Have you had any formal training on how to develop a strong, diverse, effective chamber board? My guess is that most chamber executives who are reading this blog post have not been trained on board development. Many find themselves in the chamber industry by happy accident. What makes a chamber board effective anyway? While I am by no means an expert on board development or management, I will share what I have learned from experienced chamber professionals and non-profit board experts.
When it occurred to me how many chamber leaders find their career in chamber work by accident, it prompted me to do a survey to ask chamber leaders about their experience working with boards before starting with the chamber. The results were interesting. Only 27% of chamber leaders surveyed had worked with a board previous to entering the chamber world. 37% had no experience working with a board at all while another 37% had served on a nonprofit board. I think we could all agree how the perspective changes from serving on a board to being on the other side as the chamber executive.
To start, it may be helpful to understand what an effective board is. I would argue that an effective board is one that will engage in meaningful discussion which leads to action. These outcomes of these actions should support the mission of your organization and further build your community.
Chamber Board Selection
As I recently attended the MAKO (Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma) Chamber Conference, Dave Adkission was one of the speakers. Of the many topics that he covered in his talk, he spent some time talking about the unique qualities of a Chamber leader. He shared how you are often the only person in your city or town who does what you do. You may have colleagues in neighboring towns but you are typically the only Chamber Director/President/CEO in your community.
Dave also talked about how as a Chamber Executive you have a new boss each year, of course referencing your board chair. With this understanding, it is not very common in the workplace to have a say about who your next boss will be. However, in the chamber world, you can be intentional about building your board of directors with people who share a similar vision for your community.
When it comes to board selection, you may be tempted to look to those business leaders who can be a strong source of revenue. You probably want people on your board who are well connected. Oftentimes the people who make up a chamber board are some of the most influential business people in your community. This can lend more credibility and influence to your organization as a result.
On the flip side, by having your board filled with high level business leaders, there is a good chance that their time and resources will be stretched thin. They are probably serving on other boards in your community. They are most likely being asked for money from other organizations. They will likely notice that they are being asked to participate on various boards because they are well connected and have access to money which can change their perception of your organization.
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You want to be very intentional about recruiting for board service as you build relationships with other leaders in your community. Be mindful of what mindsets and skillsets are missing or underrepresented on your current board. Have discussions with some of these leaders who you think would be a good addition to your board to plant the seed or idea in their mind about the value or perspective they can provide.
Developing Board Diversity
In the past, at least in the United States, most chamber boards were composed of older, white males. As demographics change, as social justice and awareness are more front of mind, it is important that chamber boards reflect the makeup of the community which they serve.
With chambers having a sharper focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are starting to see more of this shift in board seats. As there are more women owned businesses, having the voice and perspective of women on your board is important. As you develop your chamber board, notice if your community tends to have a younger demographic, you may want to recruit board members who represent your younger business owners. Your community may have a larger makeup of hispanic, African-American, Asian, or Pacific Islanders. This should be reflected on your board.
As a chamber leader, you are expected to know your community and to have a pulse on what is important to them. Should you focus on having more veterans on your board or people from the LGBTQ+ community? Although the development of your chamber board should be very intentional, you should be careful not to recruit board members simply because the check a box. Each board member should bring specific skillsets to make your board whole.
It is important as you recruit new board members to work towards filling seats with the people who can help move your community forward and not just who has the money and influence. Ultimately your chamber should carry the influence in your community that you are looking for. You should be leading the way in showing what is important to building a stronger community and why each segment of your population is vital to this vision.
A while back, I had Matt Morrow on the Chamber Chat Podcast. Matt is the President and CEO of the Springfield Area Chamber in Missouri. Matt talked about the lessons he learned from a book titled “The Wisdom of Crowds”. The main takeaway message was that more often than not, a diverse crowd of people can, together, come up with the most correct answer to problems than any one person or any one demographic can on their own. This is because the diversity brings different perspectives which help point to the most correct answers.
Setting Clear Expectations
Communication and expectations are key to a functional board. It may be tempting to complain about an underperforming board member. You might get frustrated when the ball gets dropped on certain action items that come out of a board meeting. Are certain members always late to your board meetings or not engaged? These board members may not clearly understand what is expected of them and how important their role really is.
From their perspective, they may be complaining to themselves, a spouse, another board member or a co-worker about how unorganized and unproductive the chamber board meetings are. They may not have clearly expressed what their expectations were from you as a chamber leader.
Either way, if the dysfunction is coming from the chamber side or from the board side, this will quickly result in a disengaged board. Have open and honest communication about expectations. Be intentional with the onboarding process for new board members so they clearly understand the importance of their role. While in your board meetings, try to spend the bulk of your time in discussion about things that really matter for your community. You will likely have some of the most influential leaders of your community in the same room so don’t waste their time. Find out how your board members prefer their communications. Do they want detailed drafts for each meeting or a simple outline? By defining expectations up front will save you a lot of frustration later.
Along with clear expectations, always be mindful of your board member’s time. These are often busy people who live by a schedule. Be as concise, yet thorough with communications and meetings to keep up the level of engagement. As soon as you notice any disengagement, have an open conversation to assess the load your board member is carrying and encourage adjustments with assignments as needed.
Board Unity
It is not abnormal to have very strong personalities among a group of business and community leaders. This is not a bad thing at all. Oftentimes, these strong personalities are what land these individuals in the positions of influence where they currently reside. However, some personalities can be like oil and water as they repel each other.
Be intentional about creating opportunities for board members to break down barriers and to get past personalities. This could be done by providing opportunities for these individuals to serve directly with each other and to learn from each other’s experiences and skillset. This is often facilitated through board retreats and training.
If you can build buffer time around your board meetings to allow for your board members to socialize for a few minutes before or after board meetings, you will see more ideas generated once they are outside of the formal setting of a meeting. A good signal of board unity is when you see several board members linger after a meeting to continue discussion ideas or even just getting to know each other better.
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Continue Your Chamber Board Development
As I stated at the beginning of this post, I am not an expert on nonprofit or chamber board development. However, I have learned a lot as I have worked with chambers over the past 15+ years and as I have been interviewing chamber leaders on Chamber Chat Podcast for over 3 years now.
One of the best people I have interviewed on the podcast about this topic is Hardy Smith, author of “Stop the Nonprofit Board Blame Game”. I would encourage every chamber executive to read this book. You will learn key insights about managing your board that you have never thought of.
I would also encourage you to continue learning from others, whether that is through conferences, regional chamber meetings, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, or by reaching out to others directly who you admire and feel like you can learn from.
Chamber service and board development is a continual iteration as our tools become more refined and as the world continues to evolve.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Heath Taylor. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.
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.
Voiceover Talent 0:14 And now your host he believes our ability to make choices are one of our greatest gifts. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:21 Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where it is my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Brandon Burton 1:05
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is he Taylor Heath is the president and CEO of the Dublin-Laurens County Chamber of Commerce. Heath is a native of Augusta, Georgia. He served as the Vice President of Business and Community Development at the Aiken Chamber of Commerce and as a vice president at the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce in Evans, Georgia. He’s a graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce Institute through the University of Georgia and currently serves on the Board of Regents for the US Institute of organizational management, the Georgia Chamber Federation Advisory Council, the Georgia rural prosperity Council, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce executives board, Middle Georgia Easter Seals, board of directors and the Robins Regional Museum of aviation board of directors. Heath has served as community lay director for the Georgia Lena walk to Emmaus and currently serves as pastor of go Baptist Church. Heath is married to Tammy and has three children, Trent Camden and Kayla. Heath, I’m excited to have you with me 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 you find interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Heath Taylor 3:01 Well, thank you, Brandon. Appreciate the opportunity today. And I want to say thank you to all the folks out there that are in chamber world that understand what we do, how we do and why we do and really appreciate your efforts and the impact that you’re making in your communities. I don’t know how interesting. It may be two people but I get asked this a lot as president CEO at the chamber. Yes, this is a full time job. And I do this much more than 40 hours a week. And some people ask Well, are you a bi vocational pastor, I’m also a full time pastor. And so sometimes that involves 40 plus hours a week, it just depends on what’s going on. But what I really appreciate and enjoy the two jobs that I have complement one another. And I was telling someone this morning even I confuse people sometimes in the morning because I’m getting my coffee at a local restaurant here and they say What are you so happy about? And I tell them because I’m going to work. And I’m one of those people. I don’t have to go to work, I get to go to work. And I think that’s important for us, though. I love what we do.
Brandon Burton 4:07 Yeah. Now that mindset makes all the difference for sure of getting to go to work. But I found it interesting to your pastor as well, because you like he said the two different the two jobs do complement each other. And I don’t know maybe you’ll touch on that in our discussion today. Kind of some of that crossover. But why don’t you take a moment to tell us a little bit about your chamber, kind of the size budget staff just to kind of set the table for our discussion.
About the Dublin-Laurens County Chamber
Heath Taylor 4:35 Okay, fantastic. And I think it’s important to start but I’ve been here six years. When I came to Dublin Laurens County. We’re a rural community in the middle of Georgia. And this chamber had just over 400 members and an annual budget of almost $300,000 And as in a lot of rural communities, there was a lot of mentality. Some people call it cave mentality the citizens against her everything. But but a lot of people that have been here a long way a long time, and they’re used to doing things a particular way. So when I first came and we started talking about events and programs and sponsorships, Ambassador programs and different things, there was a lot of pushback. And I even had a few of my board members I remember laughed, actually laughed out loud in a board meeting, even at the mention of a $5,000 sponsor for our program. And they said, You know, I don’t know about where you come from, and Columbia County or Augusta. But we don’t do that here. So which I had to reply, we will start or I won’t be here very long. But to their credit, they’ve gotten behind our chamber supported our chamber today. We’re close to 600 members, and we’re closer to 650,000 on our annual budget, so we’ve doubled our annual budget, and grown about 150. Net, and our membership. So it’s been a great community to work with. And I believe that support builds support, momentum builds momentum. And more importantly, I think we’re starting to even work more regionally, because that’s so important as well for rural communities, especially in the state of Georgia. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 6:14 I think we could go down a whole rabbit hole of regional cooperation with with other chambers, especially when it comes to things like economic development and advocacy and things like that. But we’ll focus our discussion, our topic for discussion today, around Ambassador programs and in really understanding where your chamber fits in in your community, kind of what your role is. And we’ll get into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Alright, Heath, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break we’re we’ll be talking about Ambassador programs, and it’s my understanding you have kind of a robust, I’ll say, Ambassador Program. So I’d love to have you share with us how you approach working with ambassadors, onboarding ambassadors, just your overall program and how you engage with them.
Topic-Ambassador Programs
Heath Taylor 9:21 So probably one of the programs I’m most proud of and most near and dear to my heart is the ambassador program here at the double Marins chamber. So we do have a program sponsor, and I mentioned that to a lot of folks in chambers because a lot of folks don’t have a sponsor. We have a really really great sponsor here and it just so happens to be bass physical therapy, which if you break down the word ambassador, right in the middle of it is bass so so that was a God thing for us here. To have bass physical therapy come on board with us. Something else that kind of shocked people Brandon when I first met you To them, because all of our ambassadors do pay $150 a year to participate in our program, I would tell you, I’ve not had one ambassador to date complaining about the $150, when they see the value of the program, this program was a big win for us, as well as the folks that participate. So they are interviewed anyone that’s in our chamber ambassador program, if I don’t know you personally, you have to come in just like you would for a job interview. And I got to know why you would want to be in this program, what you can bring to this program, if your supervisor or your owner is allowing you to participate, and we look for a particular type of person to fit into this program. Once they are accepted into the program, we have a full day of training that you must attend, in addition to be a part of the program, and that’s a that’s a day of training. It’s kind of chamber one to one. But it’s everything that we are in everything that we are not. So our ambassadors can answer the question, you know, when people say what you get out of it, what you put into it, but they get the right answer, you know, kind of a trick question asked him, sometimes they’ll be a membership. A lot of times they start off telling you about the programs and events, and I’m backing them up and stop them right there. Who are you talking to, you always have to know who you’re talking to. Because some things that we do are important to some people that are not important to others. So I would say pretty rigorous training for our ambassadors. And then they represent us in the community, we break up our entire membership among our ambassadors. So they get just over 20 contacts the piece. And again, they’re trained and coached on how to call how to email and how to make personal visits to those businesses. They meet together monthly for lunch. We have the mayor come in city council, we’ve had Arthur’s books, police chief different people come in to share information with them that other folks in the community or even in the businesses are not privy to. So they get firsthand knowledge on a lot of things there. They meet together monthly, have lunch together and build their network. Additionally, you know, they build networks and friendships and relationships with the people that are their personal contacts. That’s a kind of a, a real quick overview of of that program.
Brandon Burton 12:28 Yeah. So I think you’ve hit on several important highlights. So do you have like an open enrollment period for chamber ambassadors? Or is it as people are interested? How do you approach that?
Heath Taylor 12:42 So November is usually when we send out applications for the upcoming year. Training always takes place the last week of January. And because you are an ambassador, this year does not guarantee you a position on the team next year. Through doing that we’ve actually really created a lot of demand interest in the program. Whether it be good or bad, I do tell people and I want people to know we have way more applications than we have positions on our ambassador team. So it is a select elite group of folks. And it’s two words we’d like they used to be an ambassador here his privilege and responsibility. But I’m glad to know that people are applying and they’re interested, sometimes Brandon is just not a good fit. I’m honored to say, you know, we’ve had presidency, who at the hospital, inquire about the ambassador program and being on that team. And pets just not a good fit for the CEO in the hospital. Not that it’s beneath them. But this person’s busy. And they don’t have time to do the meetings and the networking and the ribbon cuttings and all the different things that we require of our ambassadors, right.
Brandon Burton 13:51 I think the similar thing could be said about a board position as well, trying to recruit for a board, it kind of falls in the same category, it’s got to be a good fit. absolutely make sure that the time is there and expectations are well known, which I wanted to touch on the expectations like through the interview process and through the required training that you provide. It really does help to set those expectations of this is what we expect of you to do this is what an ambassador role is and giving them those resources to go do it. I’m curious, how did this start? Like how did you come up with the ambassador program? And how would a chamber listening? Who thinks man he has really got it going on there? Like how would I get started?
Heath Taylor 14:38 Yeah, I think one of the most important things a couple of things go into that Brandon and first and foremost is when we have any networking event, whether it be first Friday of in a business after hours of women in business, a golf event, whatever it is, I’m looking for those people that walk up to people and introduce themselves, always willing to smile, shake a hand They’re friendly, and they’re outgoing. You know, and then the the people that that’s your job to be out in the community to build your network and build your alliances and friendships and things, those are the people that make a good fit for this program. So, pretty strategic in who I will tell you a majority 75% of the folks that are in my program, I stopped them out personally. Okay, the other 25% are probably people that applied that, that I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know over a period of time with that your ambassador chair is of utmost importance. And we are blessed here, the guy that’s our ambassador chair, he does say in the chamber of drinks, the Kool Aid, he believes 100% and the Chamber mission and the purpose. He’s our cheerleader, he keeps the the men and women involved. He has contest for them constantly. Gift Certificates at lunch for different things that he has them. So we have a fun group. It’s a personable, very personable group. We pray together, we laugh together, we’ve cried together, we’ve lost members of our ambassador team, for different reasons over the years. But our ambassadors are there for one another. It’s almost much more than a team. It’s it’s a extension of family.
Brandon Burton 16:22 Yeah, that that is great. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the spot the program sponsor for the Yeah. Yeah,
Heath Taylor 16:34 right. And people ask me because we have a $5,000 sponsor here, which is a lot more than I thought originally that we would have. And if I can tell you real quick how that happened. I don’t mind sharing, and they’re, they’re still happy and fun with this. But when I talked about our ambassador program, to our sponsor, I mentioned all of the things that we do as a team. And then I mentioned to them, you know, when we do our training, your company name, your logo, everything is on the notebook, we actually have notebooks for training for our ambassadors. You will also have a person on this team, which worked out well again with bass because my chair actually works for bass physical therapy, okay. We do quarterly awards, and we do those that are our monthly breakfast. So best physical therapy comes up and introduces that person and gives that award. On our website. If you go to the website, anything you read with ambassadors best physical therapy has their name and their logo. And probably the biggest thing is our annual award for Ambassador of the year is presented at the Chamber’s annual dinner. And of course, the folks from physical therapy come on stage and present that award as well. Anytime we have ribbon cuttings, we always recognize and thank our sponsor, and give them a minute to welcome the business and speak at the ribbon cuttings as well. So that’s part of that sponsorship. $5,000 How do we get $5,000? That’s what people asked me. My goal was 2500. But when I was in, I love to talk about negotiating. And maybe that’s another story another day. Yeah. But I like to sit down and ask my program sponsors. What what, what does this look like to you? What do you want out of this? Here’s what I’m offering. But what do you need? And we work together until I get them to ask me. Well, how much is how much do you want for this? To which I always reply, I would say Brandon, what’s it worth it worth to? Yeah, well, when Mr. Bass said, I don’t know, $5,000. I’m overwhelmed inside and bumbling, but how to keep a straight face and stay calm. And that’s not exactly the number I had in mind. Let me ask you this, if you’re committed to two years, I’ll do 5000. And so they said absolutely put us down. That was six years ago. They’ve stayed with us, they see the value in the program. And it’s awesome. Very fortunate there. Now some people do ask sometimes what if he would have said 2000? And that’s another story, like I said, on another day to negotiate.
Brandon Burton 19:05 Yeah. And even that even that example you shared, that’s a good example of negotiating, showing the value. Yeah, and it’s all having the discussion, right, and seeing what the value is what they need from it, what’s it worth to them, right? And make sure that things align, make sure those expectations are met.
Heath Taylor 19:25 I do I think too many times in the chamber world, people come in with their sheet are their flyer and they’re giving you here’s what you get and the sponsorship. When you know there’s two or three things on that list. It’s not even important to the person that you’re trying to build this sponsorship with. So I think we need to get their input, get their buying and you know, then yeah, they’ll pay for it.
