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A Podcast for Chamber Professionals Posts

Chambers Leveraging AI with Kaytee Lorentzen

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Kaytee Lorentzen. Kaytee is the Director of Communications and events at the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. She spearheads the Chamber’s multifaceted marketing communications initiative engaging with a diverse array of stakeholders including Chamber members, the public media board and staff members. Her role involves closely collaborating with every department to craft coherent and compelling communication and marketing materials that cater to their unique needs. Beyond communications, she meticulously organizes and oversees the myriad of events that the Chamber orchestrates ensuring that they align with the organization’s objectives and standards. Kaytee has been a part of the chamber team since May of 2021, initially as a marketing and communications coordinator before stepping into the role as marketing and communications manager in January 2023, and subsequently evolving into her current position in September 2023. Before joining the chamber as a staff member, she was a member of the chamber with her photography business for four years. Kaytee holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a concentration in photojournalism from Ball State University. She’s a graduate from the Indiana chamber Executives Association, who’s your chamber Academy in June 2022, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Purdue University. And Kaytee, I am very excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I would love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Kaytee Lorentzen 3:37
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Brandon, for having me on. I’ve been listening to your podcast ever since I have been a chamber professional. So I was super excited to get this opportunity. You helped me grow into this position. So I appreciate that. And everyone that’s been on the podcast as well. Just a little something interesting about myself. That isn’t in my bio. If I had a you know, a separate universe life, then I probably would have been a detective. I love true crime stuff. It’s kind of weird. Much I Love it. But even growing up I was, you know, doing forensics, trying to figure out fingerprinting and putting clues together. So that is what, but I would be in a different life. That’s

Brandon Burton 4:21
That is interesting. And there’s something to that the thrill of solving a mystery. You know, my my wife, she works at our kids elementary school. She’s the front desk receptionist and every now and then she’ll come home from work and say, I should have a detective badge. Like my GED today, you know, usually it’s some you know, kid in the neighborhood that’s caused some mischief, and they get caught on a ring doorbell camera or something. So the police will bring it to the school and say Do you recognize this kid? So she solves the mysteries. But there’s there’s something to that at the thrill of solving a mystery for sure. Oh,

Kaytee Lorentzen 4:55
yeah, like watching it on television shows I’m all about okay, I wonder if this happens. Next. Right,

Brandon Burton 5:01
right. Well tell us a little bit more about the greater Bloomington chamber just to give us an idea of the size staff scope of work. The tight you know, what kind of work you guys are involved with just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 5:14
absolutely. So the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce is located in Bloomington, Indiana. We are the home of Indiana University. So go Hoosiers, which is very ironic considering I go to Purdue University for graduate education. We Are Rivals so that’s really fun to be a part of. But the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, we have six full time staff members and one part time staff. And all ton of interns. Currently we have one high school intern to undergrad scholar intern. So they’ll be with us for all four of their undergrad years, and two grad fellows which are also going to be with us for their whole grad program. So that’s how many we have a ton of people here. And we have about 850 members currently, Bloomington itself, the size is about 80,000 people. And then Monroe County, which is the county that Bloomington resides in is about 140,000 we say we are the greater Bloomington So yes, we do have a lot of Bloomington businesses but also more Monroe County and surrounding.

Brandon Burton 6:25
Very good that that definitely helps to give some perspective and even going through your bio just in the marketing communications as you’ve had different roles, shows you guys are you’ve got to you’ve got a good amount of staff and get a good team there to work with. So that’s awesome. Well, our topic that we’ve settled on for today is very relevant and timely for all the buzz that’s going around right now around chat GPT and AI and generative AI and so we’re gonna dive in deeper in that discussion today. Katie has done some some great presentations on this at different conferences. So we’re going to kind of tap into her her wealth of knowledge to be able to share some of that, with all you chamber pros as we as we move forward in this conversation. We’ll dive into that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:03
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Brandon Burton 9:57
All right, Kaytee, we are back And so I’m excited to learn how you’re using generative AI and just AI in general, as a chamber professional, where you see the use cases and where it’s helped to save you time make your job easier. And does it save you time at this point? You know, or is it just the learning and everything, but it ends up making your job easier. I’d love just to hear how you’re integrating this. And hopefully spark some ideas for listeners maybe want to explore some of these aspects of utilizing AI at their chamber.

Kaytee Lorentzen 10:32
Absolutely. So first and foremost, like artificial intelligence is just this plethora of things. So it pretty much all ultimately is intended to make computers do things that when done by people are described as having indicated intelligence. So I was very skeptical at first, I’m not one of those people who typically jump on bandwagons. So in November of last year, or sorry, to it would be November 2022. At that point, when it came out, I was like, I don’t know about this chat. GBT, it kind of seems a little not in my realm. Then I tried it. All I did was just asked a few questions. And I was like, wow, I just opened the door to something that’s going to make my life so much easier, just by asking it simple questions. And the more I’ve been using it, the more I have learned how to write the prompts that are necessary for it to generate the kind of answers that I’m meeting. So for example, the one thing I use it a lot for is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. It sounds very dated, and some of its not customer focused. And that’s more of what it needs to be. You want it to say, like I asked it, this is what we currently have on our website for our membership benefits. Can you rewrite this in more of a customer focused realm or point of view, and also give some examples of why it’s important for somebody to join the Chamber of Commerce. And they will give you a full list like, a lot of the time, if you ask it for list, it’ll give it to you. And now that I’ve used it so much, it thinks that I like list all the time. So it will continuously give me list until I say please stop putting into the list. I just need a paragraph. Yeah. And then it typically apologizes. It goes, Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me fix that for you. Right, right. The big thing that I’m doing right now is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. I’ve also used it for social media copy. I’ve even asked it to create social, like a social media plan. Small Business Week was something I was like, Okay, I want to do something different. I don’t just want to say, yeah, it’s Small Business Week, let’s celebrate small business. Let’s actually make some sort of content with it. And so it was able to give me five different days of social media content that all I had to do was just pretty much copy and paste and find some graphics and photos to go with it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 12:59
So talk to us a little bit more about rewriting the website copy. Are you literally are you copy and pasting paragraphs from your website, login in chat? GPT? Are you able to give a link to the website and say, scan this page? And tell me how how does that interface work for those listening?

Kaytee Lorentzen 13:15
Yeah, it depends on what program you’re using, and what version of the program you’re using. I know, some websites will do that. But not all of them, like I primarily use to actually btw and chat GPT for. So I use the paid version. But I don’t put a link in there. I literally copy and paste the exact information so that way I like because a lot of our content is pretty long website page. So I just was like, No, I just want this section rewritten in this point of view, and then obviously, the main thing is, I always say, double check, it’s work. Because you never know what is gonna pop out and you want to edit it. I don’t ever think that you should copy and paste directly from whatever chat GBT or you know, whatever generative AI system you’re using, you need to go in and, like have oversight, it gets you 80% of the way there. But you need to go in and edit and finesse it and make it more your voice.

Brandon Burton 14:16
Yes, so you shared your experience in November of 20 I guess it’s 2022 right when chat GPT was made public and available for everybody to use. And I remember going to Thanksgiving dinner my brother in law was like Oh, you gotta check this out. And he’s he’s a very loud in your face kind of person anyway, so he’s shoving his phone everybody’s facing you ask it a question and just very excited about it and like, Okay, calm down. You know, so I asked him a few questions and and really the responses I got back because I was asking business related questions. You know, how can I create a social media posts from my podcast or tell me about a chamber of commerce, like what Chambers of Commerce do and just that feedback I was getting from it initially. You needed to verify, you know, the stuff it was kicking out. And granted, this is Chad GBT three. So it wasn’t it hadn’t scanned, you know nearly as much of the of the web and things like that. But an example of just this last week, I’ve got a daughter in fifth grade, she came home with a math problem in her homework that she wasn’t able to figure out. And my, I think it was my son who’s a senior single as chat GPT. And, like, first of all, it seems like cheating or, and then your homework to plug it in. But like, we worked through the problem, got the answer? And then I’m like, I’m gonna try this, you know. So I asked chat GBT exactly how the question was on the homework. And immediately it spit back an answer. And it wasn’t the right answer. So I gave it some clarifying, you know, prompts along with it, then it apologize, spit back and other answer, and it never came up with the right answer. And after verifying, like more and more of the criteria with it, it kept apologizing, but then we kept giving me the same answer over and over. And like, okay, and this is still catch up three GPT 3.5. So it wasn’t the paid version, maybe that would have gotten me better results, but goes to the point of you need to verify you can’t just trust everything that it puts out as being doctrine, like you got to, you got to really read it, you got to make sure it’s accurate. And some may say, Well, does that really save you time then? So how would you approach that with if you need to verify everything? How does that aspect work and time saving, or you know, the application into real world scenarios?

Kaytee Lorentzen 16:36
I think it varies on what you’re planning on using chat GPT for so if you’re using it for research, that can definitely still take you some more time, it hasn’t been able to scan everything, and it’s still learning, it’s still, you know, it’s still a child, and it’s learning new tech. Yeah, it’s still a baby, it’s still trying to figure out what it’s doing. But for me, I use it more for things that I know are fact based, like hard numbers type of thing. I use it more for like the colorful language. For an example, there was one way someone emailed us and I was trying to explain to them, I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say. But also saying it in a much better way. Because right, there are some times where your brain just you know, when that clicker icon just keeps going on a blink word screen. That’s how I felt with this. I was like, I don’t know how to say this. So I just asked chat GPT. And it gave me a much better way of writing it. That actually was exactly what I wanted to say. But I just didn’t have the words or the sound mind at that point. I think it was like 430 on a Friday or something. And it put it all together and flowed nicely. So that was something I more use it for is earliest for chatty BTW I use it more for that aspect. Even if you asked it to give you a source, sometimes it makes it up. So but at least if you can look up and see if that source even exists. And that sometimes works. I think I’ve only used it a few times with statistics. And then what I’ll do is I’ll just copy and paste this statistic that it gives me and look up where it is in Google. Yeah, just to verify, make sure that’s fine. But yeah, it varies, because I’ve also heard similar situations with homework, where someone it was I think it was NPR that I was listening to. And they were saying, Well, my daughter was doing homework. And they and I’m a history major. And it asked if this particular person in history was pro separation of church and state or against it, and it gave the wrong answer. And they were like, That’s not right. So I if you ever ask it fact, based information like that, then I would at least just copy and paste what it gave you and ask it as much question as you can to get where they got it from, quote unquote. And then you can find it on the internet pretty quickly. So

Brandon Burton 19:10
is there a value to giving it feedback to say that’s not a correct answer? Or yes, I’m gonna challenge the answer a little.

Kaytee Lorentzen 19:18
I think so because it’s learning based off of what you are giving it as well. So like if you there’s even after every single prompts that it gives you, was this, what you were looking for? Was this not and then there’s a thumbs up, thumbs down and you just put that in there it actually is teaching it. That’s another way that it’s learning on giving the correct answers. So if other people start asking similar questions or something like that, it’s it’s now learning based off of our responses, right, right.

Brandon Burton 19:49
And I think you know, although some of the information you get may not be totally accurate need to verify if you’re having some writer’s block going on or looking for ideas Just to be able to put a prompt in and receive, you know, a ton of ideas and, you know, pretty much instantaneously, things that will get those creative juices going in your mind, again, that I’ve heard it said that it’s not to replace your own thinking in your own mind, but it’s to supplement it’s to add to what you’re already doing. Yes. Yeah. I know, in an example that I had, there was a chamber professional that I mentioned, how much they enjoy the podcast, and you know, very nice email about what they have appreciated. So this is great. Would you mind putting this as a review on Apple podcasts? And they try it and try it couldn’t figure it out? Like, can you tell me how to leave a review? Like, let me ask Chet GPT. So I just did, how do you leave a review for by and just copy and paste it? And I could have typed the response and said, Here’s how you do it. But to look up each, you know, the website and give a link and here and there and back and forth? Just that plug it in chat? GPT it was all right, copy, paste, send and it was done. And it was easy. It was easy.

Kaytee Lorentzen 21:05
Yeah, as long as you just review it and be like, Yeah, that’s exactly how you do it, then you can just copy and paste, which is nice. And that’s kind of what I’ve done. Even for scripts for videos that we do. I’ve asked it to make it you can even ask it. Can you make this more of a TED Talk style, and it will completely read rewrite it? I did that actually the first time I presented this at the Indiana chamber Executives Association Conference. Hi, how do you write my intro? I didn’t like how it was like, have a we tried TED Talk style? Yeah, very different. It was, it almost felt like when you were reading it out loud, exactly how it starts. Right. Any TED Talk? So

Brandon Burton 21:50
maybe let’s talk about that a little bit about the prompts that we put into to any AI, generative AI assistant. What kind of things do we need to consider? Because I think we’re very much a lot of the public is very much still in the mindset of Google, right? You put in? What is this? He put in a question, get a response. So talk to us about a prompt, and maybe becoming a prompt engineer, so to speak.

Kaytee Lorentzen 22:17
Yes, yes. So that is something I’ve definitely been trying to hone my skills on, is learning how to create the best prompts. I always say, garbage in, garbage out. So whatever. If you give it like subpar information, it’s going to give you a subpar answer. So you want to make sure that it has as much information as you can possibly give it. Like if you’re trying to make a all do something pretty simple, like a social media post, if you tell it your audience exactly who it’s supposed to cater to, you can even tell it more of like your customer persona, it will give you a much better answer and a less generic answer, it’ll become more personalized. So that’s a lot of the time why I copy and paste a lot of our content when I’m asking it to rewrite it. So I say take this and move it to something more like this other thing. So that could be you know, saying it needs it needs to have more colorful language, can you make it sound more professional, this needs to be more towards small business owner, not necessarily the big business, so you can change up exactly what you’re wanting it to do. But the more specific the better it is.

Brandon Burton 23:37
Yeah. So as you’re given that response reminds me I had recently read a book called The AI whispers method. And it it’s a, it’s an AI generative fiction novel. So it takes the whole hero storyline and plugs it into to teach you how to use AI. And it talks a lot about generating prompts. And even asking, like, for example, with Chet GPT, to act as a math teacher or act as a math professor to give me an answer to this problem or act as a sports historian and tell me why, you know, this scenario is happening or so being able to get that context of act as if or act as a different, you know, expert in different fields, it’s able to tap into different resources and really understand what it is that you’re looking for. So as I played around with that there’s a lot of power in the act as prompt when you plug that into chat. GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 24:45
Absolutely. That’s actually something I do for our customer journey type of thing. I said to chat GPT act as if you are a brand new business. You’ve never heard of the Chamber of Commerce. You We are interested in it because someone mentioned that it’s a great thing to join, why should they join? What are their pain points? What are their objectives? What are the rebuttals to those objectives? So you can really start tailoring your content to better address their pain points and why you’re the solution to their problems.

Brandon Burton 25:19
Right. I love that. So let’s, let’s maybe circle back a little bit more to the generative AI. Discussion. So you mentioned you, you’ve used it to rewrite website content, you use it for social media posts. What other applications are you seeing in the chamber world, specifically for using generative AI? That

Kaytee Lorentzen 25:40
is a fabulous question. So for me, I have been using it more obviously, for the marketing aspect of it. I’ve even asked it to write event descriptions. So what makes people come into the event more? What makes it more appealing, besides just saying, you know, come to this chamber event at this day, on this time at this place, we look forward to expanding your network hope to see you there. It sounds the exact same every single time. So how do I change it up and make it sound more exciting? What makes that chamber member have to be at that event. So I use that a lot for to change up the descriptions. I’ve also asked it to make correct like full social media campaigns, not just the captions itself. Also, like I mentioned earlier, the market research different emails to members. So like how, like, if you’re saying I want people to fill out this survey, what makes someone fill out this, if you ask to attribute it, right, this email, enticing people to fill out this survey that doesn’t. Obviously, we’re all nonprofits, we don’t have a whole lot of money to give out as an incentive. So without incentives, I’m creating different types of plans for customer journeys. The one that I’ve used the most often is writing up ours, we have a sponsorship book that we do all at one time, kind of like why GM does. And so I’ve asked it to rewrite our sponsorship book and why people should sponsor it and why it’s important to sponsor it. And then lately, I have noticed AI disclosures on your website, writing a disclaimer for your website, we actually didn’t have quite a few like the privacy policies, those things that you’re supposed to have on your website. And so I was like, I’m gonna see if Chad GPD can come up with something very like simple and then obviously run it by our lawyer, just to make sure everything sounds great. But it really helps take out a lot of the guesswork for us. We didn’t have to do you know, how many hours of research trying to make sure that what we had in there? Would it be? Sound for us to use, even if it’s just like a blanket one? I think ours is our AI disclaimer is probably two paragraphs, just saying, you know, we use AI, there are things that may be generated by AI that come out here, but there’s always human oversight, ultimately, is what it says but in some more legalese term. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:15
Like that. So I guess that brings up a good talk at a good point to talk about as well, where I know I’ve been at chamber conferences and breakout sessions you you lead some these breakout sessions, where we talk about AI? And the question always comes up as far as the legality, the copyright issues if you’re especially like image generation, right? So if you’re asking generative AI to produce an image for you, who owns the rights to that, is there copyright issues if you’re bringing in certain elements into that? So if you would speak a little bit to the legality and regulations around AI and what we need to kind of be aware of and kind of look out for as we kind of navigate through this new world of artificial intelligence?

Kaytee Lorentzen 29:03
Absolutely. This is definitely something we need. As chamber professionals. If you’re using AI just to keep up to date on there are quite a few websites that you can track legislation. And there’s a lot on AI. Currently, right now, as of August 30, of 2023, the US Copyright Office issued a notice of inquiry in the Federal Register on copyright. And AR pretty much just means they’re going to be studying it to see kind of whether legislation or regulatory steps are even warranted, and also just steps to advise Congress on any legislation that does come through. But anything right now made by something other than human is not protected by copyright. So if I like the API disclosure I was talking about I can’t if someone else wanted to copy and paste it and use it, they legally can. And I can’t cry that that’s copyright. So that’s it. One thing that we have to look at, right now a lot of people are getting frustrated with the image portion of it, I haven’t used that aspect too much, because I still feel like there is a lot of stock photo that I can use in that aspect. And I don’t need to just create an image that we don’t have. But other people are saying that it’s very unfair to the artists, which I do, as someone who’s a photographer, I get that completely. And it takes, you know, scanning my work to use someone else’s yet that’s not exactly something I’m a fan of. But I am interested to see where that’s going to be going and legislations and any what Congress is planning on doing on that. And I do think that they’re in a very interesting position right now. And I think they do need to take that whole issue very seriously, that AI is here, and it’s going to, it’s, you know, people are still scared of it. But it was very similar to like, when the internet happened, it, everyone was scared of it, it was this big thing that everyone’s like, this is going to change the world. It did. But now if we look back, if you don’t have a website, you’re not really relevant. Or you’re not considered trustworthy. So if that’s something similar what AI is gonna do, that’s, I’m just very interested to see where it’s gonna go, what regulations we’re gonna have. So just keeping up to date, making sure that we are using it legally, then that is something that we do need to do, and do our due diligence on it, as you know, people that are in the community seen as a trustworthy and leader.

Brandon Burton 31:42
Yeah, for sure. Now, it’s definitely important to keep that on the forefront with any legislation that comes out. But I think to your point with the internet, you know, if you didn’t adopt the internet and have a website, now, you’re kind of irrelevant. And I see a very similar course with AI. And just the AI technology has been adopted quicker than any other technology in the history of mankind. I don’t know, besides like the fire, maybe I don’t know. But. But as far as the technology goes, it’s been adopted very quickly. And I could easily see in five or 10 years maybe doesn’t even take that long, that there’s going to be two types of chambers, right? There’s going to be the ones that use AI and the ones that are no longer around, essentially, because they’re not relevant. And they’re not able to really leverage the power that comes from Ai, especially when you’re dealing with limited budgets, and being nonprofits and all that. There’s a lot of leverage. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 32:38
and I completely understand why it would seem intimidating or scary at first, because I was in that same exact boat. But as soon as I tried it, I was very surprised at the fact that I felt like it was something that anyone and everyone can use. Even if you’re just asking simple questions like, can you give me a recipe for a very simple meal like something, it’s something you can just play around with and have fun. And the more you use it, the more you find things that you can use it for? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:09
I’ve heard people will take, you know, just random ingredients they have in the refrigerator and say I’ve got these seven ingredients, give me a recipe of something, I can make it it’ll do it. So where would you suggest somebody gets started with a journey in AI and just kind of getting their mind wrapped around it? Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 33:28
I would say just pick up like one or any of the generative AI tools that we have available. Google’s version is Bard. And then there’s chat GPT. There’s all just, obviously, Google, because Google or cert, go in your search engine, and ask it for a generative AI tool, and just start asking it questions. And the more you do it, the more you’ll get better at asking the I don’t want to write questions, but better questions, you refine the questions, you refine the questions to get the answers that you’re looking for. And then you start, that’s when your wheels start turning and figuring out where can I apply this in my professional life? Right.

Brandon Burton 34:10
So I didn’t give you a heads up that I was going to ask you this question. So if we need to edit it out, we can but I’m curious. What are you excited about on the forefront that you see coming with AI in the next weeks, months years?

