was put together by some local businessman. And some of it was funny like they were they will put up billboards that say were wet but not washed out. But the one that stuck with me was one that says we will rebuild together. And I’m not saying that I knew that Chamber of Commerce was a job you could have when I was eight years old, but I knew I was I wanted to do what those men did. So it just made a huge impression on me. And the other thing that came out of that was our congressman at the time had only been in office probably about two or three years. And where I lived during the flood was across the street from an elementary school that had a very large playground. And that’s where National Guard helicopters would land and that sort of thing. And I was able to witness our congressman landing at our at that playground and getting out and kind of directing things and starting the process and helping to shovel mud and that sort of thing. And that was Congressman John Murtha. So at eight years old, I was looking at this man like he was some sort of John Wayne and he was just one of my first heroes and then I ended up working for him. So it was kind of that was a pivotal event in my I live to kind of had an effect on my later years that I never could have predicted at the time. But so that’s why they like to joke that I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight.

Brandon Burton 5:09
Wow. So I hear a lot of stories about how people get into chamber work. But that is a unique one. So I appreciate you sharing that. And not everybody has that kind of experience when they’re a young child and being able to have those impressions stick with them into adulthood. So thank you for sharing that. Well, tell us a little bit about the Cambria Regional Chamber just to kind of set the table for our discussion give us an idea of the size of chamber scope of work staff budget, that sort of thing, just to prepare us for our conversation.

Debra Orner 5:44
We’re located in Johnstown, which is in Cambria County in Pennsylvania. And that’s about as the crow flies 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. We have about 650 members at the moment and our budgets around $650,000. And we have four full time staff people. And we do a lot with those four people, we have probably 10 major events per year. And a lot of programs in between, like most chambers, we have a governmental action program, we have a women’s issues program. And of course, the thing that’s my favorite is our leadership program. But we also have branched out into kind of becoming a digital media company, we have a pretty strong social media program. We are we do a lot with promoting our members via social media. We do a lot with video. So that’s something that we’ve been getting into the last four years when our new president Amy Bradley came on with her background in news broadcasting. So that’s something that’s been kind of new for us. But we’ve been we’ve been doing pretty well with that, in addition to the other traditional things that the Chamber of Commerce does.

Brandon Burton 6:52
Yeah, that could be a whole conversation within itself right there under the digital media. And

Debra Orner 6:57
absolutely,

Brandon Burton 6:58
you guys are taking there. As we in thank you for sharing the background there on the chamber and what you guys are involved with in the staff. And as we move forward with our discussion today, we’ll be focusing on with what we’ve alluded to a couple of times already through your bio and what you shared with your pride and joy of being in the leadership program. You guys have there at the Canberra Regional Chamber. But we will dive deeper into discussion about that and how you guys approach your leadership program that says to get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:16
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Brandon Burton 10:16
All right, Deborah, we’re back. So I’m curious to learn about the leadership program, it’s not often that you hear chamber professionals say that leadership programs are pride and joy. So I can tell this means a lot to you, it’s close to your heart. And I’m sure it’s because there’s been some big impact that’s come out of it. So share with us the approach you guys take and why it means so much to you.

Debra Orner 10:41
Well, I always joke with with my boss and my board of directors that I do leadership for free, and they have to, it’s everything else they have to pay me for, because I love the program that much. I actually took the program over, within two weeks of starting my job back in 1998. And back then, the program was only in its current format, about four years old. They had done a program in the early 80s. Back when corporate dollars for training were more easily had, they would bring in people like Lee Iacocca and Steven Covey, and it was more of an of a really higher level executive training. And it wasn’t a cohort group. The way it is now, back in about 1994 is when it when they started to form it into a cohort group where a group of about 18 to 24, people would go through a series of lectures throughout a nine month period. So then, when I took over in 1998, they also said, Well, a good way for you to learn how to run this program would be to go through it yourself. So my first year with the program, I was actually participating in the program, plus I was learning how to run it. And that was really unique. And I don’t recommend it to anybody because it was it was very confusing for everyone. For my classmates who didn’t understand that I was part of the class plus I was I was running the program and for me trying to be part of the class yet organizing everything. So that wasn’t probably the best way to go about it. But the following year, we instituted an overnight team bonding session. And that’s really where things took off. Because that really cemented the bonds the class would have with each other. And we had two amazing facilitators that I was lucky to have for almost my entire career here that really took the program to another level. And our program is a little different from other programs in that we meet twice a month. And we are skills based rather than the programs that typically have like a healthcare day or a Law Day where they go on basically like field trips to hospitals, and in court systems and that sort of thing. So our program is based around skills like project management, and we’ll do a session on soft skills, and we do emotional intelligence. And we do disk training, which a lot of other programs do as well, but we pair it with other sessions that basically benefit the person through professional development. So we’ll do honorable leadership and, and things like that. So we’re a little bit different from other programs. And we also do, the people that are in the program are required to work on a community project while they’re in the program. So we’ll we divide them up into groups of four, six people, they can choose to work on whatever they want to work on, we use a multi voting process for them to figure out what they want to work on. We give them some project management training at the end of the year. And from there, they run with it. And we’ve had some amazing projects over the years that have just touched 10s of 1000s of lives with the impact that they’ve had. And the the people that are in the program, sometimes the project means so much to them, we do a session at the end of the year where they have to do, they have to present their project to our board of directors. And they’ll do a session where they present to their classmates and their sponsors. And we’ve had grown men in the in the front of the class crying because the project meant so much to them. So it’s not just something we do to keep them busy. It’s something that really means a lot to them, and it ends up being something very meaningful to the community. This year, for instance, we have one group that’s working on building a pavilion at one of the trailheads here in town for one of our one of our hiking and biking trails. And we have another project that’s raising money for a project called the needy children’s shopping tour, which takes disadvantaged children and take they get to go shopping at Christmas time and they get to buy new things and it’s just it’s a really cool experience for everybody involved. And then we have another group that is raising money for an organization called wings for Warriors which is an organization that serves disabled veterans With all terrain wheelchair so they can still get out into the woods and do the activities that they enjoy before they were injured. And so that’s another project that’s that’s happening this year. And then we have a final project that is going to bring together some resources for first responders who we kind of tend to forget about them a little bit that they need some help, too, sometimes. So those are the just 404 examples of projects that our program does. And they will work on those throughout the nine months. And they don’t have to be finished with those by the end of the program. Usually they are. And sometimes the products are one and done. And sometimes the people continue to work on them past when they graduate from the program, which I think really says a lot for how much the project that they choose means to them. So that’s what I kind of think sets our program apart a little bit with some of the things that we do,

Brandon Burton 15:51
ya know, you you’ve covered a lot of things there is, as you talked about how the program’s laid out, but so if I understand, right, it’s a nine month program, you meet twice a month, so 18 times total throughout that that period.

Debra Orner 16:06
Yes, we meet we meet twice a month for half a day.

Brandon Burton 16:09
Okay. And tell us a little bit more about this overnight team building opportunity is that you guys set go somewhere off site, is it somewhere? Just how do you how do you come about that

Debra Orner 16:22
we did and actually the pandemic turned it from an overnight into just a two day session. But it’s still it’s still the same basic setup, it’s just, we don’t stay overnight anymore after after the pandemic happen. But we spend the first day basically with just team building activities and with them getting to know each other and kind of breaking down barriers, and really getting to know each other a lot more and what they what they have in common what they might want to work on for the next nine months. So it helps them to form their project teams. And then the second day is really when we spend putting the project teams together. So they’ll spend like the entire second day just discussing things like what does our area not have that if it did would make it a better place to live? Or, you know, what would you work on, if you knew you couldn’t fail those sorts of things. So we, we lead them through discussion like that, and then they they break down into areas of interest. And then from there, it’s all up to them, like what project they pick. So they might know that when they walk out on the second day, they might know for sure what they want to do. Some people come to the program with an idea that they want to do, and they just recruit people to help them. So and some people show up, and they have absolutely no idea what they want to do. And they’re they’re looking to be sold on something. So we have kind of all different methods happening there. But those two days are just so important because it really helps them bonded as a group. And a lot of times even sometimes we’ll have people from the same company that participate in the program in the same year. And people from the same company won’t know each other before they get to our program. So really, for the most part, these are 20 strangers who don’t know anything about each other. So we really take the time on those two days to help them get to know each other. And really, they walk out of those two days and their friends.

Brandon Burton 18:09
Very good. So that was my next question. So this is happening at the beginning of the leadership program to build those bonds, kind of build your teams select your products at a tone for the whole nine months.

Debra Orner 18:22
Yeah, we do that at the beginning. And then at the end of the year, we go back to the same site. And we do what we call a year on reflection. And that’s really their opportunity to kind of get their emotions out about what they’ve been through that year. And like the things that made an impact on them and just kind of talk it out and just really have a have a nice day, like a little Capstone session with with their classmates that they become so close to throughout the course of the program.

Brandon Burton 18:49
Nice. So you had mentioned that you’ve been blessed with a great facilitator, as you go about trying to figure out who facilitates a leadership program like this? What sort of traits are you looking for what what would make for a good facilitator for other chambers that are listening and considering building a similar program?

Debra Orner 19:10
Really, they just think it helps tremendously if they have a passion for the area, because that’s really what most leadership programs are trying to do is create something good for their community. And it also helps if if they like helping people develop, because that’s a huge part of what we do. So you really just have to have a passion for developing people and you have to really care about the community and the area and you have to want to see it get better. And we as Chambers of Commerce don’t often have large budgets and sometimes our facil facilitators most of our facilitators actually are volunteers with the exception of one person, everybody in my program is a volunteer. So we really have to be Find people and cultivate relationships with people who just genuinely just care. And that’s really, that’s really as simple as it is. Obviously, they need to have some proficiency in the thing you’re asking them to present on. But really, they just have to care. And they have to want to do it. And they have to have that volunteer capacity capacity themselves.

Brandon Burton 20:20
So I think that’s those are great things to consider. And like the passion for the community. And it made me wonder through this leadership program, it sounds like a lot of the skills like the skills based training, those sort of things that you’re going through, are I guess you can you can take it from one position to another, from one community to another, you’re developing leadership skills that are transferable. Are there other aspects, besides the project may be that are community based that are unique to your community? And maybe not, but I’m just I’m curious.

Debra Orner 21:02
Well, one thing that that I’m pretty proud of that we do with our program is we give them the opportunity to meet a lot of community leaders, because that’s who most of my facilitators are. They’re people who are business owners or leaders in some other way. And we also do a session on local government where they get to meet all of our county commissioners, and our city manager and our the community community and economic development director for the city will have the Director of Emergency Services for the county comm. So they get to meet people like that. And these are, again, community leaders who are giving back through this program by it. And that’s one of the sessions where I kind of call it the, it’s your opportunity to ask the why doesn’t someone or why don’t they questions, because a lot of times people just don’t understand why things are the way they are. And this is really just an opportunity for them to sit down and meet with oftentimes people who are elected leaders, and it just gives them a chance to form a relationship, and just to meet them and to see what their role can be in moving our region forward.

Brandon Burton 22:07
Yeah, I love that, like building those strong community ties. So the the year end reflection, that I can imagine that being kind of a high point, really to this whole program to be able to see the development to be able to look back at, especially going back to the same location that it all started right, then able to reflect back on that those beginnings, the relationships built the impact of their projects. You had mentioned grown men crying at the end, because they’re their program, what are some of those more impactful reflections that have kind of hit you over the years, as you’ve seen these people reflect on their their time in the program?

Debra Orner 22:53
Well, I always say that the people in the program, we’re going to learn more from each other than they will from almost any, any of us or any of the facilitators, because you get to meet the people who are doing the work in the community. And there’s just a lot of eye opening moments that you wouldn’t know about if you didn’t get to meet these people. And for me, just seeing the relationships that formed from people who didn’t, who wouldn’t know each other, except for this program, and who accomplish amazing things because they have met in this program. To me, that is just the most gratifying thing. And I think that’s what they get out of it as well is that people that they didn’t know, prior to be in the program, and they’ve accomplished these great things with. And a lot of times with the, with the, with the educational part, sometimes people will even tell me that it doesn’t apply to them right now. But years later, they went back to that training, and they used it. So it is something that stays with you forever. And that’s really why ours is more of a professional development kind of program. Because no matter who you work for, or where you go in your life, whatever community you’re a part of, this is yours forever. So it’s not just that it’s specific to our city or our county. We believe that you improve region by developing its people and by developing its leaders. And so that’s what we really try to do every single year in our program. Right?

Brandon Burton 24:21
I love that. So the question came to my mind is this is kind of your your baby your kind of pet project, right? There’s the leadership program. How do you I guess put the dividing line between what you do as an organizer and, and putting together this program versus the facilitator and their responsibilities and to where you’re not stepping on each other’s toes and identifying what your your respective roles are. How does that structure look with your organization?

Debra Orner 24:56
Really, I am just so fortunate with the people Will that are part of my program, honestly, we all just work so well together. And they know that I would do it for free. So that that helps to that they know what how much I love it, and how much how much of myself I put into it. But I basically recruit all of our all of our facilitators, which can be 18 per year, depending on on how many sessions we do. And, honestly, I just let them run with it, because they’re the experts in their field. So during the session, I don’t interfere with that, that’s up to them what they want to put it in their curriculum. Sometimes I helped facilitate that session in class, depending on on where the conversations going on try to help lead the conversation a little bit. But for the most part, our facilitators are just such professionals and they just care so much, there’s really no need for me to, to get involved in that part of it. And they let me handle all of the admin and that sort of thing and all of the communication and it just, it works really well together. And it’s just it’s it’s nothing but 25 years of cultivated relationships, that people know what we’re trying to do with this program, and they have just gone all in on it. And, you know, they have other things to do, they have other things they could be doing other than spending half a day with me. But they just, that’s just what great people they are. And so they take time away from their own businesses and at their own expense to come and share their expertise with our class every year. And I have facilitators that have been with me for really the entire 25 years. And I just think that’s a remarkable thing.

Brandon Burton 26:34
That’s fantastic. So as you go about recruiting facilitators, and I’m asking this for somebody who’s looking to build a leadership program at their organization, where are you looking in the community to everywhere from

Debra Orner 26:49
everywhere, and one of my favorite things to do is if there’s a graduate of the program that can teach something, I love to bring them back. And sometimes I have a list of people that I want to bring into the program, because I respect them as a person, and I want people to meet them and to learn from them. And sometimes I have a topic that I just really want somebody to teach, but I haven’t met that person yet. And really one of my favorite stories, I have one of money, one of my first friends that I ever made when I worked at the Chamber, he’s just a really good presenter. And you know, I’ve called on him in the past to present things. And the one year, I just had a really, things don’t always go smoothly. And I lost like three facilitators for you know, due to various reasons health and that sort of thing. And so I needed him to present a topic on or to present a session on public speaking for me, which was okay, and public speaking is kind of, that’s not really something that’s that unique, and you can get a lot of people, different people to do that. But the following year was the only the second year that we were going to present emotional intelligence. And back then that wasn’t something that was very common. And it wasn’t something that a lot of people, you know, were doing at the time. So I lost my facilitator for that session, probably 10 days before the session, and I just sat there, and I think I’m gonna have to cancel the session, because who am I going to get to present emotional intelligence is like, there’s like two people in the world that even know what it is, at this point.

Brandon Burton 28:18
tested your own emotional intelligence. Right?

Unknown Speaker 28:21
Exactly.

Debra Orner 28:22
So so this friend called me almost like 10 minutes later, and he said, Deborah was looking online at your at your syllabus for your leadership program. And I saw that you have emotional intelligence, and who teaches that for you? And I said, Oh, my God, why are you asking? He had just gotten certified in that like, I think two weeks prior. And I said, Oh, do I have an opportunity for you. So that was just somebody that I knew that it was just an existing relationship that I had that that I could peg into that slot. And another time I had, I had really wanted to include servant leadership in the program for some time, but just had not met somebody who could teach it. And so as you mentioned, I worked at St. Francis University, prior to coming to the chamber, and I still have some friends that work there. And so I was talking to one of them the one day, and I don’t know how the topic of servant leadership came up, but it did. And I had said how much I wanted to make that part of our program, but I just, I hadn’t found anybody to teach it yet. And she said, Well, you know, who could teach that for you? And I said, Who? And she mentioned, one of my alums, and I said, Oh, my God is so to see there, put them on the phone. And he wasn’t there at the time, but he did call me back. So he’s been teaching that session for me ever since. So it’s really just keeping your eyes open and seeing who’s around you and paying attention to what they do. If you’re friends with them on Facebook, or if you’re connected with them on LinkedIn, what do they post about? What do they seem to know about what do they seem to be an expert in? Or even just what are their interests because a lot of times people’s job isn’t necessarily their passion either. They can they can teach about something that’s not Not necessarily what they do for a living. So I’ve had that that happened as well. So it’s really it’s just a matter of using your own connections, and just just letting people know what you’re looking for what you want to do, what your goals are, and the people will help you get there.

Brandon Burton 30:16
That’s great advice. Deborah, is we start wrapping up here, you’ve, you’ve touched on some fantastic points as far as creating and building and nurturing a leadership program, it’s your chamber. What tip or action item might you have for listener who is interested in taking their chamber up to the next level?

Debra Orner 30:38
The best advice that I can give anyone is if you have a state association, and you probably do join it immediately and get involved if you’re not already, because nothing in my career has been more valuable to me than the Pennsylvania Association for chamber professionals. I learned more about this kind of work just sitting around with my colleagues over lunch and dinner, and possibly one or two late nights than I ever did in any classroom. Chamber professionals tend to be just the most generous giving people and they want you to succeed, and they will share with you and they will help you and they will cheer you on the whole time.

Brandon Burton 31:16
Absolutely. And, and that’s the only reason this podcast is a success is because the chamber professionals are so willing to share and, and share some of those best practices and tips and programs and things like you’re doing today. So thank you for that salutely. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Debra Orner 31:43
Well, I think one thing that the past few years has shown us is that and especially extremely epidemic, evident during the pandemic is despite their traditional nature, Chambers of Commerce adapt extremely well to serve our members. We have extensive extensive reach in our communities. And we tend to be extremely good listeners. And some of the hardest days we worked was when everything was shut down, because we were putting in so many hours trying to take care of our members. So we tend to be very good at adapting. And I think we will continue to do that to adapt to our members evolving needs. And the other thing that has been extremely evident the past few years is the importance of human connection. And that is something that chambers have always done exceptionally well. So I think as long as there are humans in business Chambers of Commerce will continue to be the conveners. And how we do that might change with the times, sometimes it might be virtual instead of in person. But I think that’s we’re going to continue to be the connectors.

Brandon Burton 32:44
Absolutely great points. And I would have to agree with the future chamber. So thank you for that. Deborah, I like to give you an opportunity, or really for the listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you learn more about the leadership program that you put on, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect and learn more? Sure,

Debra Orner 33:07
they can email me at debra@crchamber.com. And you can reach me directly through our website, which is crchamber.com. Or they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I love to talk to anybody about leadership. So if anybody out there is has a program that they want to maybe adapt or if you’re looking to start a program I would love to help. I’ve helped several of my colleagues start programs that are going extremely well right now. So

Brandon Burton 33:35
very good. We will, we’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode so people can can look you up and we’ll have your LinkedIn profile LinkedIn in there as well. But I really appreciate you sharing these insights and lessons learned and your approach to leadership program. They’re at the Canberra Regional Chamber. And thank you for being with us today. Really appreciate it.

Debra Orner 34:00
Thank you, Brandon. I really enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 34:02

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Talent Attraction with Sarah Davasher-Wisdom

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Sarah Davasher-Wisdom. Sarah has served as President and CEO of Greater Louisville Inc since January 2020. Sarah has been with goI since 2014. Rising from leading July’s government affairs activities as Vice President of Government Affairs, to now as president CEO. GeoEye was named National chamber of the year in 2019. Personally, Sarah’s also been the recipient of several notable awards at the local, regional and national levels. Sarah has held previous roles in government and public policy including manager of Government Affairs for Tennessee Valley Authority, Strategic Communications Officer for the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Community Development Coordinator for Congressman Lewis. She serves on the boards of several local organizations as well as on the US chambers committee of 100. Sarah is the first woman and youngest person to serve as president and CEO of GLA. Sarah, 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.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 3:13
Oh, hello, Brandon. I’m excited to be on the chamber podcast as well. Then looking forward to this conversation. I think that that bio certainly said a lot about me. So thank you for reading that so eloquently. But the real story goes beyond that. And you know, a lot of people will say what’s something that people don’t know about you or what something that tells more about you personally, and I always like to share that my husband and I are serious ballroom dancers. Between the two of us. We have 50 years of dance experience. And it’s how we met. So we’ve been dancing together for 10 years of which will actually 11 years we’ve been married for 10. And that’s something that not a lot of people do. And not a lot of people know. And it’s something that we’ve continued. Despite any sort of changes in career or relocations, or anything else that we have done, we’ve always remained committed to our dancing.

Brandon Burton 4:09
Awesome. That is, it’s great that you guys have been able to keep that up and have that common bond together. And that that interests. So thank you. I like learning these tidbits about people as we have them on the show and learn those facts that so I had mentioned to you before we started recording, but this is a first for me to have. Three, you’re the third person from Greater Louisville Inc. to be on Chamber Chat Podcast. First time, I’ve had three of any organization on the podcast, which speaks volumes to the great work and impact you guys are having that you keep rising to the top to have different members of the organization on the on the show. But for those that are Thank you, yeah, yeah, for sure. So Those who’ve been listening to the podcast since the beginning. may remember at Kent Oyler on back in 2019. When you guys were Chamber the Year finalists and won Chamber the Year and more recently had Jordan Clemons on talking about using LinkedIn to grow membership and they both are fantastic episodes so encourage anybody to go back and listen but I just I mentioned that because those longtime listeners may be a little bit familiar with with GLI, but for those who may not be just give us a little synopsis, I guess about what GLI is all about, you know size, the Chamber staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing, just to set the table for our discussion.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 5:43
Sure, well, Greater Louisville Inc. We have a staff of about 30 people. And we serve about 1800 members. We are also the Regional Chamber and we are by state so we cover 15 counties, five in Indiana and 10 in Kentucky. We’ve got everything from Fortune 500 companies located here to small retailers and suppliers. We are the home of Humana, and UPS Airlines. And those are two of our biggest companies here. Our main goal was to grow the regional economy. And we do that in several ways through traditional economic development, talent attraction, advocacy and DNI. So our goal is to do all of those things in the best way possible to make our region the strongest for growth. So that’s a little bit about GLI we have a great team, our budget is 5.7 million.

Brandon Burton 6:38
Very good. So you touched on one of the things that we’ll focus our conversation on today. And as you mentioned, those focuses of your work, one being talent attraction. And I’m excited to dive in a little bit deeper and learn about how GLI goes about talent attraction. I know that’s a hot topic for chambers across the country. And you’re so kind to share some of the tips and strategies you guys are using there in Louisville. So we will dive into that conversation much deeper since we get back from this quick break.

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Howdy it’s me, Donna from Yiftee again. Today we get to hear from Christine in upstate New York about her Shop 716 Community card program. She was able to use sponsorship funds for a generous Buy One, Get One program that benefits her whole county.

Christine Langenfeld  9:21  

Hi this is Christine Langenfeld with the Amherst Chamber of Commerce located in Buffalo, New York. We have partnered with Yiftee on our Shop 716 e-gift card program that has been incredibly, incredibly impactful for our small businesses. So happy to have incorporated this program in our shop local initiative here in Western New York. I highly recommend them and give them a chance to show what they can do.

Donna Novitsky  9:50  

Thanks, Christine. So folks, check us out at yiftee.com and sign up for a demo or shoot us an email at sales@yiftee.com. 