Brandon Burton 19:48 Yeah, that’s good advice right there. So I’m wondering for a chamber who has a typical ambassador program, taking whatever volunteers will will sign up and show up but ribbon cuttings or whatever it may be, whatever their program looks like, how would you suggest if they wanted to go more this direction, having paid Ambassador ambassadors pay into the program, having a program sponsor, just changing the whole outlook of the program and really making it more of a program? Maybe your suggestion, yeah,
Heath Taylor 20:22 I’ve been all over the southeast, I would dare say almost 100 chambers that I’ve worked with own ambassador programs. And let me be clear to say the number one reason some of them fail, is they don’t charge for the program. And when you charge even $150, and you can explain that by saying we eat a catered lunch every month, and that’s where your money goes, even though I get a lot of lunches sponsored. That’s buying in, that has some skin in the game, you know, a volunteer program a lot of times and there’s no charge, well, they show up if they won’t do and they don’t. Back to what you mentioned earlier, a lot of them have people, Hey, whoever we can get to show up whenever we can get him to show up, we’ll take anybody we can get. Yeah, I don’t care if you only have three ambassadors have the three best ambassadors that believe in what you’re doing and how you’re doing and you will grow your program. But it’s be clear that it’s not for any and everybody to participate, train your ambassadors, equip them and make it to where, like I said, $450, this is a steal the training that you’re getting the networking, the connections that you’re making, the people that you have access to. So it’s all in building the program, and then presenting it to the folks that you want to be in the program.
Brandon Burton 21:40 And for those listening, figure out your own price point, it doesn’t have to be that 5200 300 could be 50, you know, just have some skin in the game is the point. And
Heath Taylor 21:49 the same with the sponsorship, whether it’s a $500 sponsorship, but that whatever it is, but you can actually turn so our our ambassador program here generates about $3,500 a year for us in revenue, after everything’s paid for. And we spend a lot of money on our ambassadors, and we invest in our ambassadors. We do bowling parties with them and numerous things to thank them and appreciate them for all the hard work that they’re doing. But at the end of the day, that’s a revenue generator.
Brandon Burton 22:17 That’s right. So talk to me about, you’d mentioned each ambassador has about 20 businesses that they’re kind of assigned to how does how do you figure out which businesses are assigned to who what kind of methodology goes into that,
Heath Taylor 22:31 you gotta love this. So at the beginning of every year, even if you’ve been an ambassador for five years, you get new context, okay. And so we start with the letter A, and those businesses, and if I’ve got, you know, 35 Ambassadors, then I put out 35 sheets of paper, and then I go back and stack on top up. So they are randomly assigned. Now, if you have somebody that you just are adamant, you want to have that person and keep that person, we work with you to do that. The other thing we allow is on that first day of training, it’s almost like kids trading bubblegum cards, but if there’s a company that you’ve really been trying to get your foot in the door, and you just haven’t been able to, and you want that company, if you can get the person that has that company to trade a company with you, we allow that trading to take place. Then as the year goes on, you know, 10 or 12 new members a month, we’ve got a great membership salesperson here, and we haven’t 10 or 12, sometimes 14 new members per month at the monthly luncheon was this is a real strategic process. So I’ve got 14 new member packets here. When I call out a new business, the first hand that goes up, that’s who gets that business. Okay. That’s how they’re assigned after the initial startup of
Brandon Burton 23:49 the program. Yeah. So each year, though, are their contacts changed up? Is that what I understood?
Heath Taylor 23:54 Each year they get a new list of contacts, because you’ve had 12 months in most cases to build a relationship, right? If you did, and they understand that a 20 to 23 contacts, you’re not gonna build 23 brand new friendships, relationships, partnerships, but if you get six or eight, is that not worth 150 bucks? Yeah. And most of the time, they’re probably average that six or eight, and then next year, you get a new book of business, and you got new opportunities to meet more people. Yeah, I love it. And, and probably about a quarter turnover. I like to have about 25% turnover in the program every year to have a few new people in and give some folks a chance to that might not have had a chance prior.
Brandon Burton 24:38 Yeah. So how do you manage that as you bring in new ones and let them out of the program? Is it I mean, they’re they’re doing the interview process application process each year.
Heath Taylor 24:51 And you know, at the beginning of the year in training, every ambassador is told, you know, prior service doesn’t guarantee you a spot on the team next year. So in November, you’re going to get one of two emails from me. One email says thank you for your service in the ambassador program, and we wish you well in your future endeavors. And one says We sure hope you’re planning to reapply for the program next year. Okay, and if you get an email saying we wish you well, if you do have any discrepancies, or you think you should have come back and give me a call, we’ll have a discussion about it.
Brandon Burton 25:26 Okay. I like that. It’s a good approach. So how about trying to figure out the role of your chamber in your community? What are your thoughts on that? And how does that? How do you How does the chamber go about finding where they fit?
Heath Taylor 25:44 I think Brandon, you mentioned in my bio, so I was in Aiken with 1000 members on a million dollar budget, Columbia County, same thing. 1000 members, million dollar budget, both five star credit chambers. And then I come to a little small chamber in Dublin, Georgia. You really have to look around in your community and find yourself and find out what does my community need that I can help solve? To me, that’s what we’re here for the Chamber’s your problem solver in the community, and we want people to come to us for solutions. But where can we really make an impact? And that’s as a board. I think we have to work together in every community. You know, I work with a lot of communities around me that are just poverty stricken communities, and they look at what we’re doing here. And they say, Wow, we see what you’re doing. We see what Dublin’s doing, and how do we do that. And I tell them, Don’t do Dublin, do your community and be the best chamber, you can be for your community what find a need or two, that you can address that you can make some progress with that you can toot your horn and say, Look what we did, and then grow that momentum. From there. That didn’t always happen. I think people reach for the stars sometimes too early. Yeah. You know, find some wins, get some wins for your chamber. Some things that you can say, hey, look what we did together, and then you can grow that momentum and grow your influence in your community.
Brandon Burton 27:12 I love that. Fact. That’s one of the next questions I was going to ask you as far as like a tip or an action item for a chamber to sing to help take them up to the next level. Do you have any other suggestions that you’d put out there to?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Heath Taylor 27:28 Well, I do look at your larger chambers. And I’m fortunate because I worked at two of those chambers. And again, they were five store credit and chambers. So I’ve brought a lot of the things that we did in those chambers to this community. But as you mentioned earlier, I’ve had to tweak some of those things. You know, I had $8,000 table sponsors at my annual dinner when I was in Aiken. Here, I have $2,500 table sponsors. You know, some of the programs are the same program, but they get a new twist or a new look. But But look at greatness. And look at what greatness looks like so that you can become great. Sometimes we don’t know when a small community what greatness looks like, because we haven’t seen it. So that would be my advice, look at some successful chambers, some of your successful peers and find out what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. And then learn how you can adapt that to make it be successful in your community.
Brandon Burton 28:24 I love it to look at greatness, it makes me think of you know, when you have a limiting beliefs, you know, we can’t get a, you know, $5,000 Ambassador sponsor, you know, that could be a limiting belief, are you sure, but if you look to greatness, you know, for people listening, look to Heath and be like, Hey, you did it there in Dublin, right? I can’t I scale it for the size chamber, I have bigger or smaller, and to see something, you know, relative?
Heath Taylor 28:51 Yeah, great. I have to throw a scripture in their brain. And I do believe you know, Philippians 413, all things are possible. And we do work here. And we pray weekly, in our staff meetings here. You know, we want our work to be pleasing to the Lord. That’s important to us.
Brandon Burton 29:07 That’s great. So I like asking everybody this question that I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Heath Taylor 29:18 I think that back to what we talked about a few minutes ago, you know, Chambers of Commerce should never embrace change, they should lead change. And I think we better realize how we need to do that in our communities. I love at the Chamber Institute where I get to serve on the Board of Regents one of my favorite courses there is called innovate or not. And that’s what I believe for our chambers. We better be change agents and innovative and leading our communities or we’re going to be irrelevant. And again, whatever that is to your particular community, whatever that change in that innovation needs to look like.
Brandon Burton 29:57 Yeah, and I know whenever we think Innovation, I’ve, I always get a little bit hesitant just because you know, it’s easy to chase those shiny objects, you know, it’s easy to chase the the next, you know, attractive thing. And it may not be aligned with your mission and may not be aligned with the direction that your chamber really should be going. So as you look to lead change, make sure it’s something that your chamber should be leading that change for, so that it aligns well.
Heath Taylor 30:30 And just a pet peeve for me, Brandon, the fact that throw it in there. But if you’re a chamber of commerce, listening or watching this that don’t do fundraisers, execute your program of work, everything that you do in your chamber should fall into your program of work. You’re not doing a fundraiser, you’re executing a program of work. And yes, we have to have money to operate just like any other business does. And we need to run our chamber that way.
Brandon Burton 30:59 Another great point. Yeah, I think of, you know, my daughter right now, playing middle school sports and basketball, volleyball. Every year, they’re tasked with a fundraiser, and they’re supposed to get 20 email addresses and basically spam these email addresses for any amount of donation. And that’s all it is. It’s a fundraiser, you’re asking for donations. And that really, if a chamber is just going after fundraisers, and donations, it really devalues what the chamber has to offer. So keeping it within your body of work is such an important point.
Heath Taylor 31:35 Absolutely, should fit with our program of work everything that we do.
Brandon Burton 31:39 That’s right. Well, he I appreciate you being with us today, you’ve shared a ton of value and and I think some good stuff for people to kind of mull over and see what they might need to change at their chamber, how they might be able to apply and scale some of these things we’ve talked about. But if a listener wanted to reach out and connect with you about your ambassador program, or anything else you’ve touched on, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect,
Connect with Heath Taylor
Heath Taylor 32:06 I’ll give you an email and a phone number, if that’s okay to do. Sure. 706-414-0014. And my email is htaylor@dublin-georgia.com. And if anybody is indifferent to anything I’ve talked about today, or, you know, has something different or better, I would love to talk with them to better ourselves and what we do here. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 32:43 and I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode170. But again, this has been a great discussion, and I think one that has probably opened the eyes of some chambers listening as new opportunities. So thanks again for for being with us and sharing this insight.
Heath Taylor 33:05 Thank you for the opportunity.
Brandon Burton 33:08 If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Betty Capestany. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.
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.
Voiceover Talent 0:14 And now, your host. He recently started blogging about chamber stuff on regular basis. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:21 Hello, Chamber Champions. Thank you for joining us for Chamber Chat Podcast. I am your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.
Brandon Burton 1:02
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Betty Capestany. Betty serves as the Director of Economic Development for Pierce County. Her department focuses on retaining growing and bringing new jobs to Pierce County. Last year they delivered $46.5 million of cares funding to small businesses in Pierce County. Currently she’s overseeing $40 million dollars of American rescue plan economic stabilization and recovery funds to help Pierce County businesses receive resources during the pandemic. One of those programs includes a Pierce County accelerator. The accelerator is an entrepreneurial program that is focused on bipoc startups and micro businesses that his career has focused on building communities with the knowledge that successful supported businesses help the community thrive. But his work has been dedicated to having a deep understanding of how each community functions, its synergies, its quirks, its strengths and leveraging those to the advantage of the businesses she serves. That he thrives on pushing the envelope being the first to try out a new technology brings her joy and has her quick thinking ways it could be applied to the advancement of business. Prior to coming to Pierce County that is Betty served as CEO of the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce for 17 years and prior to that, the city of Renton economic development director, Brendan Chamber of Commerce CEO and Assistant Director for the Kent Chamber of Commerce, Betty and her husband, George have a blended family of four boys to lovable labs and to BlackBerry eating coats. For fun. Betty runs marathons. She’s done all the world majors except Tokyo, she loves to travel, read entertain family and friends. Her civic involvement includes 30 plus years as Rotarian and Paul Harris fellow, she serves on the executive committee for Washington Economic Development Association. And as a past chair of ACC.
Betty, I’m excited to have you with me today on chamber tap podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are listening and share something else interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better.
Betty Capestany 3:54 Well, hello to all my favorite people across the country. The chamber industry is amazing and has amazing leaders. And it really is the heart and soul. And I’m just delighted to be able to share some conversations and I look forward to seeing everyone in person, hopefully sometime soon, like maybe an ACC II conference. So maybe something exciting about me. We all stumbled into the chamber world in unique ways. And my unique way was I was filling out a college application. And I didn’t know what to say, I was gonna do. I was trying to get a scholarship. And my grandmother said, Put down that you want to work for a chamber of commerce, because you love people and I don’t want you to be a social worker because it’s going to kill you and your grandpa’s a member of a chamber so just put it down. Well, I put it down, didn’t think anything about it. And fast forwarded after graduation. I was working at a CPA office and the chairman of the chamber happened to come by and said we’re looking for someone for the Chamber of Commerce and then that’s kind of the rest of the story. So it’s kind of a unique way to get there. But I truly love the industry.
About Pierce County Economic Development
Brandon Burton 5:07 Wow, that is a neat story. I’m sure there’s more details to it that you could expand on. But that’s that is awesome. So I shared some of your background in the chamber industry as I went through your bio, but you’re now working in economic development with Pierce County. But take a moment to maybe expand a little bit on your background. What I mean by that, is that the chambers he served with your current situation with economic development, what is the scope, and maybe like the size of the chambers he worked with, just to kind of give everybody perspective as we get into our discussion?
Betty Capestany 5:45 Sure, I’ve worked with chambers of all different sizes, and I’ve always figured it doesn’t really matter how large or small you are. But if you figure out from your current state, how do you make it better. So obviously, the written chamber was a lot smaller. It was a one and a half person job to start with, and a lot of parent involvement helping do things. And then it grew to the Bellevue chamber that had nine staff members. So I think, budgets you, but just show the reflection of how well you’ve done a job in the community, because you can grow those income streams and people accordingly, at Pierce County, actually, I’m an economic development director, and I have the pleasure to work for a county executive that is a third generation business person. And top of being a county executive. And also for our county council. Our department is a smallest department in the county, we don’t even have a tab in the budget book. So before care’s and the rescue plan, before the pandemic, I might have had three, four or $500,000 of discretionary money every year to invest in different programs and resources. And most of our work was done leveraging through Chambers of Commerce for advocacy, economic development boards for recruitment, retention of businesses, larger companies. And so I really didn’t have a lot of dollars, but it was always about connecting people to solve solutions. And then the pandemic changed all that. And I have a really big budget. And I kind of chuckled during cares, because at the Chamber, I would stay up late at night trying to figure out how I was going to make my budget and, and how, you know, how do I hold my paycheck and all those things that you worry about as a business person, and then all of a sudden to have all this money to give away? Oh, my gosh, I thought I just got into heaven. Even though it was a very stressful process, but it was it’s just the other end of the spectrum, I guess you’d say?
Brandon Burton 7:57 Yeah, no, that really does help set the table and give that perspective. background that you have, you know, coming into our discussion, I really love what you had said about the reflection of budget at a chamber, you’ve been a reflection of the the value that you’re providing to the community, I think that is a great perspective to to look at that. And not that if you have a smaller budget, it’s not dollar for dollar, you know, reflection, but it’s the size of your community and everything like that, that factors into it. But I thought that was a good way of looking at it. And if you can grow your budget, grow those revenue streams, then you can see the impact you’re making in your community. So our topic for discussion today is going to be around industry innovation, which I know it’s kind of a broad topic, but that’s something that as chambers are always trying to remain relevant and move forward. It’s it’s something that I think it’ll pick up the ears of a lot of listeners. But we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Becky, we’re back. So as we talk about industry innovation, you’ve had some experience in the chamber world, as we’ve talked about leading up to this. What are some of those innovations that are top of mind for you? I know, you’re specifically from your economic development role. There’s some some unique nuances. I guess we can call those. But just from your career in the chamber to Now what kind of innovations have you seen, and then we can talk about kind of right now going forward?
Topic-Chamber Innovations
Betty Capestany 11:48 Well, it’s a topic I love so so thank you very much for that. And I truly feel like the Chamber’s of the future, needs to make sure they’re innovative. And so just a couple of bookends as we work into the conversation, part of that innovation is to surround yourself with amazing people in your kitchen cabinets, and your kitchen cabinets sometimes maybe should be people from across the country. I mean, my kitchen cabinet has chamber people across the country. And when I was told, at three o’clock in the afternoon that I had until the next morning to come up with how would I spend that that time $30 million of cares funds, and I had to come up with a plan. I sent it out to 10 of my best chamber pals across the country. And they so when I send it out eight o’clock at night, my time, many of them, that’s 11 o’clock their time, they all responded, I put the proposal together, we actually delivered all those and even more programs, but was based on that network. So I always think you don’t have to have all of the answers. But if you use good people around you, and that could be your board leaders and focusing on what what are they doing to be successful, because whatever got you to your current state won’t get you to the future state. And I also strongly believe in you have to focus on solutions, not the problem, because everybody wants to talk about the problem. And our communities, I would say probably all of us have really big community problems. So chambers moving from a transactional Chamber of which many times that’s how we started. And we’ve kind of that space has been taken by others. It may be Google, it may be Amazon, it may be other people that are serving a lot of that transactional pieces. And if we move to more being transformational, how can we innovate and bring unique people together to solve those really big problems? And your really big problem could be infrastructure, it could be workforce upscaling rescaling. It could be how do you serve underserved populations? Could be broadband, homelessness, housing, I mean, the list goes on and on. But how do you do it differently? And that’s a piece that I always challenged people to dare to be different. And not everyone. I mean, if you if you stumble, you just get back up and you do it again, also use a lot of trends. So we had a ACC A while back, Robert towbar, and he talks about future trends and he talks about key industries. I always use that to figure out is that a is there a cluster that’s growing that we don’t know about that we can we have the talent that we can bring to our community or the 3d printing tiny homes can we do that for homelessness is so trying to figure out how you take applications that others have and put that into your community to to really make it beneficial.
Brandon Burton 14:56 Yes, I love that so much good stuff to unpack there. So at that the idea of focusing on solutions and not the problems. And I had heard of a company, I’m sure several companies have a similar policy where you can’t just go to the boss and say, we got a problem. You got to come and say, here’s a solution to this problem. Or here’s a possible way we can address this problem, instead of just dropping the problem on your boss’s desk, like you got to be part of the solution. And I think chambers can approach that same kind of perspective of, okay, yeah, there is a problem. But let’s not focus on the problem, let’s look at some possible solutions, because there’s always a way, right, right. And I also like the idea of looking at going from the transactional to transformational type of work, you would come to me as a reference from Casey Steinbacher. And we know we’ve got she’s got her great book from relevant to essential. And she talks about chambers becoming more of an influencer in their communities. And I think that comes along with creating that transformation, doing things in a better way, having the community look to you, as that influencer of change as that influencer of positive movement of the community going forward. So I think that it’s kind of a broad scope for a chamber to look at, but to get away from the transactional stuff, and become more of that, you know, solution, problem solver. And influencer in the community. So great, great perspective. So let’s, let’s look at things now. I know you’re, you’re tasked with the American rescue plan funds to dispersing and congratulations, I understand you guys just won an award. Maybe pat yourself on the back and tell a little bit about what that is, but then how that how you’re planning on dispersing some of those funds, and how that can relate back to to Chambers as well.