Kaytee Lorentzen 34:24
I’m just excited to see the evolution of where it’s going. It just reminds me of like when the first iPhone came out, like and just seeing how it evolves and where it’s at now that it’s pretty much a part of our daily lives. If you’re an Apple user, obviously. It’s something that I am just excited to see where it’s gonna go. I’m excited to see how our legislation will take this and you hopefully use it for the good obviously, there’s always some bad actors, but I think Oh, For all this is going to be something that’s extremely well received in, in our world. Right?

Brandon Burton 35:07
I think there’s just a world of opportunity available. And quite honestly, I don’t know if legislation can keep up with the trends and the way things will develop. But we need to be plugged in and not be burying our head in the sand pretending like it’ll go away because it’s not going to go away. Well, Katie, as we look to the future, actually, let me back up before I ask that question for a chamber who’s listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share for them to try to accomplish that goal?

Kaytee Lorentzen 35:42
I would say, the tip to use is embrace playing. I know that sounds so weird, but embrace that it’s something new embrace change, it will make a world of a difference. Because I can even tell you even in my office, as soon as people started embracing this tool, it was a game changer. Like our membership director, she now uses that a lot to help personalize each individual sales email, instead of just having like this copy and paste mentality of the same type of email, she can personalize it a lot more saying, this is the industry this person is in. And now she says that she really can’t go without it. Our operations manager uses it to help create some Excel documents, like it’s different things, the more you play with it, and embrace the change that it can bring, the better I think we’ll all be.

Brandon Burton 36:41
Absolutely, it reminds me. Last year, our church, we were putting together a fundraiser for our youth program at church. And I was trying to get the text together for the flyers that we’re gonna go out and promote on social media and everything. And I was just having the hardest time trying to make all the words fit on this flyer without being crowded and like telling what we’re trying to accomplish. And I told my wife, this Super Chat GPT will say I plug it in, give it the prompts, and it spit back and answer those beautiful, perfect, and we use that going forward. Like if I would have just done that from the beginning, it would have saved me so much time and headache and just beating my head against a wall trying to figure something out. That wasn’t coming to me. And it was it’s a great tool. So I would encourage everybody to embrace the play and embrace the change. Because I think initially, you and I both had this similar initial reactions I get I’ll know about this chat GPT steps, the more you get into it, you see more and more applications where it can assist you and make your life a little bit easier. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kaytee Lorentzen 37:53
You know, it’s funny as I was like, you know, how do I answer? Because I knew this one was coming, right? Because I hear from everyone. So I asked chat GPT what they thought. And it gave me a gave me a list of nine different things. But I would like to kind of summarize what because a lot of it is things that I thought of but I was like how do I make this sound? Great. I do see a lot of the future of chambers using innovation and technology adaptation, obviously, for me using AI and GPT. I do see that. And I think with that we will become leaders in the business space in general. I think it will bring forward I’m trying to think of the correct word that I want to use. But it will bring forward this leadership of how the standard should be set on business and how they can embrace it as well. And I think that we’ll have a lot of Gosh, I’m trying to figure out

Brandon Burton 39:04
here, but you can plug it as chat GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:09
Pretty much yeah, just focusing on the technological changes focusing on small business and it’s going to just help leverage that and just, you know, promote this business atmosphere that I think will be that will occur encourage all of that.

Brandon Burton 39:33
Yeah, I can definitely see that and we need to be embrace the innovation that comes with technology. Yes.

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:43
You pretty much said exactly what I was wanting to say. All

Brandon Burton 39:45
right, well, whether you know it or not, you said it at some point in there because I wrote it down and he said well, Katie, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and learn more, maybe Do you see some of the slides or anything you’ve shared at different conferences or whatever you’re willing to share and help out with them? What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Kaytee Lorentzen 40:09
The best way is probably through either email or through LinkedIn. So my email is just klorentzen@chamberbloomington.org. And my LinkedIn, you can just find me, Katie Lorentzen, and I spell it differently. So I’ll spell it here for you guys. It is Kaytee and then my last name Lorentzen. And either a message on either of those are typically the best way to get a hold of me just because I am all over the place. And my phone is always on me. So those two apps right there for me.

Brandon Burton 40:45
That’s perfect. And we’ll get that in our show notes too. So people can pull that up and have easy access to reach out. But I appreciate all the value you offered to listeners today here on chamber tap podcast for sharing your experience of exploring and being innovative using generative AI and I just, you know, it’ll be fun to look back at this episode a year from now and be like, Wow, things have really advanced in the last year. So I know I’m excited. Yeah, but thank you for being with us today. This has been a fun and enlightening conversation. So thank you.

Kaytee Lorentzen 41:18
Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 41:19
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Data & Technology with Jaime di Paulo

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

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

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

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Jaime de Paulo. Jaime is President and CEO of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a prominent organization dedicated to networking advocating for and developing the Hispanic business community in the Midwest. Since assuming leadership and 2019. Jaime has spearheaded numerous initiatives and collaborations positioning ahcc as a finalist in the 13th world chambers Congress, the largest economic forum for chambers and businesses worldwide. Jaime’s exceptional exceptional leadership and contributions have garnered recognition and accolades. He became a distinguished member of the Economic Club of Chicago and infinite influential organization connecting leaders in Chicago’s economic circles. The government of Mexico officially acknowledged him as one of the most influential Mexican Americans in the Midwest, highlighting his significance with the region’s economic landscape. Moreover, he received the 2022 American Mexican Association’s Leader of the Year Award, which celebrates his dedication to the community and his role within the broader Latino community. Driven by his commitment to empowering Latino entrepreneurs, Jaime has worked to strengthen the Latin X incubator program in collaboration with 1871, a renowned business incubator. This initiative supports young Hispanic tech companies, fostering innovation and providing them with opportunities to secure capital funds. Outside of his professional pursuits, Jaime is married and is a proud father of three sons and a daughter. Hi, man, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Jaime di Paulo 4:01
thank you, Brandon. I want to thank you first for inviting me to this wonderful chat and thanks to the listeners because we are out there doing the good work or that empowers more businesses. And, you know, feel proud of what we do. I mean, I would just sharing with you that the Our job is very significant, and it means a lot to small businesses. So kudos to all my chamber colleagues out there listening. You know, I was born in while I had I Mexico, I grew up in the United States. My father was American. And you know, when I was when I went to high school, I went back to Mexico, and I became a DJ. I was a renowned DJ back in the late 80s in that club in Acapulco called the baby oh, so some of you have been there some of you have not but if you compare it the baby oh, it was the comparison to studio 51 in New York City and next. So it’s a it was a big Back in the day, so you know, I lost my hair since then. But anyway,

Brandon Burton 5:05
that is awesome. I love getting these these fun facts about people and never would have guessed it. But that’s a, that is a great fact about you. So thank you. Well, tell us a little bit about the Illinois Hispanic Chamber, size of the chamber scope of work, kind of airy cover staff, that sort of thing. Just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

Jaime di Paulo 5:29
We one of the bigger chambers around we have 19 staff members, and we’re about to hire eight more we just announced last week. So we just, you know, we do a lot of government contracting. Our main focus is making sure minority owned companies have access to government contracting, because we see that as the future of our companies to scale. So that’s the reason why we are a bigger chamber than the norm. We have for example, we have an SBDC. In our Office of Small Business Development Center, we have what is called a PTAC. It’s not it’s called Apex which is a Procurement Technical Assistance Center, which helps minority owned companies get certifications so that so they can access government contracting. We contract with the United States Department of Transportation, for example, we in Region eight with we represent six states we help minority owned companies access us do T contracts, including water and airports and, and you know, and highways and all that. And then we also have a big contract with the Illinois Tollway, which is the, the you know, the Tollway authority here in this in the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois. So we make sure minority owned companies get hired and started working for them to scale this company. So we are a little bit bigger than a normal chamber. We have all these programs in between that’s why we bigger we our budget is about five and a half million dollars a year including that one and a half million dollar grant thing that just got to the beginning of next year. So we are growing certainly, since I started with a seven employees now we are you know 19 plus a couple full times 27

Brandon Burton 7:09
Yeah, I was seven so we put a big. Wow. Yeah, you guys are rockin and rollin and get your work cut out for you. That’s That’s awesome. I love it. So personally, I’m excited to get into our topic for discussion today. And as we kind of went back and forth a little bit we focused on the the areas of data and technology. And I know those are kind of hot topics for individuals and chambers at this time, especially with the emergence of AI and you know all sorts of things in that realm. But we will dive in much deeper into this conversation as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:09
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 11:07
All right. Hi, me, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today around data and technology. And I know as a chamber, it’s super important to be able to make data driven decisions, right as we go about, you know, working in our organizations and knowing what the course of action to take on different things. But I’d love to know how you guys are implementing data and technology. And I know they’re related, but also kind of separate at the same time. So feel free to just take us whatever direction you’d like there and and we’ll we’ll go down that path. Certainly,

Jaime di Paulo 11:42
we belong to a small niche group called the Aspen Institute that help us download data. I was in New York City last week with the McKenzie group, and they just released new data on the state of Latinos in the in the United States. So everything we do is related to that particular data. So we got to make sure we have a significant impact on that data. For example, when this when the SBA talks about small businesses, they’re talking about 500 employees or less is a quick fact that in nationally, Hispanic or Latino businesses are under 20 employees. So when the SBA talks about small businesses, we’re not I believe, we’re not even on the picture, because we’re so small, so Chambers of Commerce just becomes very, very relevant to help those businesses scale, right. So everything we do, every program that we implement, everything we do is related to data, we and then in the technology side, we are fortunate enough to have our our offices at 1871. If you Google 1871, you’re going to see is the one of the number one or two incubators for technology in the world for businesses. So our office is right there. And the where the technology is made with it, technology happens. And we believe in technology. And we also believe that minorities should have an opportunity to develop new technologies, new applications, or whatever are solutions, and have the venture capital injected into those companies. And because we are offices there at 1871, we’ve been able to move that up a little bit. For example, 90% of new technology companies a surface every day in the world are Hispanic owned, but what percent of those Hispanic owned 90% Get get capital injected to it. So there’s a big disparity. And so our job here is to make sure the venture capital gets injected into minority owned companies awesome. We realize the data for example, we created a policy institute in our chamber. And we figured out how to create a scorecard using artificial intelligence. And in because of our 30 years in business that we have, we have a lot of data. We actually know what a procurement means and everything in between. So every bill that comes to the state of Illinois, we track and then we can create a scorecard for our legislative elected officials. So now we know who’s our big champion and who is and who we got to work with AI in terms of legislation stuff, using artificial intelligence, web scraping and all these other tools and utilizing the same model. We match it into contracts, for example. Right, so now you’ve seen we create a program called Kodama, you mentioned I was in Geneva and the world in the world Chambers of Commerce symposium and this past summer and because of that particular program that week, that particular solution that we curated is called Kodama contract radar Maximizer, which basically it matches contracts with capability statements in seconds. You know, when I mentioned we 20 employees or less we are busy working, we don’t have the staff or the knowledge to go search for contracts or government contracts, right. So This tool is going to revolutionize how people, you know, access those contracts because now you have everything on your hand, you just give me your capability statement or match it with the technology. And we’ll put in front of you contracts. So you basically qualify for it. In seconds. We are testing it right now, we did a couple of pilot programs in Lake County in the northern Chicago, we working with the City of Chicago to disclose our spending money. So now we know what kind of bunch contracts are happening. So we gonna be able to match him with companies. So we are about to launch a nationally and this thing is going to be an incredible tool tool for me chamber to use to help their

Brandon Burton 15:38
whims. That’s awesome. He said, It’s called Kurama.

Jaime di Paulo 15:41
What am I CLR AMA, contract radar maximize your website is there.

Brandon Burton 15:51
So let’s hone in on that a little bit more. I mean, I’m just full of excitement as I hear you talk about that and match in the contracts. And so when you have a chamber member, what would their experience be? Like, you know, applying karama? How would they access it how what what information they put in to get that instantaneous, almost feedback.

Jaime di Paulo 16:13
For example, if you, I’m sure everybody has heard of the government, federal government, they have what it’s called next codes, right? Every every, for example, you in construction, there’s a special number they gave you. So when you search for contracts, you use that particular code to identify yourself as a construction or, or cement or brick layer, or landscaper, or whatever it may be. So now utilizing that code and web scraping stuff analysis, or vectrus was called vectorize, which something I don’t understand, but my team does

Brandon Burton 16:51
have a team. Yeah, young people that

Jaime di Paulo 16:53
do the technology, we’re now able to if you put everything in like a company comes to us, we teach them how to do a capability statement, which is basically a one pager of who you are in one piece of paper and that particular. So it has different codes and different keywords that we can run into the system we came up with in the system will will search and will spit out the contracts you actually qualify for according to what you told us who you are as a company. Okay.

Brandon Burton 17:24
And then as far as going after those contracts, you guys provide any kind of support to help them figure out how to do that. And you had mentioned that earlier helping them get contracts? Yeah, how’s that process? Look,

Jaime di Paulo 17:38
we have what is called a PTAC, Procurement Technical Assistance Center that actually helps you have staff that will take you by the hand and show you how to apply. We’re working on technology right? Now this is going to actually self populate the application at what point the what you told us, so it’s coming. I mean, we a little bit step below that. But you know, a year or so we’re gonna have that on hand. So what I’m envisioning in nobody here, you’re gonna be able to fill out 80% of the application automatically. So yeah, finances and you know, that kind of stuff. But that’s something we, you know, you got to work with you on accountants.

Brandon Burton 18:17
So what kind of advantages do you see for your members in utilizing this type of technology and these tools that you’re making available for them?

Jaime di Paulo 18:28
Well, you know, when you go to even the playing field, for example, you know, that these huge companies out there, they have personality, all they do a search for contracts, now, we’re going to have the necessary tools for zero small companies have access to those contracts. So we’re going to revolutionize how the United States does government contracting, for example, right? So if you are a minority, like Hispanic, African American women, veteran or Asian, you are considered a minority in the United States. And so those are the guys who try to push so they can even they play? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:03
I’m glad that you said that that way, even in the the playing field. So I think that’s what AI that’s what it does, you know, a lot of people have the concept of AI is for the big companies are the ones that have the budget and understand how to use it and all that. But really, AI is going to level the playing field across so many different platforms. That I’m glad that that’s the vision is it levels, the playing field and brings your members up to a competitive level across the nation.

Jaime di Paulo 19:30
You know, AI can be a scary thing, but it can be used properly. It’s a wonderful tool, and nothing we use in it properly. Right? So who knows what AI is going to take us in the future. But at the end of the day, we need to take advantage of those tools and use it to the event to to scale our companies, right?

Brandon Burton 19:48
Yeah. So do you have somebody internally that’s working on the technology with the AI to develop these these platforms, or do you consult with somebody or how’s this being developed? So, within your chamber,

Jaime di Paulo 20:01
we actually have to two engineers, you know, just coding full time and the director of the program. Wow.

Brandon Burton 20:11
So not everybody has that on their staff. But where would somebody get started, you know, maybe a local chamber, you’re wanting to implement some of these things? How would you suggest they get started,

Jaime di Paulo 20:24
we, we don’t we still working on the model, we don’t know how we’re going to do it, we license it or just give it away, or we got to make a little money on it. But our intent is to bring up our companies and across the United States, we’ve been in conversation with Walmart, for example, you know, in government contracting, every contract is public information. Private is not so having this tool, access private corporations, like for example, Walmart, Target and Home Depot, whoever it is, we need to create partnerships directly with those companies. So we will talk into Walmart and the Google and some other companies so they can have access to this to this tool. So they can do some hiring. But it’s gonna that’s gonna be a little bit more difficult, because it’s not public information, those contracts. So yeah, work to be done.

Brandon Burton 21:18
Gotta get them to play along with you, right? That’s right. So the the technology incubator, I’d like to maybe hear some of the things that you’ve seen, you know, birthed out of that incubator there. I get excited here and about this technology programs, and you know, what people are into and what’s kind of cutting edge, but what are what are some of these things that you’ve seen come out of there? No,

Jaime di Paulo 21:45
it’s amazing what goes through our, our offices there, we got companies, for example, we have a Latina woman, micro cycle is her company, she she basically figured out that I mushroom eats concrete, how I have, but she’s been taking marketing that technology, and it’s a solution for the landfills, for example. Right? So she’s been scaling at a pace you have never seen, right? We have a company that, you know, that connect hero, it’s using utilizing technology in the retirement homes, and connecting them with families. It’s an amazing thing. And these two companies, for example, they’re they’re growing big time. And those are companies that we helped start, you know, so it’s, and we have, you know, work, we just graduated a cohort of 25 companies last week. So, you know, we have about 400 companies we’ve worked with, and 80% of them are still still in business trying to get that capital so they can scale up. So some of those, like, cycling clinic here on it, and a few others are beyond that, right. So it’s very cool. Spot hero, for example, I don’t know if you heard of that, that came out of the incubator. It’s not a Hispanic guy, but it came out of the incubator, I had an opportunity to meet him, it’s a tool you use for to find a parking space, low costs around, okay, Spot hero, so, so as many companies like that,

Brandon Burton 23:21
I like it, I like hearing these these different ideas. And it’s got to be a sense of pride, seeing these people come with an idea and watching it grow and watching them be successful and looking for that additional funding to continue, you know, adding fuel to the fire, so to speak.

Jaime di Paulo 23:37
And he was a good one, there’s a guy whose name is Ricky, like a loud, young Latino guy. His family has a cleaning, Office Cleaning Service, right? So thinking outside the box, this guy actually created the technology in training, so so he can help companies, show people how they can become a cleaning company, so they can have access to cleaning contracts, and the guy is making millions for that app. And so who I wish I would have thought of that. I mean, that. So it says good example, that this guy probably and I want to go pee in offices. But he kept the family business with using technology. Now they’re scaling up big time. So that’s the goal here because you know, in our communities, for example, in Chicago, there’s a famous street car 26th Street, which is basically 99% of those businesses are Hispanic gone. But those are immigrants that came to United States with nothing and they started a business and now what’s happening their sons and daughters are graduating from high school from from college and they don’t want to go and work at that particular restaurant. They want to work in technology downtown. So how you combine both right so that’s been a big issue in our chamber. How are you going to encourage your sons and daughters to take over the business and using technology? This So restaurant guy that has 45 restaurants in the city, Chicago, and the sun just to cover the businesses, what are they doing, they kept the business, same recipes and everything. But adding technology now they’re they’re packaging tacos and put them on grocery stores. So that’s the kind of stuff that we’ve seen. And we’re very excited about keeping the restaurant as it is, but using technology to scale and policing design and data that went to college. Right. So that’s, that’s pretty encouraging. That’s very cool.

Brandon Burton 25:28
Yeah, that is very cool. I like that all these examples that you’re you’re showing, or they’re helping others continue as well. So it’s not it’s not replacing another business is not, you know, harming another industry, but it’s, it’s bringing everybody up to a higher level,

Jaime di Paulo 25:46
leveraging that technology for the own use. Really? Exactly.

Brandon Burton 25:50
Yeah. So is there anything else as far as the data and technology that you want to make sure we hit on before we we move on?

Jaime di Paulo 26:01
No, I think you know, chambers should use technology to I mean, you we have a lot of tools out there that can enhance our chambers to the benefit of the members, right? Databases. I mean, the keys are chambers keeping your database and then the, everything you do is not in writing in them or happen. So that’s how we created the technology we created. So this tool, the Kurama tools, because we have 30 years of data. So now we actually know what a pig, what’s a contract that based on data and notes. Right? So that’s how you do it. Really? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:37
Yeah, I guess, to your point, when you’re training an AI model, to do something for you, you have to feed it data to be able to learn what it is you’re looking for, and what it needs to put out. So as long as you can, can collect the data up front and all along the way, every interaction, every touch point should have a data point to it, that you can go back to and be able to plug it in, as you see applicable down in the future.

Jaime di Paulo 27:07
You using key words, for example, saving those key words, it’s, it’s called web scraping. So you can actually take a document and show the document, identify this key words, and then it’s tracks that key words and puts it somewhere else. Now you have a you know, now you chamber instead of being, you know, business incubator, at the small business incubator for businesses, you take out the then you just keep small businesses and incubator and those two words are keywords. So now the tool searches for those key words and legislation. And if any bill comes out or any of those key two key words you identified, it flags it, and now you have a couple of key words you can track and you can lobby or whatever.

Brandon Burton 27:53
That makes a lot of sense. That

Jaime di Paulo 27:55
was easy. Well, it sounds easy to explain, but you need to have the back office doing it.

Brandon Burton 28:00
That’s right. That’s right. And then get that machine up and running. Right. And once it gets going, just just keep feeding it that good data. So as we, as we start to wrap up here, I like asking for chamber listening, who’s wanting to take their chamber up to the next level? What kind of tip or action item might you share with them to consider implementing it their organization?