Brandon Burton 10:01
All right, Sarah, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today about how you guys are focusing your work around talent attraction. And I know there’s different approaches, you know, chambers go about this work in different ways. But I’d like to learn a little bit more and have you share how how you guys are GLI are going about talent, attraction, and really making your economy there is something that’s really thriving. And I know you’ve mentioned the DE&I efforts as well. And it is a very diverse community as well. And I think that plays into talent attraction. So I anticipate that those two will overlap a little bit. But I don’t want to steal your thunder. So I’ll hand it over to you to to share how you guys are going about this work?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 10:47
Sure, well, I’m really excited about our talent attraction programming, because we’ve had a lot of cities come to learn more about it, because they want to replicate it. So it really has been one of those. One of those things that we are known for in Louisville, our program is called Live in Lou and we developed it in 2016, to really show what it was like to live work and play in the greater Louisville region. And the platform itself showcases all of the assets that really differentiate us as a community, we highlight the availability of good jobs and career opportunities, the quality of life and the sustainability, to raise a family and the suitability to raise a family I should say. And then the ability to make a difference. And the reason that we highlight those three things is because in 2016, we did a lot of data, a lot of research into why people want to live in our community. And those were the three reasons. So we target our marketing around those three reasons. And one of the places that people go to learn about a community is on social media. So we use our website and our social media channels to promote feel good stories about the community, new businesses, opening up favorite restaurants. Because we have a fantastic culinary scene here. It’s one of the things that people love to visit for. We also showcase restaurants and festivals. So those are some of the things we really try to highlight. We have also been doing private label campaigns for companies under our live in loop programming. And we basically will look at where there isn’t what jobs are needed for that company. And then where there is an area in the country or even internationally, where that skill set exists and may not be paid as well there as it is here in Louisville. And so then we can geofence and do some targeted marketing, highlighting those things I mentioned earlier, and really go out and connect the the job seeker or the potential low avillion to the job opportunity. And we can use the marketing from the company itself. So it’s a really innovative way for us to recruit individuals to move here to work for a specific company. So it helps our community because we’ve got residents moving in, and it also helps our companies. I love

Brandon Burton 13:10
that name that Lou avillion that just that flows. So well. I love it. Can you share with us some more about the geofencing? So how do you go about that and targeting the right people like the parameters you set on it? Certain radiuses maybe some people aren’t familiar with what geofencing is just give us a little bit of background on that.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 13:33
It’s really a technology that we pay for. So we identify what geography we would we would want to highlight usually by ZIP codes, and then the firm actually does the geofencing. But it’s basically a way that you can put information on phone like you’re capturing phone data so that then you can advertise. Because when people are moving in and out of that zip code, you’re capturing that data out that makes sense.

Brandon Burton 14:01
Yeah, it does. Are you guys identifying specifically people that don’t live in Louisville currently that based on the phone data, so when they come and visit or pass by or how does that? How does that

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 14:15
yes, we definitely are targeting out of town people so that we can get them to move here and and maybe because our goal was talent attraction, we don’t have enough people here in Louisville to fill the open jobs. And so that’s why we’re trying to really focus on talent attraction. We’ve grown the social media channels from 200 followers to 53,000 followers in five years. So there really is a lot of momentum to live in Lou. And then we also have a group of volunteers that we call city champs. It’s kind of a human Welcome Wagon to help people get connected to the interest that they have in the region. The volunteers are incredibly passionate. Excuse me, and If they really want to showcase the best parts of our community and make connections, so the new residents kind of have a friend immediately, when they when they move here. So we train the city champs on all of the things in the community, it’s about a four hour training. And then they identify what interests they have. So we can put on our website that this person is a trained city champ, and this person is interested in interested in parks or ballet, or whatever the situation may be, so that when we have prospective residents interested in those same, those same things, then we can make that connection. And there’s automatically an interest in sharing information so that the person is more likely to relocate to

Brandon Burton 15:42
a level like that it kind of creates a friend, right? They come into the community. And as they’re saying, this reminds me when I was in high school, I moved across the country. And it was a kind of a traumatic thing as a junior in high school, across the country. But the new high school I went to, they had a program at the school where they would match another student up with new students to kind of show you around, and it made all the difference. So I see these these community are the city champs, these volunteers, really being able to be that tour guide of the city, you know, sharing some common interests, really helping to help these new people feel at home, I see that as being a key attribute to being able to really attract and retain these these new people to the community. You had mentioned I mean, the social media following is great. I mean, 253,000 followers is in that short amount of time is amazing. You had mentioned a few examples of some of the things that you’re doing on social media to leverage that and tell the stories of the little bill. Are there some examples that have really taken off that you’re aware of that, you know, I guess you could say have gone viral that they got more traction than other things on your social media stories.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 17:03
I think the real life stories of people that have followed live in lieu and actually move to the city have been the most powerful. And that, you know, those are like, really kind of rare, but also that doesn’t negate the success of the platform, it’s just that we don’t always have somebody love it so much that they post about it, you know, I think people often will look at it. And I think, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. But they don’t necessarily write a big story about it, we actually had a couple write a big magazine article about it. And that was that was really a thing that went crazy on social media, particularly locally, people were talking about it. Another thing that has really gotten a lot of media interest on our live and live platform is our newly launched workforce ecosystem hub. And it’s a compilation of all of the workforce development resources. So we have our talent attraction, part of living, Lou, but we also are trying to get people that aren’t working now into the workforce, or people helping them to upskill. And since 2014, when I first moved here, I was hearing about all of these different workforce development programs in the community. And I kept saying, Where is the one stop shop, like work, and I read about all of these in one place, and that that resource just didn’t exist. So there were a lot of programs that were going on utilized and not not utilized to their maximum potential, I should say. So we, for two years, we work to compile all of those resources. And we launched this ecosystem hub on the live and lose site. It’s liveinlou.com/work. And it has 245 organizations and their programs listed. We’ve got a portal for job seekers and a portal for employers, the employers can go on the site and identify any sort of training programs, some of which are free, and funded by the state actually funding from the state available that you can apply for on the site. And that that funding and those training programs are for their employees. So we have a manufacturer, they may be able to get funding to do a certain certain upskilling initiative, and all of that is listed on the site. It also includes different organizations that are helping to remove barriers to work so the employer can help identify those for the employee. A lot of HR offices will use it if they have an employee that’s having difficulty with transportation and or childcare availability. I mean, it’s childcare, transportation, all sorts of barriers that exist out there. And we have all these organizations in our community that are working to overcome them. And now there is one place that you can go and access that on the job seeker platform, you can still you can still see the barriers to work resources and because a lot of job seekers are, you know, trying to figure out ways to manage that themselves, but they also can apply for jobs on there and see what financial assistance may be available to do certifications or apprenticeships or going back to to get a college degree even. So, we’ve really taken a collaborative approach to all of this and worked with the organizations to make sure that the right information is being shared. And we’ve had a lot of hits on it. And the media has been going crazy about it locally, they’re calling it Google’s version of LinkedIn. So we’re excited about it. That is

Brandon Burton 20:36
great. As you’re given that explanation about how live in lieu works, and the job seekers and employers portals, the thought hit me why why do communities, you know, outsource to these big job seeking websites, when they have a chamber of commerce, who’s connected with employers know the needs know that those barriers, they really can give a kind of a white glove service to help match future employees with employers. So I love that how you guys have set this up and strategically having those are calling out what some of those barriers are, and approaches of how you guys are working to overcome those things. And community partners to help overcome those things. As a going about the job seekers, the employers on there, I imagine that you have a wide range of different employment opportunities. It’s not any one type of industry, obviously, but what are what’s kind of the the range of employment opportunities that you see happening through the live in lieu website,

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 21:48
we’ve got everything from, you know, clerk position, to a nurse position, I mean, every sort of job imaginable is on there. We also with some of the jobs that we learn about some of the jobs that our employers post are also very skill specific, highly technical. And we do have a partnership where we can seek out those highly specific skills, because there are some jobs where you may only have a handful of people in the country that have the ability to do the job. And through a partnership with LinkedIn talent insights, we can seek out those individuals. And that’s more of a specific employer request. It’s not, I mean, they’re usually posted on live in lieu as well. But in those instances, it’s less likely that somebody with that skill set is going to be posting for a job, they probably they’re gonna wait for recruiters to call them. So we find them and call them.

Brandon Burton 22:45
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. Because there’s those highly skilled labor that you need to kind of seek them out and, and maybe even try to take them from another company. And we won’t say that too loud. But that happens, right?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 23:02
Well, we don’t do that from local companies only when we’re trying to get people to move here.

Brandon Burton 23:07
That’s right. That’s right. Now just say this program, it seems like a real game changer, especially in the talent and workforce development space. Is there anything that we’re missing from the live in loop program that we haven’t touched on?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 23:23
Um, I would say that, you know, we do overcome objections to moving to Louisville sometimes. And this is where the DNI aspect of this comes in that you mentioned earlier. We in in 2020, we were the epicenter of the Breonna, Taylor, killing and the protests that followed that really showed us that we needed to expand our scope of work. So recruiting diverse talent has been a little bit more difficult. But since 2020, I have been saying all this time, this is also an opportunity for us to show that this time, it’s different and it should have been different every time before but we have to show that the business community is committed to creating an inclusive economy. So we have really expanded our work in the DNI space. And that helps our talent attraction initiatives. So some of the work that we do, and includes a minority business accelerator called power to prosper. We’re getting ready. We’re taking applications for our third cohort right now. And it provides small businesses with knowledge and resources and networks that will help their businesses scale. We also have during 2020 launch a racial equity pledge that identifies five different ways that companies can can make their business more inclusive. And that includes things like diversifying their vendor spend, creating a safe space for conversation ones that are about inclusion. It also includes hiring diverse talent. I mean, and we then with that pledge, we launched a toolkit. And I was, I was excited about the number of companies that signed the pledge, it was over 200 companies. But then I was also excited about the toolkit because the toolkit gave businesses, the tools, they needed to do that. So we didn’t just say, Hey, we’re signing this pledge, we also said, Now, here’s how you go and do these things that are in the pledge. And as our as an organization, we have diversified our own vendor spend in ways that we never thought possible, because we’ve been so intentional about it. And my hope is that every company that sign that pledge has been equally intentional, and that we’re seeing a lot more things have, or a lot of great things happen as a result. Another thing that we do, and then we started doing it 2020 is a procurement matchup event called power to prosper. I’m sorry, I’m forgetting the name of it. It’s not that’s the minority business accelerator. Progress through procurement is our procurement event. And we identify what needs companies have in our community. And then we bring in diverse vendors to and match them up. And then sometimes there’s still a contracting process involved, but it is helping both the employer that has this, this need for a vendor and then they they’ve been having trouble finding a diverse vendor. So then we’re connecting them to a diverse vendor, and hopefully good things come from that. So those are some of the things that we’ve done in the DNI space. And like I said, that also helps our talent attraction and helps our economy grow. And all of the things in a chamber seem to work together cohesively. And I like that about chamber work.

Brandon Burton 26:48
Absolutely. So one of the things that stood out to me is you mentioned that you guys are often involved with overcoming object objections. And occasionally certain objections will rise to prominence. But, and oftentimes, we don’t even hear about some of the objections. So how do you guys go about soliciting feedback of people that may be hesitant of moving to Louisville to understand what their objections might be? So you can address that and learn how to better maybe fine tune this program?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 27:18
Well, most of the time, the HR recruiters at our companies will tell us what the objections are. And that’s, that’s really our source of information. There are times that we’re talking with individuals directly, particularly when they’re those highly skilled individuals that we’re seeking out for employers. But most of the time, the HR managers will tell us what stories they’re hearing and a lot of it relates to Louisville, being in Kentucky, and people here, Kentucky and they think that we are not as sophisticated as a place they would like to live. And Louisville is actually very sophisticated. I mentioned earlier, we’ve got a great culinary scene. We’ve got all five types of art organizations. I mean, we really do have a fantastic city is a great place to live and not just a great place to raise a family. I mean, it certainly is that but I mean you can be single here and you can really have a fantastic life. It’s a fun place to be. So but Louisville often gets branded with Kentucky and the demographic and the psychographic of talent looking to relocate is looking for, you know, a city that’s fun and exciting. And Kentucky doesn’t have that brand nationally. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:33
Kentucky is a great state though. Okay, yeah. Is it beautiful? Yeah. Well, Sara, you’ve hit on some great points here. As far as talent attraction goes, and I’m sure people listening or are taking notes and seeing how they can make some tweaks to their own talent attraction programs. I’d like to ask if there maybe is any tip or action item that you’d like to share for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 29:05
Well, I would suggest getting your CCE I’m a big believer in the certified chamber executive program for several reasons. Number one, there is an application process that requires you to really get out there and give speeches and also sometimes like IOM counts. So that’s a training program where you’re networking with other chamber professionals. And through IOM and through CCE which came later for me, I’ve met so many incredibly smart people. And being able to reach out to those individuals being able to hear about their programming as I went through IOM and CCE really, really helped me to know different ideas and different ways to navigate community issues and different ways I could take Our chamber to the next level. And so as a result of my experience being so positive, I have said, anybody that goes through IOM has to commit to doing CCE as well. The CCE process, what I liked about that was beyond the application process that I just described with you, you get to meet so many people, you learn about their programs. There are there’s a body of literature that one has to read that really focuses on governance and finance and making sure the chamber is in good operational order. And I believe that’s incredibly important, because all of the programs that we talk about that are exciting. We can’t do if our chamber isn’t in good operational order. If we don’t have the money, we don’t have the right money in reserves for a catastrophe. I mean, there are all of these things that seem boring to a lot of chamber people, but they’re incredibly important to enabling that programmatic aspect that can be very exciting, and fun to be part of. So that would be the thing I would say, to take your chamber to the next level, because you’ll learn so much as you go through that process.

Brandon Burton 31:06
Absolutely. Anybody who’s been sitting on the fence debating whether or not to get over that hurdle, go go do it, go after your CCE apply, go through the process. And like Sarah said, there’s so much development that comes out of that to benefit your chamber, but also you professionally as you move on through your career. So Sarah, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 31:37
Well, I see the purpose of Chambers as being incredibly important. And you know, I’ve heard speculation about this, but I believe in chambers very, very much. I think there is a role for chambers and the big community issues of the day. And we’re really starting to see that more and more. I mean, there is no other organization where you can go to and and say that they represent the voice of the business community chambers do that chambers, or that one stop shop you can go to and the people who enjoy being in the chamber world are just ready to help. And to say yes, attitude, and all of the big community issues that we’re so interested in. I mean, everybody wants to figure out how. And so I think that chambers are so so incredibly important. And I think that the people who work in chambers have a real passion for community growth. And it’s becoming a lifelong career for a lot of people. You see that more and more particularly at the CEO level of the chamber world. And I like to see that. I think that there are some incredibly smart chamber leaders out there and I enjoy talking to them frequently. I think chambers are really important to making sure community issues get solved.

Brandon Burton 32:55
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. And I I also agree with the scene, people who are making the chamber industry a profession, you know, it’s a career choice for people now, especially at the executive level. But we’re it’s not just a job in their community that gets filled because somebody needed a warm body, but it becomes something that they go after these trainings are IOM, they’re CCE and really develop and help take their community to the next level, which is what it’s all about. But Sarah wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about the living loop program and how you guys are doing things there at TLI. What would be the best way for people to reach out and connect with you?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 33:40
Sure, well, I’m happy to provide my email. It’s sdavasher@greaterlouisville.com. And my phone number is 502-625-0073 happy to talk with any chamber leaders about these programs or anything else bounce ideas off of each other. I’m always happy to connect.

Brandon Burton 34:02
Very good we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well so people can access that to connect with you. But Sarah, I want to thank you for spending time with us today here at chamber chat podcast provided a lot of value and some great things for listeners to think about and and see what how they can implement and take their chamber up to the next level and provide a new level of competition on the talent attraction front. I appreciate that.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 34:30
Happy to do it. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 34:32
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Addressing Challenges Facing Businesses with Rick Wilson

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Rick Wilson. Rick is the President and CEO of the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce, and has been since 2019. Rick comes from a 16 year career working at the YMCA organization in a variety of different roles from facility manager to executive manager. He’s an active Rotarian, and is involved at different levels with several local organizations and board of directors. But Rick, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you 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.

Rick Wilson 2:37
Well, thank you, Brandon. And it’s exciting to be on the show here. And hello, everybody out there. All those interested in what goes on at chambers of commerce. And again, my name is Rick Wilson. I’m the President CEO for the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce. I’m very excited to be on here today to chat a little bit about what’s going on with chambers of commerce, especially here in Southern California and hopefully, some great storytelling on will help you guys moving forward on some of the things you’re looking to do as well. But a little interesting about me. Born and raised here in Southern California, I went to school for a little bit in Australia for about a year as well as in Virginia, of when I was in high school and then went to college at UC Santa Barbara. And then was lucky enough to come back to San Diego to work for the then San Diego Chargers. And that was a great experience for seven seasons traveling on the road working in coaching and working in the business department. But since then, I’ve moved on was at the YMCA, As Brandon mentioned, and now landed over here at the East County Chamber of Commerce for about the past four years and really excited to continue to help our business community.

Brandon Burton 3:38
That’s right. And you you came into the chamber world at just the right time get about a year of experience under your belt before they really put you to work, right?

Rick Wilson 3:47
Yes, sir.

You know, got hired in May of 2019. And about March of 2020. We all experienced the same thing and stay at home orders and the 100 year pandemic and there was no playbook for anybody on what to do during 100 year pandemic, especially for Chambers of Commerce. So we definitely rolled up our sleeves and dove into it and just went after it. Absolutely. But tell us a little bit about the San Diego East County Chamber just give us an idea of you know where you’re coming from. So things like the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work you’re involved with. And that’ll kind of set our table for discussion. Great. So yeah, the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce was founded back in August of 1912. So we are now in our 100 and 11th year of operations here at the chamber. So that’s quite a few generations that have really looked at our chamber as the go to resource in that community, whether it’s business related or not. And we definitely really love that and appreciate that and want to keep that up our staff size. We’re fully staffed. We have five employees. And we have two longtime volunteers one for about four years and one for about 11 years now. And that’s really helped us out our budgets, just over half a million just

over 500,000. And we’re looking to continue to grow our membership is right around 600 members. And so we’re looking coming out of the pandemic continuing to grow that we had a great program and a great plan going in 2019. And then as I mentioned earlier, the pandemic hit and for everybody, it just kind of changed the way we did business, but really excited about what the future holds. And as a chamber of commerce, we want to be that resource in our community to help everyone out.

Brandon Burton 5:26
So I know it’s in the name. So the San Diego Regional East County team, what all the do encompasses geographically?

Rick Wilson 5:35
Now, that’s a great question. So well, first off, I’ll start off by saying that as a chamber of commerce, we don’t really see boundaries or barriers. We’re a global economy. So we’ve gotten members in other states here in the United States, Northern California, and then obviously a lot in Los Angeles in Southern California, but we are in San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce. So if we had borders, we would say we go as far east as Borrego Springs as far south as Spring Valley as far north as Poway and as far west as La Mesa. But we do things all over San Diego County, we partner with tons of chambers of commerce here in San Diego. And the whole goal of that is to bring our businesses together, it has nothing to do with poaching, membership or anything like that. We kind of believe that, you know, the rising tide lifts all ships so we can work together as chambers of commerce, we can help the business community even more, and that’s really what we’re looking for. So as a Regional Chamber, we’re not just regionally for each county, but we are regional throughout San Diego County doing everything we can to help.

Brandon Burton 6:33
Okay, I know that that makes a lot of sense. So I appreciate the the extra explanation of the name, right?

Rick Wilson 6:40
Yes, it is a little bit of a sentence. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 6:43
So as we get into our discussion for our topic, today, we settled on the idea of talking about how chambers can really be a resource and a help for businesses who are facing struggles and some of those struggles that businesses face. So we’ll dive deeper into this discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 8:43
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Brandon Burton 9:37
All right, Rick, we’re back. So leading into the break there we introduce the topic for our discussion today being addressing challenges that are facing businesses and specifically how a chamber of commerce can help with addressing some of these challenges and and I think it’s kind of an inherent thing for Chambers of Commerce to be involved with being problem solving. versus their community. But as we approach this discussion, what what are some of those things that are maybe top of mind for you when it comes to a chamber of commerce helping businesses that are facing certain struggles?

Rick Wilson 10:13
Absolutely. Well, first off, thank you, Brandon, the Chamber of Commerce exists because of so many businesses that exist in our society, right? We are in a capitalistic society. So Chamber of Commerce has are here to really help businesses small, medium, and large size. And some of the challenges that we’ve been seeing over the past year and a half, two years coming out of the pandemic, obviously, is workforce, getting employees, I would say, the middle of 2021, coming out of the pandemic wooden restrictions kind of lifted up was definitely a challenge. Definitely, in Southern California, we saw, restaurants half empty, and they’re not serving the other half, because they can’t get enough employees, cooks, waiters, you name it. And so a lot of stores or retail, or manufacturing, or anything that we can think of have struggled with getting workforce. So as a chamber of commerce, we are definitely working with the Workforce Partnership in San Diego here, working with the Economic Development Council, working with government, local agencies, to make sure that we are doing what we can to help get that workforce back into our society back into working, that really is the machine that makes everything go. And so Workforce Partnership is incredibly important workforce development work with, like I mentioned, all those agencies, that’s been really big for us, and we’ve not arrived, we are still looking to do that, I would say we’ve gone from getting bodies in there to now really needing to look at incredibly qualified people getting back to where we were pre pandemic. So looking for those qualified applicants now and really getting them placed into our workforce out here in East County and throughout San Diego County. So that’s, that’s one of the big topics that we’ve seen.

Brandon Burton 11:49
Yeah, so the workforce issue, I think it’s taken on a whole different approach, a whole different issue, you know, coming out of the pandemic. So before, I think, you know, we’d see jobs shift from one region to another, or different states, navy, whatever political climates or incentives there are for employers to be in certain places, but the pandemic when everything shut down, and people kind of got creative in different ways to bring in an income, and especially those in the service industry, if they weren’t, you know, super high income earners to begin with. And maybe they’d created their own side gig or side hustle that became something. I mean, it just really created a different need and that time of their own employment, but then it leaves a huge void today, right? So as we look at trying to help with the workforce issues, is that something you guys are seeing there in the San Diego area? How, how are you trying to approach it to fill that void? I’m sure others are looking at a similar situation.

Rick Wilson 12:56
It’s a really good point, we have seen coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people who were employees of organizations, nations looking to kind of go on their own. And so we’ve had a lot of people come into the chamber of commerce, and we’ve worked with the Economic Development Council to help them start a business are starting to realize to during the pandemic, that a brick and mortar isn’t the be all end all that you know, it really expose the fact that those who were not comfortable with people working from home, for the pandemic, really were forced to see this results. And as many saw, you’re getting the same production, if not more, with some of those people working from home, which has really, you know, allowed. The word I’d like to use this pivot, we talked about that a lot during the pandemic is businesses looking outside the box re looking at their business model. You know, what if I use an example of one of our local companies here was heavy, a barbecue place, heavy seven days a week in their restaurant pandemic happen, they changed their business model pretty quickly. And they jumped all over the fact that all of our hospitals, and all of our health care, were starting to feed their people on a 24 hour basis, because remember, during the pandemic, and people working 12 hour shifts, 15 hour shifts. And that pivoting of that model for that restaurant, just as little restaurant completely blew them out of the water. They’re doing better than they’ve ever done. They’ve looked at their model. Now they rent out their facility three days a week for parties and events. It’s less staff that they need to put on the front end with not sharing what’s going to come in and able to load up their staff or catering their chefs. So pivoting was really one of the biggest things that we worked on during the pandemic to try to think outside the box to help businesses think of something different and individual employees who were unemployed during the pandemic, who maybe didn’t fall into the wonderful PPP program, working with them if they wanted to start a business on how we could get this going, especially during the pandemic and we’ve seen some really great results with that.