Betty Capestany 17:00 Sure, actually, a lot of it relates back to chambers. But let me just do a tiny step back on the Cares Act. So we for that $46.5 million, it went across eight different programs, and all of those programs, and we did cradle to grave of pretty much from our department here. And we had to break all sorts of systems inside the county to make them happened because there was a real tight timeframe to do that. But part of those we did in partnership with the chamber, so So I think that’s the piece of from chambers, making sure you’re looking at other entities that may have resources and how you may be the best person to actually do that. So the government per se doesn’t have to go breaks some of those elements. So on the rescue plan, our focus has been on how can we lead the world differently? And how can we make it because the cares was more trying to patch things together and keep us all going and Washington State was pretty much locked down. So we had a lot of bumps on that piece. So how to change it differently. During cares. We also our department looked at 5000 balance sheets and profit and loss statements for businesses in the process. And we saw many times people couldn’t fill them out. So we had to help them do that. But we also saw there were a lot of people that were left out, or there was a big difference between the haves and have nots. And while our cares resources over 40% went to diverse populations, and 70% went to women owned businesses, we knew we could do better. So with a rescue plan, the focus was on how can we make big changes. And the changes really we wanted to be was in that bipoc Arena. So which is black, brown, indigenous people of color veteran and women owned businesses and focusing on the really small businesses, or entrepreneurship since startups were kind of left out of any kind of funding in that process also. So we actually worked with I guess you could say through the cares process, we develop great relationships with like our Korean Women’s Association, our Asia Pacific Cultural Center, the black collective, the Urban League, the NAACP, me centro, so just a wide network, because we learned if you go to those networks, then they can go to their networks were trusted sources. The thing we also learned was most of those networks never focused on business. Because all the resources they got were actually around, usually a social service kind of program or resources, because in our state government never gave money to businesses. So that was an anomaly. This whole academic resources have been an anomaly to what we’ve normally done. So with that, we’re able to actually do a navigator program through our community. So we’re hiring Business Outreach Specialist. Each of these entities will be hiring them. And they have a dashed line to us. And we’re going to teach them how to network with their business community. And then when we find out what resources we need, we’ll plug them into things. So like professional services, there’s a lot of different innovation grants that we have things that we can help them grow their business. The project, we actually won Innovation Award for the state was our Pierce County business accelerator. And this is one that we’ve leveraged with our chamber of commerce as our administrator of the program. And this program, there’s probably lots of business accelerators around this program is focused, most specifically on bipoc veteran and women on businesses, they have to be really small. So under 325,000, gross revenue in 2019, or a startup business, and just having them go through the training is huge. But the training is on people that look like them, training them. So they’re see those groups and heavy peer groups. So the chamber does that. And in addition to that, we’ve actually hired in Kiva, I’m not sure if people have heard of the Kiva platform. It’s kind of one step above a GoFundMe. But it’s a platform that people all over the world can give resources to just have businesses for startups, and they help fund up to $15,000 for a business. But we basically have that platform available for the whole community. And we also have specialists that help people get ready for that platform. And these are all housed to the chamber. And then in addition to that, once someone raises $10,000 of capital that’s gone through the accelerator program, the county will match that capital. So that way, we’re truly helping them take their company to the next level, we also have paid for
about $5,000 of professional services. So if someone needs bookkeeping help, that could be 50 or 60 hours of bookkeeping help if they need legal help, but maybe 20 hours of legal help. So trying to make sure how do we remove those obstacles, and then the most important one, that the Chamber does a fabulous job at his mentorship. So matching them with a mentor for over a year. And then the last kind of cool piece is we do a rent reimbursement, up to $500 a month for a year. So trying to really take all those things that businesses have challenges and struggles with, and most particularly our bipoc businesses have challenges and struggles with and really help them figure out how to help grow wealth, so they can then pass that on to the next generation. Wow. Sorry, I get so excited.
Brandon Burton 23:02 No, so Okay, so the business outreach specialist, so I want to circle back to that it sounds like each of these kind of partner organizations. Is that person that’s being hired? Is that being? Or are they being paid through these funds? Is that how that’s working?
Betty Capestany 23:20 So we’re gonna reimburse them. So the Korean Women’s Association will hire the first. And they’re, they’re a big association for our state. They started small, they’re big. And they’re focused in Pierce County, but they will have a person on their staff that we help train that connects in with Us Weekly for all the data. And the goal is we’re going to go out to 3500 to 5000 additional businesses in our underrepresented communities. So we just make sure we touch base, let them know, figure out and connect them to resources. So it’s a reimbursement. So it’s a two year program, and we help with the job interview. Just getting them on board, because that’s that’s teaching them that skill set.
Brandon Burton 24:06 Yeah. So for somebody listening, chamber champion, listening, if they’re sitting there in their hometown, there’s their local chamber and think, gee, I wish our county or economic development had a program like this how, like you’re sitting at economic development, helping to figure out where these funds go, if you’re on the other end of it. How would you encourage that? I mean, some of the funds may be already spent right in some of these communities. How would you encourage them to kind of navigate these waters to try to adopt some of these programs that you’re talking about?
Betty Capestany 24:43 But they can always call me. But the thing is, and I’ve worked with many different communities, trying to help them do the same thing. The rescue plans, probably they’re there. They’re easier to access because there’s a little longer time for deployment. So So I think coming up with the story addigy Have what they’re trying to solve and that rescue plan. So whether it’s broadband, whether it’s something like this, which I think ties perfectly to value add so so this contract for just the navigate on the accelerator program is a $5 million contract from the county. And then we have one of our cities that added more money to it, because they saw it was very successful. For us to implement the chamber, it gets about 2.2 million to put that program together. The other monies go to the capital and the rent reimbursement and the professional services. So So I think there’s a way to leverage what chambers do really well. And I’d be glad to talk to any of them. And they may come up with different ways to make it even better. And I think it’s also making sure chambers connect into the fabric. So whether it’s tribal partners, whether whether it’s their diverse populations, just bringing different people to the table as part of the solution, and trying to figure out how you tailor it because it’s not one stop, fits all. It’s we have to meet people where they’re at. So are Korean, Vietnamese and Cambodian, a cohort, they wanted to be at eight o’clock in the morning. And they wanted to be connected to a government. They want everybody to know they were existing. And we actually did that it was translated every class into Korean and Vietnamese, now are a black population, they did not want to meet in government. They want a night time. And they didn’t want anyone that looked like me, which I’m a white lady to be in the room, because they just wanted to work amongst themselves. So but now we’re starting to have the next cohort be more blended. And so I think it’s just trying to understand what’s important to them. And now they realize, oh, I can’t, you know, have you showcased me? Or before they weren’t comfortable with that. So it’s just understanding chambers to understand those populations and bring them in because they want to help partner on these programs.
Brandon Burton 27:18 Yeah, for sure. So the thought that comes to me is we I mean, this is a lot of money that we’re talking about, you know, that the federal government’s put out a ton of money into the the economy. And I think on the surface, it’s easy for the average person to look at and be like, this is going to, you know, throw inflation through the roof, which we are seeing some inflation from it. But I think, on a local level to be able to help, you know, combat some of that inflation is where are those underserved people in the community, these bipoc business owners, because if we’re able to help them to get started, get their business, you know, to be more profitable to be more successful, employing more people that money’s being put to work. And I’m not an economist, but I think that would help keep inflation lower. It’s not a pie where the money’s just gone, you know, it’s going to generate more value and continue to move your community forward. The problem is when the money just gets spent and disappears and goes away, and you don’t have anything to show for it. That’s where we see the real damage of inflation. But if we can put that money to work, like you’re talking about, I think it can help combat inflation to some degree. And I think
Betty Capestany 28:33 along that line, maybe to pieces because I do agree with everything that you just said. I think sometimes that the groups that we’re trying to serve and reach, they don’t use a traditional chamber network. So trying to also connect them to the network. But we recently had the when they the undercover billionaire, Monique islet bat dropped into our community, and she didn’t go to the chamber, she went to a church. And because her mother had passed her, she went to a downtown urban church, and she’s a black lady. So she went, That’s where she went. And she went to the Urban League, she went, she went to different paths to and she’s established her business within that period of time without using those resources. So I think trying to bring those non traditional resources into the chamber fabric, because it’s just changing how you operate as being more transformational for your community.
Brandon Burton 29:35 Yeah, that that’s interesting. She was able to do that and goes a different a different avenue. And
Betty Capestany 29:43 she didn’t even think about chamber commerce. She just never and she’s, you know, relatively young. Very, I mean, a real live very connected lady and a very sharp business lady, but she’s done all that through her real life, that she wouldn’t Ever, she didn’t even, you know, move that into this opportunity.
Brandon Burton 30:04 So it shows the power in those other networks as well. And if you can connect them and leverage, you know, the the connections, it’s just going to make for a better community all together. So I wanted to ask that you’ve covered a ton of great information in our discussion here, I wanted to see if you might have one tip or action item for listeners to, to help take their chamber up to the next level to help elevate their community, what would what would you suggest for them?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Betty Capestany 30:32 I would suggest them, I think what we started with the focus on a solution that they want to work on, so but work on that solution and to think differently, to expand their kitchen cabinet, if that’s what you want to call it, to people that might not be connected the chamber to figure out how to make things happen in their community.
Brandon Burton 31:00 So I love that response. Just hearing you say kitchen cabinet, again, I have to ask you to expand on that. How did that term come up? What do you what do you mean by that, just as listeners can can relate.
Betty Capestany 31:12 So what I mean by that, I know Casey calls it her tribe, I’ve always called it my kitchen cabinet. So I have people throughout my whole career that I used to benchmark things by so I have people across the chamber industry, I have a few past chairs from from different. You know, my, throughout my career, I have just successful business people that may or may not have been connected to the chamber that I just used to benchmark things by because I know I can’t solve everything by myself, I’m not smart enough. But if I use looking through their lenses, I could come up with solutions that that may work at this this period of time. And so that’s what I think has helped us as a county be innovative. I think it’s helped me throughout my whole career, just having those cabinet of people. And they’re all ages, all ranges, everything diverse everything. And I love it. And I just I love people. And that’s that’s what helps me be more visionary.
Brandon Burton 32:19 I think the term kitchen cabinet is awesome, too. So I just wanted to hear more about that.
Betty Capestany 32:24 I still have a dining room table sounds smart. It’s probably this food to table stuff. I should I should say my kitchen table there,
Brandon Burton 32:30 though. No, I like the kitchen I think of because it’s got that dual meaning right, your people you talk to while you’re in your kitchen, you got cabinets in your kitchen, but like a presidential cabinet, you got your people that support you and give you that feedback and insight. So I love it. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Betty Capestany 32:53 I think this is a fabulous time to be in the chamber industry. And I think they’re the future is very bright. Because of these these huge issues going on to communities and the chambers are the ones that can really make a difference and bring people together. And it just making making chambers essential. Yeah, very relevant.
Brandon Burton 33:18 I love the answer. I love it. Well, you had mentioned as you’re giving responses, and telling how you guys are helping to disburse funds and helping to solidify some of these networks and resources for chambers, that people could reach out and connect with you what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you and figure out what’s the best way to apply some of these strategies in their community.
Connect with Betty Capestany
Betty Capestany 33:42 Probably the best way would be via email. And I don’t know if you want to just put that up on the screen at the end. Since my name is a hard one to fill.
Brandon Burton 33:52 Put it in the show notes for this episode. Yeah. So
Betty Capestany 33:55 that’s probably the best way to reach out via email (betty.capestany@piercecountywa.gov). And glad to connect in I will be an ACCE this summer. So that’s also another way to connect in. And I just appreciate everything that chamber industry does. I love the industry. They’re amazing people and they’re doing amazing things.
Brandon Burton 34:15 You and I both totally agree on that. But they thank you so much for joining us today on Chamber Chat, challenge Chamber Chat Podcast, gonna be able to say the name mount show, right. This is great. I’ve enjoyed the discussion and it’s got me pumped up to see the opportunities that are further leveraging resources and communities and beyond the money though to those connections with other organizations. And I think you’ve provided a ton of value for Chamber Champions today. Thank you for that.
Thank you.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Carlos Phillips. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.
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.
And now your host. He wonders if chambers in the future will use NFT’s for membership. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where it is my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Brandon Burton 1:07
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Carlos Phillips, Carlos began serving as president and CEO of the Greenville Chamber in South Carolina on March 29 2016. Much has been achieved during Carlos his time with the Greenville chamber including the implementation of strategic plans for the organization and accelerate the Chamber’s private sector fueled economic development campaign, selling its office 40 years and moving downtown to Greenville central business district, leading a statewide effort for legislation to expand the number of non violent offenses eligible for removal from one’s criminal record, partnering with Columbia, Charleston, Myrtle Beach and Charlotte chambers to form the South Carolina Metro chambers coalition and partnering with the United Way of Greenville County and the Urban League of the upstate for the Greenville racial equality and economic mobility Commission. The Greenville chamber foundation secured a half million dollar grant to expand its minority business accelerator initiative to the Columbia and Charleston markets. The chamber has been awarded chamber the year by the Carolina’s association of Chamber of Commerce executives for its programmatic leadership and value to its members and earned its five star accreditation by the US Chamber of Commerce for its operational excellence. Carlos is an active leader in the community, and his profession serving as director for visit Greenville, South Carolina Urban League, the Upstate Community Foundation of Greenville and the United Way of the upstate. He chairs the United Negro College Fund upstate mares mass ball, which raise funds to help kids to and through college. He serves on the executive committee of the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and chairs its metro cities Council. He’s also a member of the US Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100 and serves on its equality of opportunity Task Force. Originally from Owensboro, Kentucky Carlos received an undergraduate degree in communications from the University of Kentucky and a master’s degree in organizational communications from Western Kentucky University. He and his wife LaTonya have four children.
Carlos, I am excited to have you with me 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 all get to know you a little better.
Carlos Phillips 3:32 Well, Brandon, thanks for having me on the podcast and Hello, Chamber Champions. Glad to have the opportunity to share with you today.
Brandon Burton 3:43 Very good. So I know we were chatting just a little bit before we hopped on the recording. And you had mentioned you played some college football, which is I find to be interesting. I’m a big football fan. But uh, tell us a little bit about that. You know, obviously you’re Kentucky but what position did you play? What was your experience?
Carlos Phillips 4:05 Yeah, I played a couple of positions on the defensive side of the ball at the University of Kentucky inside and an outside linebacker. But that was back during the days of leather helmets. So that was back in the late in the late 80s. The game has changed a little bit since then. But what’s interesting is my oldest son played college football at Morehead State, which is a division two school in Kentucky. And my youngest son now plays quarterback at the University of Kentucky. So it’s clear that we we kind of like the game.
Brandon Burton 4:45 That’s right. It’s a great game. I love it too. Well tell us a little bit about the Greenville chamber. I know it’s probably been a couple years ago I had Liz Horton from Greenville chamber on the podcast as well. So it was regular listeners, you know They might go back in their memories and remember a little bit about what Liz shared about the Greenville chamber but just bring us up to speed and kind of size budget, you know, type of chamber you are that sort of thing just to give us that, you know, perspective.
About the Greenville Chamber
Carlos Phillips 5:12 You’ll, you’ll find that Liz was a much better guest than I will be. But I’ll try my best today. The Greenwood chamber, I like to call the Greenwood chamber a 133 year old startup. All right. We’ve been around for quite some time delivering value to to Greenville business community. Our legal name is the greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce. But for some reason, before I got here, we shortened it to the Greenville chamber. So but we are an organization that has members from throughout the upstate of South Carolina 1800 investors total. And we’re about a $4 million chamber coming you know, revenue coming from dues. Events sponsorships are economic development initiative accelerate that you mentioned that in my intro, that’s a private sector fuel initiative that focuses on growing our entrepreneurial ecosystem, expanding our talent, and workforce and only informing our community through through data. But the foundation of that accelerate work is on increasing educational attainment for working age, adults. So there are a lot of lot of moving parts in our in our organization, got a great team of about 20 folks who wake up every day, committed to delivering value to our business community and helping our economy grow.
Brandon Burton 7:01 Very good. Definitely helps us to kind of know where you’re coming from, but especially as we get into our topic for today, which is the evolution of chambers and I know through the pandemic and everything chambers have had to take a hard look internally and say okay, where’s our core values? What do we have to offer to our business community and the community in general. So I’m excited to get into that discussion with you and kind of learn how the Greenville chambers approached this and and maybe some things that you picked up on from other Chambers as well. But we’ll get into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Carlos, we’re back. So as we get into our topic today, evolution of chambers, I wanted to circle back to something real quick that you had mentioned, when you were talking about the Greenville chamber and you mentioned being 133 year old startup. Can you expand on that? And why you look at your the chamber as a startup 133 years later?
Topic-Evolution of Chambers
Carlos Phillips 10:38 Yeah, I can. We were, we were formed back in 1889. And it’s, it’s amazing how the chamber has, has evolved in led the evolution of our community. But you know, we did that the status quo has never been, has never been acceptable. For our community or for our organization. We’ve always either changed when we needed to change, or we’ve led the change when necessary, as well. So you know, some of the worst things that you can say that a team member can say here to be with chamber is, well, that’s the way we’ve always done it. That because that doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter. To us. We’re also the type of organization we don’t, we tend not to wait until something’s broken, to fix it. Sometimes we’ll break it. Yeah. To, to make it better, to make it more to make it more effective, or to deliver greater value to our investors. But that’s the kind of shop that’s kind of shocked that we are, I talked about our team all the time, because I really do have a special team, it takes special, it takes special people to embrace, you know, continuous improvement. But we’ve got such a team here at the chamber. And I think our organization has been in a state of continuous improvement over the past 133 years of its existence.
Brandon Burton 12:29 That’s awesome. A couple things really stood out to me. And your response there is one is that sometimes you’re the ones that break, you know, you’ve got going on to be able to innovate and move forward and reminds me of Apple, right? I mean, they had the the iPod, which is incredibly successful product, probably arguably one of the most successful products that Apple would ever put out. And they essentially killed it when they came out with the iPhone. Right?