Jaime di Paulo 28:28
Well, you know, first, you know, as every chamber knows, we don’t we don’t we don’t do miracles, right? You get out of the chamber, when you put into the chamber, you know, it’s like, uh, you know, like, I tell my members, look, this is Mina chamber member is like having a, you know, a gym subscription, right? If you don’t go, you don’t, you’re gonna you’re gonna see results. So, partying from that, we need to, you know, people do not come to you just because you name is the Chamber of Commerce, you need to have parents, right, you need to have programs, classes, events, whatever it is to attract people to the chamber. I think that’s the key. So I call them carrots, right? So you wiggle the carrot, and then they’ll come, but you need to Google it. Good, right. So for example, you need to make sure this, you know, chambers were known for network events. Right? Now, it’s a lot of competition and network events. So we’ve got to start thinking outside of the box and how to do events, very more unique and those events because there’s a lot of groups out there doing, you know, after our event, so think outside the box, get some more carrots, encourage corporations to get involved in actually, you know, encourage those corporations to hire those small companies that you represent. That’s the key. And then for example, what I try to do is, for example, a big corporation comes on board as a corporate member. I actually have like, a piece of paper that encourage them it’s not a legal document or anything Ellison just make him sign something as promised, I will give an opportunity to your members to apply for right something that is good to sell to the small businesses so they can come in and be part of the chamber. Sometimes it’s good sometimes they don’t. Right. I

Brandon Burton 30:16
like that. Just a commitment to Medicare and Yeah,

Jaime di Paulo 30:21
nothing. Nothing about it. It’s just on paper, right?

Brandon Burton 30:25
And of a pledge. Yeah, I like that. But I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers. And I feel like we’ve been talking about this throughout this whole episode here. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jaime di Paulo 30:43
Well, chambers are the key. There, they’re a necessary tool for small businesses to scale, we have the knowledge, we have the connections, and we have the access to well to your clients, or contracts or whatever it may be, your members need. So Chambers of Commerce will never go away. Because of that reason. Everybody needs somebody, you know, you if you’re an accountant, to focus on your accountant, but you don’t know anything about marketing, we can help you do that. We can help you bring clients to you, we can help you promote your business, we can help you do other things. But you need to focus on your business and give us give the chamber an opportunity that can help you business scale. So it’s like an artist, you know, an artist should be should be drawing pictures, right? Not marketing themselves. So you need to, you know, understand that. That’s what chambers do we help you market your business, we help you scale your business, we’ll help you with connections with with financial, financial institutions. Because the number one thing is small businesses. theme is access to capital. One is me, not every bank is suit for anybody. So we have many we have like a smorgasbord of banks, we can actually know what the what’s the right banking institutions for your particular business, right. So that’s the kind of stuff we bring to the table, the chamber, so we never gonna go away. I mean, if you don’t work, you’re gonna go away. But if you add value to those businesses, you’re good,

Brandon Burton 32:15
right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like that idea of, you know, chamber is necessary for businesses to scale. And if your chamber believes that, if your chamber is promoting that, if you’re putting that out as a carrot to attract the businesses, because you have what it takes for them to scale, then you’re right, chambers are not going to go anywhere, and they become necessary in their communities. Okay, we

Jaime di Paulo 32:40
create example. Right? And then we we chambers do a lot of workshops, right with our members, but we never had something structured certified. Right. So we went to the city colleges, which is a local community college. So I told the chancellor, look, let’s create a curriculum, I certify curriculum and and show people how to run a business properly. We did that. So now we launching you know, we had two cohorts or two classes, it’s a 4040 hour class that teach you about finances, marketing, legal stuff. Inventory. So now you we have a certified program, you can people actually go and get a credit, credit, credit, college credit, take this particular class and you when you graduate, you know how to run a business properly, because we know that businesses get into businesses because many reasons and not necessarily everybody is suitable to run a business. So teaching them how to use to how to run a business properly is the key to the success of your business. And so you utilizing the local colleges, you know, get you all members can become teachers, the classes, it’s a win win for everybody, really. So.

Brandon Burton 33:51
Yeah, absolutely creating those good partnerships. Well, as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who might be interested in anything you talked about and maybe wants to learn more or just connect with you in general, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jaime di Paulo 34:11
Well, our website is, you know, IHCCBusiness.net HCC meaning Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. My personal email is jaime@ihccbusiness.net. Those two if you Google our chamber, you can find me on LinkedIn Jaime de Paulo. We have I’m very active on LinkedIn. Our website, you can find me there and you can you know, access all the programs or you can email me for sure and then I will get back to you.

Brandon Burton 34:48
That is perfect. And we’ll get all of that in our show notes for this episode as well so people can pull it up and reach out and connect with you. But Jaime, this has been great having you on Chamber Chat Podcast. I appreciate your time. Taking the time and, and telling us you know what you guys are doing in the realm of data and technology and these AI tools, and you guys are just full of exciting stuff going on right now that really, I think will end up being models for other chambers to follow. So thanks for blazing that trail and sharing some of these insights with us today. I really appreciate it.

Jaime di Paulo 35:19
Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate your time and you know, don’t give up.

Brandon Burton 35:23
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New Teacher Program with Renee Earls

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Renee Earl’s Renee has proudly served as a president and CEO of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce in Texas. Since 2016. Native of Odessa, Renee believes that she has the best job in town. She works alongside a team of staff and volunteers to promote her hometown community through special events, membership, Economic Development and Tourism. Renee is a graduate of Texas Tech University where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. So I do have Renee on Zoom and I see the guns up so you guys can’t see that. Sal? Yeah, you got to do it. Right. But she started her career as a reporter and morning anchor at the Odessa Midland ABC affiliate. Then she spent 14 years in the health care arena serving as a community community as the communications Marketing Executive Director for Medical Center Health System. After volunteering for the Odessa chamber for decades and serving as our board chair Renee was thrilled to take on the role full time. She also has what she calls her midnight job. In 1999. She and her husband became the fifth owners of the Odesain. Magazine, a bimonthly community publication, which has been in print since 1964. Renee has served on numerous boards locally including the Odessa college and Ector county ISD Education foundations, and nonprofit management center of the Permian Basin United Way of the Junior League of Odessa. Renee serves as elder at connection Christian church. She’s a board member for the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives, having just completed the year as vice president of professional development and chair of the annual State Conference, which was held in Odessa this last summer. For 2024, she will serve as the TCC II VP of Governmental Relations. Together with her husband rich, they have three grown children, two grandchildren, and her motto for a successful life is whatever thy hand finds to do do it with all thy might. Rene, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Renee Earls 4:21
Wonderful. Well, thank you for having me. And thank you for allowing me to talk about what the Odessa chamber does. You know, we’re out here in West Texas. But as you mentioned, we hosted the State Chamber conference this last summer and we just have great feedback. You know, I’m blessed to be from this community born and raised, left long enough to go to college and came back and I honestly would not live anywhere else. And I’m a huge champion of my community and I just encourage those who haven’t been to West Texas in a while to come visit us come see us. We have a lot of opportunities here. So

Brandon Burton 4:55
absolutely. And I was at the TCCE conference and it was was a it was a success if you guys did a fantastic job, the venue and hosting and just everything about it was just fantastic. So great job. No, I

Renee Earls 5:09
think one of the the the most important thing that we have in our community, world oil and gas community. So obviously the resources below the ground are what is literally fueling the world. But it’s our people here who are just fantastic very much roll up your sleeves, get the job done, leave a lot of grids, and you won’t find better people than here in Odessa and West Texas. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:33
no, that’s that’s, that’s fantastic. So that’s a little bit about Odessa, tell us a little bit about the Odessa Chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of your staff Scope of Work budget, just that sort of thing to kind of set the table for our discussion today.

Renee Earls 5:48
So our chamber is one of the few chambers left in the in the industry that actually is the three legged stool. So we have the operation side, we have you know, the membership, the events. One of the programs that we’re going to talk about today from the membership side of the of the office, the operations, We’re also fortunate to have a contract with our city to run the economic development aspect of the community through our Odessa Development Corporation. So we have a economic development staff. And then we also have the tourism arm that we received funding from the city through Hotel Motel. So as a total, we have a staff of 18 here in our chamber. And those are pretty well divided between those three departments. We also have a community foundation, where we just focus on you know, just as it says community projects, things that come up in the community. And we have about 775 Members, we’re having our first membership drive in January for the first time in almost 20 years. And we are turning 90 in 2024. So we are looking to hit that 900 mark. And it would be nice if we went over the 1000 mark. So that’s kind of a little bit about our chamber, our operations department itself is a little over 1,000,003 in budget. So overall, we’re about a $3.4 million chamber budget wise with the three departments.

Brandon Burton 7:19
Yeah, that’s very good. That definitely helps give that perspective and 90 years coming up. That’ll be exciting, especially to cross that 900 threshold. It’ll be huge. Yeah, and I know it’s there. I know you guys are going to do it. So yeah, that’s awesome. Well, for our topic today, we kind of settled on the idea of talking about the new teacher program that you guys do there Theodosia chamber. I’m excited to dive into this learn more about the kind of the unique aspect and approach you guys take to it. And we’ll dive into this much deeper since get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:13
Hi, it’s me, Donna from Yiftee. Have I mentioned that we’re working with chambers and other leaders on community cards in more than 500 cities across the US. Yiftee is the undisputed leader in community cards because we did it first and have learned a lot and because it’s free for you to set up and free for your members to participate. Plus, we do all the heavy lifting for you. Many chambers have chamber checks or other similar programs. Imagine the benefits of those without the extra costs of staffing, creating and tracking checks and reconciling payments. Community cards are all digital, sold online and always available on the cardholders cell phone. We provide tons of training and marketing materials. Come check us out yiftee.com or email sales@yiftee.com. Back to you Brandon

Brandon Burton 11:08
All right, Renee, we’re back. As we dive into the discussion today about your new teacher program. I guess first of all, do you guys have you? Is it branded with a certain name? And just answer that one first, I guess we

Renee Earls 11:24
host right before school kicks off and into July 1 part of August. We call it our new teacher reception. It’s been a breakfast. It’s been a tailgate party. It’s been a reception. So it’s basically just a big party for our new teachers with our school district. I

Brandon Burton 11:44
love it. So I guess let’s just start at the beginning the origins How did this program come about? What was the need? Was it presented you guys you guys come together just tell us how this became how it started and how it’s evolved? Sure.

Renee Earls 12:02
So we were actually approached by one of the superintendents at the time, just a little over a decade ago, maybe 12 years ago, the chamber was approached about hosting something new for teachers coming into the market. The Odessa market is somewhat unique in that at one time, you know, we have between three and 400 vacancies for teachers. You know, we’re talking in like June, before school. That is a huge number. And so we obviously wanted to do something that made them really, you know, learn about the community. And most of those were coming from out of the area. You know, we were they were the district was recruiting Ector County ISD was recruiting from not only all over the country, but they also bring in teachers from different parts of the world. And we wanted them to learn about Odessa, we wanted to connect them with our businesses. We wanted to just thank them for taking on a profession that is, you know, probably one of the most valued most important professions, you know, teaching our students, our future, our workforce. So the superintendent came to us and said, Let’s do something. So we came up with at the time, a new teacher breakfast. So we brought him in to our big can What if the time what we would call our you know, our Coliseum a big event center. And it was like a pep rally. You know, we had the students out there, the cheerleaders and the band and the mascots and they would come in and you know, they ran under the tunnel and it just really set the tone for the school year. They would come in there are you know, 50 to 60 booths from our Chamber members because when they come into town, they need a bank, they need an insurance salesman, they need to find a place to go get their hair cut, they need a place to dry cleaners, they need to get their nails done, they want to go shopping, I mean all the things that a person when they moved to a community they need so it was a win win. The teachers felt wonderful. They left there with literally bags full of goodies. We were giving out door prizes, T these, you know cash rewards gift cards, the vendors that we had, were just giving away incredible gifts and breakfast and we had speakers we had, of course our superintendent, we had our mayor, we had our county judge, we had our state representative, all the leaders in the community welcoming these teachers, again, some coming from far away some coming from, you know the area or maybe they lived here and we’re going back into the field. I remember one gentleman told me this was about five years into it. He said he had literally driven his car from out of state moving to Odessa and that was he had literally driven into the parking lot that morning and this was his first impression. Wow. Um, so um, and through the years, you know, after COVID hit, we couldn’t have an indoor breakfast. But you know, we’re still having school we still have new teachers coming in. So we went to the famous Ratliff Stadium, which is known for Friday Night Lights, where the Friday Night Lights community, we go to Ratliff stadium and we had a tailgate. So they literally would drive through the parking lot to the vendors and, you know, had their windows down, and they were throwing stuff in their bags that we would give them. And again, it was just a lot of fun. You know, we gave them food, we gave them coffee, and they never got another car. And the cool thing about that is many of them had their kids and their families in the cars with them. So even though COVID had hit, we did that for a couple of years. And it worked out great. So once COVID was over, and we could go back inside, we did the tailgate in the morning, it rained, we did the tailgate in the afternoon, it was really hot. So we said, you know, we’re gonna go back indoors. So we went back to the Marriott where, you know, we have a beautiful new hotel, we wanted to show that off, what a beautiful reception with lots of food. And again, going through the booths, this last year, we had it at one of our other hotels here, the fundo, a little larger. And it was just it’s a fun time we give out incredible prizes. And the district really, you know, they really encourage those new teachers to come in, they’ve had two days of training, and they end up their their training time at our events. And our members love it because it gives them an opportunity to see you know, 400 people in a two hour time span and get their product and their information in front of them. And it just really kicks off the school year with a fantastic culture and attitude.

Brandon Burton 16:57
Yeah, I love it. So what a great way to welcome these teachers into a new community for it sounds like a lot of them, it’s a new community for them. Let’s talk a little bit about the logistics of it. Right. So you had mentioned vendors a few times. So I anticipate that they’re, they’re paying to have a booth of some sort, they’re sponsoring the program somehow. So kind of walk us through what does that look like, as far as the logistics of obviously, you’re serving food of some sort, whether it’s a breakfast or dinner, whatever, some something at this reception. So there’s moving parts to it. So kind of walk us through what that looks like,

Renee Earls 17:37
you know, any chamber professional knows that the leading up, there are hours of planning, and then you have this two hour event, it’s kind of like a wedding, you plan and plan and plan the minutes over. And we do have sponsors for this, we have a program, our Platinum sponsors where they at the beginning of the year, they commit to sponsoring every event we have. So we have about 25 of those. So they’re premier sponsors of that event. And then we also have a presenting sponsors. And like $1,000, you know, we probably have 10 or so of those. And then we have breakfast sponsors at about $500. And we might have about 10 of those. And depending on where we have it, obviously we haven’t a hotel, you know, they’re they’re responsible for where we’re purchasing the food from them from the catering. We have one particular credit union, that since we’ve started they every year, they get, you know, a very nice Yeti style mug, they fill it up with either, you know, if it’s breakfast, they’re doing a great coffee setup with every kind of flavor, you can imagine, they probably have 10 or 15 of their staff members, they have aprons, they it’s a huge deal for them, and that everyone wants to get to that booth. In fact, a couple of times they’ve run out because everybody goes people want to go to in the afternoon they’re filling it with you know different flavors of of tea from HTO. So these vendors will either they’re either a sponsor a breakfast sponsor, or they can just purchase a booth space. I think we’ve we’ve gone from you know, about two to $300 for the booth space. And we have the draping, we provide the table a couple of chairs, and they come in and dress that booth that almost like a business expo. Yeah. And basically that’s what it is because they’re going up and down rows to to learn about these different industries. We give them a piece of paper to encourage them to go to everyone and so once it’s complete, and they’ve seen it, you know, they’re putting their name in a big drawing. So, it there’s a lot of logistics to it. But again, our members love it. We start promoting it several months in advance and we fill up and honestly we’re Are, we’re running out of space. So. But it’s a great opportunity, it’s a lot of fun.

Brandon Burton 20:05
I think it is a great opportunity when you have, like you mentioned three to 400 new teachers coming in, to be able to match them up with local businesses in the community. So that I think that’s so key. When you’re new to a community and you’re looking to get established in a new community, you need a place to bank you need an insurance person, you need a physician, you need a dentist, you all these different things to get established in the community. So being able to help match them up with those Chamber members that are vendors or sponsors that the program, I think,

Renee Earls 20:37
benefit of being a chamber member to, you know, we have other groups who will come in and say, well, we want to have a booth, well, you’re not a chamber member. So that encourages them to to become a chamber member, I will say Chevron is has been our host or our our major sponsor from the get go. And every year we give the teachers are really nice, special gift. And for years, we were giving them something that they would put in the trunk of their car, it was like a trunk holder. And you know, it’s like a cloth bag, it had the chevron logo, it had the ECSD logo, it had our logo. We did that for years. And we listened to the teachers this last year, because they said, you know, many of our teachers are going from classroom to classroom and they they drag along that little, you know, things. So we’ve got them a wheeled cart that had the logos on it. And, you know, they love that. And again, I mean, they just filled it up, and we’ve had teachers, you know, post on social media, they’re getting all these awesome items. And many of our vendors will do things that they can utilize in their classroom, you know, supplies, because we all know, teachers are having to go and spend money out of their own pocket for supplies, and so many of our vendors will just fill them up with things that they can use in their classroom. And, you know, these teachers come to us and they’re emotional, and they’re just so thankful. And it’s it’s a great feeling. And we’ve been encouraged other chambers to do this, you know, in the in the chamber industry. We have that very important R&D that we talked about, which is rip off and duplicate. We want everyone to rip off and duplicate this program because it’s great. It’s a it’s an easy way to really promote your members and and make these teachers in such an important profession feel good. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:27
I love the idea of the wheelie tote, right. So it’s got your logos on it, they’re gonna use it every day, it’s being seen every day, all the other teachers are using them, versus something that sits in their trunk, and nobody’s ever gonna see it. I mean, it serves a purpose, and it’s a great gift. But to be able to have that win win, you know, all the way around. I love that. And then just to be able to see the involvement that the Chamber has with the schools. My wife actually works at our kids elementary school and not as a teacher, but front office and through COVID. You know, the kids weren’t allowed to drink out of the drinking fountains, right. So there was a realtor, local business realtor came in, he brought two pallets of water bottles to the school. Now, the kids all had water bottles. I don’t know how many months that lasted. But so just to see that involvement, when whether it’s a business or the chamber, getting involved with the schools, everybody notices, you know, they’re appreciative they see, you know, they’re grateful that somebody cares about them and providing tools and resources that they need. So, so important. And I know you guys are very connected with your local school district there. A while back, we had Chris Mead on the show, and he talked about the pen pal program that that you guys started with Odessa, Ukraine. You want to take a moment, just kind of tell your point of view story on that.

Renee Earls 23:54
Chris Mead, this was a fabulous idea that he had, he reached out to me and and he had some connections there in Odessa, Ukraine. And they are, you know, our sister city, if you will. And he just had this wonderful idea to connect students in Odessa, Ukraine was students in Odessa, Texas. So we got a hold of our school district, they then put us in touch with, I believe some of the social or history teachers. And so those teachers and those students started literally writing back and forth. Some of them had zoom meetings back and forth. And it was just amazing to see these students from two different worlds. Connect and at a time when things were so volatile in Odessa, Ukraine and they just really needed to hear from others that they were supporting them and, you know, the art of writing is really gone as well. You know, the pen pal program. I mean, that’s just not something people don’t write personal notes anymore. And we saw this too. units do that, and the teachers loved it. And again, that all goes back to Chris Mead and the idea that he had, so kudos to him. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 25:07
But what I love about that is a program like that doesn’t happen unless you already have that relationship with the school district. And just the lives that are being touched on both sides, both here and in Odessa, Texas, and there, and in Odessa, Ukraine, lives are being touched, stories are being shared, they’re being enriched by each other. And it’s all facilitated by having those relationships, through things like this through the new teacher welcome program and building that goodwill.

Renee Earls 25:37
You know, that’s what chambers are all about are about relationships. And we’re so fortunate to have very healthy relationships with our educational partners either in the our school district, we just recently passed, our community passed a bond for our school district, and our chamber really got behind that, as far as endorsing it in just that. One, we wanted people to go to the polls and vote because we’ve seen such voter apathy. Not very many people, you know, going to the polls, so we encouraged a very active voting awareness program. But also, these, again, are our future workforce, these students who are in school today will be working for us, they will be our bosses, they will be running these companies in this community, and we have to have a strong education program vient, the ISD. We have private members here that are private schools, we have charter schools, and then of course, our community college, and our university, we are so fortunate to have really good programs and partners with our education.

Brandon Burton 26:49
Industry. Absolutely. So it’s so important. I love it. And appreciate you highlighting, you know, this, this new teacher program or reception new teacher reception, I’d love to give you an opportunity for any chambers listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item might you offer to them to to consider maybe implementing at their own chamber?

Renee Earls 27:14
You know, one thing I think that is so valuable is just talking to other colleagues in the chamber industry, find out what other chambers are doing, find out what will work in your community and make it your own. Um, you know, we talked about this new teacher program at a Texas chamber conference probably five years ago, just highlighting what we do, in a room of about, you know, 100 people, and it was a, it was almost like speed dating, you find out, you know, a program that’s working in a community, you get some info on it, you go to the next person, well, we all got, you know, five to 10 ideas that day. And I think it’s so important to just find out what other groups are doing, don’t reinvent the wheel, find out something that you can take in your community and make it make it your own. And, you know, again, those relationships are so valuable, and not only the relationships with our own members in our own community, but with colleagues throughout the state in the country, and what’s happening and just like listening to your podcast, people get so many ideas, and can again, take that into their own chamber, and make it work for them.