Brandon Burton 14:50
Yeah, so yeah, I guess that’s that’s a whole nother aspect of the the workforce issues all the money printing and all the money that got put into the system and I Um, stimulus checks and things like that that made work optional for people for a time. Or give them that flexibility to explore the opportunities to so yeah. What are what are some of the other challenges that you see businesses facing that a chamber of commerce can help with,

Rick Wilson 15:18
especially coming into 2023, two of the big things that we’ve been seeing is obviously, the supply chain, we all hear about this challenge that’s been happening. And then obviously, inflation. So with inflation, you know, businesses looking at their total package, what they’re offering, you know, most that we know how to increase pricing, depending on what service it is that they have, or what industry they’re in, as our chamber of commerce worked really hard coming out of the pandemic, and in 2022, really made some great strides. We were able to as a decision this year with our board of directors to not raise our pricing for our membership, do the fact that everyone is it totally makes sense to do it. You know, this is the time that you can argue and say, Yes, but if you’ve been able to do some really great things and make some really great decisions that have benefited you financially, as an organization, we’d like to turn that around, and give that back to our members by being able to say for 2023, with the inflation going up, and pricing going up and everything being like it is we’ve been able to hold our pricing at membership for 2023, which we’re incredibly proud of. And we’ve been getting incredible feedback on that, knowing that in 2024, we will have to look at an increase, but we just we’re talking at the end of 2022. What can we do for our members as they go through supply chain issues, inflation workforce challenges. So we’re really proud of that. And if you know, organizations are able to do that, whether through grants, whether through donations, whether it’s due just smart strategic and what you’re doing with your events as a chamber, you know, that’s a great way to give back to your members without actually taking it out of your pocket.

Brandon Burton 16:56
Right. So I think those are two key things that the chambers can can work on. And I think that we see a need across the country with both supply chain and inflation. And I commend you guys for being able to take a look at your budget and say we don’t need to raise price. And I’m sure your members appreciate that. As far as addressing the needs of the members, I mean that that’s one way of addressing that the inflation, but are you guys providing any feedback or data or anything as far as inflation goes? Or to be able to provide resources with supply chain issues? At what’s the approach on those two things you guys are taken?

Rick Wilson 17:37
Yeah, partnerships are very big for us at this Chamber of Commerce, we feel like we are able to reach more and do more by partnering. So when you’re talking about data, yes, we work with several groups here, not only in East County, but throughout San Diego County to keep our eyes on what’s going on with the economy. And so with related to inflation, what kind of data can we push out what kind of suggestions, so we’re not the be all end all as a chamber, the more partnerships we have, the more research verses we’re able to give to our members and non members just in the entire business community. So really, partnerships are what’s big. And so working with those groups, we can give those resources out. One of our big partners, and I think for most chambers is the Economic Development Council. They work on a lot of similar items that we do. So we try not to duplicate what we’re doing, we try to work together to make sure that together, we’re pushing out those resources to the community. So we’re very proud of that. And also continuing to work with other chambers really makes that partnership with other outside agencies much easier. Because we’re all trying to do the same thing. We’re all trying to help the business community. And it’s not a competition, it’s really about if, if the business committee is doing great tax dollars are rolling in coming back to your city in your county, it just makes a better place where we all work, live and play. And that’s what we’re really our goal is to go towards, right.

Brandon Burton 18:56
So the thing that comes to mind, you know, oftentimes, chambers are very involved with important work, you know, and oftentimes, they’re not seeking the credit, you know, the the partnerships, it doesn’t matter who gets the credit, necessarily, as long as the work gets done and information gets out there and everything. But at the same time, it’s important for people to understand what a Chamber of Commerce does, right. So there’s that definition of what a chamber does. So I’m curious as you guys work to address the needs, the the issues that are facing businesses, obviously, it’s best to have, you know, success stories, you know, individuals who are telling others that word of mouth spreads. But are there other ways that you guys are trying to educate the community about the work that you guys are involved with, and specifically with sharing some of these success stories of helping businesses overcome obstacles?

Rick Wilson 19:52
And that’s a great question. I think that’s probably one of the number one challenges most chambers have is pushing out the information and the resources on what they do. I think most people will think they know what a chamber of commerce, I probably have exactly one of those before I got the job. And then when you dive in, you realize that, yes, it is about the business community, but in that respect of the business community, how are you going about helping them. And in my opinion, there’s multiple branches on this tree of how you get to that success. So like, we talked about partnerships are partnering with government partner with leaders in your community, partner with big organizations that are looking to give back to the business community. So there’s multiple ways that you can do that, obviously, during the pandemic, we had program grant programs that came out in the county, the states and the cities that we all live in work in. And that was kind of a band aid to help, you know, get to a certain point. But it really wasn’t a solution. It was really about talking with other groups and making sure that we’re working to be successful, and not just saying, we as an organization know what is happening, we need to get a vibe of what’s going out throughout our county. And that is the best way to get those results and get those two people or organizations or businesses that we work with. Could you follow up again, with the second question? There’s another part to that question?

Brandon Burton 21:10
Yeah, that’s a good question. Mainly about just how you guys go about sharing the success that you guys create for businesses and beyond the word of mouth of businesses that have been impacted, telling others? How are you sharing the message of what a chamber does? And specifically with addressing the challenges that face businesses? And a great,

Rick Wilson 21:35
that’s a great question, and I appreciate you kind of falling back up with that. So for us, you know, when we look at, yes, social media, that’s where people live, right? So social media is incredibly important that we’re, we’re pushing out the word, a lot of people are using Twitter or Instagram to find out their information, we know a lot of our media, really still follow Twitter, that’s really kind of where they get their information. So we’re pushing out as much as we can on that we have a weekly newsletter that goes out to over 2500 businesses, but we only have 600 members. So we know the business community has their eye on what’s going on with us. And we want to help. And when people find themselves in an alignment with what we’re doing, then fantastic, they can join our chamber. But our goal is really to help the business community. And so looking at these opportunities, success stories. I mean, there’s lots of them, I think of stories that we constantly tell people and educate, reach out to the chamber when, when you have a question, we can probably help you. And a lot of it is businesses with permitting and cities in the areas that they’re in. Well, we’re working with all these cities. So we can call in sometimes it’s just as easy as the permit is ready. But someone didn’t press the button within that city organization, because they’re so busy themselves trying to get things done. And Souplantation was a huge organization here in San Diego that died in Southern California during the pandemic. And we have a business owner who’s bringing that back and working with the city to bring that back. And people are very excited about that. And I’ll just share one little simple story on that is, she also is running a different business in there until she can bring Souplantation back. So she didn’t want to take the big signs down there on a 30 foot pole, the ones on the buildings. And if you’re not running the business at the time, you need to do that. But there’s also a clause that you can also put a wonderful canvas over it. And so she went from oh my gosh, this is going to destroy my business to oh, I can just have put a canvas over it until we get Souplantation open again. So working with your chamber communicating with your chamber. That’s the biggest thing, the more we hear from our businesses, that voice of what’s going on, the more that we can push that towards government write letters to the state, work with local entities, you know, deregulation, you name it. But when we hear from our business, community, especially our members, that’s the biggest thing. So one of the big tips I would give to anyone listening out there is reach out to your chamber, your chamber is there to serve you. And I know that it’s very difficult, you’re running your own business, you don’t have a lot of time to be engaged. But I used I like to use the analogy of a gym membership, right, we all kind of have a New Year’s resolution, we get that gym membership, we put it in our front pocket, but we never go to the gym, not to say that you can achieve your goals. But it might be a little bit more difficult to achieve your goal. If you don’t go to the gym. Well, if you join the Chamber of Commerce, the chamber is going to do everything it can for you, it’s going to mark it for you, it’s going to reach out to you it’s gonna have touch points, it’s going to share resources. But if it’s not hearing from you, and it’s not engaging with you, it’s harder for that business to achieve its goals. So my suggestion always is try to be engaged, try to be involved in Do not hesitate reaching out to your chamber, they have more resources than you would think.

Brandon Burton 24:34
Yeah, that’s great advice for business owners. So maybe I will shift that it says a good tip for business owners. What tip or action item might you have for a chamber that’s listening that would be interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? So

Rick Wilson 24:51
they I love this question. This is one of my favorite answer is that chambers definitely in their areas is you know the the environment in the communities that they’re serving. He will be strategic on that. But for us, the bigger picture is we’re all inclusive. We care about everyone in the business community. So for us, it’s not about getting our membership to 1000 by next year. And what are we doing strategically to do that? If we’re pushing out that information, and really being all inclusive, when I say all inclusive means that you’re willing to partner with other chambers, you’re not we’re afraid about another chamber, oh, they’re talking to someone on the side and taking my member. That’s if that’s what’s happening, then that chamber is not really driving and doing what it’s supposed to what it’s supposed to be doing is collaborating, working and bringing all these resources to the business community. So the first thing I would suggest is, open your doors to all chambers, try to partner with mixers, any opportunity that you have. Look at that we have a meeting next week, we have our women in leadership luncheon that we’ve been running now for 21 years. And there’s a huge group here in San Diego called mana, which is Latino business women in that group has 400 Women in that association. Well, we want to see what opportunities there are for our very successful event that has over 600 people that attended every year, we want to partner with other groups to find out what might we be missing. So always be as a chamber be open to hearing other ideas, doesn’t mean that you’re going to move forward on every idea. But we’re that crazy chamber that believes if we throw 100 things on the wall, and one or two stick boy, we are going in the right direction. But if we don’t vet those opportunities, if we don’t look at that opportunity, then we’re going to kind of be the same chamber that we’ve always been. And we are a chamber that wants to be innovative. Were the first chamber of commerce in North America to have a personal assistant robot that Tammy robot that you’re starting to see in airports, restaurants and things like that. So we want to be leaders in our community, we want to be innovative, if and the only way to do that is to open our doors, and work with as many organizations, government agencies and chambers of commerce as we can so that we can all succeed. So in my vision, if the chambers in San Diego County, which is about 30, or 40. If they’re succeeding, then we’re all succeeding than the entire business community. So be open to working with other chambers of commerce. And there’s incredible ROI for that.

Brandon Burton 27:09
Awesome. So circle back, tell us about that personal assistant robot. Everybody’s all over AI these days, right? Yes. What can this robot do for you.

Rick Wilson 27:22
So interesting. Back in 2019, when I got the job, I met a gentleman who was a member of virtual reality for Main Street. So he kind of saw the technology, which is kind of already here. But he wanted to help chambers kind of grow with that. So we started a program called chamber innovators that did okay. But really, when the pandemic hit, chamber, innovators, all of a sudden became one of the number one programs in San Diego, we’re putting, excuse me, we’re putting it on virtually once a week. And we have people all over the nation with innovative business practices, innovation with technology. And so we had a lot of members throughout San Diego County that were members of other chambers jumping on this free program, and really started driving us in that technology innovation Avenue. Coming out of the pandemic, we had the opportunity to get one of these Tammy robots. And so if you walk into our office, the first thing is you’re greeted by the robot, it will welcome you. We bring it to all of our events. So it’s like anything else, you got a program and for whatever you wanted to do. But we had all our sponsors that are big EC honors event that we just had last week. And all the sponsors love that, that is robots talk, going around and talking about the sponsors. And, you know, it was definitely just a different way of looking at things. And as time goes on, we’re seeing airports restaurants using these not to replace employees, but to really use it as an additional tool to make the organization more efficient and better. And I’ll give an example. I was just at a restaurant three weeks ago, where when you walk up the person that greets you and says oh table for four great, they send the robot to take you to where which sends a message to the waiter that now your table for is ready and the robot sat you down. And the restaurant we weren’t at didn’t have the robot serving. But I have seen that. And so the personal robot assistant is really an assistant, it’s not a replacement of any employee that we have is to really build on what we’re doing and become more efficient in what we do. Plus technology’s kind of cool. So everybody does like it.

Brandon Burton 29:18
That’s right. Yeah, that reminds me, I was at a Chick fil A in in Texas, a small town in Texas. And we sit down and they had to have these robots that would bring the food to you. So they’re taken at the counter, put the tray on this robot and they would go right to your table. And it was pretty slick. I mean, everybody’s in there just watching the show, right? Technology is cool. But so does this robot. Does it collect any data, or is it just delivering data? How is it interacting?

Rick Wilson 29:50
Yeah, so so far, we have one of the first models that came out, t Mi, Tammy. And so there’s all kinds of new ones like I’ll just segue real quick into there. There’s ones that it’s, uh, the, the stamp, I guess you could call it is a refrigerator. So if you had one at home, you would still need to stock it. But you could call on your robot anytime to bring you a beverage or anything like that. And for us, it’s not collecting data, it’s you program it to do anything and everything that you want. I do believe that that is the future. And I’m sure some of the newer models that have come out do have that it’s an evolution. But the first model that we got out really has one little platform that we put some waters on, it greets our members when they come in or non members. It shows them a few things in our lobby or business cards, you know, materials of our members, sit them down in our conference room and let them know someone will be with them right away. Then it goes to each one of our offices until we say hello. Oh Rick’s not in hope someone else is not in this person’s in and lets them know that someone’s there. So it is helping us being more efficient. But right now, we’re not using it as a data collection. We’re putting information into it, depending on what day it is what event it is that we have going on. But mostly Monday through Friday. It’s a it’s a welcome robot that welcomes people when they come in. And what I wanted to have happen is happen, people who walk in, they walk out and word of mouth is Have you been to these County Chamber recently, they’ve got a robot in there. And so that’s kind of one of those spread of word where people just want to come in the postal workers now don’t just drop off the mail, they want to come in everyday because they want to be greeted by the robot.

Brandon Burton 31:26
That is great. Any any of these things that can draw that attention and positive positive comments? That’s great. So I like asking is another good segue I like asking everyone I have on the show, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Rick Wilson 31:45
That’s a really great question. I’ll just say this, if chambers aren’t innovating and thinking outside the box, they could get left behind. If you’re doing it the way it was 1015 20 years ago, exactly the same, you might get left behind with all the innovation that’s coming out. So my suggestion is that what we’re doing is looking at all the tried and true practices that still do work, yet open to all kinds of opportunities to look at what the future has, as technology gets better. As as partnerships grow as bigger, or organizations are looking to partner with smaller organizations Chamber of Commerce are ripe for that. So continue to look for partnership opportunities, continue to try to partner with chambers of commerce, and be open to innovation and new ideas that really is what’s going to continue to take chambers to the next level. Because we are not going to be the same in our community, especially after the pandemic. So looking at business models, really looking at the way we do things, the way the business community operates, be flexible and right along with them to help them achieve their goals.

Brandon Burton 32:54
I like that. And I think look into the future. Some of those things that are on the horizon right now, obviously, is artificial intelligence. Already, a lot of buzz around that. But also look at things like blockchain and NF T’s and the business models that go along with that, because it’s going to change the way a lot of businesses operate. And if as a chamber, we need to know, you know, how do these things work?

Rick Wilson 33:20
Correct. And to your point, AI, as well as augmented reality is starting to become really big. If you went to our website, you’ll see, about two years ago, we had created a virtual Chamber of Commerce. So you could go to our chamber of commerce, virtually, you could go into different rooms, different lobby areas and get services and get stuff that would traditionally be on our website. And now we’re starting to see an augmented reality avatars that are walking around you create your own avatar, and building Chambers of Commerce is our businesses or, gosh, what do I even say like, imagine a conference but you’re you’re you’re you’re in downtown San Diego at the wonderful conference center, where you’re doing it 100% virtually don’t have to actually fly out and get a hotel, you can be a part of that. And we’re starting to see that becoming reality. During the pandemic, we did a couple job fairs like that, that were incredibly successful, where we weren’t sure how people would react to having a little avatar and go into different rooms and sitting down and having interviews virtually. And we didn’t know how it worked. But we had about 350 participants in that and it was incredible. And so I think it’s the more that you do the stuff in technology, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, you name it, the more comfortable you get into I am someone who’s not a techie. And so for me, it’s like I get the concept. I want to be innovative, but I’m not your leader. That’s gonna say this is how you do it. Here’s, here’s all the logistics. But I tell you surround yourself with people that do you know what’s going on that are leaders in that industry, and they can hold your hand and take you with them to because for us, we’re one of the chambers in San Diego they’re looked at as Wow, look at all this innovation but it’s Because of the partners that I have, is why we’re there. It’s not because of myself, I wouldn’t know the first thing about that stuff except saying that looks super cool on the screen. That’s

Brandon Burton 35:10
great. So Rick, I like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things at your chamber, and maybe addressing some of these challenges that businesses face, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Rick Wilson 35:28
Yeah, so I’m pretty transparent on everything. I’ll give you my email address, which is rickw@eastcountychamber.org. Our website is eastcountychamber.org, you can contact us here at the office 619-440-6161. And I want to be here for any chamber, I’ve learned a lot from other chambers, people who have been CEOs for 2025 years and Chamber of Commerce’s throughout the United States. And I want to be that reference and resource as well. And I’m sure whoever contacts me, I’m going to learn from them as well. We continue to learn from each other continue to evolve and grow our chambers of commerce, they’ve come a long way from 100 years ago. And as businesses pivot, and as they look at new ways of doing things, looking at their business models, we as a chamber need to be flexible as well and coming right along with them, hearing their voice and sharing that with our local government.

Brandon Burton 36:21
Absolutely. And that’s why we do this. That’s why we encourage people to reach out and connect and build that network and learn from each other. So thank you, Rick, for joining us today on chamber tap podcast for sharing your experiences. And it’s been a fun conversation and something that hopefully in re energizes those that are listening to do that important work at their chamber, and especially when it comes to facing those difficult challenges that their business members are facing. So thanks a lot for for being with us today.

Rick Wilson 36:51
Well, thank you so much, Brandon, for the opportunity to be on chamber chat. What a great opportunity to share resources, but also let everyone know that we are here to help and we want to learn as well. So if you have something incredible and innovative that you’re doing, I would love to learn about that as well. But thank you so much, Brandon. Great to be on chamber chat.

Brandon Burton 37:08
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The Impact of State Chambers with Lew Ebert

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Lew Ebert. Lew is a seasoned State Chamber executive and CEO with over 40 years leading statewide business organizations in three different states and Pennsylvania, Kansas and North Carolina. Over a long and successful career, he’s developed a proven ability in business development, revenue generation capital and political fundraising, communications, and leading transformational change. As a nationally recognized State Chamber leader, he’s developed a unique set of best practice skills, what works and what doesn’t work and a deep expertise working with top professionals in our industry. Lew, 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 get to know you better.

Lew Ebert 2:47
Wonderful. Thanks very much, Brandon, great to be with you and appreciate the opportunity. I love the title. By the way, I mean, chamber leaders are champions, and they’re leaders of an important movement, no matter where they’re working. In my case, as you indicated, over four decades, I’ve had a unique opportunity to kind of work in a number of different states. But more importantly, really been very fortunate to get to know a lot of great leaders and a lot of great mentors, and even in our profession, learn from some of the best in the business. So part of what I’m now doing in my second chapter, if you will, is kind of category you know, kind of collecting intellectual property and sharing best practices and ideas. But it’s a it’s a wonderful opportunity to help leaders make the kind of impact in their state and regions like I found in my career. So good to be with you.

Brandon Burton 3:40
I love it. We’re in the same business just maybe in different mediums, right. sharing best practices. Yeah,

Lew Ebert 3:47
absolutely. Yeah, we’ve lived at the intersection of business, politics and the economy for over four decades. So it’s been kind of an exciting journey. And I’ve obviously seen a lot done lot figured out what works and what doesn’t work, as you’ve indicated, and someone told me a long time ago, I think was Mark Twain suggested that the definition of a consultant is you know, we have to learn from other people’s mistakes, because we won’t live long enough to make them all ourselves.

Brandon Burton 4:13
That’s a great point. I love it. That should be a t shirt. Well, and tell us a little bit about the consulting work that you do just to maybe set the stage a little better. I think you shared your bio and everything. But what I didn’t share is you worked with over half the states in the United States as far as their state organizations go. So tell us a little bit more about that and the type of work you do.

Lew Ebert 4:38
Well, you know, as you indicated at the outset, I’ve had a chance to work in three different states, you know, red state, blue state, big state, small state. So kind of have unique perspective. I think it’s often said, I’m sure you’ve had guests on your podcast suggest if you’ve seen one State Chamber, you’ve seen one state chamber or chamber in general, but I think what I’ve been able to kind of connect is one of the things they all do when All. So regardless of size, regardless of geography, regardless of their economy, regardless of red state, blue state, purple state, whatever the demographic looks like politically, really helping them navigate, you know, kind of a path for success, and ultimately have an impact. I think the common thread is that most chamber leaders, including State Chambers, leaders kind of see their job as really doing three big things. They raise awareness to, you know, challenges as well as present problem, you know, solutions to those problems, they raise money to address those. And ultimately, they try and find a way to have impact, whether it’s job creation, economic growth, or moving their state forward from a competitive standpoint. And that’s mostly what I’m working with, as I’ve worked around the country with big state, small states, New States Chamber leaders, you know, there’s sort of not a common body of knowledge about how this business works. Because I think unlike a local chamber, state chambers have to sort of navigate all the different dynamics, with governors with legislative leadership, people of different parties, you know, kind of the unique regional business communities, even in the state where I am here in North Carolina, where I finished up my chamber career. You know, you got a wide disparity of regional challenges, you know, rural urban, in my case, you know, Raleigh, Charlotte. So, again, you’re sort of bringing together, you know, what are the what are the most impactful ideas that can move the state forward?

Brandon Burton 6:35
That’s right. And I think that actually sets the table very well for our discussion today as we focus our conversation around the the impact that state chambers are making across the United States. And we’ll dive in deeper on this conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky

Hey everybody, Donna from Yiftee here today, just like Brandon, we’re bringing you a guest speaker. First up is Gina from Durham, North Carolina. We’ve sold more than 3300 community cards in Durham, that are being spent at 51 different merchants. There’s something for everyone.

Gina Rozier

I’m Gina Rozier, Director of Marketing, Communication and Peacekeeping for Downtown Durham Incorporated. And I’m a very happy Yiftee customer.  We’re the Bull City, and we created our spendable community card with Yiftee years ago. Our participating businesses love it and we had our best ever sales figures last year. Yiftee is great to work with. They help with marketing the program and it is truly turnkey for us in our businesses. Choosing Yiftee has been a great decision for downtown Durham.

Donna Novitsky

Thanks, Gina. Wondering how you can have your own community card for free. Check out yiftee.com for next steps. Now back to the show. 

Brandon Burton 9:38
All right, Lew, we’re back. So tell us I like the idea of you’re taking these best practices as you work with states across the country. You’re seeing some of these differences that you mentioned. You need to work with governors you need to talk to you know, work with people, different political backgrounds, different things, you know, businesses regionally and And yet, there seems to be some things that maybe float to the surface that are common amongst all the the State Chambers. What are some of those maybe keys for success or things that you’re seeing these chambers do effectively, to share some of these best practices, and then we can go the direction of impact that they’re making.