Carlos Phillips 12:52 They basically cannibalized the product,
Brandon Burton 12:55 right? Yeah, yeah. And, and is done very intentionally, and it’s worked out very well. But you’d also talked about how the status quo is never good enough, which I think is a good theme to follow through for our discussion today as we talk about the evolution of chambers. So what are some things just, I know, I mean, pandemic is top of mind for for everybody here. How does the chamber remain relevant? How do you provide value? What are some of those things internally there at the Greenville chamber that you guys looked at to make some of those changes and evolve as the times changed?
Carlos Phillips 13:30 Yeah, great question. Brandon. One of the first things that we did was, we revisited the Chamber’s vision and mission. When I first arrived, the chamber had vision and mission statements. But on my first my first staff meeting, when I asked the staff to, to recite the vision and the mission,
Brandon Burton 14:00 like stare, because
Carlos Phillips 14:02 they couldn’t do it. It was it was long. And well, both of those statements were long. And they clearly had not committed to it. It was as if they were, they were showing up to do a job. But they hadn’t committed to the vision and the mission. So we shortened both the vision and the mission statements. The vision, we changed that to being a globally competitive, upstate economy where businesses succeed, and people prosper. And the most important word in that vision statement is to and sometimes I’ll quiz sometimes I’ll quiz people, and I’ll say what’s the most important word in that vision statement? And they will, they will say everywhere except that and so, but we changed that we changed our mission statement, so that we could be very clear and concise on what our what we what we committed to delivering for our business community and that is to lead convenient mobilize the business community to drive regional economic growth. That’s, that’s how we are going to achieve that vision that I stated earlier. Doing those things really helped us in a couple of ways. First of all, help our staff, our board, our stake or our stakeholders, have a clearer understanding of our of our Northstar. This is our goal. This is what we’re trying to pursue. And that’s from a vision perspective. But then it helped us focus on on how we get there. We, we were an organization that we we were uncomfortable saying no. Yeah. So if someone would call chambers fall into that, yeah, someone you know, someone will call and say, Hey, I need Can you can you? Can you help me build a birdbath? You know, can you? And that’s, that’s a little extreme. But we would say yes, to opt almost everything. But in in so while we, while we may have please people short term, long term we couldn’t deliver, we couldn’t deliver. So we actually ended up disappointing, folks, because we couldn’t deliver. Now, instead of disappointing people for that we can’t deliver. We disappoint people, because I’m sorry, that doesn’t fit into what we’re tasked with doing. But we’ll say but let me refer you to this organization or that organization who can better serve you that has provided a much clearer path for us to achieve the value that our business community expects from us. So we’ve learned how to say no. And through that, we’ve become much more valuable, much more effective for our business community, and quite frankly, for the community overall. Right.
Brandon Burton 17:12 And sometimes those referrals or other organizations, like you mentioned, and sometimes their businesses that are partners at the chamber. Yeah, that are investors.
Carlos Phillips 17:20 We’ve learned that sometimes the best, yes. Is a no. Yeah, yeah.
Brandon Burton 17:25 And you can make a mutually beneficial, you know, relationship out of that where everybody thrives to be better. Yeah, I often have friends throughout the country that they know, I do this podcast and me on my work involved with chambers, and their business owners, and they’ll say, Should I join our local chamber? Yeah. And it’s like, Man, what a loaded question. Like I wanted to say, yes, you know, no, good. But it’s like, well, I don’t know, you know, what is the mission of your local chamber? What is their vision? Can you get behind that? Does it resonate with what you want to do? Do you have similar goals to move your community forward? So I think, you know, like you guys did with condensing and you know, refocusing your mission and vision I think, is very effective to be able to tell your, your existing members and potential members investors, this is what we’re here for. This is our purpose. And if you want to jump on board on this best and write it with us and be alone, this is this is the group for you.
Carlos Phillips 18:28 Well, and Brandon, to that point, our our retention has improved. Because we’re now we’re now attracting and securing investors who a have a clear understanding of what the chamber said it’s going to deliver and they vote in its they’re not disappointed when when they expect one thing that is not, that’s not delivered. We have we have five focus areas at the chamber. And our goal is when we could have had 20 focus areas. Yeah. But for those five, we wanted to, we want to be the best in the marketplace, and delivering on those five. We, we pride ourselves in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, I’m not the most, I’m not the smartest person in the world. I keep things really simple. That’s for me, that’s for our team. And that’s for those who engaged with us keep things really, really simple. But if we do those simple things, if we do those ordinary things, if we execute them extraordinarily Well, you have very satisfied, very satisfied investors in members. And I think we’re improving on that. Daily.
Brandon Burton 20:12 Yeah. So I think, yeah, going back to the, what we’ve titled this episode, the evolution of chambers. You know, it went, I believe, from a lot of chambers that their founding had a very clear purpose, very clear vision. And then those waters got muddied over time. Because you get different organizations, different people, different business owners saying, hey, the chamber would be good for this. So got to be where you could go to any community, you know, most of the communities throughout the country, and ask the random business owner, what is your local chamber of commerce do? Yeah. And they would have no answer for it, you know, they do some networking, they, you know, like, it would be really hard for them to come up with an answer. Right. So I think refocusing is going to help give a clear definition to those businesses, what the chamber does why you exist,
Carlos Phillips 21:03 Brandon, to that point, I was on a zoom call. It was a strategic planning call for an organization here in town a couple of weeks ago, and someone on the call, they were in the performing arts sector. And they wanted to include as a part of the strategic plan, the chamber to build a performing arts venue, for smaller, non for profit, performing arts organizations in the area. And I chuckled because someone sent me a text on the calendar like, Hey, did you hear what you hear what you’re asked to do? And I replied back? Yeah, I heard that. No, it’s a bit of a mission creep. For us, yeah. You know, and it’s not, it’s not far fetched to think that at some point, it’s at some time. We may have tried to pull that off. Yeah. Yeah. But but based on our current, based on our current mission, just it just didn’t align.
Brandon Burton 22:15 Yeah. But I think among that confusion of what a chamber does it in, you touched on this earlier, where those expectations of what the members have when they join, you leave them not satisfied, because you’re not delivering on what they thought the expectation was. So going back to just being clear on that,
Carlos Phillips 22:35 well, and you know, if we’re going to disappoint you, we’d rather disappoint you up front.
Brandon Burton 22:42 You have a little more control there to you know, if you’re disappointing up front, you’re able to control that you’re able to direct them or redirect them the right way. So for sure, I think there’s a lot of value to that. Are there things that you’ve noticed other chambers doing that you think is maybe innovative, you know, as this evolution process that maybe you guys haven’t adopted, but you think you know, that it’s something good to explore? Put me on the spot? Here.
Carlos Phillips 23:07 You are, but you are, but you know, in our industry, we tend to be an industry that’s heavy in r&d. Right, and not not research and development. Rip off and duplication. Yeah. And so I’m a part of a group, you mentioned that I chair, our metro, metro cities Council. And that’s about 75. Chamber CEOs from the largest markets in, in the country, and we meet monthly. During the pandemic, we’ve been meeting via zoom. Yeah, and I’ll tell you, that was a, that’s been a great. It’s always been a great resource, but during the pandemic, there was some great ideas sharing. We probably, you know, drank a few virtual beers, you know, as we were trying to figure out how to lead organizations in our communities through through the pandemic. But there are a lot of great ideas from from those organizations. If you, there’s a oh, there’s a saying in our industry that if you see one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber? Yeah. There are no, there are no two chambers that are identical. But what we tend to do is, we’ll see we’ll hear an idea or an initiative from from one chamber in one community, and then we’ll, we may take it, season it to our taste, you know, how can it fit with our organization and our community and we have you and we, we repackage it, and we’ll implement it and there’s a lot of that, that there’s a lot of that that goes on For the folks on listening to the podcast, I would strongly encourage them. And I’m heavily involved in ACC, the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives. But I would encourage them to join a peer group. And engage in those meetings, whether they’re virtual, or they’re in person, there’s a lot of great idea sharing, and you never know what you’re going to learn. It’s a great, it’s a great network, great professional development, it’s probably where I received, my greatest professional development is through the metro cities Council through ACC. And it keeps you up, again, to talk about the status quo and how that’s not acceptable in our organization. Well, one way to one way to avoid that is to, to listen to others, listen to other people who are trying to figure it out, as well, you may have an idea for them. And I guarantee it, you’ll take some ideas from them as well.
Brandon Burton 26:08 And that’s actually the whole basis of why I started this podcast over three years ago is the idea of I initially trying to reach some of those smaller chambers, maybe they’ve got one staff person, maybe it’s a volunteer, maybe it’s part time person. Because I would see some of these smaller chambers, it just really struggled, where other chambers are hitting on all cylinders, everything’s great everything communities, well respect some and it’s like, what can we do to help these small chambers that are underfunded, they can’t take the time to be a way to be in these peer groups, they all these things. And it’s like, so here’s a resource, but that is a great tip is to for everybody to get involved with the peer group.
Carlos Phillips 26:49 I’ll say this, Brandon. All chambers have their challenges. Because matters, not matters, not your revenue level, your number of investors, how many? How many staff, me folks you have on staff, all chambers have challenges and opportunities. So when we talk big versus small, it’s a scaling. It’s a scale factor. But everyone’s all chambers have to have challenges and opportunities. Even for the small chambers, if you’re a one person shop, professional development is still important, for sure. And you have to carve out, you have to carve out time for that. And maybe it’s an hour a month, maybe it’s an hour a month, but that hour a month could help you figure out how to overcome some of your challenges. Yeah, it could help you, it could help you better understand how to deliver enhanced value for your, for your members. So I mean, yeah, I’ve not worked for a small, a small chamber, I started off with greater Louisville Inc, which was a pretty large shop. I moved from greater Louisville, Inc, to the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, another, you know, fairly large shop, went back to greater Louisville Inc. and then came to Greenville. So I don’t have a full understanding of, of being the only person in the office. So I want to be careful that my, my comments, I want to be careful that they’re not insensitive to that. But if professional development is a need and a priority, then no matter what, no matter the size of your chamber, you got to figure out how to carve out time for that. And that’s, again, that’s one of the values of those peer groups through ACC is that is an opportunity for leaders to carve out time for their development, which is great not only for them, but for their organizations and further their communities. Right.
Brandon Burton 29:14 And it reminded me of the quote, and I’m terrible given attributions, but you can’t get from where you are to where you want to get where you want to be by doing the same thing. So by hearing how other people are doing things by not being, you know, okay with the status quo, continually evolving, I think is key to that transition.
Carlos Phillips 29:35 Yeah. You know, you made me think of something to Brandon, a book that I read, that is referenced continuously. It’s called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Yeah. And it was a good book for me personally. But it was also a good book for the Greenville chamber organizationally, as well. What what got us here over the 133 years won’t get us through the next 133 years. Right? And we have to be intentional in that in that mindset.
Brandon Burton 30:08 Yeah, that’s good. Well, as we start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask you, and you’ve given some great tips. But I’d like to formally ask if there’s any tip or action item that you would suggest for a listener to help take their organization up to the next level.
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Carlos Phillips 30:25 Well, random Far be it for me to, to give tips or formal advice to folks because we’re still trying to figure things out here at the Greenwood chamber, but I will say this, recognize that you’re still trying to figure things out, recognize that you’re not quite where you need to be. Recognize that your your business community and your community as a whole, they’re always going to need you to be more, more effective. And the pressure on chamber CEOs and leadership is to continue to seek opportunities to deliver better value. So if your chamber is primarily engaged in networking events, then how do you make those networking events more valuable for the folks who, for the folks who attend? You know, interestingly, our business community 10 years ago, they charged the chamber with being a thought and programmatic leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Not a traditional space for Chamber of Commerce.
Brandon Burton 31:53 Yeah, he said 10 years ago, 10 years ago, 10 years ago.
Carlos Phillips 31:59 And what we realized is and what these leaders what our board realized a decade ago, was there’s a business case, for insuring for trying to include more people in in the economy, for sure, yeah. So how do you include not just more more black owned businesses in your economy, but more women owned businesses, Hispanic owned businesses, veteran owned businesses, there’s a business case. There’s a business case for that. Our board leadership embraced that business case. And for the past decade. We’ve been that thought and programmatic leader in our in our community. You mentioned the partnership with United Way and Urban League on the racial equity and economic mobility commission. Yeah. It’s it, there’s a business case for ensuring that that there are minorities and blacks have better health outcomes, better education attainment, better jobs, and that our justice system works, you know, more fair than it is than it is today. And so, again, my only advice is, you know, yesterday’s. Yesterday’s homeruns won’t win today’s ballgame. Right? What what you did yesterday, what you did 133 years ago. It’s really inconsequential. You got to figure out how am I going to hit singles, doubles, triples, home runs today? And how is my organization going to be best positioned to hit those singles, doubles, triples, and home runs? Tomorrow? And that’s, that’s, that’s my goal, as the CEO of the Greenwich chamber, and I would encourage others to, to proceed accordingly.
Brandon Burton 34:06 I love that. So many thoughts as you’re given that response. Maybe a try to condense it down to one response for myself is it reminds me as I read Dave Atkinson’s book. Yeah, of course, she’s, I love that. But it really paints a picture very clearly about the purpose of the chamber is to advance your community to build a stronger community. And as you talk about the diversity, equity and inclusion front, I think that’s a there is a huge business case for that it from a chamber if your goal is to advance your community and make it a better place for everybody. Where’s the most room for growth where who who has been underserved who has not had the opportunity to be able to advance and develop and do these things? And if you can put some some focus on those areas As the whole community is going to advance so much further. So I love that. And I
Carlos Phillips 35:05 want to give a shout out to Dave Backus and he’s the person that introduced me to this industry. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so he introduced me to the industry. And after working in Google in for five years, I got a chance to join his team and work for him for five years. And you may have seen me referenced in that book that you Yeah, that you that you spoke up? He is. He is He has that book is I consider that book kind of the Bible. Yes. For Chamber Leadership. And it certainly has influenced how I lead this organization and community.
Brandon Burton 35:43 Absolutely. Well deserved shout out for Dave Atkinson. I like to ask everyone this question as we look to the future of chambers. And that’s kind of what we’ve been discussing this whole conversation, but how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Carlos Phillips 35:59 That’s a good question. Brandon. I think I’ve answered that question. Throughout today’s throughout today’s interview, again, I think it’s just embracing you know, continuous improvement. Think investor or member first. You know, we we tend to, we tend to communicate in chamber speak.
For which are the businesses in our community really don’t care much about chamber speak.
And so but but be in a mode of, of continuous improvement. And, and I think you’ll position chambers will be positioned for success. In yours in the years to come, I think, again, and I think we’re a testament to that, again, 133 years. Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 37:02 I appreciate that. I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who would like to dive in a little deeper about how you guys are doing things, they’re in Greenville, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?
Connect with Carlos Phillips
Carlos Phillips 37:15 Well, you can email me at cphillips@greenvillechamber.org and or go to our website, greenvillechamber.org. And while I enjoyed my opportunity to speak with you today, I’ve got a team that’s much more knowledgeable on this stuff. They forgotten more about this than than I’m ever going to learn. But go on our website, you can find my contact information there. And you can also find the rockstars who are helping us not only develop our plan of work, but are effectively executing each day.
Brandon Burton 37:55 I love that advice because you’re right you do have Rockstar team and it doesn’t all have to come to you. Yeah, they’ll filter him out to the people with those you know programs are looking to learn more about that Carlos. I really do appreciate you spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. Thank you, you delivered a lot of value and and some you know thoughts to provoke. You know what the evolution of chambers can continue to look like at the local level for those listening,
Carlos Phillips 38:24 My pleasure.
Brandon Burton 38:26 If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
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In today’s world, everyone has a smartphone with them at all times. Thanks to social media and text messaging, we all look to our tiny screens to pass time. If your chamber has not been fully immersed in creating a strong digital presence, then you are missing a huge segment of your community.
Mobile is Everywhere
Next time you are out in public, take a look at the people around you. Look at your own behaviors with your smartphone. Most of society are consumers of digital content. For some this comes in the form of social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. For the younger generation the trend is currently TikTok and YouTube. Podcasting is the digital platform for audio content that people can consume while doing many other tasks at the same time. The gateway to almost everything digital today is done through a mobile app.
I have yet to come across a chamber in the last five years that doesn’t at least have a Facebook page. Most will also have a website. I would suggest that these are the most basic digital platforms to utilize and they also have the lowest barrier to entry. I once heard a quote that said “the lower the barrier, the greater the competition”. There is a lot more ‘noise’ at the lower barrier of entry levels. The Facebook page and website are important digital marketing tools. I believe tools are designed to leverage your efforts.
Leverage Print Media
For example, printed publications are still very popular in the chamber world. They are great producers of non-dues revenue and can often have a digital counterpart. The digital side of your printed publications should be amplified on your website and social media to further spread the distribution of your publications.
Directories, magazines, maps, and digital… Consider Community Matters, Inc. for your next chamber publication.
I would also encourage your members who advertise in your printed publications to leverage their advertising using digital. They can do this by sharing a picture of their ad in your chamber directory on their social media pages and tag your chamber in the post. You can take it a step further by encouraging them to use a specific hashtag to further promote the publication.
Repurpose Other Chamber Content
The same is true with other chamber content. Your website and social media pages should be used to amplify your message. Your digital presence will be much stronger as you identify ways to broadcast your traditional/analog efforts.
If you have a podcast, post each episode to your social pages. Tag any guests in the social media posts as well as their company. Your website could have a dedicated section that points to your past podcast episodes with show notes and links to relevant content and sponsorship partners.
If you have a YouTube channel, the same practice can be applied. YouTube will also allow you to have ‘in video links’ to other relevant content you have on YouTube. You can embed certain videos on your website and share your videos on your social media networks.
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Blogs
As you get caught up in the digital craze, don’t forget the importance of the written word. That is by the way how you are consuming this content right now. Blog posts for longer form messaging can still be highly effective and could be a source of non-dues revenue with sponsorships. You can share your blog posts on social media.
I recently worked on a project with a homeowners association. This was a monthly magazine that was mailed to the homeowners. With a younger demographic moving into the community and in an effort to gain more advertising revenue we decided to leverage digital. We decided to repurpose the articles that were already in the printed magazine as individual blog posts. This allowed us to insert additional advertising content and it allowed the HOA to reach a new, younger audience.
Content Frequency
However you choose to approach your creation and distribution of digital content, it is critical to have a plan. Creating a frequency for digital content will help you stay on track. Oftentimes you can repurpose content in multiple ways. I would encourage you to create a content calendar to plot out how you are putting out content in a strategic way. Izzy West spoke about this in a past podcast episode.