Brandon Burton 28:23
That’s the idea. That’s the hope everybody listens, gets those ideas, and then, you know, takes what may be valuable to their own community and implemented and do their R&D and be a successful chamber, right? Well, Renee, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Renee Earls 28:49
You know, chambers have have really changed a lot. membership organizations in general have changed over the many decades. We’re not your grandmother or your grandfather’s chamber anymore. And we can’t think that way. We can’t act that way. I think it’s so important that you know, because we are a membership based organization. If you look at any chambers budget any more. A large portion of your budget is not tied to actual memberships, because we’ve had to think of other ways to be successful and to create dollars for different programs. So I see, you know, the chamber is a major part of any community, or at least it should be, you know, our chamber is fortunate in that we have we’re we’re built on 90 years of just incredible volunteers who have served prior to us and have made our community what it is. And it’s so important for us to I tell people for an organization that’s supposed to be non political, you know, chambers are political. We we work with our all members, we work with all leaders, regardless of, you know, our, our party affiliation. And regardless of how we feel on certain issues, we all have to get along, we all have to work, our goal should always be with our community in mind. And I think for any, any chamber to thrive and continue to grow, is we have to continue to build those relationships, continue to meet in the middle, if you will, and just be the community cheerleader that talks about all the things that are happening in community, good and bad. But be the the person in the middle who can bring the people to the table to have a respectful conversation about how your community can grow, you know, be the be the liaison be the one who pulls everyone, the collaborator who pulls everyone together.

Brandon Burton 30:59
Absolutely. Yeah, chambers are political, but hopefully not divisive, like politics. Typically, you’re bringing into the middle. So I love that point. And in showing that role that chambers have in the future of being that same center and helping to be at the table and bring parties together to be able to come to a common goal and moving your community forward. I love that. Well, Renee, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening, who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about the new teacher reception or anything else you guys are doing there in Odessa, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect? Well, we

Renee Earls 31:40
would love to hear from you. Again, I think it’s so valuable for chamber professionals to connect with each other. So you can always reach out to us on our Facebook, Odessa chamber, make sure it’s Texas, there are a couple of chambers throughout the country at Odessa chambers, you can always, you know, email me at renee@odessachamber.com. And reach out to us here at the Chamber 432-332-9111 with lead to visit with you put you in connection with any of our staff on any of our programs that we’re working on. And follow us on social media. Again, I think we have to support each other as chamber professionals and just rely on each other to work us through you know, chamber profession is, as we said, at the beginning of this, you know, I feel like I have the best job in the community because I get to promote the chamber in my own community. But chamber work is hard. Chamber work is stressful. We’re working with a lot of personalities and a lot of people a lot of volunteers but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t be doing anything else. It’s it’s the peak of my career that I’ve I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. And you know, take time for yourself and rely on each other to see what’s working in what’s not.

Brandon Burton 33:02
I love it. So we will get your contact info in our show notes so people can pull that up and connect with you. But Renee, this has been so much fun having you on the podcast and learning more about the new teacher reception and the relationship you guys have with the your local school district there. And I appreciate your example and willingness to be with us today and providing all this value for us. Thank you for being with us today.

Renee Earls 33:25
Well thank you so much for giving the chambers a voice and for all of us to be able to learn from each other and through the programs that you do. And thank you for having me and thank you for allowing me to highlight great things happening here in Odessa, Texas.

Brandon Burton 33:41
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Quality of Place Fundraising with Dan Culhane

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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

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

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

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Dan Culhane. Dan is the President and CEO of the Ames Chamber of Commerce in Iowa. In his current role, he’s led several initiatives including the modern modernization of the Ames Municipal Airport, the annexation of 13 of over 1300 acres for the creation of Prairie View industrial center, and the recruitment and expansion of over 75 companies to the Iowa State University Research Park and the Ames metropolitan statistical areas supporting the creation of 1000s of jobs. He is a 1993 graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Community and Regional Planning and a 1998 graduate of the University of Oklahoma’s Economic Development Institute. He earned his CCD in 2000. And the chamber industry’s highest designation, its CCE in 2011. Dan has served on numerous boards and is currently a member of the Wi SS Foundation Board. He’s also served on the board of the United Way of storey County and chaired the 2017 campaign, which is the largest campaign in history and remains today. He co chaired Reggie sleep that out Reggie’s sleep out in aims to promote the needs of homeless youth as well. He’s served as chairman to several organizations over the years including the Iowa state university’s athletic letterwinners Club and the Iowa chamber Alliance, a coalition of Iowa’s largest community communities Chambers of Commerce, the professional developers of Iowa and the Mid America Economic Development Council multistate peer group from Iowa to the Dakotas. And Dan was honored in June of 2023, with the Iowa Association of Business and industries leadership for Iowa award given annually to deserving leader in Iowa, who’s an alumni of leadership, Iowa. Dan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Dan Culhane 4:09
Well, thank you, Brandon. It’s great to be here. I certainly appreciate the invitation. So I’ve been in the chamber in the economic development business for nearly 30 years. And I’ve seen it change a lot, but I still get up every day greatly enjoying the work that I get to do. Our chamber here in Ames, Iowa was about 750 members. We’ve got about a $3.6 million budget. I’ve got 17 people that do a lot of good work every day in to county area that encompasses the Ames MSA, which is about 125,000 people. You know, I’ve often heard and I’ve since repeated that if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber. I think they’re all different. I think they reflect the needs of the board members and the communities in which they serve. And we’re certainly no different. Ames is a vibrant university community, home of Iowa State University with 32,000 students. And so that creates a level of dynamic that’s really powerful for chamber work and economic development work and community development. And so we do a lot of community development work along with the very traditional chamber work that most Chambers of Commerce to do that I’m pretty excited about. You know, in terms of something that unique or that most of you may not know about me is they often quipped that the reason I came to Ames, Iowa in the first place, was to play baseball at Iowa State and I got to stay and play baseball at Iowa State because I get hit a curveball. And so I played three years at Iowa State, they’re on their baseball team had a great experience, ripped up a knee pretty good my junior year, and then I was done. And but nonetheless, it was it was a rich experience. And it’s even a neater opportunity for me now to be back where I went to school, leaving the Chamber of Commerce and the economic development organization here in this region. I’m

Brandon Burton 6:01
sure you still get a few curveballs thrown your way, as a chamber exec

Dan Culhane 6:05
every day.

Brandon Burton 6:08
You’re the right guy for the job, you can hit those curveballs. So very good. Sam, thank you for for touching on that. The Ames chamber itself, just the the size, you mentioned the the number of members and your staff and what kind of scope of work as you mentioned, one, if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber. What areas are you guys involved with, as far as the work goes at the chamber?

Dan Culhane 6:32
You know, Brandon, it’s incredible. When I got here, there, there I was the I was there was five of us at that time. And so we’ve grown immensely. And we’ve grown as as a staff, as the work has, has come to come to our table. And so we do the most traditional of chamber programming, leadership development, public policy, a wide variety of events, we do over 100 events every year. So we’re in that’s in that from that standpoint, we’re a very traditional Chamber of Commerce. Beyond that, we’ve also got an economic development organization. We do a lot of workforce development, workforce programming, career fairs, things of that nature, internship programs. And so we’ve got our hands on a lot of things that maybe some traditional chambers may or may not do. But we’re also doing community development work in the smallest of communities in our two county area, where we’re helping communities of 700 people with infrastructure grants and other other grants and opportunities for new housing starts. And so we’re, we’re engaged in housing more today than we were probably two years ago. Housing is certainly a need across our country. We all know that, but it’s certainly needed in our region. We’re also engaged in childcare, in helping with childcare grants and a variety of programs to enhance the childcare slots that we have in our region, for our for our workforce, you know, workforce is such a big piece of of all that we do. We have to support childcare, housing, and things of that nature, to support people that are going to work in our companies.

Brandon Burton 8:18
So I’m hearing more and more chambers getting involved with paying attention to childcare and helping that out as far as the workforce needs go. And for those listening is you hear certain trends being repeated over and over, it might be worth looking into and seeing what your community needs in these areas of work, specifically in childcare and workforce. And then in education, I mean that it just snowballs right and all these different areas. But childcare specifically I’ve seen as more of a newer area of interest in the last couple of years of chambers get really getting involved. And my ears are kind of perking up every time I hear it now because I think more chambers are seeing the vision of the value that comes to their community by paying attention to childcare. So for our topic of conversation today, we’ve kind of narrowed down our options and things that could discuss today we could we could probably talk for hours and hours. But we’ll we’ll talk about fundraising for quality of place projects. And we’ll dive into that and much more detail since we get back from this quick break.

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Siobhan Kenney  11:32  

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Brandon Burton 12:16
All right, Dan, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re we’re highlighting the fundraising for quality of place projects in your community. First of all, I think just to maybe the light level, the field for everybody listening, so to speak. In some communities, it may be the initial reaction is, well, maybe we’re not a quality of place, maybe we don’t have anything that draws people in or, you know, really attracts people. I think we need to maybe attack that thought or maybe that misnomer. First, before we go on with the rest of the discussion. What What would you have to say, with that initial thought that some people may perceive about their community?

Dan Culhane 12:58
You know, I think that no matter what size community you’re in, you’re always trying to do something to make your community better. And so I I don’t think we’re any different than anybody bigger than our community or smaller. There’s always those quality of place enhancement, those amenities, those livability amenities that are important, because you want to make yourself as a community as attractive as you can for that next company, that next employee that has come that’s going to work at your hospital or, or your next superintendent of schools, whatever it might be, you want to you want to check all those boxes, so people choose you. And so that’s where I think we focus in our region on those quality of life assets, and how do we help support communities in accomplishing those things. So that ultimately, we are more attractive to an external audience that’s contemplating either an investment or a life change, job change, by coming to our region.

Brandon Burton 14:01
I think that’s a good point. Because whoever it is, you’re trying to attract whether it’s a new superintendent for the schools or somebody at the hospital or whatever it may be. Your community may be exactly what they’re looking for. Maybe they don’t need the huge community or the super smaller, you know, whatever you feel like might be attractive to other people. Your community does have something to offer to the right person for what you’re trying to fill for. So keep that in mind and look at those assets that you have to promote. So I love that perspective. You said having those check boxes for people that choose you so love that. So when you think of aims, think of quality of place, what what sort of projects are you guys working on around the quality of place, and then we can get into the fundraising aspect here in just a moment.

Dan Culhane 14:50
You know, while Ames is a pretty vibrant university town we still have needs and the biggest project in most recent memory that that Our organizations worked on was an indoor Aquatic Center, a public indoor swimming pool, if you will. And the community had voted down a very, very large Wellness Center, I think it was called a healthy life center. Here in our community, it ended up being close to $50 million. It just blown up to everybody had something in it. And as a result that it just didn’t garner any attention when it came to the voters. And so when that failed, the the need for an indoor Aquatic Center and market this size, it didn’t change we didn’t have we never did better with that the high school and high school have been torn down, they built a new high school, they built the new a new facility, a new swing swing facility, the AIMS is that a lot of state state championship teams swimming, but that new pool was dedicated to the student population. Now there’s a number of indoor water basins in our community because of the university, but in terms of rank and file citizens in our community that they wouldn’t necessarily have access, they needed something. And so we went to the city and said, Hey, we’ve got to figure this out. And we broke it into really three pieces, there was a state program called the Iowa reinvestment district program that we applied for the city put in a percentage of the money. And then we promised to raise the other third. And you know, that was a awesome task, but we did it. And the fact of the matter is a lot of chamber professionals like myself may think, well, that’s not our role. But again, it goes back to what what the needs are of your community. And I saw that as a need for our community. And so we pushed hard to get that done. And they’re breaking ground next spring out of $32 million indoor aquatic facility near our downtown, which will also be catalytic for the downtown portion of our community as well. And so that’s certainly a community asset or an amenity that we identified as a real need, and at the same time, will also support other things in our community.

Brandon Burton 17:10
Absolutely. I love that and being able to attack it from you know, the three different arms, as you talked about with the state program, the city, and then the chamber picking up that, that remaining third. I’m always curious, you know, with whether it’s fundraising or messaging of any sort, as a chamber tries to push out messaging or attract donors in this case, what is the messaging look like as you go about the fundraising? Did you have kind of a list of people that you wanted to target? Or was it just kind of broadcast to everybody? Or how kind of the what’s the methods behind it about the approach? So good, great

Dan Culhane 17:48
question. So in this instance, what I really focused on was our companies making an investment in this facility, and talking about how this would be impactful for them, in retaining people, their workers, and attracting workers. You know, we routinely are one of the lowest MSA is in the country for unemployment, pre pandemic, we were at 1.2%. And usually number one in the country for unemployment, which that’s great, but because you got to be known for something. But at the end of the day, you still need to attract new industry. And so for a variety of reasons, we continue to do attract industry while our unemployment rate was that low. But Consequently, there was still a need for for more workers. And so that was the that was kind of the the angle I took with a lot of our funders was I said, this is an opportunity for one more arrow in your quiver to attract that next worker, that next engineer, that next software engineer, that programmer, or that production worker at 3am. That’s got a large facility in our community. And that resonated with people because they knew that they needed more assets and amenities outside of work to attract those people. And that worked really well for us in raising the dollars for this for the 1/3 of the project. I

Brandon Burton 19:12
like that and that kind of answers. My the next question that I had is going to be how did you help these employers catch that vision that this project, this aquatic center is going to help to attract and retain employees and really see it as a workforce issue rather than a, you know, a new amenity center or a new asset to the community but really, it became a workforce issue? Was it was a well received? Did you get any pushback on it? Did you learn anything along the way about maybe how to change the approach at the next business that that you guys talked to?

Dan Culhane 19:48
You know, I, I learned, I guess what this process did was reinforced, something I might have already known. And that is the big national or international companies that are in your community. Knee. They’re not as though they’re not always as quick to support things like this their processes harder. Our best supporters were locally owned companies, locally owned small businesses and large, that really understand greater good. One of our core values here at the US Chamber of Commerce is actually the term greater good. Because there’s so many things that come across my desk, where if you really looked at a very traditional chamber organization and say, well, that’s probably not our fundraising for a public project like this, in most places probably wouldn’t be there. I raised money with another person in our community, a business leader for our airport a number of years ago. And again, making sure the airport has adequate hangar storage and things like in a new new terminal, we’re gonna have partial service here, but a small terminal building that better represents the community. That was something else, we raised the money. And again, so it was a need for our community. And we said, well, if not us, then who? And so often, I think chambers are faced with that decision, if not us, then who. And so a lot of times chambers step up, it can be for the smallest of projects, new banners for the downtown, somebody putting on the Fourth of July parade, or raising $10 million to build a new aquatic center, it runs the whole gamut. And I think that’s, that’s why chambers are powerful and effective. And every community, it’s because they step up and say, well, we’ll take care of that we’ll help we’ll support that. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 21:36
I love that. And then the example the the airport as well. And I’m sure you’ve got other examples you can point to of really creating more of a quality of place their names. As you go through the process of evaluating because I know as a chamber, you know, all the projects cross your desk, right? And you kind of have to have a filter of, yes, this is worth our time. And this aligns with our mission and purpose as a chamber, versus those that other people just don’t want to do. And they push to the chambers think I know what the chamber should do this, right. So when you look at that, because I can see where some people would say, well, this doesn’t necessarily fit directly with our mission. But how do you apply that filter as to what what is worth the attention, especially when it comes to quality of place improvements in your community?

Dan Culhane 22:24
Well, that’s that’s a tough process, because almost everything can be applied to that makes our community better. And so that’s where a board of directors really comes in and can help someone like me helped make that decision. Because oftentimes, if you ask my staff that’s sitting outside my door right now, they, they would probably all say Dan says yes to everything. And I really don’t but we say yes to a lot of things. Because we again, understand greater good. We’ve got a nonprofit radio station here in our community. We’re a sponsor. I don’t listen to it very often. But I know people do and it creates community. And so we support that. There’s a thing called the Ames tuba Christmas that happened two weeks ago, it’s a professor of music at Iowa State who puts this thing on and they they fill a 17 seat 700 seat auditorium on the I was a campus for this three times over the course of a weekend. And we provide some dollars to that to support that, again, because it’s about greater good. And so that’s, that’s probably the litmus that I put on a lot of things is, does this does this enhance our communities as our make our community better and stronger? Certainly the volunteer, nonprofit radio station, there’s, there’s, there’s community there. And so anywhere, we can help build community or support building community, there’s a good chance we’re going to try and participate at some level. It’s like a lot of things in our community. We’ve done a diversity, equity and inclusion program here at the chamber. It’s not the biggest one of chambers. It’s certainly not the leading one in our community. We’ve got a very strong city, and a very powerful university. But we’re at the table too. And so I look at a lot of things like that, and others, where if if we’re not at the table, we’re conspicuously absent. And so we try to be participant be a participant in supportive of a wide variety of things in our community. Because as a chamber of commerce as the voice of the business community in our region, we should be able to Yeah, and

Brandon Burton 24:33
you don’t need to be the driver of all the things but being at the table is important. Yeah. So I’m curious on the fundraising aspect. Do you typically when you fundraise for these quality of place projects, are you doing it internally and just having staff dial for dollars and go out and meet with members? Are you using a third party or what how do you make the approach to these come On the capital campaign?

Dan Culhane 25:02
Well, in the in the instance of the aquatic center, you’re looking at the fundraiser right now, I raised the money for that. And I don’t like to say I, but that’s really what happened. It was, it was, I was probably the best equipped to do that, you know, I’ve also been in the community long enough now that I can I can get the appointment and, and maybe lean in a little bit on some of our business leaders to say, hey, this really is the right thing to do. You know, and so I think that my tenure here, made that probably an easier process than if I was brand new in the community. And I was knocking on doors, introducing myself as the new leader of the chamber. Oh, by the way, I’d like $100,000 for this aquatic center. So more often than not even even our even our capital campaigns for our organization. Usually, I do most of that. And now there’s a rule in the in the chamber and economic realm world that says, the staff should never be asking for money, because they’re asking for money for their salaries. And I understand that, but at the same time, I do think more often than not staff and the president and CEO of the organization, typically know the numbers better than anybody. And so they can articulate the best. And that’s why I won’t argue with anybody about what’s, what’s the right way, the wrong way. But I would just say that, in our instance, my senior leadership team and myself are probably best equipped to talk about the finances of the organization, far better than anybody on my board of directors. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:35
I would agree. And I think as you’re out making those asks and visiting with the businesses, they see the passion, they see your commitment to building the community. There’s no question about what does Dan do for us anyway, right, like you’re out there working it and, and building on those connections, and really seeing names grow and develop, and that, you know, match the vision that you would see and hope for?

Dan Culhane 26:58
Well, you know, as we were talking before we started the day, Brandon, you know, you can’t, you can’t fake it in any business really, right. You either you either are well set well suited and match to it, and have a passion and a really a real desire to see. In this case, a community to get better, or your business community get better. It just can’t fake it. And if you’re faking it, people will know right away. So passion is pretty important in any any job, but certainly in the chamber business.

Brandon Burton 27:27
I love that. Is there anything else is in regards to fundraising and quality of place projects that we might want to consider going forward? If I’m just picturing the Chamber’s listening that have projects kind of crossing their desk or maybe floating in their mind? What are some of those things to consider before moving forward or as you move forward with some of these projects?

Dan Culhane 27:52
Well, you know, you can, you can talk about raising a lot of money, like for an aquatic center, or you can talk about raising money for a new program and site or chamber. I think you’ve got to develop a plan. And you’ve got to articulate why it’s important, why your community needs a why your chamber needs it, why your chamber needs a Workforce Program, or why your chamber should do it in our city leadership, business, whatever it is, why you should add another employee, you have to be able to lay out a plan for how that will positively impact the chain your chamber, but also your your community, and your business community and your members. And so I think that that’s the key to doing anything related to trying something new, is Think it through a similar plan and doesn’t have doesn’t have to be a 20 page document. It can be I’m kind of an executive summary kind of person. It can be a one page that says here’s why this is important. And then really understanding what the what the what the the problem is you’re trying to solve, or the opportunity you’re trying to capture, and are being able to clearly articulate why that’s important, whether it’s to your board, or to local elected officials or the broader community. I think that’s the key to doing anything related to fundraising or starting new programs is being able to, frankly sell it in a manner that shows the true value of moving forward.

Brandon Burton 29:19
Yeah, I don’t know that I necessarily like this. This example, but when you think in politics, you know, there’s a new piece of legislation that’s being discussed or something’s being presented there. Politicians are really good at getting their talking points in order. And their staff talks about it’s almost word for word, you know, they’re just last step and barrel you know that exactly what they’re gonna say. And I see that being very similar to if you’ve got a program or initiative that you’re trying to raise funds for. Your whole staff needs to understand this is the why this is how it’s going to enhance our community. Here’s the main points about it. So if anyone if anyone gets a call And when they’re standing in the line at the coffee shop, or, you know, taking their kids to soccer practice and somebody asks him that it, boom, they’ve got the answers, they’ve got those talking points, you can go right to it, and being able to do it with a passion. So the pizza recipient hears that and thinks this really is something of importance, and then need to give some give some attention to this.

Dan Culhane 30:21
That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:24
But I think that’s, you know, some great points, a lot of value there for listeners to, especially as they tried to level up the quality of place in their own communities and going about fundraising for it. As we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to see if you had any maybe tip or action item for listener who is looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what might you suggest for them?