Lew Ebert 10:22
I tell you, Brandon, sort of the handbook for my career everywhere I’ve worked. And even when I meet with new leaders across the country, it’s an old book, but it’s still very timely. Jim Collins is the author of a book called Good to Great. And it’s sort of in my career, it’s been sort of a handbook on how to build high performing teams, and ultimately have an impact everywhere I’ve worked and even where I’m consulting with folks, and I kind of mentioned seven quick points. And we can come back and talk about any one of these that you want to. But I think the first line of the book talks about Good is the enemy of great. And I think, you know, most of us want to work somewhere. That’s great. I think it’s critical to know your why. So Jim Collins talks a lot about your hedgehog concept. What are you deeply passionate about, and something you do better than anyone else in your community in your state? I think the third thing is have a clarity of vision, you know, why are we here? What what’s our main purpose? You know, why do we exist? The fourth thing, I think, everywhere I’ve worked need to have a B hag, a big, hairy, audacious goal. And in many cases where I’ve worked, it’s how do we become the best state for business? How do we become more competitive? I think that hedgehog concept, the fifth point provides not only clarity of vision, but it also turns your flywheel. And Jim Collins talks about that in terms of how generates revenue. Because at the end of the day, you need to attract revenue to hire the talent to accomplish the mission. And that’s never changed over my career. I think the other thing that chambers sometimes are afraid to do, but I think it’s really important. The sixth point is the Stockdale principle. Admiral Stockdale was the highest ranking POWs in a Vietnamese POW camp. And he, he, he became very focused on, you know, kind of recognizing the sober assessment of their current reality. And he saw over his time in incarceration that the POWs and embrace their reality, and realize we’re gonna be here for a while, tended to be the ones that make it, the ones who didn’t, didn’t seem to make it out of the camp. And then the seventh thing I found in my career experience is, you’d have the right people on the bus and in the right seats. So it’s an old axiom that people are your best asset. And the only thing I would put kind of put a fine point on that Brandon is the right people in the right jobs are your best asset. So those are probably the things that I’ve kind of seen that has been kind of a kind of a Northstar for my career, you know, leading and running and working in State Chambers, both as a CEO and also working with leaders in our profession.

Brandon Burton 13:02
So I think some of these chambers get now I’m trying to figure out there why having that clear vision as you. And I think these two points are kind of related to the good being the enemy of great and having that big, hairy, audacious goal, right? So you can have these goals. And as you work towards them, sometimes you let good get in the way of great along that way. Do you mind touching on either one of those points, or maybe a combined just maybe some things that you’ve seen throughout your career that would point to those as examples?

Lew Ebert 13:34
Yeah, I think probably the best example, when I look at what some of the best state chambers in America are doing right now, the way they embrace both of those concepts, you know, Good is the enemy of great and driving and leading changes. They’ve sort of evolved from, you know, not just advocacy organizations, but they’re really becoming seen as agents of change. And there’s at least a dozen State Chambers in the country that have pretty impressive blueprints or visions for the future of their state over the next 10 to 15 years. And many have positioned themselves as the state’s futurist. So they’ve really sort of elevated their importance in estate. And when you think about it, you know, governors come and go, and in most states you can think of, but the constant is the State Chamber in the business community. So what many states have done is a sort of move from good to great to say not only do we want to focus on how to be great, but we have a plan to make our state great. And I think that’s where the profession has evolved. So it’s no longer about just you know, working with the legislature to defeat bad legislation, which is still important and beat up on the trollers in unions, but it’s really about how do you bring solutions to move your state forward and make a big impact on the most pressing issues in many states kind of holding them back? And that’s where I think states chambers at least have embraced not only their new role, but actually put a methodology in place. Ways to drive and lead and keep track and grow and keep change front top of mind, and also hold politicians accountable. So I think in a lot of states, it’s no longer, you know, what the state legislature wants to get done for business. In many cases, the State Chamber is sort of setting the tone for the kind of change that has to happen to make their state great and more competitive. Right. So

Brandon Burton 15:25
as we look at change, like you said, having these goals trying to make your state great, and your community great for those local chambers listening, you mentioned the Stockdale principle. So there’s got to be a fine line somewhere of Yeah, realizing and accepting your the sober assessment of your current reality, as you put it, or as Jim Collins puts it, versus having a healthy dissatisfaction for your current reality and wanting to improve it. Can Can you talk to that a little bit?

Lew Ebert 15:55
Yeah, you know, random, in my experience, most powerful tool is data. And there is just dozens, if not hundreds of data points and studies, that kind of, you know, surface some of the challenges. And, you know, everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve, you know, I’ve used member polling data to surface these challenges. I’ve used state to state competitiveness data to surface these challenges. So it’s never been my opinion of what needs to be addressed. But it’s like, here’s what business thinks needs to happen. Here’s what state competitiveness metrics show. So if we’re in a state, we’re in the sort of the bottom third of every major ranking known to mankind, you know, we’re not going to make our state great by not talking about that. So there has to be a way I think you’re making a great point. You know, we don’t want to be sort of the the chamber of bad news, right. But we do have to, you know, going back to what chamber leaders do, they create awareness. And in some cases, the awareness is, you know, we have some things we got to work on. But but right beside it is they’re also bringing solutions. So they’re not just sort of throwing a flag saying we’re bad. But here’s how we get better. And then bring the resources to the table to help make that happen, and ultimately have impact because you’re absolutely right. I mean, just drawing attention to, hey, we’re 38th in this ranking, whatever that is, you know, that’s a data point. But what are we going to do about it, and I think that’s where chamber leaders are now kind of leaning into, we have to get better if if we have a B hag to be a great place for business, or the best state for business, or go from good to great, you know, you can’t, you can’t get from good to great, by only getting better at what you’re good at. Right? You have to eventually get better at what you need to work on. And I think state chambers have a role in sort of surfacing both, you know, here’s what we’re good at. But here’s some things we have to work on.

Brandon Burton 17:51
Yeah, I like that approach. Because I can see some, some chambers, maybe in certain circumstances where they say, our governor just is not business friendly. And there’s nothing we can do about that until the next election, and almost use that as an excuse of your, their current the sober assessment of their current circumstance. But I like the idea of still having those goals, still trying to press forward, still trying to make that case. So even when that next election does come around for the next governor, or whatever that elected position may be, to be able to say, here’s some things that are important to the business community in our state.

Lew Ebert 18:31
And I think, Brandon, you’re making a great point. I think, business wants to see these things, politicians when I see these things, but what can we be for? And I think chambers have a responsibility to be for things, not just against things, and being forward thinking and proactive and future focused. You know, there’s a lot of things chambers are for. But there’s also things along the way that we have to be against, because they kind of moved the state in the wrong direction. But I think at the end of the day, most business leaders and CEOs want to see an organization that’s stepping forward indicating what we’re for.

Brandon Burton 19:05
Yeah, I like that. It keeps a positive approach on it, for sure. Absolutely. So as you look at these states that you’ve worked with, we’re talking today about the big impact that you’re seeing State Chambers make in their communities. And I mentioned before we started the recording, I recently had Glenn Hamer on the podcast from Texas. So he talked about some of the things that they’re doing in Texas. But maybe as you as you talk about the impact these state chambers are having maybe through the lens, how local chamber can get more involved with their state chamber as well and supporting that work.

Lew Ebert 19:44
That’s a great point, Brandon, and again, over my career when I first started doing this my first job out of college, you know, four decades ago, which seems like forever, you know, local chambers and state chambers were really seen as competing for membership competing for mindshare. and had a very similar role. I think in most states in America now, it’s pretty clear that they’re both different organizations, but they complement each other. So in many states, State Chambers of Commerce have, you know, put together kind of a chamber Federation, where they have local chambers sort of working hand in hand with the State Chamber, on the most pressing issues affecting the economy. Because I think at the end of the day, if I was running a local chamber, anywhere in America, I don’t want to be working with the statewide chamber, because the kinds of issues that are happening in state capitals affects my members in my community. But there’s no local chamber anywhere in America, that has enough political clout, and even enough votes to move the needle on anything at the Capitol. So being part of a statewide Federation, if you will, of local chambers rolled up under a State Chamber banner working on the big issues, because when when you affect change in any state and improve your competitive position, you know that that helps every community in the state. But I think where local chambers have become more aware, I think is, you know, lobbying, advocacy, political action, getting big things done at the capitol is kind of what State Chambers do. And local chambers play an important role. And plenty of things they do locally, moving their community forward. And even you know, as as the world has evolved, they’re picking up a lot more community based groups that they’re being, you know, leading the kind of non government groups and being forced to do more than they used to be able to do. So I think recognizing that there’s a statewide advocacy organization that can be part of and on that team is a compliment rather than a competition.

Brandon Burton 21:44
Right. So throughout your career throughout maybe the history of State Chambers, local chambers, and it’s a long history looking back, but do you feel like there’s been a shift, and maybe the the mission and purpose had mentioned before, they were kind of seen as being competition to, to local chambers.

Lew Ebert 22:03
I think at the end of the day, many of them have the same last name. But I think the roles we play are different. And I think that’s just evolved, given the nature of how things are happening. And what I like about how the evolution has happened is partially it’s happened, Brandon, because where the action is, now, it’s no longer in Washington, DC. So when I first started doing this 40 years ago, the sea was sort of the epicenter of all things that affected business. And now I think what you’re finding is with the level of acrimony, and somewhat dysfunction, the action is now in the States. And I think some of the states that that you will have on this program have sort of figured out how they can crack the code at their state capitol, and really improve their business climate in such a way where they can become a lot more attractive for job creations and economic activity. So that that’s probably where local chambers and state chambers have figured out, hey, wait a minute. If we work together, we create economic opportunity for our state. And at the end of the day, that’s what all of our members fill in the blank state want to have happen, we want to have a big impact for our state, create jobs and more economic opportunity. So and in many ways to Brandon, the, the major members they all have in common, are really kind of very intent on making sure that focus happen. So I think the customer is also driving the need to work together to make the kind of big impact of the state level that’s needed. Right.

Brandon Burton 23:30
So maybe this may be a step back a little bit in our discussion, but going back to one of those points that Jim Collins made, so the hedgehog concept and the revenue for maybe a local chamber who maybe you know, I’m sure they see their State Chambers a good ally, but maybe they still do see that certain level of competition because they take some of the same big members from their community. Can you talk a little bit to how some of these State Chambers go about their their budget, their financing to maybe clear some some money? Why would they local chambers that might be confused on it?

Lew Ebert 24:07
Yeah, you know, I think at the end of the day, a typical local chamber, probably 80% of their members have less than 10 employees. And for a State Chamber, it’s just the opposite. So I think the big trend over time, State Chambers in most states only have about one to 2% of all the companies in his state are members of the State Chamber. But I think what’s happened over time, Brandon is across the board, most state chambers have seen a decline in the number of members, and a pretty significant increase in the revenue per member. And I think that just recognizes how they’ve grown their business model. And also, you know, the mission they have in terms of their hedgehog concept. You know, not a lot of businesses 99% In some cases, don’t really embrace the mission and vision of why a State Chamber is needed. So it’s kind of been necessary to say okay, well If we need more believers in the cause of advancing economic growth in our state, and a lot of states have been very attractive, very successful and attracting Cornerstone investors from major companies, as I suggested earlier, they’ve eliminated the competition of, in many cases, attracting small businesses. And they’ve effect effectively said the local chambers. You know, anybody under 10 employees, for example, is automatically a member of the State Chamber. So they’ve created a grassroots network to effect change. But they’ve also sort of gotten out of the business of saying, we’re not going to hire a bunch of salespeople to come into your town to recruit small business members. But because at the end of the day, we’re still back to what what State Chambers do well is making impact on the big issues that affect business in their state. And it’s just not cost effective to use a lot of those resources to go find money, it’s more effective to aggregate the resources to make a big impact on the big issues that affect businesses in the state. And that’s where most of the chambers are spending their time and resources.

Brandon Burton 26:05
Yeah, and I know every chamber, I’ve seen one chamber seen one chamber, but a lot of chambers have very similar missions and purposes behind the work they do and, and it should align very well with their state chamber. So I hope that those local chambers may see a conflict of interest with the State Chamber. I hope that’s fewer and fewer. Today, I know what it was in the past and building a stronger relationship, because oftentimes is the state chambers that are putting on a state or regional conference, you know, to share some of those best practices and help support the local chambers.

Lew Ebert 26:40
Absolutely. And again, I think you pick the right issues. I think a lot of State Chambers, local chambers have a lot in common when you start talking about how we can make our state more competitive and attractive to business, how we can address workforce and education and talent issues. How can invest more in infrastructure? Those are at least three issues where I would guess most local chambers in America and most state chambers in America would say that that’s kind of a sweet spot. No disagreement here, let’s figure out how to do it. But I think most of the chambers would say quickly, we can’t do it by ourselves. And most local chambers would probably also admit we can’t do it from our community. But collectively, we can make the kind of impact that’s needed. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 27:22
That’s a great way of summarizing that. So Lou, I like asking everybody I have on the show about maybe it for a tip or an action item for listeners who want to take their chamber most been local, or maybe regional chambers, but I’m taking them up to the next level. What What tip or action item might you suggest for

Lew Ebert 27:43
them? You know, I would suggest if they haven’t read, good degrade, you know, go get the book. It’s not a new book, but I think it’s sort of a handbook on how they can develop their organization and, you know, accelerate and create more opportunity and have more impact. And then the other thing I would suggest, and I know many of them do, I’d invest in knowledge acquisition benchmarking. So I’d really, as I’ve done over my career, you know, what are the best organizations in America look like? And how can I learn from them. So it’s, you know, get your CCE certified chamber executive credential, you know, become a cAe, if you want to certified Association Executive, many of them go to institute and get your IOM certification, some participate in a SAE, or ACC. Those are all great organizations to really put leaders of any level and I found even late in my career. There’s always great new ideas, great new learnings, and the profession keeps evolving. So I think have a great sense of awareness, it’s important to know what you don’t know, as well as to know what you know. And I think that people that are sort of open to understand like, Hey, I just don’t know how to do this. But let me go figure out how to do that. And who can I learn from, I think is a great skill that continue to evolve.

Brandon Burton 28:59
Yeah, I like those tips. I always like when you get a bonus tip like that, too, you know, not just one. So there you go. So the other question I like asking everyone I have on the show is as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going

Lew Ebert 29:15
forward? I think we’re just sort of hitting stride in terms of the importance and the role they play. And I think a lot of it is not just, you know, our politics in DC, but I think politics in general, you know, we live in a more divided time than probably ever before in our history. And I think the common denominator chambers of all varieties bring to the table is their kind of the common sense, middle. They represent a business community, they represent leaders that want to figure out and kind of come up with solutions. You know, they’re not partisan. Usually. They’re not philosophical. There’s sort of the pragmatic, common sense middle. And I think that role, you know, you know, probably 20 years ago was probably not as important as it is today. But there has to be a way and a place where business politics and the economy can kind of intersect. And right now more than ever, it’s the Chamber of Commerce.

Brandon Burton 30:09
Right? I like that. And I would agree with that, too, is that the future chamber? We are hitting that stride right now as far as importance and relevance and keep leaning into it. Then Lou, I’d like to ask if there’s, for those listeners who want to maybe reach out and connect with you learn more about the work you’re involved with? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Lew Ebert 30:33
Yeah, my email is EbertLew@gmail.com. Or you can call me on my cell phone. And if I’m awake, it’s on 919-614-2810.

Brandon Burton 30:46
All right, and we will get that in our show notes for this episode, as well. So anybody shows up and get that that contact information. Great. I really appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast, you bring a great perspective, from the experience you’ve had working with a number of a wide number of chamber of State State Chambers across this great country. So thank you for sharing that, that insight, some of these lessons that you’ve learned, and I think we’re all better for it. So thank you.

Lew Ebert 31:14
All my best all your viewers. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 31:16
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Killing Sacred Cows with Wayne Michell

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guests for this episode is Wayne Michell and July of 2016, Wayne was named president and CEO of the Nacogdoches Chamber of Commerce in Nacogdoches, Texas. He has worked with businesses and organizations over the past 45 years in various roles. Wayne is a graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for organization management and has served on the institute faculty for over 22 years. He’s taught chamber executives and nonprofit leaders from Maine to California. Wayne has worked for associations on the local, state and national level. He’s a past president and CEO of the Kennebec Valley Chamber of Commerce, former director of state services for the United State JCS, Executive Vice President of the Maine paper industry information office, former Executive Vice President for the Maine publicity Bureau, past president of the Maine JCS, past president of the Maine association of Chamber of Commerce executives, former CEO of the Augusta Board of Trade and former member of the Board of Directors for the Texas Association of chamber executives. In 1991, Wayne founded Broadcom, Broadcom provided a variety of services to state and national corporations and nonprofits. Wayne has been a registered lobbyist in Maine and Washington, DC. But Wayne, 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 that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Wayne Michell 3:38
Well, first of all, thank you Brandon for the invite to participate here today. And it brings back my institute faculty days and the opportunity to share all of the things that that I’ve learned good or bad in my 40 plus years of experience. After you read that resume, you can come to the conclusion quickly I can’t hold the job

around so frequently but all kidding aside, this is this industry is nonprofit world we live in a chamber world and not in the association world for me has been has been absolutely wonderful. I I have enjoyed my 40 plus year career in this in this field here. I think the you asked me to share an interesting statistic and that is that I spent most of my youth overseas in there in Taiwan or in Germany growing up so when my family finally settled in my in my late in my late school years high school years back here in the United States. It it was great to be re acclimated to the American way of life after living in in in China and and enjoying it for those many years and and you have enormous appreciation for this country and the and and many blessings that offer so. But I don’t regret a moment the opportunity I had to grow up overseas.

Brandon Burton 5:13
Right now both my parents were military brat, so living all over from Spain to Turkey to Japan and all over the place. So I can appreciate that and probably see a lot of similarities between our backgrounds there. But why don’t you take a moment and share with us a little bit more about the Nacogdoches county chamber just to give us an idea of maybe sizes, size of the chamber staff budget, scope of work, things you guys are involved with, just to help set the table for our discussion today?

Wayne Michell 5:47
Well, first of all, it’s great to be here Nacogdoches County, and especially the city of Nacogdoches, which is which is heralded as the oldest town in Texas 300 plus years old. The Chamber itself is over 100 years old as well. So we have a long and proud history here in Nacogdoches, we’re currently just a hair above 600 members. And we have a very diverse membership base everything from manufacturing, to retailing to, to distribution, you name it, we probably are engaged with it here. What I love most about an academician is is is the is the collaboration between the various organizations in town, we play so well together. And I think that helps us become more effective in accomplishing the objectives we have in serving our community here today, at my staff is typically about five. Right now we’re down one person, but will remedy that in the next few weeks, I suspect. And I’m proud to say that my Executive Vice President Kelly, Augustine is an institute graduate, as am I. So we’ve got the institute experience behind us. And we’ll be sending to other staff members to either the TC AC Institute program or the US Chamber program in the next year. So we take professional development very seriously. And we are a four star accredited chamber, which we’re also proud of, and we’ll be moving into the accreditation process in the next in the next couple of months are re accreditation for hopefully obtaining the fifth star.

Brandon Burton 7:28
Awesome. That is great. You guys are rolling and glad to see you’re sending to more staff to institute here in the near future as fantastic. So for our discussion, for our topic for discussion today. Rather, we decided to focus our discussion around something that either has been addressed or has been talked about, or has, at least the idea has been kicked around in a lot of people’s minds in the chamber world. And that is the idea of killing sacred cows. I think a lot of times the idea is there and the need is there to kill these sacred cows but there’s a lot of fear around it. But we’ll we’ll dive into that discussion much deeper as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 10:58
All right, Wayne, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break as we talk about sacred burning sacred cows, or killing sacred cows, doesn’t matter. I’m not prejudiced one way or another how we kill them, but we got to kill them, whether it’s by fire something else. But there is a lot of fear around getting rid of programs and, and things that your chamber is really identified with, you know, a lot of I think that’s the problem is a lot of times these programs and scope of work become something that really becomes the identity of the chamber, sort of get rid of those programs. I think a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their mind around it. But how have you come to terms with being able to kill sacred cows and be able to move forward with more important work?

Wayne Michell 11:48
Well, first of all, I think I don’t know of a man or woman in the chamber business. Certainly a CEO that hasn’t inherited or, or had created a sacred cow with no organization. And I always define a sacred cow as a program or project that has run its course, it’s no longer needed by the membership. And I’ll give you a couple of Wayne isms as we go through this chat this morning, Brandon. But it is often difficult for chambers to move away from traditional projects and programs. But there’s a necessity to do it, especially in this changing economic environment. I often say that one of the things, one of the things we need to ask ourselves, every year about everything that we’re engaged in is the relevance of what we’re doing. And whether or not it’s the most important utilization of chamber resources. And I’ve always said that the resources break down into three different areas, staff time, volunteer time, and financial resources. If you don’t have the money, the staff or the volunteers to do something, you probably ought not to be doing it. And every year, something comes along, that we need to be engaged in a surprise in our community, the loss of a major industry, a catastrophe locally. All sorts of different things that happen that requires us to at least refocus our energies and our resources in order to preserve our economic base, and our and make our communities hopefully more attractive for investment. So I think it I think you can’t attack the sacred cow without some degree of risk as a CEO, and how you do it safely, I think is the key to success on this. So I I’ve got some thoughts or so how you approach it, or why it’s difficult to, to to eliminate those things. I mean, sacred cows typically have members and commute in, both in the within the chamber and within the community that are emotionally committed to the project. They may be founders of the program. I, the things I created as a chamber CEO will be included at some point in my obituary, either the first second or third paragraph. And yes, it I can say I’m objective, but the truth of the matter is, it is tough. When somebody takes a look at your program, sometimes the sacred cows create income, sometimes the community so, so committed to it and and, and expects it every year that it’s tough to walk away from. So those are the you know, those are least the approaches to sacred cows. Brendan,

Brandon Burton 14:44
so you had mentioned that as an executive, there’s always some level of risk when you talk about killing a sacred cow. At what point and I liked how you identified it as saying that the sacred cows a program project that has run its course, but at what point does see where this program project has run its course. And now it’s worth the risk of taking it on because of all those other factors of people being emotionally connected, or there’s it’s an income generator, there’s certain expectations in your community. So how do you balance that? Where you say, yep, now’s the time, we need to tackle this, this program or project that has run its course?

Wayne Michell 15:23
Well, I will tell you this brand, and I’ve tried to make their decision rather than my decision or my recommendation idea. And I do that by approaching it by saying, I think there are questions we need to ask ourselves. You heard me say at the beginning of this, this chap that in I have a few Wayne is one one. Wayne ism is a to many chambers that perform programs and projects based on tradition, and not based on the needs of the membership. If you can’t, if you can’t make a direct link between what you’re doing and what they need, then you probably ought not to be doing it. The second Wayne isn’t my answer is that every chamber has sacred cows. And at least once a year, someone needs to stick a fork in it, to see if it’s still relevant to the needs of the membership. See, if it’s when I say someone, I want my board and a retreat to look at every program or project and ask Is this still the most important utilization of chamber resources? And, and, and the third Wayne ism, I’d say it would be just because you’re making money on a program or project doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing it. Money ought not to be the motivating factor. It shouldn’t be again, based on ROI, what return on investment, do we provide our members, I was engaged in a program a while back where we spent over $30,000 of the organization’s resources to execute. And on the way back from where we where we implemented that project. I had a long drive. And the question I kept saying, Well, what were the deliverables out of this project? What did that 30,000 Give my members? And you know, what? I, we reinvented that project, and we in order to be able to answer that question more comfortably. But we need every year to come to that conclusion. You ask how we do it safely? Right. From from a staff standpoint? Well, in my opinion, what we need to do is, it’ll Fiberon anything in the last in the last 30 years of my career. I think the first 10 years of my nonprofit career, I flew by the seat of my pants. I you know, I went on hunches and guesses and estimations. And I think the last 30 years, I have a great appreciation on the value of data. And on every program or project. I want to collect data, which starts with surveys. And I distill that down on every project project to three questions. If we do a trade show and somebody buys a booth at that trade show, we need to ask that woman or man, What value did this program have to your company or your business? And I have three questions great value, some value or little or no, in the vast consensus is little or no, then we’re going to we’re going to visit that project and determine whether we should be continuing now. We need to ask that question on not everything we do in our organizations, and not make some assumption is that people and when I collect that data I liked, I like to put it in a form where I can present it to my board. I give them an honest assessment of what the project did at the end. But then I let them know what the customers our members feel about that program or project. I had one Expo I remember my early years of chamber business we knit and probably 40,000, which would probably be 100,000. In today’s dollars, which shows you how long ago it was. Yeah. So it was a successful project. And I’m talking about knitting after staff time and everything else is calculated. Yeah. At the end of the program, I surveyed the 150 booths. And 70% of them said little or no value in the survey result. And so when I followed up and said, if you have little or no value to them, Why did you participate? And they said to support the chamber. That’s the wrong reason for them to be there. Right. I love their commitment and but we killed that project and next year based on the data and the feedback we had,

Brandon Burton 19:55
and we’re making good money though. You know what

Wayne Michell 19:59
Have we had to we had is that what we’re in business for just to make money, we’re in business to serve our communities and our customers, our members first. And so when my board saw that, the vast majority viewed that thing not as an investment, but as as a contribution. They wisely said, it’s time to move on. Money is not the motivating factor for doing an expo, we thought it was our business development. It had it had run its course,

Brandon Burton 20:29
Brendon? Yeah, I can see where somebody could say this is a successful program. Is it successful Expo? Because we made X amount of money? Yeah, X amount of dollars. And they may not want to ask those questions, because they don’t want to hear the answer. That was little to no value. So I think it’s a great idea of asking or providing these surveys for every program and project just across them, it’s, you don’t apply a filter on it ahead of time to decide whether or not to do the survey. It’s just part of everything you do.