As you create your content calendar, see where you can spread some of your content creation. Maybe staff members could be responsible for different platforms or types of content. You may be able to utilize a board member, ambassador, or another volunteer. One unique way of creating content is to use your members. Holly Allen talked about this in my interview with her as she talked about how her chamber was marketing the thought leadership of their members. Essentially, their members became the experts on certain topics that their chamber then shared on their different platforms.
Summary
I will share a personal thought. As you plan deliberate content, consider the platform. For example, people tend to turn to Facebook to tune out, not to tune in to a message from the chamber. However, a platform like podcasting and YouTube have active subscribers who tune into and subscribe to hear from people and organizations like you. I would not rely solely on Facebook and a website as your digital footprint.
The bottom line is that if you are not actively thinking about a strong digital presence, you will inevitably miss out on opportunities. We are living in a digital first world now where people turn to their phones for answers, information, and entertainment. How is your chamber interacting with people on their tiny screens?
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Ralph Staffins. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.
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.
Voiceover Talent 0:14 And now your host. He believes with a little creativity there’s always a way, he’s my dad, Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:22 Welcome, Chamber Champions. Thank you for tuning into chamber tap podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it is 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
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Ralph Staffins. Ralph is the president and CEO of the Brunswick Golden-Isles Chamber in Georgia. But before that in 2018, under his leadership, the Covington Newton County Chamber of Commerce was awarded the four star accreditation by the US Chamber of Commerce. And prior to serving in Covington. Ralph served as the executive director for forward McDuffie in Thompson, Georgia as the economic development director. Ralph was named president and CEO of the Brunswick golden Isles chamber in June of 2019. And he currently serves on the coastal pines technology book College Board. Georgia economic developers Association Board of Directors is twice served as chair of the Georgia Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and serves on the Board of Governors for the Georgia Chamber. During his time in the golden isles, Ralph proudly led the Brunswick golden Isles chamber to earning its five star accreditation with the US Chamber of Commerce. In 2021, Ralph was recognized by Georgia Trend magazine as one of the top 40 under 40 in the state of Georgia. Ralph graduated from the Georgia College and State University in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, and earned a master’s degree in public administration in 2008. Ralph is designated by the International Economic Development Council as a certified economic development professional, and he makes a great impact in any community which he serves. He’s married to his lovely wife, Rachel and has four beautiful children. Ralph, I’m excited to have you with me today here on Chamber Chat Podcast if you will take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.
Ralph Staffins 3:42 Yeah, Brandon, thanks for having me today. I’m excited to be here with other chamber professionals listening, as always like to learn from others as well. I guess the most interesting thing about me as far as a chamber professional golfers, I’ve had the opportunity to live all over the great state of Georgia, and I’ve never done anything other than economic development in my career. As a young professional, I’m still learning balancing work and, and life and you said I had four kids. And that certainly keeps me busy on top of leading such a great organization down here at the beach in Georgia.
Brandon Burton 4:16 That’s right, I’ve got four kids myself, and it keeps you running all different directions. You know, every day after work, it’s seeing who’s got basketball or volleyball or you know, all these different activities. Well, it take a moment to tell us a little bit about the Brunswick vowel chamber just to kind of give us some perspective before we get into our conversation, maybe the size budget staff, that sort of thing.
About the Brunswick-Golden Isles Chamber
Ralph Staffins 4:39 Yeah, so we represent Brunswick-Golden Isles and many other communities. It on the coast. So our community is the economic hub in Southeast Georgia. And so we have a lot of members outside of our immediate community. But if the brothers would go now this chamber was actually a result of The merger between the St. Simons Island chamber and the Brunswick chamber about 20 years ago. And so we represent roughly about 1200 Members, we have a budget of almost a million dollars a year and we have six employees as well.
Brandon Burton 5:16 All right, well, that definitely helps to kind of set the stage for your resources that you’re coming from and and I think that’s important so as other chambers listening, they’re bigger or smaller can see kind of take a pulse as to what you’re able to do with with the Chamber your size and kind of adapted to their chamber and where they’re at at the time. So our topic for our discussion today where we’ve titled this breaking down barriers and it’s really much more than that and I’m excited to to hear Ralph from from you as to the the perspective and background there the golden isles, the Brunswick golden Isles chamber as to how you guys are being more intentional around this topic, and we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Ralph, we are back. As I mentioned before the break you guys there at the Brunswick-Golden Iles Chamber being very intentional with how you’re going about, you know, some some things that have been kind of contentious and you know, a lot of tension throughout the country, especially as it comes to race relations. But if you would tell us a little bit of the background in your community why this is a topic that we’re talking about today. And how you guys addressed it?
Ralph Staffins 8:49 Absolutely. Well, and I’m sure the listeners know, they would probably be living under a rock if they didn’t know about the mod Aubrey murder in our community. As COVID was going on, all across the country, our country faced riots in issues from Portland all the way to Atlanta. And we actually had a incident in our community where a young man was shot in one of our neighborhoods, young, young African American gentlemen. And so it was just like the perfect storm with George Floyd and all these other things going on. And I tell people sometimes, you know, we were fortunate that COVID was happening because it slowed the news down and slowed everything down a little bit for our community to be able to to catch up, but I am so proud of our community. Right And last week, actually the hate crimes trial wrapped up. And so we are completely through the judicial process of this tragic incident happened in our community. And so we’re thankful for that. But we’re very proud that we came through this entire process peaceful. We didn’t have rioting or looting both, but that was because our community came together. And I’ll tell you, it was the business community, the Chamber business leaders in the African American faith leaders who have such strong existing relationships as to why that was able to take place in our community that they always say silence is deafening, right, you’ve heard that saying, the silence of our local elected leadership, it was deafening. And there was no reaction whatsoever. And so we came together as a business community and a faith community and started meeting and having conversations. And while we as business leaders and the face side of the house, too, we couldn’t guarantee an outcome. But we knew something was going wrong with this process. And we did come together and promise our community that we would ensure that it was done aboveboard. And that’s really all they wish they could ask for. And so we welcome people to our community to protest and to be heard, we asked him to do it peacefully. And when you add brothers and sisters locking arms, because of the relationships we already had, it allowed us to keep it peaceful in our community.
Brandon Burton 11:27 Yeah. And I think communities across the country and in I imagined in some other countries as well, they’ve all been much more hyper aware even of these challenges in communities with with race in regards to race relations. And I think everybody’s trying to be more intentional with how they go about being inclusive. And, you know, whether it’s just a general membership or board selection, things like that. I think there’s definitely a balance of being inclusive. And also making sure that, you know, people are not being put in positions or businesses aren’t being highlighted strictly because of the race background. Yeah, there’s so much more that you want to highlight what the good things are they’re doing. And it’s not just because it’s an African American based business or anything like that. How have you guys gone about intentionally being aware that drawing the proper attention in your community?
Ralph Staffins 12:38 Absolutely. I tell people all the time, this was a tragic incident that happened. There’s no way of getting around that. But it is changed our community, including our chamber. Moving forward, right, the tragedy would be to have something like this happen, and just go back to the way you’re doing. Yes. And so I told you this all kind of transpired and unraveled. During the height of COVID pandemic and lockdowns in our community, unlike most in the country, was very fortunate our economy had a hard hit, because we’re a tourism based economy, but we had a immediate rebound from that little dip. And so our community was wide open. There was no doubt about that. But but people were still being costs. Our workforce wasn’t 100% back even though we had record numbers of tourists in our community. And you couldn’t go into certain businesses because of the the restrictions and the Coronavirus. And so what we did is we decided we were going to start a new part of our organization, we started a 501 C three Foundation. And that foundation focuses on three main things. It’s leadership development, workforce development, and diversity, equity and inclusion. And I say it all the time, leadership development and workforce development go hand in hand, and the D comes in to support those right? We want to make sure our programs as we’re developing the leaders of tomorrow, and the future workforce of our community looks like our community. We want to make sure people of black and brown skin have the same opportunities to advance their careers and become part of our workforces. Anybody else. And so that’s that’s kind of what we did. It’s a reaction to it. And I can give you an example, a lot of chambers, I would venture to say most chambers have leadership programs, leadership, whatever your county is, right? Yeah. And our leadership program historically, did not have much diversity in it. And so through our foundation, we set a realistic goal of having 33% of our leadership class, which is almost the makeup of our community to right, as far as diversity goes. And we even took that one step further. We said, doesn’t matter if you’re white, African American, Hispanic, it didn’t matter. We do not want cost to be a barrier to you being able to better yourself and workforce and leadership development. So we raise scholarships and our leadership program cost $1,200 A year to go through. And a lot of small business employers can’t afford that kind of investment. And so we want to make sure that cost could be a barrier. So we, I literally made two phone calls and hesitant scholarships, I needed. This community rallied around not only redefining our leadership program, but ensuring that there was access to that program. And we went from having we take 30 people a year into the program, and we went from having 32 applications, maybe they haven’t 52 applications this year, and the second year going through this, this process.
Brandon Burton 15:45 So how did you go about communicating that, as far as you know, trying to attract the diversity to the leadership group, as well as the scholarship opportunities?
Ralph Staffins 15:54 Absolutely. Well, we invited folks to the table. Okay, so I need to say this, I understand these kinds of conversations are uncomfortable, right? Nobody likes to have these conversations. It doesn’t matter. Your ethnicity or socio economic class. They’re not comfortable conversations. And we are that we invited all of our minority businesses to the table. And we had conversations, we invited that African American faith community I talked about earlier, to the table. And we identified 75 young leaders in those communities. And we just invited them to apply.
Brandon Burton 16:37 And what kind of feedback of the 75 young leaders he identified? He said, total was about over 50 applications. But obviously, they weren’t all, you know, from the That’s right, those he identified, did you get other feedback? I guess the purpose, what I’m asking is, as far as, you know, a starting point for building relationships. Even if they didn’t apply, did you get positive feedback from those who you’d reached out to and invited and identified?
Ralph Staffins 17:10 We absolutely, we absolutely did. And not everybody can make that kind of time commitment from their job to be away from their job to be a part of progress. So that that did cause the application number to be lower. But we have so many people out of that first 75 or so young people we identified as part of our our chamber in different ways. Now, they didn’t have to go ship, Glenn is what we leadership, Langley County. But now they’re in committees. They’re part of our young professionals, they’re part of our ambassador program. One of that 75 is already on our board, went through the leadership program, and immediately showed so much potential, and his employer encouraged us to add him to, to our board. So it’s the last thing any community will want to do. And I think anybody listening would agree with me is to look over your shoulder and be worried about the next set of leaders coming up. Right. And we don’t want that. So we’re going to make sure our leadership program is state of the art but more than that, we’re going to make sure it looks like our community. So we’re empowering leaders in every neighborhood and every type of business, whether it’s small or big in our community.
Brandon Burton 18:25 But there’s you know, the the quotes out there have never let a good crisis go to waste, and not to make light at all of robberies, death, but it definitely came in a time of crisis. It came at a time where you know, emotions were very sensitive, were raw, and to be able to not let his death go unnoticed. And to have a mean something by be able to be able to, to reach out and and involve others and like you said, having them more involved with the Chamber now where they weren’t before. And it’s it was a matter of bringing that to the focus to the attention and being able to say we want you to be more active in our community. At least that’s how I see it is kind of taking that approach of we want to include you we want people of every walk of life to be part of our community to make it
Ralph Staffins 19:25 great. Absolutely. It changed our chamber down to our DNA. And that’s, that’s just me being honest, we, we do things differently. We have conversations we weren’t having before. And we are better as a business community and as a chamber because of it. And that just many of your listeners might not know my area, but we’re diverse in many different ways. It’s not just religion and race. We socio economically we have the richest zip code and one of the poorest zip codes in the state. of Georgia, all here in the same place, we actually have a four mile causeway that separates those two zip codes. And so that’s why I told you we were positive emerge chamber, there were two chambers for a reason, right? We had a diversity does is passed, color of skin or your religion, it’s Island and mainland. Yeah, Richard for and so we we want to make sure that we are doing the best we can and developing the workforce a for employers but b we also want to help in generational poverty, that’s something that we at least in the south face a lot is this generational poverty, and we are certainly part of a task force that’s helping to, to erase that from our community.
Brandon Burton 20:45 I love that. And that you do have some obstacles a lot of other chambers don’t have with the mainland, and the island is a real divide, you know, geographical divide between the two. But you know, working to bring them together as one. And I can imagine by having this new group of leaders being brought up, it’s going to bring a whole new perspective going forward at the chamber to insights and feedback that you wouldn’t have received otherwise. So I see this as being a really long term play of really seeing that the growth and development of the chamber there.
Ralph Staffins 21:27 It really is. And truthfully, we also have a youth leadership class. And so we’re also talking about high school, right, we changed the way we did that program to it’s not exactly like our adult leadership class, but it’s, it’s diverse, and now you’re having to apply for and it’s not just a counselor, telling us who we’re going to get. We’re getting private school kids and in inner city kids, and we’re putting together because those relationships in the future are going to be important for them.
Brandon Burton 21:53 For sure. So with the schools, how are you? How are you working with them to get that set up? Do you? Are you working through the counselors through administrators? How do you How are you initially setting up that relationship?
Ralph Staffins 22:05 Well, yeah, you know, like all things, it always flows down from the top right. So I would encourage anybody listening to this, your superintendent needs to be your best friend, that school board needs to know you just as well as the city or county commission does, right? It’s, we’re facing as a country, a workforce crisis. That’s the result of this pandemic, let’s be really honest. We’re not in a depression. We’re not in a recession, we are facing a workforce crisis like our country has never seen before. We are a microcosm of that here in the golden isles, we’ve got a 2.4% unemployment, right? In 1800 open jobs so that I can point people to right now, those numbers just don’t add up. No, not at all. And while we are increasing our population, being tourism community being a place where people like to come and retire, right, we’re not attracting workforce aged people as fast as we’d like to. And so we recognize that that 1200 to 1500 kids, we graduate every year out of our K 12 program. That’s our pipeline, until we figure out how to attract new, new young people to our community. And so we’ve got to make sure those kids are understanding what the workforce of the future is going to look like in our community specifically. And so we work really well with our school system for a lot of workforce type things, and we marry him with our Technical College. And we actually have a four year school here in our community as well. And so there’s a seamless transition for our kids, no matter what, whether they want to go to a technical school, or a four year education. And we at the chamber in the business community, we just want to make sure that they’re aware of all of their options, and where the jobs are. And so we actually just got done with a new program we installed called our teacher externship. And so we sent a bunch of teachers from I mean, even kindergarten, we even had kindergarten teachers, Brandon going into industry to understand that it’s not smokestacks and Miss indigenous anymore. It’s it’s high paying jobs and no debt out of the technical college, for the for the young people. And so it’s it’s relationships, everything is, you know, comes down to relationships. And so if I could give any word of advice to the listeners, it’d be to make that superintendent your best friend, because it’s whether it’s a leader, Youth Leadership class, or workforce pipeline, it all comes down from him or her and their willingness to partner with the business community.
Brandon Burton 24:36 Absolutely. And, and I think just having discussions too, I mean, just recently, I had a discussion with my oldest child, he just turned 16. And we’ve talked about his future and say, Okay, do you see yourself living in our community in the future? Yeah, 10 years from now, are you going to be here? Are you going to be living somewhere else? It’s like, Well, geez, yeah, I haven’t really thought of that. But I know a lot A lot of youth as they’re growing up, they can’t wait to get out of mom and dad’s house and, you know, go to college and start a career. And I don’t know, maybe it’s just an assumption, but it seems that a lot of youth seem to look outside of their community for their future. So what can we do to develop that future vision within our own community to keep our youth there and for them to see a future there in your community? I
Ralph Staffins 25:23 think it’s all important. So, absolutely. Is them understanding the careers. And it’s not just them, let’s be real honest, as parents, too, right? We got to make sure the parents and the students, I understand that there are incredible jobs in our community, and
Brandon Burton 25:40 we live at the beach, right? We have
Ralph Staffins 25:42 quality of life. Let’s show them where the jobs are, and show them that it’s you can play with computers and technology and make a lot of money in our community. And then maybe they’ll go to college, and maybe maybe they’ll go to technical school, but hopefully they come back. It’s that brain drain that our community has got to continue to work on slowing down.
Brandon Burton 26:04 Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. And, and you see chambers all over doing this now, as you know, showing those opportunities to the upcoming generation in showing that you can have a great career here. This is a great place to live. You’re familiar with it, you got family here, you’re showing all those highlights as to why it’s great to stay
Ralph Staffins 26:25 in your community. And I will I want to add one more thing. Yeah. I will say it’s, it’s more than just putting programming in your own community. I’ll give you an example. We want to build a new technical college building in our community $38 million. Once it’s all said and done. Our chamber spent the last two years working on that at the state legislature. In fact, we pulled all of our partners in this community together, and we all we could the chamber convinced them, we’re going to say our number one priority for our entire community is this new building. And I was actually there, the first four days of this weekend Atlanta, doing work in lobbying to get that financial commitment from from the state of Georgia. And so, you know, I see a lot of chamber professionals that I’m friends with good folks. And they’re good at events, or they’re good at workforce development, or they’re good and Governmental Affairs, but those things all just bleed together. Opinion. So even if you’re, you’re you’re not, it’s not your strong suit to do one of those things. Get out there and do it. Ask somebody how to do it if you don’t know and make sure those things are seamless, because because if they’re not, and we keep doing great workforce programming, but the kids don’t have a technical college to go to here. They won’t be back, right? Example.
Brandon Burton 27:42 Yeah, that’s a great example. So as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask what might be one tip or action item that you would suggest for a listener that they could do at their own chamber to help take them up to the next level.
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Ralph Staffins 27:59 And I’ll say this, I think we were fortunate to get it done while we had to be stuck in our office. But it’s a 501 C three, I think every chamber should have a foundation. So that a they can get tax deductible gifts, I promise you those Chamber Champions, and those past board members, all those folks. They sit in December and try to figure out where they’re going to give their money to give them an opportunity. They spent all that time being on your board and becoming your chairman, I promise you we’ll see more funding. And the second thing is your have access to grants that the C six designation won’t let you get to, in fact, we sat in a meeting this morning, they all did a site visit for a huge grant to help us with the workforce development process, new program. And so it’s not that hard. Get your attorney that works. Work does work for your chamber already. And I’ll tell you something else, I think that’s I didn’t realize was going to be a huge benefit of starting a foundation. But it’s allowed me to get my former chairman, plugged back into the chamber. I know that everybody hears it, it’s I just need a break from the chamber. But after a year or two, they fell out of the loop. And in so this allows them an opportunity to stay plugged into the chamber and those past chairmen are always the ones who are connected to the money in the community.