Dan Culhane 30:52
I would suggest that people lean in lean, and other volunteers, and probably more importantly, lean in on your peers, you know, I, I still have people that I lean on, and say, Hey, I’m not sure if I should do this. And so I’ve gotten mentors out there even for being as in this business, as long as I’ve been in it, I’ve still got peers that are older than me, they’ve been in this business longer than me. And there’s value in that, you know, we want to put a smile on someone’s face, ask ask for their advice. And when someone want to appear, calls me whether I know them or not, I’ll always take that call. And because people have always taken like, and I think the chamber business can be a lonely place, you know, there, you don’t have three, three counterparts in your community, you can go talk to, you need to reach out across across the geography to be supported by others. And so I think that’s where I think I’ve been successful is I’ve never been afraid to ask for advice, or ask for help. And on the flip side, I’ve also been quick to help others, because I truly want people to be successful in this industry, because I kind of stumbled into it. And it’s a it’s a wonderful industry. And it’s it’s a lot of fun. My days are different. Always. And as we talked earlier that yes, there are curveballs. But you know, at the end of the day, then they’re not insurmountable. And I think business leaders, members, local elected officials and people like that, they understand the importance of the work that chambers do. And they want you to be successful too. And it’s a lot easier for, for them to understand what you’re doing if you’ve got an open line of communication. And you’re also, you’ve got a level of humility, where you say, we don’t really I don’t know about that today, but we’re gonna figure that out. And you call your peers.

Brandon Burton 32:59
And I love that. That’s a great piece of advice. And we’ll we’ll give you a chance here in just a moment to share your contact information. So people can call them put a smile on Dan’s face and kind of learn more about how he’s doing things, their names, but I wanted to ask is we look forward to the future of chambers? How do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?

Dan Culhane 33:24
So I think that chambers will continue to have to find new new sources of revenue. That’s probably the biggest, biggest key, we’ve certainly seen a bit of consolidation. We’ve we’ve picked up some smaller communities, economic development and chambers here in the last few years, primarily because there was a time where one person could do everything. And that’s just not, that’s just not practical now, you know, and so I think continuing to look for ways to partner regionally, but also continuing to diversify your revenue streams. And that’s going to be an ongoing challenge. Like in any business, and I think that’s what a lot of chambers don’t always think about is that they are a business just like your your local manufacturer, the shoe store down the street of the flower shop. We’re this is a business. And so how do we continue to diversify our revenue so that when one one source dries up, this new source takes care of that. And so I think chambers will always have a role because communities need leadership. And chambers are a great place for leaders to be born. You know, I, I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve actually seen my ability to help mentor my board chairs and my board members, who more often than not now are either my age or younger. And it’s might be their first our first entrance into a board leadership role. And so fostering that in In developing those leaders, it’s really important, not only for your chamber, but for your community. And so whether it’s diversifying your revenue, or building leaders in your community, I think chambers will always have a role. But we have to continue to evolve, just like our businesses do.

Brandon Burton 35:18
I love that. As you’re giving that vision of your future of chambers, we could have talked the whole episode about different revenue streams, for chambers and kind of ideas there could have talked about mentoring, you know, those future leaders in your community that’s so important, maybe a little uncomfortable, you know, the first couple times you do it, but as you catch the vision and see, and kind of, you know, help these people progress along their path to being a leader in your community. So important. You’d mentioned before there is a certain loneliness in leadership, but you help bring those along and help them kind of catch that vision you’ve got others to talk to, and then maybe they won’t be so lonely once they’re in your place down the road. I don’t know if I cut you off. It looks like you had something to say. Maybe, please. Okay. Okay. So, before I let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and, and maybe learn from you as a mentor, just you know, learn more about how you guys are doing things, their names, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect, you

Dan Culhane 36:29
can connect me and connect with me in a variety of ways. Again, my email is dan@ameschamber.com. You can call my office at 515-232-2310. Or the best place to reach is my cell phone 515-290-0447. You can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, all those things. I’d love to talk to you. I might learn something, there’s a good chance I’ve learned something from you. And so this, this is a great business, I encourage people to engage. I’ve got a lot of young people that work for me, which is awesome. I’ve had four people leave after a few years of me and run from chambers of their own. And that’s really gratifying to because I think I’ve helped them see that this is a really good professional career path. And so please give me a call. I’d love to talk. And Brandon, I appreciate you and, and you give me the opportunity to be on your podcast today.

Brandon Burton 37:34
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Culture for Huge Results with Bryce Riggs

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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

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

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

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Bryce Riggs. Bryce currently serves as the executive director of the Seneca Regional Chamber of Commerce and Destination Seneca County, the county’s Visitors Bureau. Since taking this position in July 2020. Both organizations have received a breath of fresh air and a surge of energy. The chamber has significantly grown their membership by making it the highest membership it’s ever seen. Historically, the chamber is on its way to becoming one of the strongest in Ohio. While destination Seneca County has become the one stop shop and trusted resource for the community and visitors of Seneca County. The Seneca Regional Chamber of Commerce received the 2023 outstanding chamber of the Year from the Chamber of Commerce executives of Ohio, and destination Seneca County has received six statewide awards from Ohio Travel Association within the last two years. Bryce, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the listeners and to share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better. Perfect.

Bryce Riggs 3:07
Hello, all Chamber Chat Podcast listeners, as Brandon said, I am Bryce, I think interesting about me is I got a vast background in terms of I’ve worked in economic development, I’ve worked in development work with fundraising, and now the chamber and I think, you know, they always say there’s not one job that prepares you for the kind of role like this in the chamber. But I think I’ve been fortunate that I kind of see the business background side of things. And I’ve seen, you know, the kind of development as we all know, without fundraising and raising those dollars for our organization, we really can’t do that fun and transformational things that we want to do always. And so fun fact about me is that, you know, only 30 years old, but I’ve had some really unique experiences that have kind of helped me prove it prepare me for this role with the Chamber of Commerce. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:55
awesome. Yeah, there’s not the perfect resume per se to to become a chamber executive. But you know, certain things do tend to give you experience that you can definitely lean upon as you go about that as a career. So take a little bit of time to get a few minutes. Tell us a little bit more about the Seneca Regional Chamber size of the chamber scope of work you guys are involved with, obviously, you’ve got the tourism side as well. Staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for discussion. Yeah,

Bryce Riggs 4:26
we were unique as as a chamber because we do do the tourism side as well. We see especially in the state of Ohio flow a few of us left because I have to say there’s kind of two different missions and for both organizations in the chamber and destination, Seneca County, so it’s been a joy of keeping many folks happy across the board from our chamber partners as well as our tourism partners. Staff right now three and a half team members. We’ve historically been but three team members, majority of the time of the existence of the chamber We brought on a part time marketing specialist within this last year, and we’re pretty fortunate from a staff level wise. And we have one employee that’s been there for 20 years, who’s our voice of reason we call her and our seasoned vet. And obviously a lot of institutional knowledge we have, that’s Denmark, Toronto, we have Marissa Stevens, who’s the movie organization now, going almost three years, and then for me almost four years with with the organization, but three and a half years. But with that, and then also with the Chamber budget for 2024. I’m proud of the kingdom of outspending, but also the king of raising additional dollars. So $322,000 for the budget for the chamber, for 2024. And then for destination Seneca County, about $170,000. We have for the budget for destination Seneca County, really big thing with us is like the setting, you know, really, the value that we provide back to our membership is, you know, we’re big about listening and understanding their needs. We do a membership survey every year where we understand, hey, what’s important to you. And the big thing is just as things change, as times change, making sure that we have the information, we have the tools, we have the programming that makes sense. As an organization, we’re unique, where we put out all our events for the for the following year and our annual meeting in October, as we do our ama in October, we release a full slate. But you know, as things change, for example, the Damar Hamlin situation with the NFL last year with a cardiac arrest in the field, we were able to do a CPR, AED and first aid training within two weeks close with that scenario. And so we’ve continued to keep that as part of our plans. But we just I think, you know, like any other business partner we work with, we want them to be nimble and make decisions quickly. And I think that’s kind of what we’ve been good at is just, you know, being accurate, the community being very transparent and being, you know, engaged.

Brandon Burton 7:05
Yeah, I love that example. I like having the kind of that map for the year saying, here’s our main events and things that we’ve got scheduled but to be able to be nimble enough and not so rigid that when something of importance comes up, you can say yes, let’s fit that in and have some focus on that. And not have it derail the rest of your plan for the year as well. So I think that’s super important. So as we kind of settled on a topic for this this episode, we’re going to focus most of our conversation today around creating a culture for huge results. And we’ll get into you know why we came across that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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

Christine Langenfeld  9:44  

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

Donna Novitsky  10:13  

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

Brandon Burton 10:24
All right, Bryce, we’re back. I mentioned before the break, we’re recording to focus our conversation today about creating that culture for huge results. And sometimes it takes a different perspective, maybe an outsider’s point of view, to be able to see where there’s some gaps and opportunities within an organization. And I may be making some assumptions, but you guys have seen some significant growth in a variety of different ways. Since you’ve come on board there at the at the Seneca Regional Chamber. So I’d like to maybe have you highlight what some of those big growth areas are. And we can kind of dive into what has kind of fueled that growth and the culture being built there at the chamber.

Bryce Riggs 11:10
Probably the big thing is, I should have noted this early, earlier, but membership wise, about 540 members give or take. But you know, we’ve seen since I started in July 2020, we unfortunately, 65% increase in membership. And for me, it’s increasing membership is nice. You know, we have other chamber partners that, you know, do those membership drives, and they really get people out. And they’re really kind of one time, some folks or one time infusions of cash into an organization, which is nice to keep things afloat. But the big thing for us is the retention standpoint, you know, once we get them on, do a process. And we’ve kind of created a process within the last year and a half about the onboarding and making sure that you know, everyone kind of gets the same experience when they come on board. And that’s kind of help with our retention rate 94% retention rate that we’ve had consistently over the last few years. And, again, you know, influxes of cash are nice for the organization. But how do you keep those coming back and keep you know, our partners happy membership services are great. We’re, you know, we get a lot of responses on that, that allows them the opportunity to dialogue with us. You know, ours is all anonymous, so you can kind of dialogue and kind of put it all out there, my feelings don’t get hurt. Because we only grow as organization, we realize our shortfalls. And then really the big thing is T we’ve seen with a membership growth has been kind of non dues revenue has grown over 164%. Within the last, we moved to a new sponsorship model in the end of 2020 2021, where we asked our partners one time for sponsorships, when I started in July, with COVID pushing things back, it’d be like five events and basically five months and it was, you know, I was the guy who was calling and saying, hey, it’s Bryce. I’ve fortunate part of this community. So it wasn’t really much of an introduction, but it was, hey, we have this event, the golf out and you think you can make an investment to help support us? Oh, yeah, that’s fine. Okay, then, you know, the coffin takes place. And then the educators practice, hey, it’s Bryce again. Can you cut me another check. And so like, like anything in life, that asked me a better way. It’s we moved to a one time ask model in 2021. And that’s been super successful for us. We have 14 years platinum $3,000, gold 2000, Silver 1000, and then bronze 500. And we just package everything else we’ve done in the past. And we just said, Hey, this is the price tag of $3,000 are our largest donor, historically have given us 2250 On average, every year, and it’s okay, let’s bump up to $3,000. And we’ll do it one time mass model. And that’s been super successful for us. As an organization right now, we’re actually going through our our fundraising model kind of drive at the end of the year. And you know, last year, I’m gonna pull it up real quick. Last year, we raised $175,000. And literally one month this year, we’re still at $165,000 gotten to the end of the year. I’ve a few that will over will do. Oh, I’ll do what we did last year. were fun, obviously, with inflation and other factors muddies the water tight, but I think the biggest thing for us is the chamber. It’s more relationship relationship based, rather than the monetary aspect will me get through this. It’s basically Hey, Steve, this is Bryce with the chamber. You have a team and the golf outing. Just let me know who your four golfers are and then you know we’re looking forward to seeing you and then you know, the conversations over with and so when we call it’s no longer oh my gosh, the

Brandon Burton 14:47
Chamber if I may check the budget. Yeah. What

Bryce Riggs 14:50
do they want, you know, they want to call in again for the golf outing or con for this up it’s really allowed us to take our relationship with our members more to that, you know, prefer Hold to the more personal because they realize now that like my call, if I’m gonna ask me for anything is, I’m gonna ask them for money. It’s like asking them how we can help her, Hey, I saw you’re doing this about can we stop by and take a picture to help promote it? Hey, you’re doing this? How can we help you with that? And so it’s kind of allowed us to transform the organization a little more than we’ve done in the past. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 15:23
that’s great. So on the membership, and maybe I misunderstood, but how did you? How did you go about that big increase in membership? Did you guys do a membership drive? Or is that just built kind of grassroots? had had you guys approach that?

Bryce Riggs 15:40
The biggest thing is no membership drive is all grassroots. And I always said, when the chamber gets you energy gets new leadership, there’s always an opportunity to, you know, say that first year, and in my opinion, is the most important year, it’s, you know, sometimes you’ll take over a chamber that maybe in the past, it’s been stagnant, or very successful. And it’s like, okay, you have to pave your way on why you’re different. What’s your value proposition? And so for us, a lot of it was, you know, what, before, when we meet with a new member, our value articulation was not great. It was like, Hey, join the chamber, because it’s good for the community while when COVID hit, and things hit the fan. People love the community, I love the community, but real relook at our budgets. And it’s like, okay, this is good for the community. But this is also good. And this is good. And so now you’re kind of in a match with other great community organizations. But okay, my getting returned value back. And so we kind of lost our four point approach in my first month and said, Hey, look, this is the four reasons why you should join the chamber, where we had some kind of topics underneath each one of them. And the time, I’d say it was kind of crazy, because some of the stuff didn’t really make sense, because we didn’t build the plane yet. We just kind of like, found a bag of goods that we, you know, had yet done it yet. But it’s like, look, this is where we’re gonna go, we’ve lost trust in us. Again, I’m from the community. So for me, it was I’ve had a track record of doing things the right way. And so with us, it was just like, how do you articulate that value back to someone. And then I think it just became, you know, my first month, we had like, 15, new members, my next month, it was 15 new members and kind of like a forest fire. Once you create that spark, it’s like, Look, you have to take advantage of it. And our biggest thing is that we will not accept a new member of the Chamber of Commerce until we meet with you in person. And so it’s not just me. We have other chambers, it’s their membership director, or their membership coordinator meets with them, the CEO doesn’t. To me, I think it’s like the worst thing you could do. And so for me, I take my staff, my entire staff, just the three of us, the part time employee, this now that the three of us go out, and we go to their business, we meet with them on this morning, I was at a museum that was 45 minutes away. And we traveled there as a team, we came back as a team, because the day they knew who we all are, I think call the office and I’m not in and don’t answer the phone. They’ve met them before. Dan knows who they are, what’s important to them are the four points, how we can best assist them, if they run into Mrs. On the street, corner, residence, who they are, what their balance and organization. And so for us, it’s again, how do you take those relationships pass the professional, the personal side of things, I think is huge. And that for us? Again, it’s that it’s that wildfire that we’ve just continued to keep it going. And we just you know, for us, when someone goes to kind of check to the chamber at the end of the year, in July, it’s you know, I want them to look at us as a staff and saying, Hey, right, when I don’t cut this check to the chamber, it’s not at the chamber. I’m not gonna check the price to debt to Marissa. And I think it’s that personal touch, that kind of, you know, makes the ties a little bit stronger between the

Brandon Burton 19:03
organization’s for sure definitely helps with that, to have that 94% retention rate that you guys are seeing now. I mean, when you have that personal touch, you meet the members, you have that introduction, they get to know all the staff, you better understand their business. I love the example the the museum this morning, you gave this 45 minute drive there and back all together as staff. Imagine on the way back, there may be some discussion and ideas shared amongst staff about how to help this new member, you know, who can we connect them with? Or what would help make them successful? And there’s so much value in traveling together and doing that, you know, as a team. So

Bryce Riggs 19:47
I would say you know, there’s that I think we all are bought into it. And it for us it’s like look, you know we all where we see someone we know who they are what they do while they’re doing it and it’s the lie on to say that why this one is what makes the difference? So

Brandon Burton 20:02
I’m anticipating people listening are like four point approach. Okay, what are these four egg? Do you mind giving us the pitch real quick? What your what the four points are? If you’re granted, every chamber is different, you’re offering different things, potentially. But what? What are those four areas that you focus on when you are approaching a potential member?

Bryce Riggs 20:21
Yeah. So when we dive in, you know, we kind of enters we are first as a staff and home or the personal side of us again. And then without my destination said, I didn’t count because when I first started, the tourism bureau wasn’t very active, it was kind of the inactive arm of the chamber. But for us, we kind of explain who they are, what they do, why they’re important to the bigger picture. And then, you know, we flip over to the four point approach. And we talked with the membership survey, and we say, like, look, we don’t, we don’t determine what’s important to you, we listen to you, we understand, when we can talk more about their business, they can understand where their gaps are at and how we can help fill those gaps. And then we kind of go through the four points. And based on their story, we kind of dive into like, for example, the museum, they’re getting ready to go through their new location, there’s moves. And it’s what’s the promotional side of things, and we kind of dive in here, we’re an information source, we get a ton of phone calls, but we do a ton on social media, last this year actually will reach 2.6 million people on all our social platforms for our reach. And then for the visitors bureau, we have an additional 2.9 million will do as well. So we kind of talked about quantifying that the personal experience. And so when we talk about our members, we talk to them as people not as businesses, it’s kind of how it all connects to each other. And then we’ll step up you know, for them ribbon cuttings, bread and butter of a chamber, which we do things a little bit differently. We’ll do last year we did over 40 ribbon cuttings last year, we have a photographer, we invite elected officials, our ambassadors, which are super engaged our board, most were mechanics, we do our we have over 30 to 40 people attend each one. So there for us, it’s an it’s an energy opportunity. It’s the excitement people kind of bought in. And one thing I should know, too, we sent out a calendar invite for all our first contacts for every organization that’s, that’s a member, we send out a calendar invite with a description for all events we do, including ribbon cuttings, so even if you can’t go you at least understand new business, who owns it, where they offer, what are their hours, we said to our political officials, our media, and so those are always a good thing as well. And then we’ll jump to like relationships. So we have after five networking events, like most chambers do, which I won this last week, our golf outing, is wildly popular, we had 55 teams are out in last year, and then two flights sold out. And then we’ll talk about our Casino Night that we do as well. And then just different membership engagement opportunities to build relationships. We have flank. networking groups, like a digital Management Council we have. We’re both the Human Resources association. So kind of different people within the organization can be engaged as well. We have resources and savings is our third point usually talked about, and that’s obviously saving people money in which people appreciate. So we run a chamber cash program that looks just like a cheque. And a lot of people are moved to like 50. And there’s other things but we’ve been fortunate in the last last year, we sold over $110,000 in chamber cash, which keeps money locally infuse our community with a member a member benefit card that we do as well. It’s been really popular 55 different discounts different restaurants and businesses for the community and our big sales when I first started, we engage often with like the top tier management, so the CEO, CFO, CEO, but okay, how do we take the chamber message and bring it down to the employees. And so we now have the stack slammed, and it looks like gift cards. And we can all remember businesses, their employees inside joke, I’ll be at the local watering hole, and three people in front of me will plug the chamber card and get their 50% off at the at the restaurant. We’re there. And so it’s kind of nice to see, I joke, it’s kind of a call at that point, but I’ll take it. But it’s again, the Chamber messaging of this is the chamber and every time they scan it, it goes to our website. And so it’s that name ID not just with top tier, it’s through the whole organization. You Your energy programs, your you know, health insurance programs, as well thought of that. And then last is education, where we do power hours, which is the professional development from our members to our members. We’ve had to talk about like, you know, like AI is a topic for January, we have one with Canva and in March, we have a CrossFit crash course in June. We have a golf one on one event. So just some fun, professional personal opportunities. We Someone says, which is more than a personal. So it’s like the Myers Briggs test, you take it, we bring someone in, it kind of puts people in groups, you can talk about what the results mean. And then like leader, substantive accounting, which is our leadership group, and other educational opportunities we offer to our members throughout the year as well. So you’re really that’s kind of the four point approach. And then we kind of, you know, based on what they tell us, we say, hey, based on what you said, this is probably a good fit for you, we’ll get you connected, we’ll make sure you get the info. And then it’s like, again, as many as you can, how do you connect the chamber to the organization provide that values when they go to renew, when they decide they want to join, there’s enough value there that they’re like, hey, this makes sense. I have to I have to join. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:45
makes a lot of sense. I love that it’s condensed down enough to four points. So hopefully, any member of the staff can take that and kind of tell the story of the benefits that your chamber has to offer to these businesses that are considering joining. So that’s awesome. So let’s say maybe shift a little bit and talk about, you know, things that you guys do maybe organically there at the chamber to keep the passion for the staff on a high level to keep them engaged and, you know, involved with the community and really just loving what they do. Yeah, I

Bryce Riggs 26:20
think it’s the biggest thing is, that’s kind of our our sweet spot. That’s our secret sauce I tell people is that our staff here is fantastic. And I don’t live in a world we live in, it’s as a as a nonprofit organization, it’s hard to pay quarterly, it’s hard to make the opportunities available to our staff. But my biggest thing is like look itself from the top down as us and so my, my staff sees me out in the community, they see me community events, they see me out, you know, all these opportunities that exists. And, you know, the big thing with us is that we invest in our staff to go to these things. And so if I have done, I really don’t want to go to this event, and the chamber will pay for our staff to to go do continuing educational opportunities to go to community events. We’re fortunate with some of the non dues revenue increase that we’ve had over the years, that, you know, obviously, it pays to play to a lot of these events. And it’s tough, because it’s like not every chamber has the budget to be able to do this. But for us, it’s just like, we get along well, we communicate well. We keep things fun. And that’s for us. It’s it’s important. If it starts with the staff, if your staff is energetic engaged, it’s kind of hard to go sell, sell something that you don’t believe in my staff, we do gene Fridays we do you name it, right? I buy flexible hours, if you work in the evenings, which a lot of my staff does, you know, you can take some time off here and there throughout the throughout the week come in at 10. Like that. One thing is we do as well, three o’clock Fridays, and close the office every eight to five, Monday through Thursday. And then Friday, we do three o’clock, I kick you out. I don’t care how much work you have left to do. I don’t care how stressed you are. I kick you out. Because I think it’s like, Look, you gotta go live life. As is. It’s crucial. And so like for us, again, I’ll say it just starts with the staff. And you know, if you don’t pay your staff, you know, livable wage, that’s great to talk to my staff, and do we do yearly reviews. I do all my yearly reviews, in conjunction with the budget. So line rock conducted in November, I sit down the staff, I ask them questions, I send them a Google Word document, they type in their responses, and it’s a dialogue. I put their stuff and I put my comments and we meet for lunch. One on one and we discuss kind of like your thoughts, my thoughts. And then if Yannick I say looking, you know, next year, this is what we’re able to do based on your, you know, health insurances issue, okay, great. Based on that issue, we’re able to do this. And so my biggest thing is, if you unify consistent feedback, reviews aren’t supposed to be surprises. But for us, it’s important to say you got to show the nonprofit role you can pay them, you can allow them to grow as humans, you can model them have fun. But that’s the big thing is like, Look, you don’t take care of your own team. You’re not gonna go very far as an organization in the, you know, on the chambers or one, one man one woman shops, and so I you know, I fortunately have a board that allows me to do what I do. And so I just, you know, I, I told us that the board with a discussion this last year that said, Hey, how much you’re gonna give your staff increases? And I just said to him, Hey, I love you, but it’s, that’s not your role. My role is to determine based on what their performances, this is what I’m able to do and the performance bonuses every year, but I’d say give me the freedom and flexibility to pay my staff the way they should be compensated and we don’t, and I’ll ask, I’ve put in the budget and then you know, he gets approved as a overall bigger Make sure I

Brandon Burton 30:01
like that. I like being bold enough to say, yeah, let me invest in your business, right? Stay in our lanes, right?