Wayne Michell 21:02
Absolutely. And today, with, with the tools of technology that we have available to us, there’s no excuse for us not testing the value of our programs, each and every one of them. I think that that’s that’s a key. And here’s where this becomes complicated for those of us in the staff and volunteer leadership, when the woman or man created that that trade show is still around, active in the chamber meeting, you know, with us in the community, it becomes you know, let me tell you, you’re going to hear, you need to be prepared to hear from those folks. And to make your case when you try to do eliminate that, that program that they have an enormous emotional commitment to. Sometimes I’m successful in that, but I believe that sales job to the volunteer leadership, if they agree, the program needs to be either massively revised, or eliminated, guess what? Then they need, they need to be leading the charge, not the CEO of the chamber, and not the staff, the staff. So the staffs obligation is to collect the data and, and to present the results. Right. And I

Brandon Burton 22:12
think it may be a good idea, even with some of those community players who may be the founder, those who are emotionally involved with it to as you have those discussions, or have you, your volunteers have those discussions, to help them really find what their real identity is in the community. And maybe it aligns with some of those chamber things, being able to convene people maybe to be in a champion for business, rather than the identity being that particular event that they found it or, you know, I think there’s so much emotion to it, when it becomes your identity, that there might be other ways of approaching that to show where their value really lies, and maybe get them to buy in on the next thing, you know, that will maybe they have other ideas that could be a value

Wayne Michell 23:00
you’re spot on. I mean, I was always fun to sing when I was teaching it Institute. And it’s and I learned this, you know, I add a 30 year absence from the chamber management world I, I started out, you know, running a chamber in Augusta, Maine at the Kennebec Valley Chamber in the mid 80s. And then reenter the chamber world in the in the in 2016. And what I learned in the first six months of being here at NEC noches at this chamber is I could not run my chamber today, inaccurate notice the way I ran my chamber in the mid 80s, and be relevant. And if if I attempted to do that, we wouldn’t be a dismal failure today. And we we as change as CEO is better be prepared to change as, as the needs of the community change to stay relevant. And that means you need to have capacity, you need to have staff money and volunteers to do something, you can’t do 1000 things with a chamber, everybody, I don’t care what the size of your chamber is, we all have limitations. And they just they break down those three areas. So I’d rather get rid of something that’s no longer needed, and put something that has greater value and return on investment to our communities in its place. But it’s tough to do that because people are wedded to tradition. And that’s where, you know, it does put us at risk profession when we raise, raise questions like that because somebody’s gonna say, Wait a second, that’s my baby. Yes, what your baby’s grown up, and it’s about ready to and there were other ways to do it too. You can spin off a project or program to another organization. If the community doesn’t like is running the course. Great. Let somebody else do it. Yeah. And find another host for that program. If you can’t find another host I think that should speak volumes about the relevance of that project.

Brandon Burton 25:03
That is very true. Yeah, spin it off to another host and see that feedback as it comes in. But another thought I had is some of these programs, some of these community events, they, like you said, they’re steeped in tradition, because we tag on, you know, 37th, annual, you know, festival or parade or whatever it is. So it becomes an expectation, which at the beginning might have been a good idea marketing wise to have that going and have that expectation for each year. But when it comes to the end of its course, that can really come back to haunt you, when you’ve you know, tacked on the what year it is, you’re doing this festival? So be careful of that. I guess.

Wayne Michell 25:45
You’re absolutely right. I mean, it does add a level of difficulty and in moving along on those things. And I, you know, I look, I’m on the latter stages of my chamber career here, probably. But I will say this, nothing, nothing bothers me more than boring programs. Even if you don’t eliminate the darn thing, at least every I don’t like go into programs are the same every day, if I’m bored, imagine how my members feel about it. Right? So at the very least if you if you challenge the relevance, or stick a fork into a program and say, okay, is this still necessary, at least at the very least change the darn thing? So that you know, so that there’s something new, exciting I, I challenge my staff colleagues and my and my volunteer leaders, my committee chairs, is that look, don’t do it the same way. We did it last year. But we got a plan, we got a strategy. You know what? I understand that, but it’s the same plan you had three years ago, right? If you can’t have new and improved and show me something different than what you know, they have run its course.

Brandon Burton 26:55
That’s right. That’s great. And hopefully this is this conversation is getting the wheels spinning in the minds of people listening and in really evaluating what what are some of those sacred cows that their organization? How can they start having these conversations with those stakeholders and with those volunteers to and their board members to be asking those questions? Is this still relevant? Is this still the best use of your time and resources as a chamber? I think that that question right, there is so key to just continue being relevant as a chamber. But I wanted to ask as we start wrapping things up, what might be a tip or an action item that you would suggest for chamber who is listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level?

Wayne Michell 27:40
Well, first of all, find out what other folks are doing. And I don’t just mean in your region I’m talking about nationwide. The advantage I had in being a chamber consultant for 25 years, is that I had the opportunity to facilitate hundreds, literally hundreds of board retreats. And I always left almost every chamber that I was working with, with with a new idea or something. So in this day and age is it with with the with the technology and social media, things that we have available to us look at what folks are doing, I visit websites, I visit, I look at programs of work, I look at staff structure, and and and constantly reevaluate what we’re doing based on what the industry norms, are there extraordinary women and men out there that are leading these organizations. And let me tell you something. If you think after being on an institute faculty for 22 years, I learned at all, you’re sorely mistaken, every day, it seems like I learned something new about this industry in this job. And I think that’s what keeps us relevant. The learning process doesn’t stop at any point in his business. COVID showed us all that we had to reinvent the way we we serviced our members, and how we communicate with our members and how and how we added value to our membership. So that’s, that’s my tip is please, programs like what you’re offering here, Brendan, are essential. They’re absolutely essential to to us. And I’ll be honest with you, I heard myself saying things in this discussion with you. And it was a little voice in the back of my head that said, hey, Michel, if you’re so damn smart, I’m coming. You’re not doing that. There’s an element of that. And I think that I think that that’s, you know, in the history of candor, I haven’t learned it all yet. And, and I’ve been doing this job for the better part of 40 years. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:51
alright, you’ve learned it, but you haven’t learned the lesson yet. Right?

Wayne Michell 29:54
Maybe Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:56
yeah. I love it. I love the honesty and candor there That’s great. So I like to ask anything you kind of touched on it a little bit there. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Wayne Michell 30:15
Well, first of all, you know, when I first joined this, we were primarily if there was, wasn’t a lot of hard edges on Chambers of Commerce doing a job, we were a social organization, communities used to collaborate and, and that networking, I’ve seen chambers today play a much more serious and much more critical role in representing their communities. And that’s going to be an area of advocacy, we’re going to see chambers in the future, we’ll be less loved by folks other than our members. Because if we’re doing our job, people are going to be angry at us. But I, my constituents, I know where my bread is buttered as a chamber CEO in 2023. And that’s with representing the, the men and women that are paying my bills and are trying to do business in a regulated world. And our job is to be that wall, between the regulation and the business owner. And to try it, you know, and that, you know, the US Chamber of Commerce does an absolutely incredible job on the federal level. Here in Texas, we’re blessed to have Glen hammer and the Texas Association for Business, doing a great job on the state level. But those of us on the local level, guess what we are the most important lobbyist of the business community has. And if we fail to communicate with regulators and legislators, our businesses are going to be underserved. So to answer your question, where we’re going to change, and this, this applies to chambers at all sizes, is that we’re going to have to become more aggressive and more effective in a advocacy area, to represent the business community and be more effectively. And that and that will make us less loved by those folks other than the ones that are paying or paying our salaries. But guess what? They need representation. And today, it’s a difficult word to do business. I mean, that’s the bottom line.

Brandon Burton 32:07
Well, really any say be in less love. But really, I mean, most people work for somebody, if they’re not working for themselves, if they’re working for themselves, they shouldn’t be a member of the chamber, they should be investing in the work the Chamber’s doing, but if they’re an employee of that person, they should still want pro business, you know, policy and candidates and you know, everything in the in the community going for pro business. So I, I don’t know, I might push back that there might not be as as little love as you think, you know, there might be more love for chambers of actually stepping up and doing meaningful work.

Wayne Michell 32:41
So it’s funny, I think back years ago, I have a project, I had an issue that we had taken a very public stand on in the chamber. And it was a front page article. And I remember walking through the local supermarket with my cart, and having a woman blast me for the position that we took on that issue. And I I was I was tactful, and and so I went back to my office, and my board chairman, my board chairman called me just out of the blue and, and he detected I wasn’t very happy at that moment. He said, What’s up waiting? And I said, Well, Bill, I said, I just got blasted in the supermarket. And I said, I’m just recovering from it. I said the woman was angry with the position that you folks asked me to share. And he said, and you’re you’re, you’re doing what nice, and I’m just sitting here trying to rehabilitate, he said, I’ll be right down, and the other one was corroding drove to my office. You can’t imagine you shut the door. And he looked at me and he said, What do you want out of this deal? And I said, just and I use the words, I said, Look, I want to be loved, you know? And he looked at me and he said, Let me tell you, based on the position you took on our behalf, your love by the people that are sending you check, move on. And you know what? He’s absolutely right. If I do my job from time to time, somebody shouldn’t be angry at me. But that doesn’t mean that you know, I kiddingly say just because they’re wrong, doesn’t mean I don’t love them. And I suspect from time to time, I may be wrong, and hopefully they’ll love me, in that case, too. But that’s where the engine is. Look, we didn’t do any of that in the hardly any of that in the 70s and 80s. Let me tell you this job today, there, you’re making decisions on a routine basis now that if you’re doing your job well, we’ll just got give me 100% consensus on everything. It goes with the territory. But I will tell you this. I think I’ve evolved because I’ll be honest, we I kind of enjoy it today. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t be saying I just want to be loved anymore. I just want to be right.

Brandon Burton 34:54
Right, right. Yeah. No, I think you’re right. If you’re not if you’re not Making a stance, you know, if you are making a stance, you will have people that are upset. So if you’re not making people upset, that means you’re not making a strong enough stance. So, Wayne, I’ve appreciated the insights and experience that you shared with us so far, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and connect with you and learn more from you throughout your career, and specifically how you tackle killing sacred cows, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Wayne Michell 35:32
Well, they’re certainly welcome to contact me here at the chamber at my email addresses president@nactx.com. And that’s probably the best way Brandon to get a hold of me. Know, give me a chance to but I have a question or a comment. Listen, I suspect there’ll be a few out there that probably disagree with some of the things that I’ve said, but I’m willing to, I’m willing to to, to accept that. And maybe, maybe they’re right, and I’m wrong. So if they’ve got a counter point of view, I certainly would welcome that. But at the same time, this can be a lonely business, if anybody ever wanted to anybody who ever wants to chat on the telephone, they’re welcome. I suspect your chat, you’ll you’ll share my telephone number here at the chamber. And they’re certainly welcome to call me and and we can we can talk about on one on one basis. Like I said, it can be a lonely business, because there’s not a lot of folks that do what we do in our region. So

Brandon Burton 36:36
that’s right. Yeah, yeah. And I will put that in your phone number and email in the show notes for this episode. So people can look that up. And there’s truth in that there’s a loneliness and leadership for sure you’re making stances that other people don’t totally understand or agree with. But absolutely, it’s important to have that network of people to lean upon and to learn from and and, yeah, this is, it’s been a great discussion. I really do appreciate you spending time with us today on the podcasts. And I think this I think it should motivate some people that are listening to really take a deep look at their organization, see what changes there are that that might need to be addressed. So thank you for that. Right.

Wayne Michell 37:20
Thank you, Ron. And thanks for the opportunity to join you today. This has been fun.

Brandon Burton 37:25

Brandon Burton 29:48
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Impact of Community Teamwork with Kyle Spurgeon

Impact of Community Teamwork with Kyle Spurgeon

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Kyle Spurgeon. Kyle is President and CEO of the Jackson chamber in Jackson, Tennessee. Before joining the chamber, Kyle was vice president Corporate Relations for Jackson Energy Authority. He has also served as marketing director for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. He’s helped facilitate project locations representing more than $2.5 billion in capital investment. He holds a BS and public relations marketing from Murray State University. He is past president of the Tennessee Economic Development Council, past president of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce executives, past board member of the south of the Southern Economic Development Council, and past president of the Tennessee economic partnership is also a board member of several other local community organizations. Kyle is a 2017 graduate of leadership Tennessee. He was recently named the 2019, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce Executive of the Year. Powell is married to Melissa together they have five children and one very happily spoiled dog. Enjoy running and traveling the tile. I’m happy to have you with us today here on Super 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.

Kyle Spurgeon 3:18
I didn’t realize you’re gonna read that entire bio,

Brandon Burton 3:21
we got to get the good stuff, you know.

Kyle Spurgeon 3:25
Melissa and the dog go smiled when you get to the very end. So Leila was wagging her tail? Good. Yes, something interesting. I guess it’s not in that and maybe the reason I enjoy doing these kind of podcast is in high school and college. I was at a radio disc jockey records, and I was a sportscaster and read the news. And so that, you know, as we started getting into the podcast area, that something that just not I’m not gonna say was natural, but it’s something I really enjoyed. So I look back on my days working in radio in Paris, Tennessee, that’s probably where this comes from.

Brandon Burton 3:59
Yeah, that sounds great. It’s your you’ve kind of got that natural comfort with that, I would say so. Well, I hope so. Yeah. So before we just jump into our topic, I’d like you to get some more background on the Jackson chamber. Just give us an idea of size, your chamber staff scope of work, budget, things you’re involved with, just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah, so our

Kyle Spurgeon 4:23
chamber we have are running at 1050 members and budget of 1.6 $1.7 million, a team of seven and that word team is all capitalized because we all work together extremely well. And I look at our chamber and over, particularly the last four decades, we’ve been recognized as a chamber that’s very, very effective at recruiting new jobs in industry, to Jackson in West Tennessee. What has changed really over the last decade is we’ve maintained that standing and that influence in the community and that’s the SAS but were looked upon more, for addition to that term, our leadership programs our assistance to small business, in really since the announcement of Blue Oval city working with our city and county and others, in making sure we lead community development efforts with them, either we lead those were on the team, because that’s becoming an extremely big part of what we do. Our chamber was founded in 1905, we’re accredited by the US Chamber, we’ve got a four star designation now we’re going to be pursuing that five star designation, I think, later this year, or in 24. And as you know, when you’re accredited, by the US Chamber you one of the top 3% of chambers in the country. And that’s something we are extremely proud of. I’ll conclude this by saying just about a decade ago, our chairman at the time, told him he was talking to a group of people about the chamber and he said, one of the things I’m most proud of, is this organization has a seat at every major discussion that goes on in our community. That’s something that we don’t take for granted.

Brandon Burton 6:08
Right. And I think that’s going to lead in well to our topic for our discussion today as we focus on the impact of community teamwork. So having a seat at all those major discussions, being you know, right there, the driver of economic development and community development. I think we’ll have a fantastic discussion around that today. As soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 8:37
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Brandon Burton 9:34
All right, Kyle, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break we’re focusing on the impact of community teamwork. So when you were talking about the chamber you brought up blue oval city. I’m familiar with it. I’ve heard you heard some great things about this set this huge economic development win. But if you would just fill the listeners in on what what is blue oval city and they maybe a little bit of background about how that came to be. And I think that’ll lead well into our discussion today.

Kyle Spurgeon 10:06
Sure. So blue oval City is a 17 year overnight success story as it took a while. And I’ll give you some background on that in a second. But it’s a $5.6 billion investment of Ford and SK Innovation to build the world’s most advanced assembly automotive assembly plant in battery plant. 3500 acres between Memphis and Jackson. So we sit right on Interstate 40. We are an hour from a Shelby County and two hours from Davidson County, which is which is Nashville. So Jackson is ideally situated. That project started back in the early 2000s. When Governor Phil Bredesen and the commissioner of economic and community development, Matt kispert, worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority and identified a site that would be great, what they would call a mega site because TVA had started that program. Two years earlier, local folks in Haywood County, the chamber, President CEO at the time, Paul tour was part of that effort. And those were the early people. You know, in our business, a lot of times when you make the announcement, the folks who were there at that time get all the credit. Well, if it wasn’t for the folks early that identified that property and caused it to be purchased project would have never happened. And what is happening now a blue oval cities under construction, Ford plans to be rolling their new electric vehicle off the assembly line and 25, which is crazy to think about it. That’s two years from now. And you’ll start seeing supplier announcements this year, the project announced again 5800 jobs $55.6 billion in capital investment. That’s really just the beginning. We’re starting to see those supplier locations, the tier one and tier two folks looking at Jackson and other parts of West Tennessee plus the projects that will need to be situated on site. But every piece of that project happened because of teamwork. Mark Herbison is President and CEO of HTL advantage. So that’s Haywood, Tipton Lauderdale counties. Haywood County is actually where the Megasite is it spans Haywood County and Fayette County, Mark led that effort. I tell folks, he has created more jobs, personally per capita for a staff than anyone probably in the world and economic development because he he led that project with two people. Our team, it’s a Jackson chamber in the Memphis chamber, were part of the negotiation process and helping to close the deal. But Mark was the guy day to day. And so when you take what Mark did what we were able to do with the Memphis and Jackson chamber and TVA in the state, in no one caring who got credit, you know, we were able to close that deal. And it turned out to be, you know, obviously one of the largest economic development projects in Tennessee’s history and one of the largest in the country.

Brandon Burton 13:14
That is fantastic. So as you’re, as you’re talking about this, the development of the site just yesterday. So I’m in Texas, but yesterday, I actually drove past the news Tesla facility that’s being rolled right now. So in my mind, I kind of I can kind of picture what this is looking like just a massive space, massive building, the technology that goes into it, and as you mentioned that the discussions of this started in the early 2000s. So almost 25 years from when the first cars will roll off the assembly line. But the evolution that’s happened in that amount of time, from having the focus on batteries now versus just what cars were in the 2000s. If you see an early model in 2000, f150 versus what’s going to roll off and 2025 They’ll be vastly different for sure. Being able to keep up with that, that evolution, that involvement. But let’s let’s focus more on this the community teamwork effort. So you’d mentioned that the teamwork part from an economic development standpoint, working with different counties, different cities, be able to pull together as a team. What are what are some other examples how things have have worked together as maybe you guys have been the convener of some of these, you know, throughout the community to drive some of these wins throughout the Jackson area. You

Kyle Spurgeon 14:43
use that great chamber award convener, and you know, we all successful chambers do that extremely well. The reason and focus it on the economic development piece first. The reason this community has been successful for 40 years doing economic development and recruiting Companies like Delta Faucet, Toyota, Stanley, Black and Decker. Kellogg’s is here, all the Pringles in North America are made in Jackson, we’ve always had that stance, no matter who was in an elected position as one of the mayors, or who ran Jackson Energy Authority, which was our utility, who read who ran the hospital here, we never care about who gets credit. And whoever is Mayor allows the chamber to be the quarterback for all economic development activities. And we everything we do is built around that team concept. But we also don’t have to pick up the phone and call a mayor’s office or a chairman’s office to, you know, direct every single move that we make, because we’ve got enough brand equity in the success that we’ve had. And that’s something we we protect, you know, if you’ve ever were to see a member of our team try to step out and make it all about themselves, instead of the community, that team member is going to get called back and pulled back and probably not gonna be on the team anymore. And so again, I think we’ve used that success model. And as we’ve had to expand our reach, I guess, and the different projects we’re working on and in different communities, we just make sure again, that it’s just all about pain.

Brandon Burton 16:21
Yeah, I like that. And I see the importance of that, I wonder if there maybe is some tactics or ways that you go about whether it’s dealing with your team internally there at the chamber or broader throughout the community to help build a sense of team. And and you’ve touched on a little bit there. But what what some of that mindset and maybe tactics around building that team mentality.

Kyle Spurgeon 16:45
Yeah, one of the ways is making sure particularly your elected officials are not surprised, in that they give us a lot of leeway to work on projects, again, because not just the team we’ve got in place now. But we’ve always been successful doing that. So just Just imagine if you had a mayor in office, and all of a sudden you’re about to announce a project and he knew nothing about it, that’d be a surprise. But for us to be able to do that our elected officials and everyone on the team has to understand the confidentially the confidentiality involved in those projects. Excuse me. And so by bringing them in early, and us respecting the fact that they understand that confidentiality allows us to do that. And then when we have a new chairman, coming into the role within our organization, again, bringing them in early, helping them understand how projects occur, because if you’re not an economic developer or been involved in projects, you probably have some misconceived notions about it. And so it’s education and making sure people don’t get surprised. So

Brandon Burton 17:55
I’m curious, as far as not having these elected officials be surprised. Is that something that you had to learn through experience? Or like, ooh, we should have plugged them in a little more along the way? Or is it just something that it kind of made sense to you from the beginning? So you just a good practice to follow all along?

Kyle Spurgeon 18:13
Yeah. When you said, Did I learn that from experience in a roundabout way? Yes. You mentioned I worked at Jackson Energy Authority. And I remember firing someone without our CEO knowing it. And John made it very clear to me that his name was John Williams at the time, that he needed to know that because he went to church with the guy’s mother, that we had just fired. And so you learn real quick, and he came back the next day sick out, you and your team did the right thing. God needed to go. But I can’t be surprised. So I’ve always taken that with me in terms of you know, when you announce a project, or you’re doing some community initiative, and it’s successful, you will get your elected officials and your investors up there announcing that project? Again, you don’t want them hearing about it a day before or a week before without having any Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:13
or worse as things are even more developed or the read in the paper social media. Yeah, so yeah, I think it’s neat how some of those lessons kind of stick with you and with whether it’s something professionally or personal lesson that carries over, and it’s something that is important to you, that brings a lot of value to others that are listening to and you can provide that experiences. So I appreciate you being willing to share that. I know it’s not always easy to to share from past experiences like that, but

Kyle Spurgeon 19:43
it’s that thing about everyone makes mistakes. And as long as you learn from that mistake, not gonna say it’s not bad, but it’s a heck of a lot better if you learn from it.