Brandon Burton 29:24 Yeah. So for anybody who’s read Dave Atkinson’s book, horses versus chess, he dives deep into this the importance of having a foundation and for all those things, Ralph is just talking about to be able to have it as another source of income, but also a source of work and being able to provide maybe it’s scholarships in your community or different things to be able to help further develop and advance your community. So great point.
Ralph Staffins 29:53 And I’m a big believer that chambers should not be event planners. And I know that a lot of my rule rather Don’t have to play in Christmas parades and things for their their cities. But I don’t think that’s our role. Our role is to advance business. And my motto is we’re not doing if it doesn’t advance our mission, or make us money advance our mission. And so this foundation allows you to meet your mission through new grants and new fundraisers that you weren’t tapping into before. And if not, you’re going to ask your chamber champion for more money again.
Brandon Burton 30:26 Absolutely. So I like to ask everybody that I have on the podcast this question, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Ralph Staffins 30:40 So I truly think that we, as chambers, and chamber professionals have got to get back to our roots. We were designed, we were formed to be the voice of business. Because when I go to Atlanta, or I go to DC, and I tell him 1200 members and 45,000 employees feel this way, that’s a whole lot more powerful than the chamber feels that way. And so and I also think that we’re going to have to be more regional, we got to be at least in Georgia, we’re very territorial, right, we have 159 counties in this little state. And each one of them has a chamber, that that’s, that’s not going to work, we’re wasting resources duplicating efforts. And I really feel like and I’m already seeing it, chambers and are going to have to become more regional. If there’s a big city and a couple of small counties around and make one change, figure out how to combine efforts. And we’ve done that here in southeast Georgia, we we do a huge legislative event every December and this year was we decided to make it a regional event. So we had legislators from all over the region come and talk and we invited their chamber to come back community because we had the big facilities, we ended up with five 600 people instead of the 400 we normally have. And so and those smaller chambers, members got to hear what was going on where they generally don’t have that kind of and so start off with events, make events regional. And ultimately, I think we’re going to have some combination of chambers in the southeast George’s Regional Chamber, for instance. Right? Well, from that here, but I do think that’s that’s the future, you’re more powerful when you have a bigger voice. And you certainly don’t duplicate efforts and resources and waste resources.
Brandon Burton 32:29 Yeah, I think for advocacy, especially to be able to make things more regional and and there definitely is power in numbers, like you were saying, I see the value and having a, you know, the local identity with having the the county chambers to be able to say, hey, we were late with the local businesses and local issues. But as far as you know, advocacy and being able to get the attention of elected officials, you know, for sure, combine, combine your resources and make a louder noise. So, great advice. Well, I wanted to give you an opportunity to put out any contact information for listeners that might want to connect and learn more about how you’re doing things. They’re at the Brunswick gold Niles chamber, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you.
Connect with Ralph Staffins
Ralph Staffins 33:17 BrunswickGoldenIslesChamber.com. You can you can also follow us on Facebook, we really believe in marketing here at our chamber. And so we we do get a lot of stuff out. And so you can check out our website. But our our Facebook pages is up to date constantly, as well as our website, but our, our Facebook pages as scrolling accomplishments. And I think that’s a good way. But please, you know, if you’ve got a question about something we’ve talked about today, I want you to call me, I’m happy to help any way I can. Our office number here is 912-265-0620. As for me, I’m happy to help as the chair of our state association and is on the Georgia Chamber board. I think it’s my duty to help others especially in the state of Georgia, but I’m happy to to help this process any way I can. One of the best things I did during COVID is we started a support group can during COVID. And we I was able to mentor chamber presidents from all over the country. And it was just an amazing, amazing process and I still try to stay connected with those folks as much as I possibly can.
Brandon Burton 34:26 I love that I love hearing chambers supporting each other. That’s awesome. But I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. So in case anybody’s driving or out walking the dog while they’re listening, they can access it at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode167. But Ralph it’s been a pleasure visiting with you and I appreciate the examples you shared about how you guys are doing things there at the Brunswick gold Niles chamber and you know, hopefully provided a lot of value for people listening as well. So thank you.
Ralph Staffins 34:59 Thank you for having me. You need to.
Brandon Burton 35:01 If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Sara Ray. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
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Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host…He encourages chambers to collect quality data so they can better segment their lists.
He’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber and now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.
Brandon Burton 1:31 You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting HolmanBros.com.
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Sara Ray. Sara became the president and CEO of the Douglas County Chamber in April 2018. Sara has more than 15 years of chamber corporate and nonprofit leadership experience including UPS Yancey bros as Strayer University, the Cultural Arts Council of Douglas, and four positions at the Douglas County Chamber. Sara serves on the Regional Business coalition executive committee is Vice Chair for the WellStar Douglas hospital regional board, and as a founding partner in Elevate Douglas economic partnership, a public private partnership created in 2021. She also serves on the board of the Georgia Association of Chamber of Commerce executives Georgia Academy of economic development, Cobb and Douglas public health steering committee and founding member of keep Douglas County beautiful. Sara received her Georgia certified chamber executive designation in 2021, making her one of only 22 in the history of the organization. She is a graduate of the US Chamber institutes of organizational management in 2015, the US Chamber business leads fellowship Regional Leadership Institute, Georgia forward young game changer, leadership Douglas and is it active in these alumni associations. In 2019, Sara was named by Georgia Secretary of State as outstanding Georgia citizen. She was also named as the West Georgia livings 40 under 40 in 2019, and a top 10 Young Professional in Douglas in 2015 and 2017. Her service to the community does not go unnoticed. She was recognized as Volunteer of the Year for the Georgia Ovarian Cancer Alliance in 2010 and 2012 Spirit Award by the city of Douglasville, Sara received her bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. When she isn’t working to support businesses and Douglas in the metro Atlanta region. Sara spends her time traveling and being outdoors with their children, Anna and Avery. Sarah, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, we will 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 bit better.
Sara Ray 3:53
Yeah, well, thank you for having me today. I have thought long and hard about this question. But I think something interesting about me is while I was born and raised in Georgia, my parents are both from overseas. So I’m a first generation American. And my dad is from England and my mom is from South Africa. So a lot of times when people meet me they see you know, cute little you know, southern girl and they don’t realize you know that my summers were spent in Africa and in the wild so so it’s it’s people always kind of that’s kind of throws them off.
Brandon Burton 4:31
So you get together with your family to get a variety of accents going on.
Sara Ray 4:34
Yes, yes. My mom always joke that like when I was in preschool, I came home and the first time I said y’all, she just cried because I had a British accent until I went to school because that was all I ever heard. So
Brandon Burton 4:48
yeah, it’s funny. I can just see that British accent you know, saying Yo she’s like, where did my baby go? Well tell us about the Douglas County Chamber just to give us some perspective, maybe size budget staff, that sort of thing
About the Douglas County Chamber
Sara Ray 5:06
before we get us. Yes. So our chamber is 77 years old. We have about 650 members that are investors in our organization. And we are located in west, west, just west of Atlanta, we’re about 20 miles west. So we are considered the Metro Atlanta region, but still kind of close enough. We always say, you know, close enough to the city to be able to catch a baseball game with our, you know, world champion, Atlanta Braves. But also, we still have plenty of green space and amenities where we can explore and enjoy the outdoors. So yes, so our team we are, we have and we have an interesting kind of space, we are in the process of integrating staff with our economic development organization elevate Douglas, so we share staff, but our full team is about 12 Strong between both organizations. But as far as chamber employees, we have about eight, so I think it was there anything I missed?
Brandon Burton 6:02
No, I think that that pretty much covers it. And so it sounds like you’ve said that before. Yeah. how close you are to Atlanta. And notice you you mentioned Braves and the Falcons but that that’s okay.
Sara Ray 6:17
We got we got UGA we’ve been
Brandon Burton 6:20
you gotta get your highlights, right. Yeah.
Sara Ray 6:22
Falcons fan. I know. I still have like, you know, wounds from five ish years ago. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. We’ll definitely talk about the Braves all day long.
Brandon Burton 6:32
That’s right. That’s right. So as we get into our topic for discussion, today, we’re gonna focus our conversation around creating relevant and personalized communication, which I think is going to be something relevant for listeners as we try to figure out the best ways to communicate with not only our members but people in the community and really, you know, be in that that voice for business community. So I’m excited to get into this discussion with you as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Sara, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about communication, creating relevant and personalized communication. I’d love to hear what you guys are doing there at the Douglas County Chamber to do this. Yeah, you know, what, what spurred the thought for this to be the focus of our discussion.
Sara Ray 9:36
Yeah, so I think it’s probably best to start up I’m gonna say the beginning. You know, I’ve been at the chamber as, as you mentioned, for just around 12 years and took over SEO about four years ago. So I felt like I’ve seen a lot of different things and you know, experience different trends and marketing and communications. That was actually the role I started out in being at the chamber so then seeing it grow and evolve. But I would say the beginning of our journey to where we’re at now and how we have moved into a space of having more customized personal communications was like a lot of people during the pandemic. So, you know, as a, an organization that was primarily in person with our events, that leaned into that space we were very accustomed to, like, I would assume a lot of chambers are is casting a net at, you know, at all your businesses, you know, the more people the merrier in a room, you know, that that equated to a successful event. And that was very, very true with myself in spaces, but also with my team. So when we had to go into an environment where we couldn’t do face to face, or, you know, we were just trying to still cast that net, but not being able to have those one on one conversations, we knew we had to do something different. So I remember specifically, we had brought back, and it was probably like late 2021 of our after hours events, it was outside, you know, open air. And I remember, in our, in our after hours, events typically have about 75 to 125 people, this one, there were about 27 or 28 people, and my team was coming up to me, this is a failure, this is not great. This is you know, we’ve lost our you know, our our mojo, this is awful. And I just remember being like, you guys are missing the big picture, look around the room and see what is happening, I said people are able to not come into a space where they don’t know anybody, you know, or they feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed, because of the number of people that are there. I said, people are able to come in and have a conversation, they aren’t worried about working the room. And and you know, getting as many business cards out as, as they can, they’re able to sit and have actual conversations. And I was a perfect example of that. I mean, as, as our viewers probably know, chamber execs you’re out work in the room, making sure that everybody feels welcome and included. And I remember sitting down with one of our youth leadership students, high school junior, and having like a 10 minute conversation on their career path and their trajectory, and all of these different you know, like just actually getting to know them. And, and that was a conversation I had with my team. And I was I was like you guys are missing the big picture, like people are having more authentic intentional interactions with one another. And that fosters a relationship and a depth of depth to a relationship that we can’t touch. Like we can’t, we can’t touch that in an email or communication, not the way we’re set up right now. So we ended up working with an organization to do again. So we kind of looked at, we started shifting some our events, instead of being a catch all for everyone. And during the business after hours, we had targeted industries that we were networking with, we had, you know, different themes. So we started a minority business group, we started a women in business group. So we started out with our events, but then what we realized quickly was, how are we getting the information out to everyone in a way that they can, that it that it resonates with them, and that they find value in that. So we went through the process of doing a marketing communications analysis and looked at all of the different things that we were doing email, social website, how we were how people were getting the information, and that was members, and it was non members. So we were polling and surveying our business community at large. And one of the things that kind of came back to all of it was that people don’t like getting the emails that are that are sent to the droves, you know, email was definitely their number one choice for how they wanted to be communicated with and this is in my community could look different. But even with the way that you interact with people on social media, like it’s great that we were posting, you know, we had a content calendar, and we were posting something on wherever, every other day, and we had a process behind that. But people wanted the engagement, they wanted to see themselves they wanted, you know, they wanted to know the stories about people so so we’ve gone through the process of customizing how we communicate with our businesses looking at we’ve created like a preference center. So you know, what Brandon might want contact information on it might be leadership and events and I might want information on policy and economic development. So we’ve created a you know, an infrastructure in our in our communications and how we do our events, that it’s customized and catered to the individuals just so that’s kind of the high level, how we got there. So
Brandon Burton 14:30
I love this. I just in fact, it was a week or two ago, I actually wrote and shared out a blog post about this very thing. Well, when you’re talking about these mixers, it was about that very thing. It’s like you know, so many people show up at a mixer. They’re new to the chamber, right? They show up, got a pocket full of business cards, or they’re gonna get their drink and they stand there totally awkward. Yeah, they don’t know anybody. And then you know, 10 minutes later they leave because Yeah, nothing happens that they’re super uncomfortable and That’s one of the huge value propositions, you know, for joining the chambers and networking. Yeah. Well, if it doesn’t resonate for them, they have a bad experience at first time, how likely are they to come back. So being able to have these personalized, you know, relevant events for them to attend, and really make sure that they resonate with not only the topic, but the other people that are there. So it makes sense to communicate with them.
Sara Ray 15:24
Yeah. And it’s not just about like getting them to the event, it’s the before and after to like, we’ve incorporated pieces into the process where, when they register, it’s, Hey, thanks for registering. And it’s all automated through chambermaster. You know, and it just says, Thanks for registering before you get here, check out our speakers, and we have links to the bios, and then two days before they get an email that’s like, you know, get excited, these are things that we’re going to have here, if we have kind of upcoming announcements or things you need to know before you get there. And then on the backside, we have follow up emails that are thanks for joining, here’s the pictures, here’s the links to whomever was speaking, you know, share your experience, and we put in there literally a copy and paste of post this on so on your LinkedIn, and they just have to drop it in there. So it gives them a good way to engage with us outside of just the event. And we you know, we’ll put in there register for our next event. So it’s all about creating, we call it an engagement pathway. So it’s all about creating that it’s not ever a start to finish. It’s always the what’s next behind things. So
Brandon Burton 16:27
so how do you go about in your, in your database to segment your lists? You’d mentioned you know, what their interests are I, the way I’ve envisioned it is you have a conversation of sorts, and in some of these, you probably have to guess if they’ve been a member forever, and maybe they’re not super high, you need to make some guesses. But as you onboard a new member to be able to have a discussion of what’s your expectation from the chain? What are you joining for? Is that how you guys go about it? Or what does that look like to be able to Yes,
Sara Ray 16:59
I’m going to call I’m going to call it bite sized pieces, I’m getting an email about like this long, you know, like, four pages long, is very inundating and overwhelming for someone. So we’ve actually shifted to I would call it like a drip campaign. So when they get their first email, it’s, you know, Hey, welcome to the chamber, we’re so excited to have you, here’s your login, be on the lookout, we have this next thing coming up, your next email will be about XYZ and then the next email that they get is, hey, we want to learn more about you. Right, so talk to us about the things that interested you in joining the chamber. And we capture some of that through our member application. But then it’s getting more into the space of what did they as the primary contact one, the next email is, hey, tell us about your team, let’s make sure and add in anybody that you have that as a part of your team that we need to include in our conversations, because, again, Sara raise preferences, and Julia in my office, it might be different. And the things that they find value in as a member would be different. So we’ve shifted instead of it just being this one dump of information into small videos and and kind of little snippets, that cycle out, I would say at least once a week for the first month, and then we kind of lag it out a little bit. But that way, it gives them the information kind of on a consistent basis without overwhelming them. Because that was another thing people don’t want to read through, like I said, five pages of information. So we’ve we’ve just shifted to that kind of little bite sized piece of information. And then there’s some other things, we mail them some stuff too. So they’re getting that attention, we send we have somebody that does a phone call. So we have a whole process in place. But yeah, identifying their specific needs and interests, we do that some through the main contact through when they apply. But then it’s part of the process. And we just capture that through our CRM. And then we actually connect it into the campaign system that we use for email marketing. So and then you can go into if we’re getting super granular, like the tags and segments within your email marketing system. So then you can go through and kind of pick and choose and say, hey, I want to send this piece of information to people who are tagged that they like information about women in leadership, or it could be about policy. So we kind of lean on those different tools to to segment it out, because there is information you want everybody to get and know about your big signature event or your upcoming event or training that you have. But then some of the information, you know, might not be relevant to you know, a solopreneur that’s never that doesn’t need to hire anybody doesn’t necessarily need to have all the information on how to post a job on our on our job site. So yeah, it’s just trying to try to funnel down and fine tune that information to where it’s what they find this value in. And then you can track it all on the back end through analytics and see again, and we drive almost all of our activity, I would say all of it to our website so that we can track the analytics and know where people are going, what information that they’re actually likely looking at and learning from.
Brandon Burton 19:54
I love that and I think this is going to be one of those episodes that people go back and listen to or at least You know those last few minutes? Like, okay, take notes, and how did you do this step to the next day? So, simple question, what, what email platform do you guys use?
Sara Ray 20:11
Yes. So, we have tried a few, we use Constant Contact for a long, long time. I know as chamber people, we get it for free, which is great, but I and I mean, contact is wonderful. But there are other paid platforms that can give you more. So we actually investigated using Campaign Monitor, but then ended up going with MailChimp. So it integrates with chambermaster, which is our CRM that we use. So and has a lot of capabilities and even the visibility, the open rates are better with MailChimp than some of the others just because they don’t automatically pop into your junk folder and things like that. So we have some great partners that we work with, that are investors with the chamber that helped us kind of work through all that process, it wasn’t, you know, I don’t have a crystal ball. And I will say to that doesn’t mean what works for us will work for everyone. And Constant Contact has does have some great tools that are associated with it, if you’re on a little bit of a tighter budget, but that was we ended up moving forward with MailChimp was what we ended up going with.