Bryce Riggs 30:09
Correct. Yeah, the day the executive committee is responsible for my executive review and my salary, and let’s, let’s be talking about that within this framework. But just know that, you know, my job is to get my staff in a place where they’re making competitive wages, and their benefits are great. We just launched a simple IRA this year for 2024. Based on again, concerns and needs for for additional benefits. We’ve done, you know, again, I’m willing to invest my staff and they go to war for us every day. You know, my job is to go to work for them so that they can get what they need to be successful.

Brandon Burton 30:47
Yeah. I love it. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask if anyone listening what who’s interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what maybe tip or action item might you have to offer them to elevate their chamber and kind of play it at that next level?

Bryce Riggs 31:09
So the biggest thing is, I always indicate, you know, be consistent, be persistent. When I started out, I was fortunate that I was kind of given the opportunity and said, hey, you know, you have, here’s the keys to car drive out you want. I’m not ignorant in the way that I understand it, is you have guidelines, and I have for a framework to do that within. But I would say like, Look, if you’re trying to be transformational, do things differently. It’s like, you got to be consistent with your approach, be persistent with our approach. Our big thing is community, community community. If you read our newsletter, you’ll know it’s from our community, you’ll know the people that are in it. If you see our social media, you’ll know it’s about the people. So everything is just like, look like push the pace. What do you get told now want to figure out how to get around it? You know, some sense knows, you know, doesn’t mean No, today, but might be like a maybe a later thing. Or maybe there’s another way to get to it. So you know, my first job, I was a telemarketer I was always taught you to do to rebuttal before you finally hung up the phone, and I very much live by that model. And so my thing is just people, you know, to make chambers that I’ll be honest, that we interact with, don’t push the pace, you know, our final status quo, which is great, but I think COVID kind of allowed folks to see kind of see through that. Our job is, you know, often the world that we live in the chamber world, the economic development agencies are here, and the chambers are here, or the community development is here. And chambers is always below it. And so my big thing is like, look, when we get talked about in the community, I want people to know that, like, look, we’re on the cutting edge, we’re doing things differently. And that, you know, we’re doing what’s best for the community. So people be persistent and be consistent and just have fun. That’s the big thing is, I’ve been here for three and a half years. And you know, early on, we’ll see I’ll Bryce you’re gonna burn out, you’re gonna do this. It’s like, yeah, there’s some days on central office. And I’m like, this sucks. But you know, I would say it’s not, it’s not hard work, it’s a lot of work, just power through. And if you set yourself up, put your bets out there. You know, like, look, I gotta do this, this, this, and this to get where I need to go. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:28
I’d love the honesty of some days. It just sucks. Yeah. Gotta move forward, you have a bigger picture of why you’re doing it. And I love the idea of consistent being consistent being persistent. And there’s so much value in that. And it leverages a lot of power if you’re consistent and persistent on pursuing those goals and, and the potential of your organization. So as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future chambers and their potential or their purpose going forward?

Bryce Riggs 34:01
Yeah, I would say, you know, that really, the big thing is, again, that that personal touch. I think if you two things I find is that shortfalls with the Chamber World Industries, people run their nonprofit, like a nonprofit, I say I run my organization, like it’s a business because it’s a business and you got to invest in your people invest in your marketing, you have to invest in everything, right. I remember my first year I started and we didn’t have you know, anybody at all, but here I am, like, look, we’re ordering, you know, 5000 folders for new members because guess what, we’re gonna we’re gonna go out there, we’re going to spread the word and we’re going to tell people what we got going on. I think that’s the thing is don’t you know, you know, don’t the day you stop investing in marketing this day, you stop investing in your peoples that day that you know, things are on the decline. You need to keep doing that. And I say that really the big thing as well as getting into that personal touch. You know, You gotta stand out a lot of organizations are in need United Way’s you name it right that a lot of Salvation Army’s, they need money and you’re you know, to say that we’re on the same playing field as them but sometimes we are as chambers. And so we do things such as you know, every Christmas card we do holiday cards we send out, we send to all our members home addresses, because again, it’s you could send a Christmas card or holiday card to their their business. But it’s great, you know, it’s that the business relationship, we’re trying to get the next thing. So I just say, you know, if you’re consistent persistent with that personal touch and approach, that’s why the Chamber’s gone is that, you know, we got to stay competitive in the marketplace in terms of funding domestic competitive for, you know, even like the tourism side of things, right? We pick, we have that arm of us. And that makes us more competitive, because we can offer a different service than maybe another chamber couldn’t. So sometimes in communities, that tourism site opens up. And that, you know, huge opportunity to get those dollars, go out there, go put yourself out there and really go for it. You might have to hire another staff member to get those dollars. But the more things you can add, and the more things you can do to be a resource to the community, I think that’s where we’re going is that you’re going to find only a few organizations are going to do the key things in the community. And you got to be willing to change and adapt to it. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:25
I think that’s an interesting twist you had mentioned with the the Christmas cards to send them to their home address. So you’re obviously collecting that information when they join the chamber? Or do you ever get any pushback and somebody’s like, I don’t want to give a home address. And this is about business organization.

Bryce Riggs 36:42
This is why I tell you that I’m a little creepy. So three years ago, I started I started doing white pages. And I started an honors office and I started going through and finding things and I’ll be honest with you, if we don’t ask them for their home address. It’s you know, that’s available on the internet, you can do that. This last year. We just said December, was sent last Thursday, our cards went out and got people’s addresses on Saturday. Most of them did. But for us, it’s like look like I bought look at that information. It’s a nice surprise. People are like, Oh, I never gave them that address. But it’s together that touch. So

Brandon Burton 37:22
then are you putting it in your membership software with their accounts. So the next year, it’s got

Bryce Riggs 37:26
its color Christmas card address, it’s a separate one. So okay, it just moved to gross within the last year. So with that we’re making the adjustments and add ons, but I’ve spent many long hours doing that from finding information to some people might be, you know, meaningless. But I come in late at night, and I just kind of churn and burn until I get thrown. But it’s important because again, people come to us and say, Hey, I have your card in my house. That’s really nice. And we’re always first card. And it’s all we go to their house. So it’s always important and

Brandon Burton 38:00
awesome. I love that touch. Well, Bryce, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect about some of these approaches or how you guys are doing things there at the Seneca Regional Chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Bryce Riggs 38:17
Yeah, go ahead and call my cell phones 419-889-3932 And that’s my cell phone. Just reach out to me. We weren’t happy to share information about you know what we have going on or you can reach out to me and briggs@Senecaregionalchamber.com and shoot me an email but I you know, there’s a lot of different folks that I’ve met along the way. I do a monthly zoom with people across the country, their chamber professionals because like, look, you know, the day you think you’ve figured it out, as you know, that uh, you run your nonprofit, like a nonprofit is the day to day, life becomes a lot more difficult for you.

Brandon Burton 39:00
Yeah, for sure. But we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode too. So people can can look it up and reach out and touch base with you and learn more. But I appreciate you spending some time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I love hearing these stories of you know, you get a fresh approach and an organization and throw some fuel on the fire and watch it burn. You guys are doing an awesome job. So keep that momentum keep that consistency and persistence. And I think there’s going to be even bigger numbers. Yeah, a year from now or two years from now. So I appreciate you sharing these insights and experiences with us today.

Brandon Burton 39:25
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Workforce Training Center with Jeannie Hebert

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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.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jeannie Hiebert. Jeannie has been President and CEO the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce in Massachusetts for 15 years. Under her leadership that BVCC has grown and developed into a chamber that works hard for business and the economic vitality of the region. often dubbed the queen of collaboration. Jeannie sits on several business and community boards and meets regularly with local state and federal legislators to make sure the valley voice is heard, and funding is appropriated to support their economic development and small businesses. Since her reign, the BVCC has become known as the go to place and resource for business owners and entrepreneurs to find assistance and funding to grow and develop their business. She has been honored with several awards, including the central Massachusetts outstanding woman in business power 50 manufacturing champion and Central Massachusetts economic development leader. Through her guidance, the Chamber secured over $1 million in funding to build the Blackstone Valley hub for workforce development. A Workforce Training Center located in the Chamber’s Linwood mill building, offering classes focused on advanced manufacturing. These certificate courses are offered to students of all ages throughout Central Massachusetts to help close the work skills gap and provide skilled workers to the region’s employers. Jeannie, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jeannie Hebert 3:43
Here, Brandon, thank you. I’m excited to be here today. Hello to everyone, all of our chamber colleagues there. And I am also an animal rights activist and help with rescuing animals in need. I do have you know dogs of my own. But I did rescue for African elephants. And they lived with me for two years. And we were able to secure some good homes for them. One of them Willie my favorite. He was the largest working African elephant in North America. And we found him a great home at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. So I used to go visit Willie there. So they were wonderful animals. It was a once in a lifetime experience. And I’m happy that we were able to find good homes for them because they had a terrible beginning.

Brandon Burton 4:41
So I have to say this is a first year the first guest on the podcast who’s rescued an elephant let alone for so. That is amazing. And I’m sure the stories about these elephants could go on for days. Lots of a unique experience. As a fan, I’m sure

Jeannie Hebert 5:01
they’re a unique experience they very intelligent, fun animals. One fun fact is I used to, you know, we used to wash them in the morning. And I would spray them with the hose. Use that big, big brush that you use when you wash your car, then grab the leaf blower to dry them before they would roll in the dirt and get dirty again. And invariably when I put the hose down, another one of the elephants would pick it up in their trunk, and they would spray me I thought that was a funny thing.

Brandon Burton 5:35
They got a sense of humor.

Jeannie Hebert 5:38
sensitive when we interacted very well, they were they were like my kids. So I missed them terribly. But they they needed to be in places where people who were better to take care of that could happen. So they had good lives. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 5:54
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the Blackstone Valley Chamber. Just give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion today.

Jeannie Hebert 6:09
Sure. Our chamber we have about 500 members. We were very active, we mean business and we listened well. We we listened to the needs of our members. And we’re very proactive in meeting their needs. That’s how the hub came about. We our service area is 13 towns from Worcester, Massachusetts, which is the second largest city in New England, to the Rhode Island border, just to kind of give you an idea of where we are central mass is kind of cow. It’s the belt to the middle of Massachusetts. And we work with everyone in Massachusetts. We collaborate a lot, you know, Queen of collaboration. But there is a field gap across the state and I think across the nation, really. And we found that a lot of the covenants of vocational schools because of a program we have here called the MKS. That funding is attached to it. So why are the MCAT scores on the more funding the schools are getting? So vocational schools have unfortunately changed their covenant and they are accepting more epidemic with superior students over vocational and superior students and the public schools. You have an influx of students who really want vocational training, they’re looking to go to work, and they’re not able to get it at public school level. So when we found this out and working with many of our manufacturers, the Blackstone Valley is the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, who Samuel Slater, who came here and started textile mills. And the mill is actually where we are, it’s a converted former textile mill of the whitened family. We’re in Waynesville named after that family, when we we would run the job fairs like everybody dies, and, you know, help them and it just wasn’t working. They weren’t getting skilled labor. And I was hearing, you know, I didn’t know this work, I have to turn it down. So when I found out that this was happening at the vocational level, I spoke with our legislators started doing some digging. And we were able to secure some funding from the Department of Education, and took on the legislation set the chamber, we take on the task to build a workforce training manager and said, yes, so long behold, we took over part of the middle, we didn’t build that out. And we have a design lab, we’ll hang on filling computers with CAD, and we have computer lab and we have a great fabrication laboratory. And it has 3d printers, augmented welding. We have mills and lane that start out with manual and it also has the coding, but the students learn how to use them manually. And they learn how to code. And we’ve recently just taken over the other end of the mill and put in a full electronics learn. And we’re building our robotics lab right now. So we’re meeting as the needs of our members change and evolve. We are meeting their needs well over now. million dollars in investment now.

Brandon Burton 10:02
And it’s typically for the hub,

Jeannie Hebert 10:04
specifically for the hub, but it helps us to grow our chamber. Because we’re training the workforce for many years, our members, and even those that are outside of our region support our chamber because of that constant with other chambers.

Brandon Burton 10:26
So I’m curious staff size, when you take on a project like this, just for all the chambers listening like this sounds great, but I’m sure she’s got like a huge staff to take this on. Right. So what is your staff size look like? The chamber

Jeannie Hebert 10:38
staff, there’s three of us. Okay, okay. And for a while. for probably a year when we were dealing with the billing, and so forth, there was no other staff. So I was doing two jobs, and it was exhausting. But it was very rewarding. But once the school was able to open, and we were ready to accept students, I hired an executive director, or the third Executive Director right now. She’s amazing. Um, I now have an operations director. He’s amazing. He’s, I’ve been tapping into retirement pool. He’s a retired engineer that worked in was head of Northeast for Thermo Fisher. So he’s got a wealth of information. And honestly, he can take anything from it to put a lock on a door for losing meeting diverged. In Bob ovens, our Executive Director, Ashley Bregman. She is a graduate of WPM, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. And she was also teaching robotics. She’s has an engineering degree, obviously, academic or teaching. So she’s perfect as an executive director. And we have several teachers, Instructor of some are retired vocational teachers. And some teach at night when we for the night courses, and they teach at the local vocational school. And one is an engineering teacher at one of our high schools. And we’re growing to the point where we’re building campuses in our high schools in the area, we’re up to 22 districts. So obviously, we’re working with high schools, but it’s not that we’re servicing. And we also teach incumbent workers. So some of the manufacturers who hire people with no skills, we listen to them, and we build a custom curriculum for them. And they will send their workers to us. And we do like a six or 12 week course for them. So when they go back, and they still work that you know, it’s worth studying. But when they finish their course and get their certifications, they’re more than an entry level here or mid level. Yeah, it really makes a big difference for them. So in the fall right now, because this year, Nast mass fire, who handles all the career, work with people who were looking for Jones, across the state awarded us the Youth Works grant, which means we’re now working with 16 to 23 year olds who are in a disadvantaged financial state, to their families. And we find them jobs and almost apprentice programs. We do have an apprentice program too. So we hired people to handle that under the umbrella. And we just received the connecting activities grant, which is K through 12. So now we’re working with elementary school students too. So we have at the hub 15 employees now running the hub, thank goodness, I would need to never ever sleep again. And we threes that work at the Chamber, but we interact all the time. So it’s, you know, it’s one big family, and we were growing so fast. At one point, someone would come in and like go Who is that? What is this name? What was this?

Brandon Burton 14:36
Do? Yeah, that’s great. Well, that definitely that helps to set the table for more of our discussion. I’ve got a lot of follow up questions for you about the hub and we’ll dive deeper into this in the whole topic of developing a workforce training center as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 16:40
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 17:34
All right, we’re back. So let’s dive in deeper. I want to know more. So tell us your when did the idea get presented to you for developing the hub? How did things unfold to see the vision come to pass? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 17:52
we’ve been open and seeing students for five years now. But it took a good two years to get it going. Because we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do. We knew there was a huge problem, especially in our area. For our you know, manufacturers just couldn’t find any employees and we’re in, as I said, job fairs were not working at all. It just wasn’t working. And I went to a skills America conference at the vocational school. And the superintendent, there was bragging that 90% of his students were going to college. And then I went what’s going on here? And I spoke with one of the students who was given who had a display on being electrician and I said, Oh, why are you going to be electrician? Because that week I want a grid. I like to have an electrician in my office crying because he’s done pretty good in Okay, location of school that he wanted to pass. And, you know, they were telling us they had a waitlist of six months students. And I talked to that student and I said, Oh, you’re gonna be an electrician. Oh, I’m going to Cornell. I’m going into sports medicine. Oh my god. You took up four years that that gentleman son could have had to become an electrician. So you know, a light bulb went off and said we need we need an we need somewhere where these students that the public school system parents that can go for training because the superintendents were telling me they didn’t know what to do with these students that will be coming discipline problems. They didn’t have the vocational training that the students wanted. The dropout rate was going up. So we aligned ourselves in office and I went to the legislators told them the problem. We have great legislators very approachable in our area. And we put together a plan And they connected me with our patients Department of Education. We applied for a work skills grant. And our first one skills Grant was half a million dollars. And we, you know, put together a plan to do the build out. It takes it does take a village, it really does. I mean, I can say, Oh, I built a school. I didn’t do it alone, and had a lot of help. And it was a process and even the middle owner. You know, our landlord was very understanding, very cooperative. And we all work together, and everyone was looking forward to it. They came together, I had some naysayers. I have one very prominent business person, say to me, you’re a dreamer. It’s never gonna happen. This is not going to work. So when, when I got last year, I got the manufacturing Champion award. I said, you know, I told that story. And I actually have a little locket that, like, my significant other gave me that people say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. And I said that to, to the audience, it was all out there. Most of the manufacturers told them a dream or been looking at, you know, I can see. Yeah, you know, span, so that really fit in perfectly. But, you know, that’s how it started. And we’re growing like crazy. And it’s wonderful to see these students, they come to us dejected, because they couldn’t get into the school they wanted to get into. And when they learn the skill, then amazing picture. They just have that vocation. And the brain is wired, for whatever it might be the body aches or electronics or CNC machining or, you know, developing coding, CAD, and we even have a shop where they we have businesses come to us that want merchandise, personalized, we’ve believed a quarter and upstream we have I hate to say it, but our biggest customers in the cannabis industry distilleries and breweries, they went through classes to action, the cannabis industry, they want human doors with their logo on it. So the kids do that. And then they buy from us and the money goes back into school and help to, you know, pay for another student. So it’s terrific.

Brandon Burton 22:31
Face the mill, you had mentioned it is a previous manufacturing mill, before you guys moved in with the hub, was it actively being used before then had it sat vacant for a while, like what was the the revitalization of the the space? How did that look?