Brandon Burton 19:53
That’s right, and learn from the first time hopefully. So I Want to know if there’s maybe tips or action items for those listening who maybe want to build a better community or teamwork effort throughout their their community and take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them to try to implement and to sharpen that focus,

Kyle Spurgeon 20:20
like an easy thing to do is sit back. First of all, you have to have a strategic plan. And any organization is trying to build a to build their brand and build on success or initiate some success, you have to have a strategic plan. And then once you get that, identify a group of people that you know, like and trust that you can work with, and then slowly help them find their way onto your board or your executive committee. And then look at that group as your core team folks that you can pick up the phone and call and know that they’re all pointing in the right direction. And can you know, they can alert you so that you’re not surprised? on things that might be going on in the community, either business wise, or political wise, but I think it’s that first step, you know, every chamber CEO, if they’re moving, taking a job somewhere else, my belief is, the first thing you need to do is look at that strategic plan. If the community doesn’t have one, make sure that’s one of your first action items. Because if you don’t do that, then everyone’s going off in different directions. You’ve got to have a North Star, something everyone can focus on. And so you can build that team effort that way.

Brandon Burton 21:36
Right? Well, I’m glad you went that direction. With that with those, we’ve seen a lot of change in the chamber industry right now with leadership and everything. So for those who are new to community, I think that’s key advice and make sure that there is a strategic plan. And if not, do focus on getting one ASAP. But you had mentioned finding those people in your community that you can know, like and trust. So when you’re new to a community, any tips on how to find those people, because there’s certain people that want to be found, right? For good, for better or worse, they want to be able to filter out Who are those ones that you should know, like and trust?

Kyle Spurgeon 22:12
Well, I’ve been lucky, I haven’t had to go through a search process in 13 years, but just think about it. So if I’m in Jax, and if I was moving somewhere out west, or wherever it was going to interview with the search committee, you’re not going to take the job unless you have confidence in the organization in that search committee. So that’s probably the best place to start. Those are the people that because they’ve accepted that position on the search committee are obviously vested in the community, and the folks in the community or organization, trust them to make the right decision, identify one or two members of that, or the entire committee, and just tell them that who are the folks that I need to understand can best influence our success moving forward.

Brandon Burton 23:01
I love that piece of advice. So yeah, I have that that deeper conversation with that search committee once you get that job and seek their their counsel. And I’m sure it’ll be valuable. I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future changers and their purpose going forward?

Kyle Spurgeon 23:24
But maybe your toughest question that you

Brandon Burton 23:27
bring out your crystal ball and see what it looks like I

Kyle Spurgeon 23:31
think we’ve seen it in I can only speak to our organization, something that has changed, you know, early, particularly I say early, three to four decades ago, and we’re all the way up into the 2000s, early 2000s. We could have encouraged someone to join the chamber, just because we were successful, creating new jobs and capital investment, they just want to be a part of that. Now, they’ve got to experience something. And so Chambers of Commerce, the our events, you know, our social media presence, it’s networking, and it’s an experiential type, membership. And people will no longer write you a check just because the chamber is great in your community, your your membership sales team has to build relationships with them. You have to support your existing industries, you have to run leadership programs. So you really have to be in tune with the folks in your communities and the business leaders. So I think moving forward chambers, just like you know, something that you look at, it’s a negative look around the country at the civic organizations and how their membership has declined. Well, it’s those civic clubs that have changed a bit who have been able to stabilize their membership and in any chamber organization. If you look at the average age of the men First, they may be skewing upward. Well, you’ve got to make sure you’re running young leaders programs, under 40 type programs, because those are the folks that are going to sustain your organization moving forward.

Brandon Burton 25:14
I like that I think I just had my own little aha moment because he gave that response. And so when you when you mentioned that, you know, today, people have that need to experience something. And it makes me think of just the connectivity that we have the the instant gratification, the, especially as you look at the younger generations coming up right now, if they can’t get Amazon to deliver whatever it is, you know, next day, or today would be even better, then it’s not good enough, right. So to experience something, you can’t just talk about doing something you can’t just, you know, have a good organization, they need to experience something they need to kind of need that dopamine hit right to be able to want to come back and have more. And if you’re able to provide some small wins along the way where they can see, okay, I’m seeing the value here, okay, I’m seeing where this is helping the community, I see how this impacts my business, leading up to those big wins is big economic development, contracts, things like that. I think it’s important for every chamber to be thinking about those small, small wins along the way to give that feedback loop of the what you’re doing is important, and they feel involved. So

Kyle Spurgeon 26:31
you know, one thing to do is make sure not only celebrate the successes that your chamber has in the community, but just think about ribbon cuttings, those in another, you’re celebrating the success of a small business or big business. So being a part of the success without taking credit for it of other organizations to where you attach your brand, to their brand. Because everyone loves attention. And if you’re a small business, we’re doing a ribbon cutting for you. They love seeing their faces and their names on our social media feeds, on the traditional media, news stories, and so attaching yourself and supporting other folks success without taking credit for it. And that’s a big help.

Brandon Burton 27:16
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve heard some chambers getting away from ribbon cutting somewhat, but I think there’s still a great value there with giving that that positive feedback loop so well, Kyle, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for those who are listening that want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Jackson, or learn more about Blue Oval city and how they can, you know, bring somebody else to their community because they’re not going to get forward right. What would be what would be the best way for them to to reach out and connect with you?

Kyle Spurgeon 27:56
Yeah, my favorite way actually is through LinkedIn. Really, all social media is not great all the time. But our team finds LinkedIn to be a fantastic source to connect and share information. Other than that, my email address love to give that out. It’s kspurgeon@jacksontn.com. And you know what our business you learn from other folks, we’ve, in the last several years, we’ve been to Wichita, Kansas, Greenville, South Carolina and Monroe, Louisiana, Franklin, Tennessee a few years ago, just learning what those communities were doing in their chamber and economic development teams. And yeah, we’re stealing ideas and bringing those back, we just are going to hopefully be able to announce a $34 million training center that our governor has put in his budget. The idea from that training center, pain from a visit to Wichita, Kansas.

Brandon Burton 28:56
That’s awesome. Yeah, those leadership visits as you know, inner city visits are, they’re very valuable. So by learning from each other, you know, those listening, reach out, talk to Kyle, you know, learn learn from him, and, and even take it to the next step and schedule a visit to another city and see how things are being done there. So that’s a whole other topic we can dive into right. Yeah. But Kyle, I appreciate you spending some time with us today, here on chamber chat podcast, I think you’ve provided some great value for those listening to really maybe just take another look at how they are building a sense of teamwork throughout their community to lead to some of these big wins. So I appreciate you sharing your experience and what’s going on there and Jackson, thank you.

Kyle Spurgeon 29:43
Thank you Brandon. Great questions and appreciate having the opportunity to be a part of it.

Brandon Burton 29:48
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From Membership Organization to Community Economic Driver with Mark Field

From Membership Organization to Community Economic Driver with Mark Field

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Mark field mark is the Senior Vice President and membership at the Knoxville chamber and has been since 2004. Mark oversees investor development and relations events and programming, Marketing and Communications. He previously was the vice president development for the initial group and East Tennessee provider owned Managed Health Care Network. He has over 35 years of experience in sales and marketing. And he’s been very involved with several boards throughout the community as he’s an active member of his community. He is a 2011 graduate of leadership Knoxville he graduated southeast Institute in 2009, past chair of the US Chamber southeast Institute Board of Regents member of the Board of Trustees for the US Chamber Institute. And Mark is married to Vicki he has two step children and seven grandchildren. But Mark I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so they can get to know you a little better.

Mark Field 3:09
Yeah, hello everyone. It’s great to be on the podcast. Brandon, thank you so much for the opportunity and I hope everyone’s having a great day. Something entered interesting about me so a lot of people might not know that for about seven years. I was on the competition barbecue circuit. And so I still love to cook barbecue obviously, because of that it got a little bit more time consuming than I had originally anticipated and a little bit more cost prohibitive than I’ve anticipated as as barbecue became more popular and but anyway that’s that’s something that I used to do a little bit of and still like to cook so that’s that’s something that a lot of people don’t know about me.

Brandon Burton 3:55
All right, so I have to ask I’m in Texas now. I spent some time in South Carolina I grew up in California barbecue is different everywhere. What is barbecue like in Tennessee?

Mark Field 4:06
You know our barbecue really kind of takes a lien from from both Kentucky and from Georgia and Memphis you know, we Knoxville Tennessee, you know kind of sits in the middle. A lot of people like the Memphis dry rub for ribs and a lot of people like the more Georgia sweet and tangy style for their pull pork sauces, so and then of course the great vinegar by sauce from Kentucky and and North Carolina are at you know, have a big influence here as well. So we’re a little bit of a melting pot on what kind of barbecue people lack in this region.

Brandon Burton 4:39
Yeah, you get the best of all of it. I didn’t hear any brisket in there, but you know, you get the best of

Mark Field 4:44
you know, it’s kind of funny. Granted, the very first brisket I cooked was a cross between what I would say a hockey puck and a conveyor belt. But But I learned I learned and so now it’s pretty good and I don’t I really don’t like any sauce on my bread. Should I really dislike my brisket? I’m a purist on that. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:05
we may need to talk offline. I’ve got a good Brianna rub. So well tell us a little bit more about the Knoxville chamber just to give us an idea of size, staff budget scope of work, things you’re involved with, just to kind of give us an idea of if to set the table for our discussion.

Mark Field 5:20
Yeah, gosh, the Knoxville chamber has been around since 1869. We’re old organization, old established organization, our community started as an actual board of trade. You know, and, and I would say just like any chamber, we’ve we’ve been through a lot of evolution. You know, do very well in our community have about 1900 investors. You know, our penetration rate, I’m gonna say somewhere around 10 to 15% of the businesses in our marketplace, with so for a large community that’s about standard for the industry, I think. We have 27 employees, some interns and some fellows, as well. So around 30 folks in the office, on and off, we do economic development, as well as Investor Services, investor relations. And we also have the downtown Knoxville Association. And we have the US Department of Commerce and our Tennessee small businesses wellness center all in one office. So there’s about 50 of us in the office. But chamber wise, we’re at about 30. associates.

Brandon Burton 6:28
All right. Well, there’s plenty of work there to keep those 30 Associates busy. So there really

Mark Field 6:34
are our budgets around $5 million. All in so that that’ll give you an idea.

Brandon Burton 6:39
Yeah, no, that’s great. So as we settled in on a topic for our discussion today, we wanted to focus on how the Knoxville chamber went from being more of a membership organization to more of a driver of community economics. So we will dive in much deeper into this conversation and the how that happened and what things look like now as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 10:06
All right, Mark, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about how the Knoxville chamber went from being a more of a traditional membership organization, to more of a driver of community economics. So tell us kind of what that evolution looked like, obviously, we know what a kind of a traditional chamber looks like and see them all over the country. But what was that signal that said, if we need to get involved with more important work than just membership and business structures?

Mark Field 10:37
Well, I will tell you, Brandon, three years ago, we got a new CEO, our CEO, retired, and they did a national search. And they landed on Mike Odom, from the Round Rock chamber in Texas who had that previous year had one chamber of the year in their category. And Mike was a bright young chamber professional that was really the guy for the job, no, no question about it. Mike came in and took about six months and went around, met with about 200 stakeholders in our community and, and asked for real candid feedback from them about, you know, what does the chamber do in our community? You know, what should we be doing? What kind of value do we really deliver to you as an organization that invests with us or considers itself a member and you know, where’s Knoxville, in their opinion, in its evolution of growth and success from an economic perspective, and came back and set our senior leadership team down. And I gotta tell you, the notes weren’t pretty. There were a lot of folks that were confused about our purpose. They were confused about exactly what they got from their investment with us. There were a lot of people that said, you know, we think you’re a good organization, you have a good staff, we know you’re doing some good things, but we can’t really put our finger our mind on exactly what it is that drives the economy going forward, and what you do specifically for our business, now, we did have a lot of small businesses that said they enjoyed our networking events and our our education oriented Vance, those kinds of things, but, but the the folks that drive the community, the larger stakeholders, the banks, the health systems, those kinds of folks were, were really confused about our mission, and purpose going forward. So we sat in the room for several hours and talked about that, what were we gonna do, Mike made a statement that I think kind of shocked all of us. And that was that he believed everybody in the Knoxville region deserved an equitable opportunity to be prosperous. And that basically means get a job, have a job available, if you want, why, and it’s really driven around that. Get an education, put your kids through school, have a have an affordable place to live, be able to get from place to place to do what it is you need to do. All those quality of life issues. Now we know that people are all people aren’t going to take advantage of that. But But certainly, it should be available to them. And they may ask the question that really catalyzed to get to your point, what what changed us as an organization? And he said, can anybody tell me what that has to do with membership. And when he said that, you know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years now. And for 16, or 17 of those years, it was all about membership. For me, I was a membership guy, I was all about features and benefits, I was all about the events, all about trying to figure out how to drive more features and benefits to our members. But when he said that it resonated with all of us. And I gotta tell you, it was a real catalystic moment for all of us to realize that if you’re a small business in our community, it really doesn’t matter if you’re a minority business, or are you just have one employee or two employees or whatever else it may be can’t afford and or don’t feel comfortable being a part of a big membership organization like ours, you still deserve to have the support you need to be successful in our community. And so it’s really not about membership. And so we transitioned at that point over time, over about a 18 month period of time, away from being a membership organization, to an investment oriented oriented organization that really deliver service to any business in our community that needs it. So whether it’s a small minority business, or whether it’s a large business, we don’t ask you to invest with us to help you. We say what do you need us to do? What are issues that you’re dealing with? Let us weigh into them, think about them that figure out what we can do about them if it is something we need to be involved in. And then we rely on people in our community and our businesses in our community to invest in that work. And so that’s been the transition And that we’ve made very successfully over the last three years into being more of an economic driver and economic development oriented organization, our community versus a membership organization.

Brandon Burton 15:14
That is a bold step, right? I mean, as you look at the structure of a chamber, so much of the financing is based on your membership, and if you say, let’s step away from membership, and the structure can kind of be similar, going from membership to investors, but just that approach of what’s in it for me as the member, you know, versus you guys going and saying, Let us help you what are the things you need, and then asking them to invest back in the community to be able to help others to be able to find that that equal opportunity to be prosperous,

Mark Field 15:45
I would be lying to you, Brandon, if I didn’t say I was the one person that in this organization that had been here the longest in on the membership side, obviously, that was not really excited about it, to be honest with you, I mean, it, it scared me it it, I was fearful that it might not be received, and that the communication of it would not be received as well as we had hoped it would. But I couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In that fear, in that our community did realize that there were things in our community that needed work that we weren’t focusing on as a chamber. And frankly, no one else in the community was we’re talking about attracting the right kind of talent to our region, keeping the college graduates in our community, affordable housing. Skilled let you know, making sure our high schools and our community colleges were turning out the right kind of skilled labor to meet the needs of the businesses in our community. broadband access. During the pandemic, we found out that there were 6000 households that had children in them in Knoxville, that did not have broad but had no access to broadband access. And so that’s unacceptable, you know, reading and, and lesson planning and doing the coursework they needed to do in the hybrid environment, our school system went to, it’s unacceptable. So those are not things that the Chamber historically were ever involved in. And all of those things are front and center with us.

Brandon Burton 17:23
Right. So I think for a lot of businesses, like you mentioned, they would maybe appreciate the chambers, they are a good organization do good work, couldn’t put a finger on it. But they might think of the chamber as networking, ribbon cuttings, you know, that forward facing work that you see chambers do all the time. So talk to us more about the messaging of how you went from changing from that traditional view of what a chamber is, to more of this more important kind of mission driven work?

Mark Field 17:53
Well, I, you know, I think the thing that that I was most fearful of is, you know, how will that messaging be accepted? And, you know, are we doing it in the right way. And there was no better way during the pandemic, as we were making this transition, then to get on the Zoom, and have conversations with people. And that’s what Mike had done. You know, he went out and met with those two other stakeholders. And so the pandemic offered us this really great opportunity for people to take a few minutes out of their day and get on Zoom. And us have those conversations with them about transitioning away from this event oriented features and benefits oriented chamber, to an organization focused on things that prac practically no one in our community was, was thinking enough about, and to talk with them through it. So not really just push message down to them, which which in the past was our, our more of our model, right sentiment, email sentiment newsletter. But this was more of that one on one. Hey, don’t you think everybody in our community deserves an equitable opportunity to be prosperous? Will you admit it’s hard to find employees where you admit your employees are having trouble finding affordable housing? Will you admit that there are the economics in our community are not growing at the rate it should, we need more high wage talent, we need more entrepreneurial activity. We need more of our bigger businesses doing business with the vendors that are currently in our marketplace. All of those things as we talked about them and had a conversation, you know, resume. And so what I was fearful of is that that that one way communication that we were so accustomed to, would not be effective. But what we found out was is we didn’t have to worry about that because we decided to have conversations with people. And in those conversations, the message resonated.

Brandon Burton 19:58
Right. Yeah, we Those one way conversations often don’t even get opened or read.

Mark Field 20:05
Our open rates are in the 30% range. Right? So 30% of the people are hearing the message on average. So

Brandon Burton 20:12
so as you do have those one on one conversations with with your members or investors now, do you get some of the feedback that they want some of that traditional chamber stuff, still some of the networking some of the events that you guys traditionally involved with? Did you totally cut them out? Are there things that you still maintain?

Mark Field 20:30
Yeah, you know, I think they would like to have both. You know, and we talk a lot about the the, the difficulty of being able to manage a staff that needs to do research work and needs to be boots on the ground on these affordable housing issues, and these tax issues and these talent issues, versus having three or four people inside an organization, the size of hours working on the bands. And so we just have to have just as a business, you know, I’ve had this conversation 1000 times, as a business owner, you have to decide what are we going to focus on. And we just don’t feel comfortable right now doing both. Now, in the future, may we do a little more events than we’re currently doing. And we still do events, they’re just around, the educational type events are around those ecosystem issues. Now, we’re talking about affordable housing, we’re talking about talent attraction, trying to give employees help in regard to how to attract employees, and how to retire. But the traditional things, the networking type events, we just don’t do anymore. We we don’t do any morning coffees, we don’t do any business after hours. We hope that people will network around these educational issues when we bring them together. But yeah, I mean that we had some negative folks that felt like, you know, this is just not what I want, for my best mentor from our membership. And, and we have certainly lost some of those smaller businesses. But what we have done is we have offset that investment, by great measure with those organizations that historically were never members. And I did that in quotes, air quotes, members of the organization in the past against small manufacturing facilities, you know, research and development companies, those kinds of companies don’t have the time and never came to chamber events and therefore weren’t members, those kinds of companies are investing in our organization heavily. And when I say heavily, it’s not unusual. And not Not to brag to be very factual, it’s not unusual for us to go meet with a small manufacturing facility just did that two days ago, who had never been a member of the chamber, and never saw the value of that features and benefits model who gave us $5,000, as an investor, toward the work we’re trying to accomplish, because it affects his business in a great way. So that’s, so I have less $500 members, which is our lowest tier, and I have more members, and I always say hi, and but I would say have more small or less than 50 employed businesses that historically weren’t Chamber members now invested in the organization.

Brandon Burton 23:26
I love that that answers that question I was going to have as far as the funding goes, because he’s step away from that traditional stuff. And a lot of those are moneymakers as non dues revenue generators. So stepping away from, you know, having a bunch of the $500 members to more of those mission focused members that really are investing in the work that you’re doing is is a big part of it. What other I guess from the budget finance side, how else are you guys funding the work that you’re doing? And beyond the membership?

Mark Field 23:59
Again, the majority of that funding is coming now from, you know, from targeted funding. So we, you know, for instance, we have had some folks come to us and say, Look, I’m investing x with you is what I consider my membership dues, my investments, right? And we don’t we call them investments. Now, as I said, not semantically, it’s it, they really are investing in our work not being a member, because, you know, that’s just not our model. But we’ve had a lot of them come and say, you know, my company has a foundation, or are I’m really interested in this certain project that you guys are involved in. And I want to give you some additional funding toward that targeted project. We didn’t do that before. You know, we didn’t we normally you know, we would do sponsorships, right. But but we didn’t have companies come to us and say, Hey, I really feel strongly about this project you’re doing to increase digital literacy in our menorah A community and help them get broadband access and give them access to Chromebooks so that they can find a job and help their kids with their lessons. I really liked that. So I know I’m giving you $5,000 As my investment. But here’s another $5,000 to put into that project. We, that’s a new happening for us, right? It’s it. We didn’t used to have a lot of people come in our office or call us and say, Hey, I’d like to give you more money. Yeah, it just didn’t happen. But because of the mission work, and because of the projects that we’re involved in, that that is happening. And it’s refreshing. I mean, it’s people want to spend the dollars that they’ve made in their business, that have leadership capacity in their organizations, they want to see the community get, and they want to see those economic issues resolved. And so it’s it’s been, it’s been good to see that that kind of, and we still, we still do some signature events, we still do our our annual awards for the best businesses in our community. We call them the pinnacle Business Awards, we still do endeavor, which is our young professional Summit, where we bring them together to understand what’s going on in the community, and how, what what an important role they play. We stood up still do peel and eaten and politic in, which is our shrimp boil political advocacy event. So we still do those big we have for signature events that we did. And we still have sponsorships. But now our sponsorship model is an umbrella sponsorship over one of these ecosystem issues. So we have hired issues that that they can sponsor and they sponsor, anything that happens in that if we release a white paper, their names on it, if we do a an event, their names on it, if we have a speaker, their names on. So we have those five ecosystem umbrella sponsors now. And so that that has, again offset some of that business after hours, morning coffees, education, small education, small business education stuff,

Brandon Burton 27:14
right now. That’s great. So this work that you guys are involved with now, it’s big work, it’s important work that needs to be addressed. And it was being ignored largely. And you guys have stepped in and really taken ownership on that. So that’s a big responsibility. Because if things don’t happen, now, the fingers pointing back to you, right, as an organization. So my question is, what, what sort of touch points are you having with your investors throughout the year so they can see the work you’re involved with? A lot of times these advocacy type topics are kind of hard to see that, you know, movement happening, because it doesn’t happen overnight. Right. It’s a lot of the research and, and things like that, like you had mentioned. So how do you keep your investors apprised as to the progress of the work?

Mark Field 28:02
A couple of ways. And again, this was new for me. So I’d been at the Chamber 1617 years before my came along. And so we have issued six white papers. In the last three years, we had never issued a white paper before, we had never taken a solid stance on an issue in our community. Even politically, we always tried to ride the fence like a good chamber work, right. And so we’ve issued white papers around some of these economic issues, the most recent being transitioning the Knoxville economy into the innovation and digital age, which talks about things like high wage talent, more entrepreneurialism, more, more and better civic furniture, you know, more things for to attract young professionals to our region, and high growth companies research and development, life sciences, biosciences, those kind of things. So anyway, so we issued those white papers. And we, you know, obviously, a lot of people don’t want to read white papers, but so usually when we will, on our touchpoints, with with our investors, whether it’s through our newsletter, or just our emails or whatever else, we usually will mention, have you read? Do you know, maybe a lot of Do you know, kind of stuff? Did you realize that in our region, we only retained in the last 10 years 4% of people in the 25 to 54 H group and Do you realize what kind of effect that has on our economy? So a lot of that kind of, I guess what I would call attention getting statements about Were you aware that these things are happening in the community that again, you know, a lot of people you talk to in our community or so what’s your I would not Knoxville is a great community. We got a great college. We’re actually winning in football. Now, you know what’s wrong when Doc’s? Well, the reality is, is we’re not growing at the pace of some of our peers, and we don’t have the the economics that we should have for a community our size and with the assets we have. So we’re looking at Raleigh and we’re looking at Greenville, South Carolina we’re looking at at Tulsa, we’re looking at places like that, who has had that high wage talent and, and high growth companies located there. So So those to answer your question, I mean, we, we ask provocative questions that, that make them look at some of that information we provide to them. We do a lot more roundtable discussions now than we ever did. It’s where we’re bringing in different parts of the community together to I guess, you could say debate, those issues middle, we have become more of a convener where we shine the bright bot spotlight on an issue and and then bring people in that affect it, and collaborate and partner with them. Brandon, in this new world we live in the hardest part of our jobs, is figuring out, do we lead on an issue? Do we follow on an issue? Do we collaborate? Do we get out of the way? On someone that’s doing it well, and just promote them? That that’s a new role for us. But you know, I think Mick talked about this in the horizon initiative with ACCE, you know, chambers really can and shouldn’t be the conveners. With all the social political fragmentation in communities, certainly we have our share of that. And so we now can become that place. And that organization that says, we should be thinking about this, now we can figure it out together. But the fact of the matter is, this is an issue, and we’ve got to deal with

Brandon Burton 31:56
it. Right. Now that addresses it. Well, and as you talk about how you have those touch points was brought to questions as thought provoking questions, I guess, I see, you can leverage that in several different ways, right through through newsletter, through an email through a video posts through a social media posts, you’re able to, those are great. I hate using the word teaser, but it gets people interested, right, it provokes their interests where they want to learn more, they want to dive in a little deeper. So I appreciate you sharing some of those examples of how you’re helping to stimulate that discussion further. I wanted to ask you, if for those listening, what kind of tip or action item might you have for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level?