Brandon Burton 21:11
So and I wanted to highlight that just so listeners when they talk about when they hear you talk about segmenting tags, and all these things like, Well, my software doesn’t do that, or where do you find that? So it’s within MailChimp that you’re doing those things. Yeah. So I love the way that you go about with that kind of introductory email, you know, here’s some things to look forward to. And then the follow up as to, you know, what kind of things are of interest to you? Where do you do you see, as people, you know, have a longer time with the chamber with their membership or investment where they learn about new offerings that the Chamber has and to be able to add that to their interest. So they’re getting those those pieces of information? How do you add that in along their membership journey,
Sara Ray 21:59
oh, you’re gonna laugh at this one, we have a nickname for how we do that in my office. So um, you know, we’ve used MailChimp for a lot of our you know, we use that for our I would say standard, we do a top five email that goes out on Mondays, you know, we have social that we post we did videos, those kind of things. If we are in a space, and we want again, because a lot of people just see chamber emails, and they’re like, Oh, I’m just gonna keep clicking through. So what we learned, and I honestly don’t remember how we got into the space. My team calls them, Hey, friend emails. And it’s literally me, emailing our entire database through chambermaster. And I write them just like it’s coming from, I mean, it is coming from me, but I read it just like I’m emailing you directly. And the tone and the language behind it is just as if I was writing to any, you know, any of my businesses that are members. And it’s, Hey, how are you very generic entry. Hey, there, and it’s, you know, I always try and make some kind of interesting subject line, like, got a second or one quick thing for you. And then I go into, hey, hope you’re doing great. Getting ready for the weekend, or whatever, you know, whatever, just some kind of little intro, but like, I just wanted to make sure, I don’t know if you saw the emails, but I want to make sure you knew about XYZ event or training or whatever that we’re doing. That’s coming up, I think it might be great for you. You know, we’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And we’d love to see, see your face at it. If it was an event or whatever. If there’s anything that you need from me, you know, I’m always here, have a great day. And I literally, that’s basically what are our response rate? And people like people have no idea? Well, some of them start picking up on it, they have no idea that it’s sent to 1000s of people. So I get responses from people. They’re like, Oh, my gosh, it’s been so long since we talked hope you’re doing well, thanks for checking on me, you know, so we call it Hey, friend emails in my office. And that’s a great way because then we’re able to go back. And if I get an email from someone, like I said, that I haven’t heard from in a long time or haven’t seen an event, and they’re responding to an event that we’re talking about, you know, going to our cap the state capitol, then I know that that’s piqued their interest in some space, if they’re choosing to respond to me, Hey, I hope I can make it please keep sending me the this this way, you know, would love to have this in a virtual format like we get we I get honestly I get better open rates on those than any other email platform that I do. And again, nobody knows what I mean. A few again, a few now know the secret, but for the most part, but that’s the bottom comes in. I have to be so let my team is there. There’ll be like, can you send a hey, for an email? I was like, I’ve already sent one this week. Like we’ve got to limit or they lose their hour. But yeah, so yeah, so Hey, friend, emails work really well. I actually had one of our state our congressional senators offices call me she’s like, I need to set up a meeting with you. She goes are those emails like really to everyone? Or is it just to me, because she said she forwards them out to her team every time and it’s like This is how we need to communicate with our business, you know, with our constituents, and it started as a random thing, but that’s kind of our, our secret sauce that you know, we have our templated emails. But if we need to pull a friend one out, then it works almost every time.
Brandon Burton 25:16
And I imagine that those Hey, friend emails are also going to help with your open rates and deliverability of the emails going out through MailChimp to see that those are getting delivered and opened and responded to, they’re gonna deliver more of those inboxes. Exactly. That’s, that’s awesome. But then, so you’re taking those manually those responses and saying this members interested in this and then updating their profile
Sara Ray 25:39
that, yeah, I have somebody on my team that I’ll just forward them to. And it’s also a great way to make sure we have bad emails that are coming through or bounces or changes in role, you know, because there’s lovely member info updates that we all try and send are only so successful before we have to get on the phone. So this is a good kind of consistent way to kind of work through that process. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 25:59
So one of the other things he had mentioned, I want to make sure that I understood it, right. It sounds like one of those follow up emails and member first joins is saying who else in your organization would be interested in XYZ. So you’re, you’re getting other contact information for each business, but then also able to further the segmentation to that person’s over HR versus, you know, over, you know, the CEO, as the company, they’re going to be, you have different interests, so you’re able to touch them on different levels at the same
Sara Ray 26:31
business. And I was trying to add something, we always add some language like, if this isn’t for you, please feel free to share with share it with somebody, you know, and make sure a lot of people and I know that you’ve heard this before, but they think that they’re the only person that’s a member of their chamber. I’ve had several conversations with our school district. I’m like, every teacher, every educator is a member of the chamber. So you know, like, use that leverage that leverage that bandwidth. Oh, yeah.
Brandon Burton 26:57
Yeah, no, I think that’s key. Yeah. They think whoever was the one that signed up to chat. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, crazy. Yeah. Or just the owner. But yeah, it can. And obviously, every chamber is a little different. But most chambers that I’m aware of is opened it. Yeah, buddy within their business. So good point. I think this topic is so important. I’ve mentioned this a few times. And I think it’s worth mentioning again, just with the topic is my background is in chamber publishing says I would go out and meet with different Chamber members. And they find out that I’m not actually with the chamber, but they open up to me. Yeah. It’s like, I’m a bartender, and they just start telling me, you know, this is this last experience, this last event was awesome. Or I get way too many emails from the chamber. You know, I’ll ask them, Did
Sara Ray 27:46
you get to see my, like, little chamber therapist?
Brandon Burton 27:48
Exactly. They’re like, I get so many emails from the chamber. I probably got it. But you know, yeah, I deleted or I just opened it moved on. So yeah, being able to segment make it highly personable, I think it’s so important. And that’s, that’s the age we’re in today. Anyway, I mean, if you’re just doing a blanket email, there’s, there’s a purpose for it, you know, at times, but if that’s your only communications, a blanket email, you’re missing the boat, and you’re missing opportunities to connect with members. So yeah,
Sara Ray 28:17
and our ultimate goal is to, for people to have value in what we do, right? Like the end game is for someone to say that they got what they were looking for out of their membership. And if you have simple tools in place to be able to pinpoint that so a year in you can say, Hey, you said you wanted information on policy, or you wanted us to go to bat for you, as the voice of business in our community, you can go back on that and say, You, this was what you you know, this is what you said you find value in here. Here is how we took that, like, let’s talk about that. So being heard is so important for businesses.
Brandon Burton 28:52
How do you use the information that you get? I’m calling it segmenting, just for maybe lack of a better term? How do you use that information to create content or plan future events? Do you ever look into it to weigh that into what you’re doing?
Sara Ray 29:08
Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, so think of Okay, so we’ve had events, okay. Our breakfast series is a great example. So we used to have a, you know, you know, just a networking breakfast. It was just putting people in a room together. And that was it. Like there was no agenda. I mean, we will get up give door prizes, you know, that normal kind of, Hey, everyone, thanks for coming. And we shifted that and based off of feedback from people saying, you know, what are you doing for minority owned businesses? Why can we have women’s programming we’ve done you know, we did surveys and focus groups talked with our board, of course, and then we’re able to create those events and then solicit feedback on Did you like this, what did you think? And then just continue to craft our programming to meet the needs of our members? You know, we’re a member driven organization as all chambers should be, and so meeting the needs of what our business is our and that looks very different than two years ago, it looks very different than 10 years ago. So just continuing, you know, I am, I am always a proponent of new and different, and sometimes I think exhausts my team. But at the same time, the things that were relevant, you know, three or four years ago are very different. Now, we were never in a space where we thought we’d be relying on Zoom to do, you know, a majority of our work for six or eight months, so. So I think just being open minded and nimble listening to your members, and then and then being okay with adapting and changing, you don’t have to go and completely rebrand your whole organization, you can do it in small spaces, do a beta test of something, try it out, see if people like it, get their feedback. And then you can look at expanding that. So we do a lot in that space of trying things with small groups of people before we pull it into a larger space.
Brandon Burton 30:49
Yeah. And I think as you gather that information on what their expectations are, as they join the chamber, you’re able to then speak their language. And then when it comes time to renew memberships, it’s very hard for them to say, you know, the Chamber didn’t do anything for me, I didn’t see any value out of the chair, if you’re sending them those direct communications and talking to them in exactly what they’re looking for. So yeah, I hope everyone’s taking notes. Yeah, and
Sara Ray 31:15
I think you one more thing, because you asked me about like sharing information, articles and things that you’re what we’ve what we do is we do a lot of alcohol, like inbound marketing. So sharing resources, I’ve always been a firm believer, we don’t have to be the doer of all things, or the creator of all things. So we have a huge focus on building partnerships with other organizations. So we have a great partnership with the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, right? We have, I’m going to call it a language barrier with dealing with our Hispanic business community, they are successful at that. So why would we sit and recreate the wheel in bringing that into the mix. So we have a lot of content that we gather from our members, subject matter experts, we partner with our colleges and universities, you know, they’ve great economists that work at colleges and universities, why not lean on them to do our economic development reports and things of that nature. So I think that that’s very important. Even with trainings and professional development opportunities for businesses, you don’t have to create things. It’s it’s even thought more highly of if you partner with others, so we have gone that direction. Our new our new tagline is where partnerships and businesses thrive, because that’s the environment that we try to create. So it’s a lot easier to than trying to recreate the wheel on things.
Brandon Burton 32:27
That’s right. I love that. So as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you what might be one tip or action item for chamber champion listening that they could do at their chamber to help take them up to the next level?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Sara Ray 32:40
Yes, um, so I would say, and this is a super simple Hey, friend, email that basically anybody can send out is send an email out, I did this, I tried to do it about once a year. But send out an email to your membership and from from your executive, or whomever you deem that you think would have the baby could even be your board chair, and ask them how you what, you know, kind of three questions What what are you getting from us that you love? What are some things that you need from us? And what can we do differently? You know, and just get that feedback from them. It doesn’t have to be this highly calculated survey. And again, if you go with that personal approach of how can I best support you? I guarantee I remember the first time I did, I got like, 300 emails back and I was inundated, but took the time to respond. And because it was coming from me, it wasn’t again, this, it doesn’t have to be this robust, well thought out process, just zap out an email, ask them how they’re doing how you can best support is there anything I can do to support your business? And you’ll be amazed at the results that you get, it’s super simple, but I promise you, like people find value in that kind of thing.
Brandon Burton 33:47
Absolutely. lets them be heard. Yeah, yes, that’s awesome. Then you
Sara Ray 33:51
can just make a list. And then you know, and you have your marching orders for the things that you can look at adapting and changing. So yeah, and listen and listen to them. And share that information back with your members is also important. Don’t just take it all and keep it in a dropbox folder somewhere, share out with people what, what, you know what your membership is saying. So,
Brandon Burton 34:09
for sure. So as we look to the future, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Sara Ray 34:18
Oh, um, you know, I’m sure you’ve chatted with my buddy Casey Steinbacher. Before. She is a great friend of mine. And, you know, she preaches a lot about going from being relevant to being essential. And I think that and I have others that have kind of lived in that space. And I feel like that’s the environment. The things that we have done in the past, as far as chambers go, you know, think 30 years ago, chambers used to be the place that did parades and you know, they might have done ribbon cuttings every now and then. And now we have chambers that are moving the needle in Washington DC advocating on behalf of businesses and helping businesses stay afloat, you know, during the pandemic. So I think I think where I see it going is just continuing to move into that space of being essential. And that looks different for every community. And for every business. You know, during the pandemic, I had a business that was it, they it’s like a kind of like a farm of like a petting zoo farm. And she needed to feed the alpacas on her farm. And the only way she raised revenue to do that was by having visitors and she couldn’t. So helping her figure out what was essential to her helped her us be essential to her. Does that make sense? So. So I think that where we’re headed is into a space of, I mean, it sounds silly, but it’s a space of humanity, it’s listening to people, it’s talking to them. It’s providing a space where they can have those open, honest, intentional conversations, whether that’s about diversity, or whether that’s about you know, growing a company, I think it’s just giving people that personalized attention, where they feel that there is not another option than to be a part of the chamber. I think that that’s kind of the direction that we’re headed in. And that looks different for every business, and it looks different for every community. Yeah, it’s been open to that, too, is important.
Brandon Burton 36:07
I love that you brought up Casey, and in her book, you know, relevant to essential. And if anybody hasn’t read it, it’s a it’s an e book. So look it up on Amazon. terrific book, but I mean, she talks about being relevant to your members becoming essential to your community, which really changes perspective, as you read through the book and read, you know, see the ideas that she shares in there. Yeah, changes perspective. So thank you for that. What would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect with you if they have any questions about, you know, how you’re doing things their communication wise, or they couldn’t keep up with what’s the best way to reach out,
Connect with Sara Ray
Sara Ray 36:48
I get excited, and I talk fast. So I would say the easiest way is on LinkedIn. And it’s just my LinkedIn profile, you can search at Sara Ray. You can also get to us through our very snazzy new chamber website. It’s DouglasCountyGeorgia.com. Or I’m happy to share my information with you. It’s ray@douglascountygeorgia.com is my email where you can look you can look me up anywhere.
Brandon Burton 37:14
That’s right. And we’ll get all your contact information in the show notes for this episode, which will be at ChamberChatPodcast.com/episode166. But Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today and talking to all the Chamber Champions about this great work that you’re doing and really moving your your chamber forward with your communication channels, and really being more essential to the businesses in your community. I appreciate that.
Sara Ray 37:40
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Brandon Burton 37:43
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Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host he believes having an emergency preparedness plan is crucial is my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:20
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Jason Mock 0:44
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Natalie English. Natalie currently serves as the president and CEO of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina. She’s served for almost 25 years in a chamber of commerce leadership role and over 30 years advocating on behalf of business. Natalie believes it’s her calling to work with business government and elected leaders to make her community attractive for business growth and investment. Natalie has almost 30 years of experience monitoring legislative and regulatory issues locally statewide and at the federal level. She has had a strong track record of success and has been responsible for building community support for many investments in infrastructure that have been key to economic development in the communities in which she has worked. She’s had leadership experience and background in effecting policy that impacts the cost and ease of doing business quality of life and workforce. Natalie found herself faced with the opportunity to advocate on behalf of her community Wilmington, following Hurricane Florence. Natalie has taken many of the lessons learned during that natural disaster to lead her community through the economic crisis associated with the pandemic, which we’ll cover in this episode in more detail. In her spare time, Natalie enjoys spending time with her son Rick on the sidelines of many sports activities, playing golf, reading and writing.
Natalie, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, if you would just take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.
Natalie English 2:43
So hi, Chamber Champions at some, it’s great to be able to be with you this way. I have admire so many of you across the country, and appreciate inputs and things that I’ve learned from all of you. So I hope that I can share something helpful for you. So I guess something interesting about me. I love to sing. And while I’m not trained to do so I have a decent voice and so have enjoyed over the years in a couple of churches that I’ve been a member of to be able to sing with the band. So we’re not talking about just Tim books, which I do, but rock and roll. And so you never know I may when I retire from this go try to replace Mick Jagger, you know, as old as he is, but, but I’m not that good. But I do love to do it. So
Brandon Burton 3:33
what’s one of your favorite songs to sing?
Natalie English 3:36
Oh, gosh. Wow. I mean, there’s there’s so many my favorite artists, Christian contemporary artists is Natalie grant. Interestingly, she has the same name that I do, but we have had a bandleader tell me that our voices are similar. Now she’s way better than I am and much better trained than I am. But I can I can sing her songs really well, because we’re the same range. So I love her. And I’ve just love the I love worshipping through music. And so I just yeah, it’s what I like to do.
Brandon Burton 4:05
That’s awesome. I love these little facts I get to learn about people to do the podcasts. Thank you for sharing. Sure. Tell us a little bit about your chamber about the Wilmington chamber kind of size staff budget location just to kind of get us off perspective as we get into our discussion.
About the Wilmington Chamber
Natalie English 4:21
Sure. And there’s a little bit of a little bit of history perspective that needs to go along with that when I joined the Wilmington Chamber in March of 2017. We were a total of five staff. Our roles said we had around 900 members and our budget was in the 800 to $900,000 range. We have been through a major hurricane, a minor hurricane and a pandemic. And I’m really pleased to say that we finished 2021 with a $1.2 billion revenue and and expenses. million million sorry, well, I want to be doing sorry, 1.2 million, I’ve been talking about building bridges. And that’s always starts with a B, so sorry, 1.2 million. And we just added our eight staff person last month. So it’s continuing to grow finding the ways we do that, and doing that in the midst of and post disasters. So I’m really proud of my team.
Brandon Burton 5:27
That is great. Oh, it says a lot about the work you’re doing to still provide that value and which is going to be evident in our discussion today, but to see that return on investments and, and to see that growth continue, even through the pandemic. So our topic for discussion, so I’ve kind of hinted towards it as I read through your bio, and in just now but we’ll be focusing our discussion on disaster and economic recovery. And I’m excited to get into this discussion with you you’ve had some I hesitate to say great experience, because I’m sure it wasn’t great experience going through it. But some valuable lessons that have come out of that. So we’ll get into that discussion as soon as I get back from this quick break.
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All right, Natalie, we are back. So disaster and economic recovery. I’d mentioned before with Hurricane Florence that ripped through Wilmington and cause destruction, you had another minor hurricane as well. What kind of lessons did you learn through these natural disasters that would lead you to help your community be prepared and to be able to bounce back and recover afterwards.
Natalie English 8:45
It’s funny, you know, to be to think about being fortunate for a disaster, but and it was it was a great experience because it has equipped me, I think, to to help to lead my community through the pandemic. So in September of 2018, Hurricane Florence was expected to be a Category five storm and so I left town with my young son at the time and our our dog and we camped out in a basement at a friend’s house in Charlotte. And instead of being a Category Five, she downgraded but she sat here for days just dumping rain on our community in our region. And because I still had internet service and phone in Charlotte, I started calling colleagues around the country and so shout out to folks at chambers of commerce in the Houston area in the New Orleans area, who had been through major hurricanes who who provided advice and counsel to me. And so from that basement in Charlotte, one of the biggest pieces of advice that I’ve received from from our colleagues in the Houston area was to make sure that the community gets connected Some of the some of the scariest things that can happen, or that people get left behind in recovery. And the way to prevent that is to make sure that we’re talking as we’re responding to do the the immediate needs in the community. And so I called my friend, the CEO of the United Way of the Cape Fear area, and said, I think we need to get the not for profit response agencies together with the business community, because I had been getting calls, right? So from from the response agencies asking me if I had a business that could provide this or that, and then the requests started sounding the same. And so I had that fear that we were falling into this trap of having multiple responses to one family, and no responses to another family and so called in church leaders from across the community, and found that we did have some less connected communities, less affluent communities, communities of color, who were not receiving the same responses as others, and it was unintentional, and yet it still was happening. And so that was the biggest lesson I learned is that immediately after some sort of disaster, making sure that you’ve your community is well connected, putting aside competition and putting aside potentially partisan differences. And, and I’m so proud of this community for doing just that. And being able to develop not only the response, the immediate response, but then to continue working together, literally, even through the pandemic. We’ve been working together to identify grant dollars that could help us become a more resilient community when the next storm hits. So infrastructure, specifically water, sewer and electricity infrastructure that will withstand the next major storm that might come through with continued to stay together. Because response can sometimes takes years to complete. When there’s damage done to homes, then the second major lesson I learned is that there is a lot of opportunity to help individuals and families recover from storms. But there was nothing for business unless you wanted to take out a loan, we’ve we invited the SBA into the chamber building after that hurricane and said Come help our businesses. But when when a business is impacted, so detrimentally, they don’t have the capacity for a loan. And so so that’s so I started then advocating in this community and at the state level, to say, look, the next time a major storm comes to any, any place in our community, in our in our state, we need to be ready to respond. Because those businesses represent jobs. Sometimes it’s two jobs, sometimes it’s 20. Sometimes it’s 500. But whatever the number is, something has to be available not just for an individual to save their home, but for their employer or to save their job. That was a broken record.