Jeannie Hebert 22:51
That was very interesting, because that bill was that mill was slated to be demolished. So ironically, we were located in the same town but a few streets over in another building. And we worked with the our landlord, now the mill owner to connect him with an amazing grant writer. And they were able to get a grant and start renovating. It was a cartel. Everybody else fell away except for these two people bill and Patti gianopolous, who believed in the project. And they partnered with another organization for over 55 subsidized housing. So above us three floors above us is over 55 subsidized housing. And I have an interesting story. They are how we interact with them. But it’s it came together over a period of I think two and a half years that they were able to renovate the mill. It’s beautiful. It has great architectural elements for big, huge wooden beams that have all been sanded so that they’re natural. Now, you know, they they were painted that hospital clean beautiful granite and brick in the windows of huge and it’s just really, really lovely. So they’re above us were below and we said why don’t we move in the mill and we moved into the new in 2016. And then 2018 We started the school. So a lot of history and had the elements or pictures of what it was. And there’s several mills in the town that were in northbridge and throughout the valley, and a lot of them were owned by the whitened family. And so our area of North there just called whiteness fell. So it’s really beautiful. It has a tower or any house out which is It’s a cute little shop now. So it’s, it’s, it’s bustling. We have. We’re there. We at the school, we have a physical therapy, we have a gym, we have a barbershop that’s run by naturalized citizens, former immigrants, and we’ve just helped them with their expanding. We have Girls on the Run. We have we were named the National Park by President Obama. So we have our rangers are there that national heritage corridor and the National Park is located there. So the national park rangers have a brewery in one of the other buildings because there’s a number of buildings usually. So it’s a pretty busy place. Oh, and beautiful woman owned business. That is a crepe or a company is another modern day Helsinki. And it’s a great little restaurant that’s been restored and invest. You know, it looks industrial. But it’s so it’s a unique place. And it’s a wonderful gathering place for the community interaction. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:16
that sounds awesome. So as you’re talking about how it came to be, it sounds like in the collaboration, I see where you get the title mokwena collaboration, but to be able to have, you know, somebody who’s familiar with grant writing, to be able to help see a vision and help bring things together to to see these things come, you know, kind of unfold and come together. Two of the things I wanted to ask you about, you’ve mentioned them, but I wanted to dig in just a little bit more. So there’s these certificate programs that the students come through, I imagine that there are varying lengths depending on what their focus of work is. So if you could touch on that, and then also touch on how you work with the schools, you had mentioned the K through 12. Now with these districts, what does that look like with those relationships and, and interacting with them?

Jeannie Hebert 27:06
Sure, well, the certificate programs are varied, some are custom that we utilize for incumbent workers. And some are standardized. Like we have, as I said, the Miller augmented augmented welding, that’s six to 12 week course, depending upon the type of welding, but it’s industry accepted, we would not have purchased them if our manufacturers didn’t try them out and say, oh, yeah, this is just like real world. And they do after they get their certificate, we bring them to one of our couple of our partners yr fab and package steel systems, who make metal buildings, all for all over the world. And invariably, they will say to the students are so come see me, you know that so they have great skills. So that’s one certificate we have. We have an OSHA, obviously, we do OSHA 10, everybody gets an OSHA 10. Everyone, we have a reentry program as well with the sheriff’s department. So we start teaching OSHA in the jail before they’re released. And when they’re released, they come to the school, and they get hands on training, that everybody gets OSHA training, we have what’s called Mecalac, which is a Massachusetts certificate, and it’s through mas MEP, which is manufacturing extension partnership. So this brings you through all of the steps of what manufacturing needs, like would have shot now. It would teach measurements, believe it or not, we’re finding graduates of high school have no idea how to use tape or read a tape measure or ruler. And they cannot even tell turn on the clock unless it’s digital. If you say to them, it’s quarter. They’ll go and they don’t know what that is. We had one guidance counselor say they had a disqualifying when they were monitoring the number six certificate examinations, because he pulled out his phone and I said, take out your phone. He said I wanted to see what time it was. They said there’s a clock on the wall. He said I can’t read it. No one ever taught me how to read. Like when we went to school first grade, they had the clock remember you

Brandon Burton 29:37
missing the mark somewhere, right? Yeah, I remember. I remember doing worksheets like that. Yeah. Don’t

Jeannie Hebert 29:42
do that. More than he is on job no more curse if they can’t. I was talking to a business that we were helping out. yesterday. She it’s called hair jewelry. She’s an archaeologist and she had an intern from one of the quality If he didn’t know how they couldn’t read the report from the patient because they didn’t know how to read cursive, so we’re really missing the mark in our schools. So these are the things that we try to address. But back to the certifications, we have those certifications with custom certifications. And then at some of the campuses that thought like Brookdale campus, which is one of our close up spirit campus, which is another one of our towns, their certifications. outsprinting is focusing on carpentry. Newbury is also property Hopedale, a cyber security. So we get certifications for those types of industries where the students are learning we even started, we help them get and I always say this wrong. And in a Tom baton, table, virtual. It’s almost like mines, US operations,

Brandon Burton 30:59
operators. That’s how I was gonna guess when you said that? Yeah, it’s a real body,

Jeannie Hebert 31:03
but they have a human meaning male, human woman, dog, cat, rather, Frog, which I love, because now they might have dissected me animals. But it’s very realistic. Students were showing me their skills. And I said, I was getting woozy and you’re doing a great job, right? I gotta go to the next. It’s like, Oh, yeah. That table alone costs $100,000. So we were able to help the school right grant, so that they have that. So Arginine is we helped a lot of the schools get DNS. So maybe you go to help deal, but you want to take manufactory. So you have to close the hub, or maybe your middle bring you to market sure you want to do you know, introduction to some kind of medical research. And that’s it helped. So we do is we’ll move the kids around. So they will take these courses together. The one principal said to me, it was hilarious. He goes, Yeah, these kids are all working together in class. And then on the weekend, they beat the heck out of each other on the football field. Because that’s great. So we put classes together, not necessarily by school, but on a subject. So the students get to even try it out, we’ll do a trial. You know, they’ll come and say, Oh, I think I want to do this. And they might try it and so on. That’s not Well, maybe you want to try that? Oh, yeah, that’s a better fit for me. So we do that, too. So that’s so it’s some of the certifications that we offer, I’m sure there’s a lot more that escapes me right now. But the K through 12 that we had the smaller kids, I think a good example would be rewarded grant kind of nothing for the energies that it was for younger kids to learn about engineering. So we had camp over the summer. And kids would come in the morning, and they’ll have a little bite to eat. And then they would learn about engineering and mechatronics and robotics and make make something. Mr. Evans, our engineer ran this program. So they’d make something and they put it all together, they do it on the computer, and they’d make it. And he would say to them, did you have fun? You know, you did you know what that was? Well, they have engineering. And the robotics is we have these really cute little robot, these, this is very key in first, and second graders, paying them. And they were like, they know, control robots, but they had to program them to make them work. And they were able to do that. And we have these little robots that look a little Michael Jackson, they had a damn thing. They were dancing with each other. And they were doing tasks and picking things out, handing them to each other. But it’s a natural for these kids. They blow me away. And it’s amazing. And then some of the middle school kids, we had codons, which are cooperatives are going to occur in an industry. They do the stuff where people say, Oh, robots are gonna take my job. Well, did you really want to keep ticking boxes and putting them here? You know, you don’t want to do that. You want to be the one telling the robots to do that. Use your brain. So what these students were doing, I went in after they kind of let a they taught them how to work, how to program them. They could like Legos out so they could build make the robots build. And then I they had free time. So I went in and they began to have the robots and they can like be stitched in Your hands. And I go, What are you doing the courts very proud of their sword fighting.

So I mean, this is a concept thing, maybe learn through having fun, but it’s part of what they would do in a job situation, they would have to program the robots to do a task. And some of them have 345 robots interacting with each other and completing a task. And that’s pretty complicated. For like, an eighth grader, too. So I just like I said, they blow me away. One of the older kids, it was a birthday, what’s what was like three of them, they came in, and they gave me these beautiful stainless steel shakers that had an unusual shape, then you throw them on the machine. And they gave her to me, it’s a birthday gift. And they said, Missmiss look, we even put pain on the top. So you can tell which is which. program that and have the drill press drill, drill it, and then had Christmas was just from a piece of aluminum or stainless steel that they had. And they design them themselves and made those, then it was just amazing that they did pocket some of the kids from shoestring High School, which is my hometown, they were making Christmas ornaments out of brought up some of the metal and like drill guns, and they were beautiful. And then they made dreidels to the trails are gorgeous, they were intricate, they were terrific. So it was, you know, it’s a fun, fun thing to learn. But while they’re learning there, we say to them, you’re an engineer, you just love

Brandon Burton 36:55
that. I love it, they have these opportunities, and they get that confidence and explore these these future career opportunities. This is such a invaluable resource for your community. So applaud and Pat, pat on the back to you guys and your team for for executing this and integrating it into the schools as well.

Jeannie Hebert 37:14
Thank you. We have a great team. We really do. I’m really fortunate really blessed. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton 37:19
So as we start to wrap up, I wanted to ask if, if you might have any tips or action items for chamber folks that are listening, who want to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you offer for them? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 37:34
I think you know, you need to listen to your members, which you know, most of my chamber colleagues do. Every region is different. What works for me might not work for you. But if you listen to what your members need, or what your municipalities are your region, we work very closely with all of our municipalities and our legislators in and listen and get advice on how to meet those needs. And then you know, collaborate with the great resources that you have in your region, we have wonderful educational institution, terrific educators, innovative people on and, you know, we’ve worked together and they’re not afraid to roll up their sleeves and work. So I think, you know, sometimes you look at a project and you think that’s really daunting. But when you you know, I hate this analogy, but how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Brandon Burton 38:37
Especially after your introduction today, no, no elephants on the table.

Jeannie Hebert 38:43
And your chamber will grow. We are gaining members inside and outside our region. Because of the services that we provide, and I’m not stealing numbers from anyone, what we do is, if I see that I’m getting a number of members, someone, you know, reaching out to me, I reach out to that chamber and say, You know what, I’ve got like five industry people that have come to me, why don’t we do a collaboration and we have an affiliation with like seven other chambers, and will offer a discount, but you have to be a member of the region’s chamber first. And then I’ll give you this note to join us. And we’ll provide everything but we do provide a lot of services without membership to and I know that I get criticized from some chambers for that, but it comes back, you know, comes around and it’s a pleasure for me to work with a number of people to help them and you know, it’s great to work together but no, just listen to your members or You read and see what the needs are and think about and seek out people with resources that I can drop in on how to develop focus to meet those who

Brandon Burton 40:11
have that so important. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeannie Hebert 40:22
I think we’re going to have to really prove that we are a worthy organization. And you know, we’re going to, to be a good resource for your members. It’s not, as we all know, already, I’m preaching to the choir here. It’s not like the inundating myself, the fog of news best attitude where Jimmy Anderson would say, I’m going to the chamber dinner, you know, like everyone already knew how to join the Chamber of Commerce. There’s too many people into the new organizations billing for the that dues that dues revenue, and I don’t think that dues revenue is going to be our is already isn’t our main revenue stream, we have to find other revenue streams. And it’s going to be to run instances

Brandon Burton 41:21
of it. Good advice. Jeanne, I want to do give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more about the hub and how you guys went about this, this great big project, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jeannie Hebert 41:44
Well, through email, which is jhebert@blackstonevalley.org. So that’s email. And if you want to learn about, you can go to our website, which is BlackstoneValley.org. And you can also check out The Hub at be thehub.org. And if you go to our website, there’s a tab and it’ll bring you right over to the hub. And I’m happy to share any information to help with anything, any resources and, you know, whatever we can do to help you with programs. And if you want to take on a project like this to go get them and we’ll help you every any way I can.

Brandon Burton 42:42
I love it. Thank you so much. So this has been great having you on the podcast today. I love getting these insights from chambers that have taken on a unique projects and have a neat approach to it. revitalizing a building that was set to be torn down and really changed the outlook of the community. I love it. But thank you for being with us today and sharing these experiences and insight and, and I’m hoping it gave you know a few people out there that drive to take on some of those big hairy audacious goals. Thank you for being with us today.

Jeannie Hebert 43:15
Thank you very much. Thanks Brandon for the opportunity we really appreciate you’ve ever thought my way I’d love to give me a tour.

Brandon Burton 43:22
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Positively Disrupt Your Chamber Community with Tony Rubleski

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Below is an auto-generated transcription. 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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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Tony Rubleski. Tony is currently the President of Mind Capture Group. His message is designed to help people capture more minds and profits. He’s an in demand speaker who’s given hundreds of presentations executive coach, best selling author and creator of the mind capture bootcamp. Now in its 13th year, he has over 25 years of experience in the personal development industry. His mind capture book series has spawned multiple best sellers in a variety of businesses and coaching categories with Amazon. The acclaimed series has received many endorsements from a wide range of leaders in marketing sales, psychology to academia and multiple New York Times bestselling authors. Book number eight in the series titled positive disruption Volume Two more quotes and questions to up shift your life, released globally in 2022. And book number nine will release in the fall of 2024. His work has been featured in various media outlets ranging from Toastmasters International magazine, the Detroit Free Press, the Fox TV network, ABC, NBC and CNN radio, NPR on an Entrepreneur Magazine, radio, and now on Chamber Chat Podcast. In addition, he’s also served as faculty member with the US Chamber of Commerce and CEO space International. But, Tony, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well, Brandon,

Tony Rubleski 3:35
Well, Brandon, thank you for bringing me on here and happy new year to all the chamber executives in the first thing I want to mention to all of them that are listening either now when they catch it live or time shift. Is that thank you for what you do. You know, we talked before we hit record here I’ve worked with hundreds of chambers the last 20 years and being the CEO, or even on staff at a chamber sometimes the loneliest job in the world, Brandon, you do a lot, you have a ton of spinning plates. Everywhere you go, people are watching you, and you have a vital leadership role in the community. So thank you for doing that. Because right now I’ll start out with a really hard hitting punch and a little bit of fun fact is leadership is in short supply right now, I believe the last three and a half years the post COVID World 2020 on it feels like we’ve been in an episode of The Twilight Zone. And people just look like they’re walking around kind of in a daze like an earthquake happen. And we’re still trying to recover I believe because we’re not going back to 2019 Brandon, and I think a lot of our chambers know it but again, I want to genuinely thank you because I think more than ever, here’s my opening salvo are shot across the bow chambers. If they position right we will grow at an even better rate. It won’t be easy. The chamber executives know this. But here’s why say that bold proclamation. Local businesses during the pandemic got hammered. Small Business still took it. You know many of them are still closing or trying to get back to where they’re at Brandon You can help them Ding ding ding. I got the cowbell here. Okay, I’m gonna ring and we’re gonna have fun is chambers of commerce. And I have a resource at the end of the podcast, I’m going to tease everybody. It’s an article seven reasons why every chamber, every business should join the Chamber of Commerce. So I’m going to tease the listeners here. I’m going to make that resource available at the end. But it really ties into the fact that you are the center of glue for many are small to midsize companies. I know you have your big board members, your power companies, your nonprofits, your hospital systems, you need them for sure. However, if we’re to revive small midsize business going forward now in 2024, I believe that chambers are well positioned massive credibility and a track record to attract those new businesses or those businesses. You know, we’re kind of struggling still. Okay, this is exactly why you need the Chamber of Commerce. So I’m sticking to it, Brandon, I’ve seen it. I was very active in Chambers of Commerce for many years before I started my own company. And to me, they are the essential glue, that sometimes even chamber executives forget they’re too close to it. They deal with all the you know, the firefights, and the committees and the board member that drives them nuts is again, huge thank you keep bleeding because it does matter. Yes,

Brandon Burton 6:15
I love that great. Shout out to all the chambers listening. So thank you for that for sure. Tell us a little bit more maybe about the mind capture group. I know I shared some in your bio, but tell us a little bit about the work that you do and kind of where your focus is. Well, I

Tony Rubleski 6:31
think the big thing is I came up with a new tagline with our team Kelsey Sanders and she’s my MacGyver on the mind capture team is really what I looked at as I helped companies and their employees get inspired to share ideas instead of staying disengaged and quitting. I’m gonna repeat this is like our, our leading charge next year, going into 24. As we go into chambers of commerce, for example, I do a session for their local membership in the whole goal. If they had the nonprofit community there. Some leaders and lots of small midsize companies that send their teams is I’m there to inspire them to possibly disrupt their mindset, which isn’t easy, Brandon, because the world is so doggone negative. We’re trained and conditioned to be drawn to negative news and headlines, I just came off and NBC affiliate this morning on live television, thanking them for bringing me on TV. Because most of the time, it’s about all the bad things in the world, or the good things far out nobody the negativity. So this is where the chambers to me shine. They bring in high quality events, they bring in training and workshops, sometimes they bring me in. But the whole goal, when I’m doing training with the Chamber coming in is to say look, I want the Chamber members that bring their teams to get inspired. Many times the chamber staff will sit in the back and I’m like, Oh my gosh, we need this to get re inspired to so that we can feel like we can share ideas that were actually being heard. So if your audience you know, if you’re listening right now, unless you’re driving, be careful, we’re at the gym on the treadmill is please write this down. People want to be heard random. Your Chamber members want to be heard like ham, small business on Main Street or ham, the, you know, the side hustle a working mom that has a full time job and has a little side hustle business on Amazon or Etsy. And they join maybe reluctantly, because money is tight. They want to know that their voice, their concerns are being heard. So the chamber can say, hey, we’re listening. And we have some new programs or we’re working on some programs that we’re going to roll out to members like you to serve you as well, not just the big players, not the old established companies or community. But the emerging companies that are new and in the startup phase or the side hustle as they grow, they’ll never forget that the chamber was there for him. So that’s a lot of what I do. I do a lot of training. As you might imagine. In for me, sometimes what I’ve seen last two years is chambers like, look, we used to come in and talk to our board about leadership. So a lot of times, they’ll say, Hey, we’ve got your book to do a program for our membership. We want you to come in the night before and talk to our board about leadership. So it’s been fun to see that reemerges last year to come out of COVID because the boy leadership, you couldn’t give it away in 20 and 21. Because everyone’s just trying to like figure out what’s just happened here globally, we’re all kind of been put into a timeout, the economy’s kind of in a long position. And I’m in Michigan, and our state got shut down for almost a year and a half Brandon. I’m not here to play politics, but it dramatically impacted a lot of the small midsize businesses to get back on their feet. And to me, that was where the Chamber’s really could shine by saying hey, this is why you need us more than ever had the group collective to have more of a voice versus just being alone on Main Street. Come join us to promote Chamber of what commerce commerce is business activity. So I hope that helps.

Brandon Burton 9:44
Yes, absolutely. And I like how you talked about kind of that mission that you go forth with positively disrupting mindset and that’s kind of our topic for today is how to positively disrupt your chamber community or and all of that starts with your mindset as a leader at your organization and we’ll dive in much deeper on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky  11:57  

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

Gina Rozier  12:15  

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

Donna Novitsky  12:44  

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

Brandon Burton 12:56
All right, Tony, we’re back. So right before the break, we talked about the title of this episode, being positively disrupting your chamber community, but also your mindset. What does that mean for you as a leader? And I know there’s a difference between leadership and management. But maybe touch on some of that throughout our conversation today. But how do you inspire individuals to positively disrupt their mindset and in turn their their organizations?