Mark Field 32:44
You know, the greatest lesson learned, you know, we were doing well as a chamber financially. Prior to this, this shift. You know, I think our community is better now, for us having made the shift in a big way. But that was all catalyzed around listening to our stakeholders. And and you can’t really survey him. You know, we do surveys, I’m not saying that you don’t survey, but you can’t use like a, what I would call the old traditional memberships are by what do you want? What should we do more? What should we not do any, because I don’t think people can have that candid conversation with you about what the real issues that they’re dealing with are. And people are not going to sit down and take 30 or 45 minutes on a survey and get the entire essay top paragraphs for you. I would just say a really strong tip to any SAS chain, whether you’re making the shift or not, is to go on a listening tour. And sit down and have open candid conversations with their stakeholders. And be willing to accept that feedback and make decisions based on that, as opposed to sitting in the office in the ivory tower, so to speak, and make decisions based on what you think your knowledge base or your experience tell you. I will tell you I couldn’t be I couldn’t have been further wrong. In my perception of what we were delivering to the community and the value of it, then what we heard and call it fall on the sword or whatever else you want to call it. I’m glad that we heard the news we heard because I think our community’s better now, having realized that we probably weren’t as effective in our community as we should.

Brandon Burton 34:52
Yeah, that’s big to admit that to that.

Mark Field 34:57
It was tough. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine A lot of what I call weeping and gnashing of teeth are

several months, right? What do you mean? We’re not doing it? Right? What do you mean? I don’t like it? What do you mean that appreciate it. But again, I mean, you know, your customers, you know, a lot of really great organizations, Apple being probably the lead that we all recognize, listen to their customers and give their customers what they want.

Brandon Burton 35:23
And I’ll say the surveys, you don’t need to scrap them all together. That might be the big one initiates that listening tour, it gives you that focus on who to go listen to first. And maybe it’s those people that aren’t responding to the surveys. Maybe they’re the ones who need to go listen to first.

Mark Field 35:38
Yeah, I think the people that we have been the most surprised by are people that were never engaged with us, that that have given us really good ideas, given us investment, have been more engaged in this new model that we have. That that’s been a really pleasant surprise is to see plant managers and owners of small manufacturing businesses weigh in and become more a part of what we’re trying to

Brandon Burton 36:07
accomplish. Right. Now. That’s great. So I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Mark Field 36:19
Well, you know, I think, again, the horizon initiative that came out several years ago that MC was instrumental in in, you know, getting together, and that Sheri Ann has, has certainly continued to press on all of us that it’s important to look at what the future looks like. I would simply say there are a lot of ways that people can engage with chambers and membership organizations, and receive the kind of benefits that that we have driven to them in the past, whether it’s, again, small business education, or whether it’s networking events, and things like that. Those can be duplicated by other organizations. What can’t be duplicated, is finding out what the real core economic issues in your community are, and doing research and trying to figure out how to convene the people that can fix those that is unique for every community, what’s a problem in Knoxville may not be a problem in Chattanooga. And there, they may intersect. And if they do, then you have collaborative opportunities to learn. But I would just simply say the future for us is chambers, and I’m on the backside of it. Surely, the future for us as chambers is to listen, and to understand our marketplaces better, and affect them in a real way. As opposed to just throwing some features and benefits and services at a and calling that a day.

Brandon Burton 37:49
Yeah, gone are the days to be in a cookie cutter organization where what you’re doing is good for everybody. You need to listen and customize and, and really be willing to pivot you know, if your work isn’t resonating any more with the needs in your community, take a look at where you do need to be involved. Thank you for for that insight. So as we finish up here, Mark, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for those listening who might want to reach out and learn more about how the Knoxville chamber went through this transition, and especially those who may have a little cold feet, it would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.

Mark Field 38:28
Yeah, and I would say you know, for us, it was about a two year process so it wasn’t quick. So I would just encourage you to go to Knoxville chamber.com There’s a lot of information about what we’re doing there. And those white papers exists there. And you can see how we’re trying to drive information and, and resources for our businesses on our website. I certainly am happy to have this conversation in more depth or around specific issues and so you can reach me obviously at mfield@knoxvillechamber.com. And I’m happy to you know, again send you any kind of printed material that we may have or or give you any conversation opportunities that you might need to help clarify and look forward to hearing from folks.

Brandon Burton 39:18
That’s great. And now I’ll get your your email and the Chamber website in our show notes for this episode so people can check that out and reach out and connect with you. But Mark I really appreciate you spending some time with us today here on chamber tap podcast. And in really this transition you guys have made is really something that chambers all over should be looking at. I’m not going to say they shall do it because every community is a little different. But they should be taking a look at what is the the important work you’re involved with and are you still being relevant. And this is a great example of that. So thank you for for sharing that with us today. I really appreciate it.

Mark Field 39:55
Right and I appreciate that appreciate your your podcast. You know we learn from each other That’s the best way for us to learn is to learn. We don’t there’s no sense of us all having to make the same mistakes over and over again and, and certainly I’ve learned from so many great chamber professionals and your podcast is another great way to learn from Greg chamber professionals operation.

Brandon Burton 40:15
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Volunteer Management with Whitney Diver McEvoy

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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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.

Our guest for this episode is Whitney Diver McEvoy. Whitney has served as president and CEO of the Yountville Chamber of Commerce in California since July 2016. Previously, Whitney served as vice president of sponsorships programs and events at the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. She currently serves as chair elect of the WAC II, and on the board of directors for visit Napa Valley. When he graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in political science, she lives in Napa with her husband, Matt, and their two cats, Tiger and Chateau I think those are awesome names. But Whitney, welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast, I’m excited to have you with us today. Love to give you an opportunity 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.

Whitney Diver McEvoy 2:51
Well, thank you, Brandon, so much for having me today. It’s it’s an honor to be here. And I appreciate the opportunity. Something interesting about me, you know, I regularly practice yoga and meditate has been a game changer for me and managing the stress level that comes with being in a leadership role at a Chamber of Commerce. So highly recommend for those folks out there.

Brandon Burton 3:15
Everybody’s shutting down right now yoga and meditation. I would recommend that that’s great. So thank you. So before we just jumped into our conversation today, I wanted to hear a little bit about the young field chamber, just give us some idea of perspective that you’re coming from as we talk about our topic today. So we know about the size of your chamber staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing, and then we’ll we’ll dive into it.

Whitney Diver McEvoy 3:42
Yeah, absolutely. So the local Chamber of Commerce, we’re located in the heart of the Napa Valley. Our town is about 3000 people, which includes the largest and oldest veterans home in the United States. We have about 600 veteran residents there are chambers relatively small, we have a staff of three people full time, including myself. And we serve as both traditional Chamber of Commerce and the destination marketing organization for the town of Yorkville. So both that chamber and DMO side together. Right now we have about 325 business members and we have about 125 Associate members and associate members or our residents who live here in Yountville. It’s an opportunity for them to stay engaged with the work that the Chamber does in the community. It’s pretty popular program I’m in right now we have a budget of around $800,000 for the work

Brandon Burton 4:34
that we do. Very good. And I think for a lot of chambers listening, I think your demographics kind of fit in very well with them. As far as you know, a staff of three, the chamber size budget, I think fits with probably more of the majority of chambers throughout the country. So I find it to be very relevant. And that’s helpful before we get into our discussion today which will focus our thoughts and conversation addition around volunteer management. And that can mean a lot, right? There’s a lot of different volunteers that get involved at the Chamber, from your board to ambassadors to people that just volunteer to add events and different things you have going on. So we’ll dive into all of that and more as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 7:31
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 8:28
All right, Whitney, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about volunteer management today. And I would like to just get an idea from you as far as how you approach managing volunteers, because they’re not paid staff. You know, they’re they’re not in it for all the perks of being the chamber staffer. But how do you go about managing volunteers at your chamber?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 8:54
Yeah, well, like I said, we’re a staff of three. So we rely heavily on volunteers, we run the Yampa Welcome Center. And that’s fully staffed by 34 Different volunteers, and we’re open seven days a week, we couldn’t do that without our volunteers. So we’ve gotten really good at managing them. And it’s really important for our scope of work, you know, I have a number of things that I’d like to share with the group today. But you know, one of the things that I think kind of comes to the top is treating our volunteers like adults, and making sure that we’re empowering them to have the resources they need to be successful. So that’s at the top of my list, but the I have a couple of things that I’d like to share with the group today. So first of all is kind of building meaningful relationships with your volunteers, make sure you know them and they know you be flexible and accommodating. You know not everybody can volunteer at the same way at the same for the same length of time. So really kind of meeting people where they are. Be sensitive to differences. You know, everybody’s different kind of acknowledge that. And then I think another important thing is clearly outlined the purpose of volunteering, when somebody is volunteering with you, as an ambassador, board of directors or helping you operate the Welcome Center, like Brandon said, helping out and event be really clear on what that purpose is and what their role is, you know, as you, you manage them, you want to make sure that they have clear expectations so that they can either meet those expectations or miss on those expectations. But if they don’t know what those expectations are, it’s hard for them to succeed. And then one of my favorite things is communicate early and often. So make sure that you’re, you’re emailing them, you’re speaking to them, they know what’s going on, so that you know they can succeed in their volunteer role. And then a cautionary tale, as I learned very, very early on in my chamber. Career is never meet one on one with an angry volunteer, just avoid that altogether, bring a board member and other staff member into that conversation. So that you’re not meeting with them one on one. But those are kind of my high level keys to success for good volunteer management.

Brandon Burton 11:09
Yes, those are a lot of value packed in those couple minutes. Right there. So as you were given that response, I, I was thinking as far as expectation, because as people volunteer, you had mentioned being flexible, sensitive to differences. So that does come into expectations as to what you expect from the volunteer and what they can expect to actually give as a volunteer. So can you talk to us a little bit more about how you go about managing expectations on both ends from the chamber? And from the volunteer side?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 11:42
Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of grouped this into different buckets. So in terms of kind of expectations, what’s the time commitment look like? What are their duties and responsibilities? As a volunteer? Do you have any qualifications for volunteers that are going to be working with you? And of course, that looks different for the different areas in which people volunteer, as an ambassador or board member or helping set up as an event? And what’s the purpose? How do they fit into the big picture of the work of the chamber? And what does it mean when they’re volunteering with you. And then a job description, this is super critical for your board of directors or your ambassadors, or even those that are volunteering at your welcome center, we have a full packet for our welcome center volunteers that includes job description for them. And then I think kind of the the last piece of maybe the most important piece is, is it a good cultural fit for your organization? You know, do are they a good addition? Do they shake things up? And did they respect staff and other volunteers? So I think that’s super important. I always suggest an interview process, we interview all of our volunteers that come to work with us, doesn’t matter how they’re volunteering with us, but we do an interview process with them, we’re really upfront with them, that we want to make sure that it’s a good fit for them. But also, it’s a good fit for us.

Brandon Burton 13:05
Yeah, so on the interview process, like I can see, you know, a, somebody who maybe gets turned away from a volunteer opportunity and like, wasn’t good enough to volunteer at the chamber. So how does an interview process work? Do you try to find a place for them somewhere? If they’re willing to volunteer? Or what’s your thought process going into that?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 13:27
Yeah, that can be a tricky one. That’s definitely happened with us before. And I think it goes back to those clear expectations of you know, these are the expectations we have for our volunteers. You know, this is what we’re looking for in a volunteer. And if that’s all spelled out ahead of time, and they’re able to review those expectations and those guidelines, then you really have kind of a backup for your decision making. So you can really kind of point to that information and say, you know, this probably isn’t a good fit for you or for us, and that’s okay. You know, I always say clear, is kind if you’re, you know, clear with somebody that’s kinder than being not clear, and then not knowing where you stand. So I think if you’re coming from, you know, an open heart and being, you know, clear with them, you know, hopefully they’ll understand where you’re coming from.

Brandon Burton 14:17
Right. So I was kind of blown away when he said you have 34 volunteers that you’re welcome center that’s open full time. How do you go about attracting or recruiting volunteers, especially in a, an atmosphere like that at a welcome center?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 14:33
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And we’ve been very fortunate to kind of tap into some folks that are very well connected in the community. But I think when you’re starting out from zero, I’ll kind of touch on that, you know, as a place to start, you know, kind of look towards those different groups within your community. You know, quanis club, foundations or associations or even leadership programs that you can tap into folks. And then of course, looking at your general membership for volunteers, we’re very fortunate that we have a lot of retired folks here in town that are looking for volunteer opportunities. And so we’re able to tap into, you know, that group of people. But I think it really starts with kind of looking at those different groups that exist within your community, and then find somebody that can be a champion for you. In terms of your volunteer program, we have several champions within our volunteer corps at the Welcome Center, that are really our key recruiters for recruiting new volunteers. They know what we’re looking for, they understand the roles and responsibilities, so they’re able to almost vet folks before they even come to us to volunteer and, and that’s been a really, really successful strategy for us.

Brandon Burton 15:48
So in what areas besides the Welcome Center, are you utilizing volunteers.

Whitney Diver McEvoy 15:55
So we have a really strong ambassador program. And that’s been really successful for us. We also have what we call our associate member committee. And so again, that’s that associate number membership for the unfilled residents. So those volunteers are kind of like ambassadors, they welcome our new associate members to the chamber, they also help us set up that events, check people in in events, stuff like that. And then those are kind of the key pieces that we have. And then of course, our board of directors as well.

Brandon Burton 16:29
So and I think that’s really smart, having associated members, because that’s kind of a built in pool as you’re with your membership that you can go to for volunteers and, and they’re hopefully catching a better idea of the mission and vision of your chamber, to kind of get behind that and be that champion that you’re talking about.

Whitney Diver McEvoy 16:48
Absolutely. The Associate Member program. When I started here, seven years ago, we had I think, I don’t even know, like 10 people that were a part of that program. And we’ve grown it slowly over the years on purpose, because we want to make sure that, you know, we could handle that growth. And you know, we’re a business organization, but we also are, you know, a community benefit organization as well. But you’re exactly right, Brandon, they have been huge champions for us, we use them for, you know, coming before Town Council and advocating for us, we tap into them regarding public policy issues. It’s a it’s a huge resource for us. And I’m happy to share if anybody wants to get a hold of me more details about that program.

Brandon Burton 17:28
Yeah, I’m sure you’ll have people reach out and want to know more about that. So as far as managing volunteers, it’s one thing to manage staff where you can give, you know, honest feedback, there’s no salary, there’s rewards compensation. You know, as you work with volunteers, how do you go about expressing gratitude appreciation? Job well done? Or at times needing to, you know, redirect course?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 17:57
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. So we do a couple of ways, a couple of things to thank our volunteers, we do our annual holiday party, which anyone that volunteers chamber is included in that. And we actually do it in January now. So we have something to look forward to after the holidays. And that’s been a really big hit moving into January, we still dress up in holiday attire, but it’s just, it’s more fun in January, something to look forward to. So we have that. And then in the summer, we do another volunteer appreciation lunch. That is also we kind of bookend, you know, the year with those two things. And then we also have kind of a yearly survey that we send out to our volunteers for them to give us feedback, and then kind of based on those responses, you know, we’ll, you know, chat with our volunteers, if there’s anything that comes up, but you know, I’m a really big believer in kind of managing in the moment in terms of if there’s a teachable moment or something that like that, that needs to occur, you know, address that stuff right away, and don’t kind of leave that to, you know, an annual review or something like that with your volunteers. And, you know, I think it comes back to treating them like adults and kind of making sure that they have the information that they need to succeed. And then one other thing is that, you know, we see our volunteers all the time, but we do a monthly volunteer meeting. So we’re able to kind of celebrate them and express those, celebrate those wins with them on a monthly basis or address any type of concerns that we have at that meeting as well.

Brandon Burton 19:27
All right. So the thought hit me Are you using volunteers to put on your volunteer appreciation lunch. Just at that, it’s great.

Whitney Diver McEvoy 19:38
I love it. No, we stopped takes care of that one all by ourselves.

Brandon Burton 19:45
So you had mentioned a good key point, early on as you went through some of these points, managing volunteers and that was to never meet one on one with an upset volunteer. So I think that goes along with that kind of course correction being provide some of that feedback that, can you talk to us a little bit more about having that buffer or having another witness there with the conversation to kind of navigate some of those harder conversations?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 20:10
Yeah, I got two good stories for you on that. So my predecessor who was wonderful retired, you know, before I took this position, and she met one on one with an angry volunteer and had to fire this volunteer, and it made the front page of our newspaper, the next few days later, big headline, chamber fires volunteer, and it was all this volunteer story. And, you know, it was her word against, you know, my predecessors word, and it wasn’t good. So cautionary tale, you know, and I, I heard that firsthand from my predecessor on that. So that was always kind of in the back of my mind. And then I had a, you know, when I first started, there was a big cultural shift between the chamber before and what we are today. And I had a couple of volunteers who thought I should be at my desk all the time, and didn’t like that I wasn’t answering the phone every time it rang, because I was at a meeting, etc. So I brought in my board chair, and we had to sit down with a number of folks and kind of explain to them, you know, the business world has changed since you were in it. And, you know, we, you know, business looks different now. But that was a heated conversation. And, you know, I was thankful that my board chair was with me for that conversation. And it allowed us, I think, to get to a better resolution, because that third party was there to kind of neutralize the space. So, you know, sometimes it’s not necessarily about, you know, anything more than just kind of, you know, calming down the situation. So, you know, that’s my, those are my two examples on that, and my horror stories.

Brandon Burton 21:45
Yeah. And I think they provide great reasons as to why to have that that other person or that buffer, mediator, if you will, to kind of work through that. So I appreciate you being willing to share those as well. You had mentioned about building meaningful relationships. So I can see for sure somebody is in the in the trenches and volunteering, it’s easy to have a focus and a desire to build those meaningful relationships. Are you doing some of that before somebody formally, you know, becomes a volunteer to try to help with the recruiting, recruiting and onboarding?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 22:24
Yeah, definitely, sometimes, absolutely. So, you know, if somebody has come to our different events and programs, you know, maybe over the last year, we’ve gotten to know them a little bit. And so we know if there’ll be a good fit. And, you know, we’ll recruit them into volunteering. You know, that’s certainly the case. And I was thinking more of existing volunteers, you know, just, you know, knowing their spouse’s name, you know, did they go on a trip recently, you know, making sure that you have some sort of small connection with them, and they have a small connection with you, right, like, that’s really important, you know, so that they can, you know, be a champion for you and the work that you’re doing, you know, building that kind of mutual respect or mutual trust between, you know, individuals, I think, is really important for folks to understand kind of the work that we do and how they fit into it.

Brandon Burton 23:13
Yeah, I would say that goes a long way, just having that that little bit of a connection, just so the volunteer feels like you get me you understand that you care about me. And that goes a long ways into building that relationship and having them again, be a champion for your organization, and you personally,

Whitney Diver McEvoy 23:31
so, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 23:33
So I always like asking people that I have on the show, for a listener is out there, what tip or action item that you have, I mean, you’ve offered a lot, but for that organizations trying to maybe step up to the next level, what would you suggest for them?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 23:50
I think in terms of volunteer recruitment, I think my number one tip would be to have clear expectations, and kind of what you’re looking for in a volunteer. And that can be different for a board member and Ambassador, welcome center, event, volunteer, whatnot, but have that written down. I think that’s really important so that you can reference that. But also, you can reference that with your volunteer. And I think the second biggest tip is have volunteer job descriptions. And all of this stuff, you know, we have available in the WAC library too. So you can, you know, check that out as well. But I think those would be my top two tips for anybody that’s looking to take their volunteer programs to the next level,

Brandon Burton 24:34
like that. And hopefully everybody took a quick note of that says they can do and dive in deeper thinking about how to involve volunteers have those clear expectations and job descriptions for the volunteers? It’s awesome. So Whitney, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 24:57
Yeah, thank you for this question. I I think it’s really important. And, you know, I think I kind of lean into kind of this this wise adage that has been going around the industry for a little bit of time here. And, and that’s, you know, chambers are really at the intersection of helping businesses succeed and our communities thrive. And if you know, we’re doing the programmatic work of leading on issues that are critical in our community, there will always be a place for Chambers of Commerce. So for example, you know, if homelessness is a large issue in your community, how is your chamber at the table helping to solve this? You know, is tourism, your largest economic driver in your community? How is your chamber supporting your tourist facing businesses? So how is your chamber you know, really helping to promote responsible tourism, that that’s something that’s in your community. So really find what is important in your town, your city, and get yourself a seat at the table, or better get, convene the leaders around the issues and champion a solution for those issues. And I think if we’re doing that there’s always a place for a Chamber of Commerce in our communities.

Brandon Burton 26:07
I love that I love the idea of champion, championing the solution in your community. That’s a huge one right there. Well, I feel like volunteer management is extremely important, especially as a smaller size chamber three staff that you guys have there, it definitely allows you to punch well above your weight belt or your your weight class, I guess, by being able to have that. You know that that crew out there, who’s out there championing your chamber, your mission, your vision, and you’ve shared some incredible tips today. So hopefully, everybody’s taking good notes, or go back and rewind and listen again, and take those notes down. But, Whitney, is there any anything that we missed as far as volunteer management that you want to touch on before we let you go?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 26:58
I don’t think so. I think that’s I think there was a lot in there. So that was, I won’t overload you guys.

Brandon Burton 27:07
No, that’s great. If a listener wanted to reach out and connect with you to learn more about how you’re managing volunteers, they don’t feel chamber what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Whitney Diver McEvoy 27:18
Yeah, you can find us on our website at yountvillechamber.com. Or you can reach out directly to me at whitney@yountville.com. And that’s Y-o-u-n-t-v-i-l-l-e. And my phone number and stuff is on the website, too. And that’s 707-944-8008.

Brandon Burton 27:38
Very good. And I will get those in their show notes for today to says people go back and re listen to those key points he hit on they can go back and jot down or look up in the show notes, your contact information. But when he this is great, you you touched on some very key information and an ability for chambers listening to really, really elevate to the next level by utilizing volunteers at the next level. So thank you for sharing this with us and for being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast.

Whitney Diver McEvoy 28:09
Yeah, Brandon, thank you so much for having me. It’s been truly a pleasure. I really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 28:14
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Chamber Industry Success with Anissa Starnes

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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 Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:01
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:29
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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Our guests for this episode is Anissa Starnes. A lot of you may know Anissa, she is certainly no stranger to the chamber industry. She started her chamber career 32 years ago and has worked for and with Chambers of Commerce since that day. She is passionate about helping to recruit and retain strong talent for the industry and helping chambers strengthen their programs of work and revenue. You may know her as a faculty member of the US Chamber institutes for organization management, where she educates on board governance, revenue generation and all things related to chamber success. And Anissa has been retained for over 25 executive searches and has spoken in front of more than 35,000 people evangelizing on marketing storytelling and the importance of work life harmony.