Brandon Burton 13:04
That’s so important. Yeah. And I think that gets overlooked and curious, what kind of traction Have you seen as he started to advocate for businesses to be able to recover after disaster?
Natalie English 13:14
Well, and I can’t take credit for it happening at the federal level. And because I’m not sure my voice has been that loud. But I but I think that coupled with colleagues around the country who’ve been through this and had said the same thing, when when we hit the lockdown for COVID, the amount of investment that our federal government, our state government, and then our local government were willing to make in businesses that that were forced to shut down as a result of the pandemic, that that did. That doesn’t happen. You’re right. We so even though government doesn’t force a shutdown, post disaster, natural disaster, the shutdown still happens. But this time, because government forced the shutdown, they also saw themselves as a as a as a resource for recovery from that shutdown. And so we here at the Chamber advocated locally for our city and county to use some of the dollars that were allocated from the federal government to invest in the recovery and reopening of our business community. And they responded, four and a half million dollars that we were able to, to distribute in our community. And then because we were so successful and advocating for it, they turned around and said, Okay, can you manage the program? And of course, we said, yes, yeah, as wide open, what have we done, but that also brought in some revenue for us because they were willing to pay us to administer the program and then to help them get the money out more quickly. And while I’m looking around the state, other communities who still haven’t done You’re down how they’re going to spend their American Recovery Plan funds. We’ve already gotten ours out the door, because our local governments worked quickly.
Brandon Burton 15:08
Yeah. And the time is so key to that, right. I mean, it really just sits there. And you know, it’s not getting out to the businesses not doing the purpose that it’s supposed to be. Right. So I’m curious as he reached out to, through the the hurricane situations, he reached out to other chambers, he had mentioned the Houston area, did you happen to chance to chance to speak to Diane probes at Rockport Fulton. Now?
Natalie English 15:34
I don’t remember. I actually, yeah, spoke to so many.
Brandon Burton 15:39
I had her on the podcast way back in episode 12, over 150 episodes ago, when she was talking about, you know, the hurricanes that have hit them, you know, on the Texas coast. Yeah, and what they’ve did to, you know, prepare the infrastructure and everything going forward. But then it was interesting, because I had recorded that, and it was just a few months later that, you know, the pandemic hit. And I actually had several recordings for the podcast ready to go. But that week, when everything shut down, I was like, you know, what, we’re going to push these back a little bit, I’m going to replay that episode from Diane probes, oh, there are so many key lessons in there from a natural disaster that can be applied to economic recovery, and just, you know, a pandemic, you know, I guess at the time, we didn’t realize it is necessarily going to become a pandemic, right. But key lessons to be learned. So, share with us what some of these things are that you took from the natural disaster experience, experiences, and being able to roll those over into, you know, pandemic response and relief and recovery from that situation is that I see that being a lot more applicable to chambers across the country.
Natalie English 16:52
Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, I think that you sometimes Chamber members, they write their check, and maybe they come to an event or two, that maybe they they don’t really think they hear from their chamber, right for the year, and then the renewal notice comes up. See, so we are all struggle, we all struggle with making sure that our investors see the relevance even if they don’t participate in the programming, right? And and what’s the best communications tool to do that? I will tell you if Chamber of Commerce does not take full advantage of any disaster that strikes, but being that trusted source of information about the resources, where the pandemic was concerned about new regulations and new guidelines, I mean, the guidelines were changing and still are, right, it feels like by the hour, and and so we post hurricane, and at the beginning of the pandemic, we implemented daily and then for not for long, but for a few weeks daily, people wanted to hear from us every day about what was new, and what do we need to do? And where do we where are we going to find help and, and so we did daily emails probably for about six weeks into the pandemic. And then we waned back to about twice a week, and did that well into the fall of 2020. We’re now back to our once a week official news related email that we send to our members, but it showed them that we were on top of what was going on and that we could connect them, it improved our relationship with many of them who didn’t hear from us. And it also opened up a line of two way communication, so that they could tell us the issues they were facing, we may not know about ahead, manufacturers at the very beginning stages. So but we are essential services, right? So different types of businesses wanting to make the case to our elected leaders that they were essential to the to to to our country, to our community. And so it opened up to a communication with some companies we had been getting checked for, from for years that hadn’t really heard from and so never wasted disaster as a Chamber of Commerce’s what I would suggest.
Brandon Burton 19:19
Yeah, I’ve heard a quote about that, you know, never let a good disaster go to waste, right? So when you talk about two way communication is that they would respond back to the email or they would get that input from you from those weekly or daily emails, and then pick up the phone and call or how was that two way communication established?
Natalie English 19:41
So some of it would happen in response to the email. And then you know, when I when I moved here in 2017, I reluctantly put my cell phone number on my business card. But in hindsight, I’m glad because we all got sent home right and, and yes, I could My voicemail or I could forward my voicemail from officer, but they are members, those who wanted to reach out to me, and who were able to get their hands on my cell phone number, I believe that they felt like they had a more immediate connection. So a lot of it really did come through my cell phone number. But also, in response to the email to my staff team, I’ve surrounded myself with people who are well connected in different parts of our community than I am. And so they got direct phone calls from our members. And it just we were we were responsive that we were available. And we were responsive, even though we were not sitting in the chamber building. We were each sitting in our individual home offices, but but we were available for them.
Brandon Burton 20:48
Yeah. So I think you’d also touched on the idea of being the trusted resource for information. And we hear that being said a lot these days in reference to chambers of commerce. But just to stress that point a little bit more. We see in communities all over that the what was the traditional trusted news outlets, you know, local TV, newspapers, things like that are, you know, if they haven’t closed or shut down their resources, or much less to cover those important stories to, to establish that information base, where it creates a void in communities, where Chambers of Commerce really are very well suited to fill that void. And to get out that information. And you don’t need to cover you know, all the high school, you know, sports events and all that. But, you know, the things that are important to get information out in your community. What communication methods you met, you mentioned email, what communication methods do you guys use to help establish, you know, that trusted credibility in your community? Yeah,
Natalie English 21:55
yeah, I don’t, it’s not unique. I mean, we do we, we, under normal circumstances, let’s call them we send a weekly email and it includes a president’s report, we call it so it’s something some topic for me that’s current and maybe in in the works that we inform our members about. We then we also have gotten much better over the last few years at incorporating social media and connecting with our, our business community through our social media outlets, and we haven’t yet dived into Tik Tok, but we’re on every other channel there is out there. And so Tik Tok. Next, they keep my staff keeps telling me, they want me to start doing videos. So we’ll see how that goes. But um, and then, and then I would say, again, because we just celebrated last week, our 150/5 consecutive annual meeting. So this Chamber of Commerce is more than 155 years old. And many chambers right across the country, or many communities across the country have had Chambers of Commerce in their community for that long. And so I think, I think we need to be I think it’s incumbent upon us to keep being that trusted source because they I think that I really believe that we don’t fall into the same category as as same members of Congress, right? People say Congress is that I don’t trust Congress or I don’t trust the legislature, I don’t trust that’s the only because because the the, the the perception that they’re all about politics, and they’re still doing really good work on our behalf. But for us Chambers of Commerce were seen as the place to go for information about tourism, for information about starting a business. And so it’s not political at the start. And so just taking advantage of that reputation that we’ve had for over 100 years in most of our communities, I think is how to do it and then using every channel possible, because different people are communicated with differently. And then finally, I would say that you can’t only communicate with everybody with the same voice, right? So me as a white woman, chamber CEO, I’m probably isn’t the right person to communicate with our young professionals in this community. I’m probably a little older than they’d like to see. Or you we have some great leaders of two councils that we’ve created an African American Business Council and a Latin American Business Council. And so we make sure that whenever we have critical messaging that needs to get out to the entire business community, that we we engage with them to help us get that word out, and whether it has to be in a different language, or through different channels. Because everybody’s not going to listen to the white female chamber CEO and US got to accept that and and use those other vehicles and show that willingness to build those bridges between communities.
Brandon Burton 25:08
Right? I think a point that you touched on that, yeah, turn on the light bulb, in my mind is when you talked about, you know, 155 years for the woman can chamber. Talk about credibility, you know, you guys aren’t going anywhere, you’ve been around a long time, you’ve been representing business in your community for a long time. And being able to get that messaging out to the community and say, Look, we are here for you, we’re here to help make Wilmington or whoever’s listening, you know, your own community, a strong place, you know, a great place to live, and work and to do business. It builds that credibility. And, you know, I wanted to circle back and I apologize, this kind of goes back to when you’re talking about the disaster recovery, from the storms, that you had mentioned, how you reached out to church leaders, which I thought that’s genius. I mean, they have a close following right there in good. Typically, they’re going to be in close communication with members of their congregations. Granted, not everybody in the community attends a church or, you know, regularly to have that relationship, but you’re getting certain segments of the population that, like you’ve mentioned, are being missed. I wanted to kind of piggyback on that maybe, and even add in homeowners associations. So that would be another way to reach some of those in communities that normally your email blasts with necessarily reach. But in times of a disaster or emergencies, they can be a great resource to help you connect with the greater community.
Natalie English 26:42
Absolutely. And, and I would also say, other membership associations, right. So locally, we have strong partnership with our Home Builders Association, and our Realtors Association. And, and then other Chambers of Commerce in our region. So and in some of those cases, they have significantly fewer staff than we do. And so I considered it extreme flattery, when I would have a chamber exec from another county in the region, or another partner, you know, text call, email me and asked me if they could cut and paste our information. And I said, Absolutely, this is not this, I don’t own it, I got it from other places, to please just do whatever you need to do, you can board it as is or you can paste it in your own template and take credit for it, I don’t care because at that time in our region, it was it was about getting the word out about the resources available. And, and so I think it’s also incumbent upon us to be those partners and not see ourselves as competitors. With those organizations, we all have the same goals, we all want our economies to grow, and economies don’t stop at county lines or city lines.
Brandon Burton 27:56
That’s right. Now, I love that idea of especially if you can establish those relationships and just know, hey, going forward, we’re gonna put out a lot of information, we want to be that trusted source for information in our community. And if there’s anything that resonates with people in your group, whatever your organization is, please take it and share it and anything to support our community. So absolutely, that’s very key. Well, I wanted to ask you, if there might be one tip or action item for listeners that they could do to maybe lift their chamber up to the next level.
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Natalie English 28:33
So I was I had to fill out a survey a questionnaire yesterday about something in our community. And I was asked what the best piece of advice I ever received. And, and it was about staffing, right about building a team. And so this one mentor of mine once said, surround yourself with people who think differently, and you have different skills and gifts. And I know we’ve all heard this Yeah. And and some of us do it really well. And, and some of us and even me at times, have fallen into that trap of of having people around me who think like me, and I’m I don’t know that unnecessarily horribly failed at those moments in my career. But I can tell you that in the moments of my career, when I have surrounded myself with people who have different perspectives, who think differently for me, who have different backgrounds, and different skills, we’ve been so much more successful. And so as I have rebuilt this Wilmington chamber team since 2017, it’s been the focus for me is to ensure that when I’m creating a position and then trying to fill it that I look at a broad array of talents and skills that I don’t necessarily bring because I am I am not the beyond the wall and I need people around me who can backfill my weaknesses, so that I can soar with my strengths and that would be the thing that I would say to get to the next level, it really is about building a team around you whether and for you small chamber staff leaders, I get it, it’s like, how can I do that I only have one other position, well then bring in volunteers who think differently. So whatever your team has to look like, just make sure that there are people who bring different skill sets to that table and different ways of thinking,
Brandon Burton 30:21
and what a great feeling neurologically, you know, when your mind is open to a new perspective, I don’t know if it’s a flood of serotonin, or dopamine, or whatever it is, it’s like, whoa, you know, that’s how some people see the world. This is. Right, it really changes your perspective and changes you as a person for the absolute LinkedIn. So I know chambers all over the world are always thinking about the future and trying to remain relevant. So I always like to ask as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Natalie English 30:55
Gosh, in certainly in the immediate future, it was before the pandemic. And but it’s just been exacerbated, I think we have to become the resource for Talent Development in our communities, we have to have our ear to our members in the business community about what they need in talent development, workforce development, if you will. And then we have to advocate with our education institutions. So that they while they are unbelievably smart, they don’t work in industry every day. And we have to help them as they’re creating the curricula and the programming that will develop our future workforce, that workforce that that our businesses need tomorrow and the workforce that they’re going to need 10 years from now.
Brandon Burton 31:43
I love that. It reminded me I just recently had Doug Griffin’s on the on the podcast, the author of 13 ways to kill your community. And when I asked him this question, he had a slightly different spin on it. But is he talking about talent development, a lot of times we think of the schools and workforce and talent development, which is I think, right on, and he was looking at it as training for employees of your member businesses, and really the businesses throughout your community. And he said the number one thing would be to train employees and customer service. Right. So when you have people visiting from out of town or new to the community, if they can go into the local businesses and have a great experience? Absolutely. Again, chambers perfect to help train the development in their communities. So just under that umbrella.
Natalie English 32:36
Absolutely. We talk about that all the time on our tourism development authority. Yeah, yeah,
Brandon Burton 32:42
that’s a great tip. Well, as we start wrapping up here, I like to give you an opportunity for any Chamber Champions listening that might want to reach out and connect with you and, you know, maybe expand on anything that you’ve shared with us today, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Connect with Natalie English
Natalie English 32:59
So the best way is probably through email simply because I check it sometimes 24/7 It’s English, my last name english@wilmingtonchamber.org. And I do try to get back to everybody, at least within 24 or so hours, and we’d love to help I think that’s the best thing and I don’t know who coined the R&D phrase as rip off and duplicate but I do it proudly and unashamedly and I, I encourage people to rip off and duplicate for me anytime it helps.
Brandon Burton 33:31
Perfect. Well, we will get that in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode165. That Natalie, thank you so much for joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcasts. I love hearing from your experiences and things that you’ve learned and, and ways to help the Chamber Champions that are listening. Thank you so much.
Natalie English 33:53
Thank you, it’s a great opportunity.
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Ghost communities are on their way due to the innovation of ghost kitchens that emerged through the COVID pandemic. This concept allows for customers to order food delivery from popular apps like Uber Eats and Grub Hub. However, rather than having the food prepared in a standard restaurant, brands are learning to cut costs by opening ghost kitchens.
A ghost kitchen allows for the restaurant to utilize less expensive real estate. Some restaurants will even share this ghost kitchen with other restaurants. They also can be hired to prepare food for other restaurants.
When I first learned of this concept, I thought this is a genius way for restaurants to save money, become more efficient, and create a whole new dining experience. I still believe these initial thoughts to be true, but I have started to have some reservations around this concept.
Ghost Warehouse
I recently read an article about grocery chains adopting this same type of model with ghost warehouses. Many people have now experienced either grocery delivery or at least store pick up of their groceries. These concepts allow a customer to “shop” for their groceries online and never have to walk into the grocery store. I know this can be a huge time saver for the busy people in society.
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As I picture the idea of a ghost warehouse or grocery store, I picture a large warehouse with no windows. I picture endless shelves of food that doesn’t even have to be displayed well because after all, an employee is the one grabbing the items from the shelf. I imagine this would look very similar to an Amazon distribution center. The marketing of food companies would have to change entirely. We will become much more a target of even more digital ads from the food manufacturers for us to add their items to our online shopping cart.
Human Experience
While I see some utility and innovations around these concepts, the thought that rings loud in my mind is that we are killing our communities! This thought probably is top of mind for me after my recent podcast interview with Doug Griffiths about his book ‘13 Ways to Kill Your Community‘.
Human interactions at the market and sitting to break bread with others are what we as humans have done our entire existence. Oftentimes it is while sharing a meal that we collaborate and solve problems with colleagues, friends, and family. It is running into your child’s school teacher at the grocery store that makes your child feel special as they are able to have a one-on-one interaction with their teacher outside of the classroom. It is the smile that a stranger receives that makes their day and builds just a little more confidence.
Ghost Communities
This idea of turning into ghost communities is exaggerated even more as we hear more talk and adoption of the Metaverse. Again, I see some great possibilities and potential with this type of technology, but I wonder if we might be overlooking the potential negative side effects. I am a big fan of cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin (This is an affiliate link that will award both of us with free Bitcoin when used.) but I am concerned about other applications utilizing the blockchain without having a better understanding of the potential outcomes, positive or negative.
The Metaverse can be a place where the playing field is leveled. Certain biases can be left behind the screen as users on the inside don’t know much about your real identity. Disabilities can be overcome in this alternate world. Race, gender, age are all non-factors in the Metaverse. These can all be viewed as really positive selling points.
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I would also argue that these identifying qualities are also what make us who we are. If we are constantly checking and putting aside our true identity, what does that do to our overall mental state? This question is probably better addressed by a mental health professional. I foresee this causing big problems in society.
Social Media
I hear many people say that if they could go back in time and do it over again, they never would have joined any social media. Social media was started or presented as a way to stay connected with others. Over time we have seen social media lead more to the division of people rather than a unifying force.
Social media has been attributed to a sharp increase in mental health issues, including depression. Comparing ourselves to others can lead to damaging self-esteem. Throughout human history, people have been limited to comparing themselves to others in their tribe or communities. As the Pandora’s box of social media has been opened wide, we are now pitted against others on a much larger scale. Social media influencers do a great job of making us feel less than what we should. Photo filters literally create the image of something that is not even real, yet we still compare ourselves to these artificial attributes of others!
Summary
The point of all of this is to say as a society, we need to be aware of the potential negative consequences of drastically changing our way of life. We should have discussions in our community, within our families about possible implications and go in eye wide open. As a chamber of commerce professional, you understand the value of community. You understand the power in numbers. Please lead these discussions in your communities. If nothing else, help others to be aware of what they are getting into before our cities and towns become ghost communities.
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