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

Anissa Starnes 2:42
Great. Thank you, Brandon, I certainly appreciate you having me here with you and your audience today. And it’s a pleasure to be here with you. And as far as something interesting, gosh, the first thing that just popped into my mind is because I was telling the story yesterday, I actually ran a full marathon at 26.2 marathon before I ever ran a 5k. So I went big from the very beginning. I ended up doing four full marathons and then back down to half marathons and then five K’s. But I just decided to set that goal for myself and went big from the beginning. And it’s taught me a lot of life life lessons, as far as setting goals and training for them. And I’ve always said once you run a marathon, it really takes the word can’t out of your vocabulary. So it’s something I’m pretty proud of.

Brandon Burton 3:43
Yeah, so I don’t use the word can’t with it. But I’ve been a runner for probably the better part of 15 years, but I just have no desire to run a full marathon.

Anissa Starnes 3:53
I didn’t either Brandon, I really, I kind of got tricked into it for a charity fundraising. And I never loved it. It was for me all about the go and the metal at the end in the cold beer when you can celebrate but certainly never loved it either.

Brandon Burton 4:12
Yeah, done the half marathons and I’ll do that. But before I’m I just, I have no interest. So yeah, congratulations. I knew

Anissa Starnes 4:21
I did a half first I would never do the full because then you know, you have to double it.

Brandon Burton 4:26
Right. So it’s all about the mindset, right. So that’s right. Well, and so at this point, I usually will ask the guests that I have on to tell us about their chamber size staff budget. Rather than do that. How about you just give us kind of how you got to where you are now in your career and working with chambers. What does that look like? And what’s your involvement been, you know, from 32 years ago when he started to now?

Anissa Starnes 4:51
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ve been on staff at four different chambers all in the Carolinas. I started my career at the Charlotte you chamber where I live now and is my home, stayed there for almost 10 years and then move to chamber just a little south of Charlotte, and then to two other chambers in the Carolinas, took a break during that time and was the CEO of a nonprofit called Girls on the Run International, which is headquartered here in Charlotte, and is a self empowerment program for girls third through eighth grade. But even when I was with Girls on the Run, I was still teaching Institute and still very involved with chambers and went on to work for about eight years at Constant Contact, where I’ve probably met a lot of your listeners, through my work at constant contact in their chamber management program, and loved that. And then Constant Contact was purchased and bought out. So our division went away and went out on my own at that time and became a consultant. And so I’ve been here, there and everywhere, but always around in and around chamber work. And a year ago, a year ago, march 1, actually, I joined why GM total resource campaign, many of your listeners know Jason Eb, who’s the founder and president and CEO of YG. Em, and he and I have been friends for many years and have talked about working together. And we finally jumped off and did it a year ago. And it’s been a lot of fun. A lot of hard work. But it’s working out for us. That is fantastic.

Brandon Burton 6:35
How did you get your start your introduction to the chamber?

Anissa Starnes 6:40
Oh, gosh, everybody has one of those great stories, where we didn’t even know what a chamber was when we got there. But my sister worked for an employment agency and needed somebody to work six weeks a temporary assignment, while some one was on maternity leave. And I did not even know what a chamber was. When I got there, I was the assistant to the assistant to the president and CEO. And my job was to help plan the annual meeting. And when I say help plan, I use that loosely, my job was to get the name tags in the name tag holders basically, and but the person did not come back to work from her leave. And I was offered a job supporting the membership department. And I thought I would stay there for you know, a year or two until I decided what was next in my life. And I’ve never left. So I had a great mentor in Carroll Gray, who was my first chamber CEO, who eventually, you know, saw something in me and sent me to institute and really mentored me into the fact that it could actually be a lucrative career. And I fell in love with it, like so many people that are in the industry today. And so I’ve just, you know, kind of stuck with it.

Brandon Burton 8:00
I love that. And what a happy coincidence or placement or whatever you want to call it. I’m glad that you got placed to work on a temporary assignment. It’s made very well every day. That’s right. So as we wanted to introduce our topic for discussion today, and very loosely, we’re going to be talking about chamber industry success. And that can mean a whole lot of different things. We can take a lot of different angles to that. But just to give an idea. Some of the things that we’ll touch on in our conversation today is recruiting and retaining chamber staff being more career ready, fighting burnout, the importance of having a personal board, avoiding mission drift, and also the importance of finding the funding, if there’s two strategic partnerships to create those opportunities. And we will dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 11:04
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Brandon Burton 11:59
All right. And so we are back from our break. So we have a lot of things that we’ll touch on in this episode. And I imagine it’ll go at a pretty quick tempo. But as we start off, why don’t you touch on some of the the recruiting and retaining? What are some of those things that chamber staff should be looking for in that arena, towards having a successful chamber and just success in the industry?

Anissa Starnes 12:23
Sure, I think first and foremost is attitude. You know, I have been so blessed to have such great mentors my entire career, and more than one have shared with me, you know, look for the attitude, you can train the experience. But chamber work is not something you go to a four year school unnecessarily can learn all of the ins and outs. So looking for that right person that’s going to bring that positive attitude and that willingness to do whatever it takes every day. Because as we all know, when you get to work, no matter what your title is, you never know what’s going to happen to you that day and and what your responsibilities are going to be. So having that positive attitude is just key to success.

Brandon Burton 13:07
Absolutely. I think that is a huge factor to pay attention to as you’re looking to hire somebody but also anybody listening who’s already in their chamber role. Just pay attention to your attitude, pay attention to how you’re responding to members and, and staff and your board and volunteers to attitude. Really. They can go a long ways. absolutely can. Let’s let’s touch on being career ready. What are some things that the Chamber staff can do to be ready for their career, but also to help advance and further developing their career?

Anissa Starnes 13:42
Yeah, I think this, this would be a tip for everyone. Whether you are entry level, just getting started in a position at the Chamber, or whether you’re already a president and CEO, is to keep your resume updated. You know, so many people don’t start doing that until they’re looking for their next row. And it’s so much easier to keep it fresh and updated. Even if it’s not in a format where you can share at least keeping a ongoing list of all of your successes. We don’t often think of ourselves and share our successes so easily because we’re taught to put the volunteers out there. But we have successes as chamber staff so keeping an ongoing list. However you do that whether it’s in a spreadsheet or in a legal padding your desk, whatever works for you, but making sure that you keep up with all of your professional development, what conferences you attend, what courses you take, what sessions you lead, all of your your increase in your membership, your increasing your budget, all of your successes, just keeping a running list of it. That goes a long way in helping to build your resume, but also when you go to apply for your seat CEE through ACC II, the certified chamber exec or either your CAE through ASAE. That sounds like an awful lot of letters. But it helps keep that when you go to apply that you have that all at your fingertips to be able to track and look back at all of the things you’ve done. So that it makes it easier to not only apply for one of those certifications, but also to put it on your resume.

Brandon Burton 15:28
Yeah. So maybe you could touch on the and I love the all those tips about staying organized to have your your resume ready in at your fingertips. As far as the career readiness and advancement. Can you speak to a little bit about when a chamber professional maybe needs to look at making a change, maybe looking at another community to move to because I know you get so vested in one community, you almost feel like you’d be training them right? If you leave and go somewhere else. So help, you know through that mindset and that struggle, that internal battle that somebody may have?

Anissa Starnes 16:03
Well, I certainly and that’s a great question, Brandon, because I’ve certainly seen some people that think they’ve stayed too long, and then think they can’t make a move. And I don’t think that’s ever the case, I think you can make a move, and you know, when you’re ready to start looking at it. But also keeping in mind that you have to keep yourself and your family at the forefront of that, that everybody else is doing that your board’s going to expect you to do it. So keeping in mind with what your goals are, and knowing what your goals are. If you eventually want to lead a Metro Chamber, then you probably need to put some steps in place. You know, if you’re at a much smaller chamber, for instance, I mentioned Carol Gray, my first president CEO, he told me, you know, once I said I want to make this a career, he said you have to start planning to leave. And I didn’t really understand that at a young age. But he helped me see that I was going to have to leave a Metro Chamber, go to a much smaller chamber in order to move up. And, you know, looking at what that meant to me and what type of community I wanted to live in and my family. Just knowing what those goals are. And putting some steps into place is huge towards that. But yeah, I think everybody has to look out for yourself. And sometimes we’re not so good at that we look at look out for others first and making those moves, you kind of your gut will tell you, I’ve always been a good listener of my gut. But it tells you when it’s time to start putting some steps in a place to make that that next move.

Brandon Burton 17:44
And sometimes it’s hard for the servant leaders to think about themselves right to the next step for themselves. But this may even bring us to the next point of fighting burnout. Because I think sometimes that gut feeling is Gee, I’m really getting burned out here. In my current situation, let me see if it’s time to move tend to look on. Is that a factor to bring into it? Or how can they address the burnout issue as a chamber exec or even chamber staff? Because it seems like the clock never turns off? Right? You’re always seem to be on?

Anissa Starnes 18:15
Oh, gosh, we would need a whole week to talk about this. Because I’ve certainly lived it and been through it and have talked about it for the last couple of years. And and it’s it’s something our industry faces for sure. Every day. I wish I could remember who who I can attribute this to that shared this with me years ago, but they said, Never send an email. Never write on social when you’re upset and never quit your job when you’re having a bad day. Because tomorrow’s is likely to be a really good day. And so burnout, we’ve certainly just like every industry, we have lost a lot of good people over the last couple of years. Because since COVID, I would go out on a limb and say that chamber professionals have worked harder these last three years than ever in the history of chambers. They were called on to do things that nobody else before them had ever been called on to do and to take the brunt of, of or the responsibility rather of taking care of the business community at large in a big way. And so even before that, we saw burnout, but we certainly have seen it the last couple of years. And I would push back on the you’re always own. And I do push back on that a lot. I’m

Brandon Burton 19:33
glad to do. Yeah,

Anissa Starnes 19:35
I push back on that with with professionals all the time when I hear them say it’s a 24/7 job 365. You know, chamber folks are doing a critically important job. But it is not the end of the world. It’s not if they take a day off. I’ve heard somebody say you know we’re not curing cancer. I wish we were but we’re not. What we’re doing is very, very important work, but not as important as taking care of ourselves and putting our families first. And it’s still going to be there, whether we take a week off, or two weeks off, take a sabbatical, come back even stronger. I owe my entire career. And then I’m sitting here talking to you today, because I had a president and CEO that that saw was burnout and said, Hey, you’re gonna go take some time off, and I’m gonna pay you for it. But you’re gonna go take a few weeks off and come back stronger. And I thought he had lost his mind. Because I wanted to just keep plugging along. And I was too important to be missed. So I thought, and I really think I would have ended up quitting and going somewhere else. Had he not given me that time. And we’ve just got to take care of ourselves first. And it’s, you know, that, that analogy of putting on your own oxygen mask first, before you put your put it on your community and your members. It’s so true. But yeah, it’s, we can do our job. And chamber professionals can do their job just as effectively, if not more. So, when they take time to take care of themselves first,

Brandon Burton 21:25
right, I actually just got back from a week long cruise, and I chose to not buy the internet package. So I was forcing myself for a week to be totally disconnected. And to be honest, it was a gift to my wife for anniversary, she’s like I see all the distraction, I just need you for a week. So it was fantastic. So I would totally encourage a cruise with no internet to anybody listening. But also you lean on your staff lean on your volunteers lean on your board to help pick up some of those pieces, it doesn’t need to all be on your shoulders. And if you can, properly you know, work with them. And as a leader to work with them, you should be able to take some time off and have the confidence that your team is going to keep things going while you’re away.

Anissa Starnes 22:10
Well, I would I would add to that to Brandon that CEOs are sometimes really good at telling their staff to do it. And then they’re not doing it themselves. And staff, staff watch the leaders. And they emulate what they see. And so I would encourage not only the staff members to do it, but the CEOs themselves because it’s just critical. And we have we have some chambers now in the network that are doing a really good job of it. And COVID has helped fortunately, kind of break away from those old traditional ones. And I’ve seen a lot of chambers. What’s the word I’m looking for actually revised their entire operations manual to give more vacation days as the chambers now some going to unlimited vacation days as long as the metrics are met. So there’s some cool new things happening out there that people have modified their their employee manuals to make sure that that we’re taking care of our teams.

Brandon Burton 23:17
Yeah, I love that so important. Another important thing that I see is the importance of having a personal board of directors for yourself. Talk to us about that. What does that mean, from your perspective? And I have some thoughts as well.

Anissa Starnes 23:31
Well, it’s one of the things I learned it institute that wasn’t in a classroom setting. It happened just over, you know, dinner one night, somebody said, Do you have a personal board? And I said, What does that even mean? Yes, I have a board of directors. And they said no, who are your personal board? Who are the people you trust the most to tell you the truth. Whether you need to look in the mirror, do things differently, who are people who are going to not just tell you what you need to hear, but provide you input based on on what you need to hear not what you want to hear, doesn’t have to be a big group, it can be four or five people. It doesn’t even have to be people in your same industry. But people that you respect that you look up to that you want to emulate, and use them. It doesn’t do you any good to have them if you don’t actually use them whether that doesn’t have to be a monthly meeting, by any means. But people that you can just pick up the phone and call and say, Hey, this is what I’m facing. And I think I know what I need to do. But let me run it by you and be willing to listen to what they have to say. But I’m very, very fortunate that I have a great board of directors personally and I know that they won’t tell me just what I want to hear that they’re going to be honest and open with me and that has really helped guide me throughout my career both personally and professionally.

Brandon Burton 24:59
Yeah, know that is so good, I part of a small we call it a mastermind. So it’s our own little personal board that we can do that, you know, we can have honesty, we bounce ideas off each other say, here’s a problem I’m facing right now and be able to get some ideas where you’re thinking more than just your own thoughts, and be able to get a little more clarity on things. In fact, a while ago, I had Betty kept standing on the on the podcast, and she referred to her board as her kitchen cabinet. I loved it, you know, you’re you’re in your kitchen, oftentimes, and you’re on a zoom call with him or phone call. And it’s just that personal to her in the friendships that develop out of it are just amazing.

Anissa Starnes 25:38
So absolutely.

Brandon Burton 25:41
So let’s, let’s touch a little bit on mission drift, I think that can also play into the burnout side of things. But having that clear focus on mission, what can chambers do to avoid that, that drift from away from their mission?

Anissa Starnes 25:56
Well, you know, this, this might be an unpopular opinion, the way I’m gonna say it, but in some ways, I think COVID was one of the best things to ever happen to the chamber industry, certainly not COVID in the pandemic itself, and how it negatively affected the world. But what it did do is it gave the chamber industry a time to stop doing what we’ve always done, and look at things differently. And I’ve seen a lot of chambers change their program of work since COVID. And have stopped saying yes to everything. And chambers for so long have been the catch all of everything. And then community of, well, we need somebody to do this. Well, let’s give it to the chamber, they can do it. And the chamber has historically said yes to a lot of those things. And what I’ve seen now is chambers are have moved the other way to saying Does that fit our mission? And if the answer is no, then we’re saying no to doing it. We might support it, we might assist with it, but we’re not going to lead it. And so I think it’s critical that chambers really know what their mission is. And stick to that and let that be the the beacon that that leads them just to saying yes, or saying no, when asked to take something on and building the program of work around their mission. And there’s nothing wrong in the world with chambers doing events, and programs that, you know, they create, and that they want to be non dues, revenue generators. But everything chambers do should fit their mission. And I’m starting to see that that a lot more chambers are have been kind of open to that of you know, let’s stop saying yes all the time and making sure it makes sense for the organization.

Brandon Burton 27:58
Right, and look at some of those other C’s right, you can be that convener to bring those ideas and present them to another organization who might be better fitted better suited to take it. And you can still be a champion for that event or that whatever that initiative is, but just not the main driving champion of it. And and still be supportive. So and no doesn’t have to be a no completely, I guess, is what we’re getting at. All right. So now that the important thing that I know everybody’s hanging on to hear about is the funding, you know, creating strategic, strategic parts, I can’t speak, creating strategic sponsorship programs to be able to fund these activities that your chamber does, what are what are some thoughts and maybe some, I don’t know, a brainstorm of different ideas that chamber can explore.

Anissa Starnes 28:46
Well, one thing that that makes my partnership and me going to work with why GM, so much fun is it’s really been refreshing for me to see the change on that side of things. I started my career, as I mentioned in membership, and I was one of the first I think second, Charlotte was the second chamber to ever do a total resource campaign after Atlanta. And I went kicking and screaming to transition from a membership campaign over to a total resource campaign. And total resource campaigns TRCs for short, have changed so much over the years, thankfully, to YG Yum, who really has a strong business model. And I would say this if I was not working with YG and right now it’s why I’ve always been a fan of their work is it’s looking at sponsorships differently. We really don’t even use the word sponsorship. We use business opportunities and advertising opportunities. It’s a way to engage members that might only pay their dues every year, but otherwise never show up. Never engage. They you’d support the chamber by their membership that that’s it, and presenting the opportunities in a way that engages the member and puts them in a position to partner and to sponsor events and programs and initiatives that they really believe in. It just heightens their their awareness and heightens their public the public’s view of their company by partnering with a program initiative or any event that they believe in. So there’s a lot of money being left on the table we see with chambers, because a lot of chambers develop their sponsorships based on what they’ve always done. Like, for instance, I was on a chamber website yesterday, and I saw they had this fantastic event, it was a women’s event. But their sponsorships levels were 1000 for the top 750 502 50. And when I went back and looked at years before their sponsorship levels were the exact same. And we all know we’re paying more every day when we go to the store to the gas pump, whatever. chambers are paying more now for their catering, their signage, their venues. But they haven’t looked at what they’re charging their members to make sure that they’re not only covering their cost, but they’re making the non dues revenue they should be making on the sponsorships. So just taking a look and evaluating your sponsorship levels, making sure that the deliverables match the dollar that you’re charging. And looking at it with a fresh set of eyes is huge. There’s so much opportunity there for chambers to start with a clean, fresh sheet of paper and develop their sponsorship opportunities. And then sell them whether you do it through a trc or whether you’re doing it with a staff driven marketing, execution, whatever it is just evaluating what you’re offering, and making sure that the levels match the deliverables that you’re agreeing to give.

Brandon Burton 32:14
Absolutely. So a lot of people know that I got into chamber industry, you can say through chamber publishing. So I see, you know, I often joke about feeling like a bartender as I would go out and meet with Chamber members about advertising. And there would be a sense of guilt of you know, I joined I joined the chamber two years ago or three years ago, all I ever do is pay my dues because I can’t make it to the luncheons you know, I’m busy, I can’t make it to the after hours. I can’t do these things. But I like the chamber. Like the work they’re involved with. I like their mission, I want to support it. And they see that advertising as a way it’s an avenue to accomplish those things. It’s a way to be supportive of the chamber without being at all the things. So as you’re talking about sponsorship and business opportunities, I’m just a second witness, you can say that there are businesses out there that are ready and willing to give your organization money because they believe in what you’re doing. But they don’t see that clear path right now as to what that best avenue would be. Absolutely. Here’s a lot of opportunity. What is it? This has been great. We’re not done yet, though. So I’d like to ask if you might have a tip or an action item, for chambers that are listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you suggest?

Anissa Starnes 33:37
This is gonna give some listeners heartburn? I’m afraid if I say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway. saying no. Saying no to being asked to serve on yet another committee saying no to taking on a new event that someone in the community thinks is a great idea. Saying no to taking on more work that doesn’t fit your mission. Say no, once you learn how is a lot easier than you think it is. And you really don’t have to give a whole lot of explanation as to why you’re saying no. But just saying no, that the timing is not right for us. Or no, we don’t think that’s in our mission. Or no, I don’t have the bandwidth to do that. Whatever that is. I get asked a lot by new execs, what is the number one thing you think I should do in my first six months as a new executive? My answer is always say no to joining every thing you’re asked to join. Because as a new CEO, or as an existing CEO, really even as as chamber staff. We get asked to participate in everything. Because we know everybody we know everything They think, and they want us on their boards, they want us in Rotary, they want us here, they’re in everywhere. And that first six months, and really even after, if your bandwidth is full, just saying, No, I can’t take that on right now, we’ll go a long way towards helping with the burnout. The first six months, first of all, should be spent getting your own house in order and learning the business of the chamber where you are, if you’re new, if you’re an existing staff member, or CEO, you know, just you want to give 110% on any board you sit on. And you really can’t do that if you’re serving eight to 10 boards, and doing a disservice, I think, to those that you do say yes to if you’re over committing. So saying no, I think is is something hard for most of us to learn. But once we do, it really can help a lot in going a long way towards helping you stay stay focused on on the task at hand.

Brandon Burton 36:08
Yeah. And I like to the simple response. He said, just No, I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Because really, you don’t owe an explanation to everybody. But you know, there’s going to be some expectation on their ends that will Why are you telling me no, and that’s a simple enough without getting into the weeds as to why it doesn’t align with your mission or whatever, just I just don’t have the bandwidth right now, that should be sufficient. So I always like asking everybody, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, you

Anissa Starnes 36:41
guys have seen so much change over the last couple of years that I think is a positive change. ACCE has been instrumental in leading this in the industry, but keeping chambers on track, again, with the mission, and we’ve talked a lot about that today. But I am seeing chambers take on some really audacious programming and initiatives that years ago, we wouldn’t have touched with a 10 foot pole, whether that’s, you know, workforce development, childcare issues, you know, social justice issues, I’m seeing chambers really take on the big stuff. And it is making chambers even more relevant than they’ve always been. And, you know, it’s, it’s easy to show the value to the business community of what a chamber of commerce membership can do for you, you know, years ago, we used to tell everybody, and anybody that’s listening, that’s been here, you know, in the chamber work more than 10 years has certainly probably used this, of, you know, the chamber is just like a gym membership, you have to go, and you have to show up and put on your shoes and get on the treadmill. So you have to be on a committee, you have to show up in an event. And that is not true anymore. We should never say that. chambers are working for the business community every single day, whether you show up or not. So if you do have someone that says I can’t be on a committee, I can’t come to business after hours, I can’t, you know, lead a task force. That’s okay, we’re working just as hard for you every single day. But we have to be able to tell that story of how we’re doing that, we have to wave the flag and say, This is the good stuff we’re working on. This is the success we’ve had. This is where we need your support. Because chambers are more relevant today than ever, I believe. And a lot of great work is being done in communities. And I just it’s an exciting time to be a part of the chamber community because chambers have seen it, they’ve they’ve started making those changes, they’ve stopped doing some of the events, they’ve always done just to make $2,000. They’re putting their resources, both monetary and human resources towards things that are really making an impact. So I just believe it to my soul that that chambers are making more of an impact today than ever,

Brandon Burton 39:14
while they’re doing the work that’s making the impact and the funding is available to drive it to so instead of just writing like the example you gave, of exerting all these resources to get $2,000 In return, you can be involved in much more important and meaningful work. And there’s businesses willing to support that financially to help drive it 100% agree. Yeah. Well, and so this has been great. I really appreciate you joining us here on Chamber Chat Podcast today I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may not be connected with you already. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you.

Anissa Starnes 39:53
Thank you for that opportunity. And if anybody’s listening that knows me you know I love social media. So absolutely Connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. But certainly my email is anissa@ygmtrc.com.

Brandon Burton 40:12
Good deal, we will get that in the show notes, both links to your social media accounts and your email. So anyone listening who’s on the treadmill or out running a marathon right now while they’re listening, they can check the show notes and they get back that and this I really do appreciate you setting aside some time and, and going through all these really powerful topics. I think that all lead to chamber industry success. So thank you for doing that and spending time with us today.

Anissa Starnes 40:40
Thank you, Brandon. And thank you for all you do for the industry. You’ve had some great podcast. I’ve always enjoyed listening and thank you for all you do.

Brandon Burton 40:50
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