Tony Rubleski 13:27
Well, I think for today, knowing the chamber, many executives or their staffs that may listen to this podcast is that I want to really hone in on what I call the three G’s make it really simple, the three G’s to start 2024. The first one is gratitude. The second is goals. And the third is get healthy, and I’ll go real quick through each one of those, Brandon. But what I mean by this is I want every chamber professional listening right now, to know that I designed a lot of the thought process when I reached out to you to come on, of how do we tune in recharge you the chamber professional, you get drained. I know this because I’ve had conversations many of you privately, or I do staff retreats sometimes where they’re like, Man, I just feel like why do I do this some days. So if you’re listening right now, I want to really give this tour you the chamber pro in really gratitude as the first gene is to sometimes sit back and go, Wow, we are making a difference. Boy, we had 20 events this year. And most of them were successful. That’s something to be grateful for, but strip it down what I do every day that I think might be a value. Actually handwrite in a journal with a pen and paper what I’m grateful for every single day. I know it’s old school. It’s not high tech, but it works and here’s the reason why I think it works. It reminds us as a daily habit that we have so many good things going on, that we can overpower that one or two nine problems that all humans have. It’s that one headache or that one issue that many times clogs our mental space like a virus of the mind. So Starting to deal with gratitude. It could be as something as simple as in the shower, you say, Hey, I’m grateful for another day. But I’m a big believer that when you write things down or you look at your gratitude list or your goals each day, it helps inspire you. When someone’s not there to give you a motivational talk, Brandon, and you’ve got to get yourself inspired. So gratitude to me, it also helps you get out of a funk really like me and I just feel like you know, this events driving us nuts here, the chamber, you go, Wait a minute, we’ve done successful events before, we will lead this event forward. It’s not going to be easy, but it gives you that extra momentum to keep pushing towards the touchdown or the goal line when you feel like quitting. Okay, the second genius goals we all know this Brandon, a lot of times chamber executives say a lot of your stuff is basic, but we forgot this. Really when I am in the remind he business of things we have forgotten that make us successful in our careers. Okay, goals to me. Simple thing again, just write them down, review them off and check off the goals you make. And Sarah there’s there’s momentum going on here. Like a domino, that tip she took one domino, the rest of the dominoes fall, but stop and go live, I put 10 major goals for the year, I already hit two or three of them. With that reminders, you’ve done this before, and you can do it again. And again, when you write your goals down, it becomes more of a reality versus a dream or an idea or a wish, or a written goal inspires you to go hey, what there’s some more clarity here. Okay? The third area, the third G is to get healthy. I mean body, mind and spirit. If you’re listening, the mindset to me is very, very important. That’s my realm of expertise. Okay, motivation, inspiration, positive disruption into me, the world is so doggone negative, that if you allow someone in a meeting or any event to rattle you, and you carry that over throughout the day, that negative energy does rub off on your staff, it rubs off on potential members, it rubs off on people walking into your office. So the best thing you can do is to remind yourself, hey, I have to like reset, almost like you do with your computer, like Ctrl Alt Delete to reboot. Let’s say look, I have to defend my mindset each day. That’s why I talk about gratitude, having your goals, reminding yourself with pictures of things you’ve done successfully at the chamber. On those tough days to go, Hey, we’ve been in tougher situations, we’ll get through this. Continue about getting healthy physical, this the physicality of our health, Brandon, I work out five or six times a week not to boast. I made a goal 12 years ago when I turned 40 that part of me being self employed is Tony, you have to stay in shape. If someone’s flying you across to timezones and you’re in front of 500 people, you have to look good, feel good and exude that you’re healthy. So, to me, we’re at the New Year here. Maybe it’s something as simple as taking a walk a mile a day, maybe it’s joining a gym today and walking on the treadmill. I’m drinking water as we record this with my coffee, okay, more water, watching what you eat, you know, the Chamber lunch and the Chamber breakfast, maybe cut back and you say instead of two plates, I’m only gonna have one plate. It’s simple little things that stack up and you get those little wins. That if you start to compound those little micro goals towards your health, all of a sudden, February, March, you’ve lost 10 pounds. Well, you were more intentional. You set some little small goals. You chipped away at it, and you started to stack little successes on it. So to me the mindset part of the goals is very important as far as getting healthy, the physicality and also the spiritual side. I’m not here to preach or talk religion. That’s not my lane. But I can tell you having a good spiritual grounding I’ve learned in many executives in the chamber space are more open to this gives you more of a deeper intentionality. So regardless of what faith walk you have, or belief in a higher power, I believe that gives you more focus to say, hey, you know what, there’s a bigger picture going on here. What is the legacy that you as a chamber executive want to hand off? A lot of times, that’s more of a spiritual quest of like, say, hey, next 10 or 15 years in the chamber space, I want to leave the community better. While typically with some spiritual grounding the body mind spirit part of the health component, Brandon, that gives you a deeper why a deeper reason to when you want to quit the chamber. Trust me, I bet half the listeners are going oh my god, he knows that he’s been in my office. No, it’s a demanding job. But here again, as the reminder, like I said, the onset right now, leadership is in short supply. This is the time again, for chambers and more importantly, each of you listening to shine as a chamber Pro, to step up and lead the community when they really really need you. So write this down. Most communities really, really need you more than ever, because we are still in a very funky timeline, where there’s a lot of confusion. What do we have coming up later this year, a presidential election. It’s gonna get nasty. I believe it’s gonna get very negative. I don’t like to say those words. But I’m also very pragmatic brand and I’m an adult, that it’s where chambers can be like, Hey, we know we got some politics going on. There’s a lot of name calling but we’re here to the matter of who wins the president election. We’re going to be here the next 10 years the next 20 Next 100 Switch he was the chamber leader steam Positive, when everyone’s going to be really bombarded with negativity during the campaign that I’m sorry, a lot of politicians thrive on dividing, we have a lot more in common. This is another hint for your marketing for chambers, we have more in common than we have that’s dividing us. I know that’s controversial. It doesn’t sell radio spots or television ads. But I’m here to tell you that if you can be a uniter, a great listener, a great leader, show the community what you’re doing to positively disrupt and keep moving the community forward. You’re going to shine, you’re going to get referrals and you’re going to retain a lot more members because they’re gonna go wow, you’re like a beacon of light. And all this negativity right now, especially with all the politicians really cranking up the negativity from about probably June, July on till November. So I want a little bit bigger, broad picture there, but those three G’s to me pick and choose if you’re listening to Hey, no, I’m doing a couple of those are hanging on I need to get my health better this year, and maybe this will be the inspiration to do it.

Brandon Burton 20:58
Ya know, just to maybe expand on that a little bit. The gratitude aspect, I think it really puts in focus your why why do we do what we do, and having the gratitude and, and seeing you know, all the good things you have in your life kind of keep that motivation going. The goals, just a little tip strategy that I that I was introduced to me a few years back is to picture yourself, you know, sitting at a an airport, right? And a good friend you haven’t seen for years comes up to you. It says five years in the future, they come up to you and say, Brandon, how’s it going? You know, how’s life and you say it’s great, but you really mean it? Like, what about life is so great? And like form your goals from there? What does that future life look like? What are those things that you accomplished five years from now or a year from now? Or whatever that timeline is? And kind of make that be your vision kind of makes it a reality? And then getting help? Go ahead?

Tony Rubleski 21:56
Oh, thank you for sharing continue. I love this. It’s future pacing. And it’s a lot of people don’t talk about this, but I love to hear your perspective. Because it’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 22:04
Yeah, well, and I was in touch on getting healthy. I think there’s there’s a few things that human beings are meant to do, right, like walking, eventually walking and drinking some of these basic things, right. And for some of us, walking gets harder, you know, as we age or, you know, get out of health. So simple things like like walking with some strength training, I’ve heard some indicators for you know, longevity, is being able to have good grip strength, you know, can you hang from a bar and just, you know, kind of have that be a measurement of how long can you hang from a bar as kind of a marker for for longevity. So it’s just interesting things, the ability to jump, you know, up onto a little box or jump rope or something. Another key for longevity. So, just little little to add

Tony Rubleski 22:51
to that. That’s awesome is to add to that. Yeah, our physicality does change as we age. I’m 51. And I started guitar lessons three months ago, I’ve always wanted to take guitar, I’m self taught. And without the second lesson, I almost quit. You think me like no, you don’t quit. You’re a goal setting guy. You’re in all that personal development stuff. But Vincent, my guitar instructor was so patient like look, I know that chords driving me crazy because my fingers wouldn’t move the way my other chords did on the guitar. I just said this is frustrated. Like a little kid. He goes now you’re not the first guitar player. And the thing is, it’s a fun challenge to start guitar lessons at 51 I feel like a seven year old with him sometimes he does a great job of keeping it simple, but he also pushes me because I know how to I have good speed on the guitar and I know someone how to play so I can tell you one other way to get healthy mentally is to try a new challenge go after an old goal. Maybe you take up dancing lessons maybe you try swimming at the local YMCA or you know a health club that of course is a chamber member and just keep pushing yourself and I don’t know random people get bored there’s so much good stuff from YouTube to podcasts. So much free knowledge out there there’s tons of I’m sure many of your listeners know there’s many of your Chamber members have really cool businesses they might have a cooking class at the local restaurant, take up cooking that’s one thing my partner Linda and I have done is we’re learning to cook a new meal every month in the wintertime. So instead of just you know getting food out or eating on our own we say let’s make the stuff mushrooms today let’s make some chili next week or two and it’s giving us something that we can both do together that’s fun she’s a better cook than me honestly. And I’m learning and it makes we sit down have that meal much more appreciative and grateful because we made it we spent time connecting so there’s tons of ways you can look at this doesn’t always have to be read like a self help book that that isn’t wrong with that practical thing is that when people ask me how do you know what your why is well go back to when you were a child what really engaged your head your interest, and maybe it was sports so maybe you join a you know, a part time rec league for softball or intramural softball. Maybe you said hey, I used to be really big into football, maybe join a fantasy football league I don’t know, there’s plenty of cool opportunities instead of staying in the same old status stuck, right? In as members are listening or your subscribers are in chamber world. This is a new year. So why not try something new? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:15
absolutely. So earlier in our conversation, you mentioned something stood out to me about leadership being in short supply. And and you also alluded to there’s a certain loneliness that comes in leadership to you get doing the work, and you’re often the only one in your community doing the work that you’re doing. Can you expand a little bit more on that about the leadership being in short supply, and there may be chamber leaders, not to damp anybody’s parade, there might be chamber, quote unquote, leaders that aren’t maybe leading, you know, maybe they’re doing more managing of the chamber, but not necessarily leading? So what do you mean there?

Tony Rubleski 25:53
Well, that’s a great question. I think the danger is you get into firefighting mode, so that many chamber executives go, I know exactly what that is. So you have to watch how much firefighting you’re doing versus actually implementing in successfully pulling off your agenda and adding a few new things into it. But let me give you a few resources. Again, I’m in reminding business, I think some chamber execs, no, some are like, I have not heard of that. Many of the state groups have state associations for chamber executives. That to me is a no brainer. If I’m in your realm, you join your state chapter. In addition, you have everything from ACC, which is more of an American Chamber of Commerce executives, the US Chamber Institute, I be remissed, I used to be faculty member there for many years in the Midwest. So you have ILM program, which allows you to network with other chamber and Association Executives so that you realize I’m not alone here. And here’s the big aha, you can exchange best practices all the time. And that is wonderful to have multiple minds helping you solve a problem. If you’re the chamber executive in Omaha summit in Savannah, Georgia might have already done an event or solve a certain board challenge. They go, Oh my gosh, here’s how I dealt with that, that could shaving years of worry off, save you a lot of time and frustration by just networking. So those are a few resources. And here’s the thing about being lonely. I’ve been self employed for almost 20 years, Brandon. And when you’re leading the company, with our team, or I’m out and about doing trainings and workshops, I can’t tell them about maybe my personal life issues, that I’m struggling sometimes, too. Here’s the big myth. People think that, you know, motivational speakers, or inspirational people like me, are always positive. We’re not always positive. You know, I’ve had issues with my kids before I have former partners, you know, I’ve, I’ve had business failures, too, I’ve had lots of success. But you don’t go over Facebook and social media and talk about your failures. That’s typically where you show your wins. So again, it’s very similar. If you’re the chamber CEO or vice president with with a for profit businesses CEO, many times that office, they cannot fully reveal the stress they’re going through. So to me, leverage. There’s nothing wrong with joining associations or groups that are there to support you so that you realize, Wow, I’m not the one that’s going through this. And more importantly, you can exchange ideas that work to help each other to be even more successful. So, again, leadership to me, you don’t just wake up and you’re born a leader, you learn to become a leader by doing the repetitions by doing the projects by getting work experience by failing a lot. John Maxwell calls it failing forward, the great leadership expert, you’re going to fail forward, you’re gonna have some events that fail and some that win, okay, we need to focus more on the winners, and then start to maybe get rid of a few events that are taking up too much of our staff too much bandwidth, we’re not making as much, you know, revenue off of it. That’s a constant adjustment of, if you’re like an airplane pilot, the stick that flies the airplane, you’re constantly making those mid course corrections, as you’re flying the plane is a leader because there’s turbulence, there’s change, there’s new passengers coming on the plane, you have to know how to land the plane, which to get the event done successfully, you know how to take the plane off, which is starting something new. So I don’t know where that aviation reference came from. But it seems to be a good parallel to what chamber life is like

Brandon Burton 29:04
it is and to go along with that the pilot has all this data, right, they’ve got all their dials and controls and altitude and everything that they can see kind of at their fingertips. And at your organization, if you don’t have the key data points to be able to make those decisions to be able to say, our revenues up or membership or attendance or whatever the things are that are important to you to measure at these events or at your organization in general with membership or programs or whatever it may be. Then how do you know what direction to go like you need to collect those key data points and revisit them often to see you know where you’re trending Are you going up or down? Is it positive momentum or negative and make those adjustments just like a pilot with Yeah,

Tony Rubleski 29:50
and the other thing too is for those members are listening is watch who in your chamber space locally that you’re listening to. I call it misery loves company, or Eagles hang out with Eagles misery loves company is the chamber that says, you know, all my other neighbor chamber executives around me and the surrounding committees are all complained about this watch out for that. It can bring you down. I’m not saying you ignore the obvious but you don’t spend as much time at the water cooler on a zoom call weinan Is there what do we do to solve it? And Eagles hang on Eagles is the other opposite side of the pendulum, model other successful chambers. It’s easy now in the point and click rule of either your cell phone or your laptop to find out what other chambers are doing online that successful pick up the phone and call chamber that’s two states away and say, Hey, I’m Executive here or vice president we want to try to do you have five or 10 minutes. It’s not being afraid to put yourself out there. And here’s the biggest mistake that most people make in business, including chambers. They don’t ask a SK, they don’t ask for an introduction to a potential member. They don’t ask a board member for some advice. They don’t ask another, you know, potential business. Hey, what do you guys struggling with? We assume that they’re going to tell us and we think well, I don’t want to bug them. I don’t want to be a problem. I know they’re busy. No, you don’t? If you hear the word no, it’s not going to kill you, Brandon. It’s not what you don’t get unless you ask it’s the old Wayne Gretzky quote from the hockey world, you’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Same with asking for help. There’s nothing wrong with it. If anything, it endears your peers to the fact that, hey, you’re just like me, you’re human. And you’re willing to listen to new ideas and even counter viewpoints to push you.

Brandon Burton 31:25
So hope that helps him as the younger crowd would say shoot your shot, right? So I wanted to ask for chambers listening who wants to take their organization up to the next level? Or you could say who want to positively disrupt their organization? What tip or action item might you have to share beyond what you’ve already shared with us that they could maybe implement in their organization?

Tony Rubleski 31:51
I think is we we aired this in the new year starting 2024 Is this is be thinking yourself, who can your best Chamber members take you to? That’s not a chamber member yet. Those not yet members. And here’s what I would give. If I was working with you in a in your boardroom, I’d look at your 1520 board members, for example, say, Hey, who are two or three businesses here in the community that need to be a part of this chamber? If I’m the executive, I grab the pen and paper I record and I write down. All right, Mike, were two or three companies that you do business with here in Omaha that are a part of the chamber, I’d like to reach out to them and talk about why they should consider joining the Omaha chamber. And you let your your current disciples, your true believers bring in more people via referral. I call it introductions. And matter of fact, I do an entire session on this for the last 20 years teaching referral marketing, specifically for Chambers as who can your top members introduce you to even if they used to be a chamber member brand. And here’s what I want to really convey everyone listening, don’t let the old biases of the history damper your ability to go back and say, Hey, that chambers keeps evolving. We’ve changed. We’ve got some new folks on we knew you remember 10 years ago, let me ask you has your business changed, our business has changed a lot the last 10 years, so has the chamber. That’s how you get rid of that old history. And you reopen the door because the only constant is change and grow forward. So that would be my big tip is your best members can bring it to other people that can join. If you ask them in, the more specific you get Brandon, if it’s one restaurant, you say who are two or three of the restaurants here in town that you network with a really respect to their good that haven’t heard of the chamber, the more specific on the Ask the much higher chance or probability they’re going to give you a referral because you’ve made it where they go, oh, yeah, I was just talking to my buddy Mike at the other law firm. For example, one lawyer talks to a lawyer, another banker might talk to another bank or credit union will talk to another credit union. So work vertical markets, ask intentionally and be very specific. So I just gave you a referral magic seminar in like two minutes.

Brandon Burton 33:56
For free to how about that? So I’m really like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce. I know you’ve got a long history working with chambers. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tony Rubleski 34:14
I think it bodes well for the chambers that believe in themselves. And if you don’t get too mired up in the politics, not only that the national level, but the the regional and the local is This to me is where chambers can really thrive. I gave up several clues in the interview, that small midsize companies sometimes are never even approached about chamber membership. Many of them know that they’re battling. Let’s be very candid. The data doesn’t lie. A lot of the big businesses during the pandemic got huge PTP loans that were never repaid and have to pay them back in a lot of small midsize mainstream businesses, the numbers, how many went out of business? They’re having a tough go at it. So I’m not saying you pick on your big members or your anti corporate America, but that’s a good data point to notice that, hey, we understand that it was challenging last few years, we want to help you grow forward and introduced other people that can help your business, bring you training to help you retain more employees to attract more employees. And that is a very, very key hot button for a lot of small mid sized companies as the chamber can help introduce them to those opportunities. So I believe the chamber future if you have the right mindset, obviously, it’s very much you can grow now, when the economy is really good. Here’s the paradox. People are too busy for the chamber, usually, while we’re just so busy, because everything’s going well, when you have a challenge economy or a flat economy. That’s where if you’re proactive in your outreach chambers can really, really flourish. So flourish while the timing is right, which to me, there’s the next several years. And

Brandon Burton 35:48
absolutely, and it is a paradox, you know, for the individual businesses or the economy in general, you know that the times that the chamber is really called upon is when it’s the toughest time. So as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity, Tony to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect. I know, you had also teased about an article that you wanted to share as well. Okay, good. Good recall,

Tony Rubleski 36:14
Brandon. So two things, the easiest way to find these, if you go to mind capture group.com, that’s my main web page, you’ll see my face there, and all the other goodies there. But MindCaptureGroup.com what I really want to issue as a special bonus here, for those that are listening, is I have an article on my blog, and you can try to find it, I’ll make it easy. Send me a direct email, or even a Facebook message. My email is simply Tony@MindCaptureGroup.com, I will send you a direct link, I’m not going to spam you, I’m not going to email you to the end of time. So please, no, I’m not going to do that. But the article is called “7 Reasons Every Business and Nonprofit Should be a Member of their Local Chamber of Commerce”. I can’t write a better headline than that. But the article on the blog post, feel free to share it, it’s copyright free. Share that with prospective members, share it with people that are getting ready to renew. But it’s a great article written from years of experience in the industry, of why more than ever, you should join the chamber. So it’s on my blog, but it’s a little tricky to find. So if you email me again, Tony at mind capture group.com put, you know the Chamber Chat Podcast, or you know the article seven reasons, I’ll make sure I send that to you right away. But again, I want to make sure we added a ton of value, because you’re only going to remember maybe a couple of key points from this interview. I know that because I listen to podcasts. And I want to make sure there’s some take home value that you can share with the organization that may not hear this podcast as well. Now,

Brandon Burton 37:36
and I appreciate that having that article that resource available to share. We will get your email and website in our show notes for this episode, too, to make it easy for people to reach out to you to get that article. But I hope as this episode comes to an end that everyone listening takes a few moments. And just hit pause, don’t let the next episode start playing. Just sit in some silence. Think about those three G’s, the gratitude goals and getting healthy. And what does that look like for you in 2024? And write down some notes about that, and maybe revisit it towards the end of the year and see, see what positive changes what positive disruption you’ve seen in your life. But Tony, it’s been a blast having you with us today. On the podcast, you have delivered a lot of value for us. If you have any, any parting words, before we let you go? I’ll let you share that. And then we’ll we’ll let you go.

Tony Rubleski 38:33
A couple things here. Thank you again, Brandon for bringing me on. I love it. I signed on scout in your chamber chat podcast for many months when I reached out to him, I love this. So thank you for what you’re doing. And I guess no happy new year. You know, if anything, know that what you do is extremely important. I’m getting ready to re up at one of my chambers here in Michigan, I’m going to call them up and say hey, I’m ready to join again. So I’m also an active, I don’t just preach about it, I actively work a couple of chambers in my home community. So thank you for what you do. And keep up the good work and know that especially now in the year of election, this to me is where the chamber really has a powerful chance to shine against that negative and say, Hey, we’re doing good things here locally. Come check us out. So thank you for that.

Brandon Burton 39:18
Absolutely. Thanks for being with us, Tony. This has been great.

Tony Rubleski 39:22
Thank you everybody.

Brandon Burton 39:25
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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Amanda Lea Kaiser. Amanda is a keynote speaker and author of Elevating Engagement: Uncommon Strategies for Creating a Thriving Member Community. Through her research, Amanda is at the forefront of exploring how member and attendee engagement is rapidly changing when within professional communities. I’ll have to say as a side note, as I read through her book, I very much was able to visualize all of you as listeners, both attending your state and national chamber conferences and engaging on those levels, but also taking some of these lessons learned to your local chamber organization. So as we go through our conversation today, I hope you can see some of those parallels as well. But Amanda, I wanted to welcome you to the show give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and if you wouldn’t mind sharing something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 2:58
All right. Hey, Brandon, thank you so much for having me here on your podcast and hello Chamber Champions. It’s it’s great to be here. Okay, something interesting about myself. So I got my start at Crayola and I rose up the ranks and marketing so I’ve got a classic marketing background. And and now I’m the keynote speaker but maybe even more interesting than that. I’ve got a two kittens adopted me during COVID I don’t know if if you’re a cat dad, but they adopt us I don’t think we adopt them. And and I named them after Muppets. So I love the Muppets, Kermit and all of those guys. So so my cat’s names are Robin in between. And you might see them running in and out because that’s what they do. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 3:44
Yeah, I did notice the Kermit quote in the book as well. So that carries through. I’m not a cat, dad. But I understand what you mean. It doesn’t matter how much you like the cat they have to like you to adopt. Right? Well, I am excited to get into our topic of conversation today. I think chambers across the country, even globally, are constantly thinking about the ways to elevate the engagement of their membership or their investors or those who participate in their organization at at any level. I often will out I’ll hear chambers talk about doing the yellow highlighter exercise where they will print out their membership list and then with a yellow highlighter, go through and mark any chamber member who’s participated or actively engaged with the Chamber in any way. And that may be the main sponsor of their annual banquet. It may be the sponsor of their board room, or maybe just somebody who’s constantly liking their Facebook posts. So literally any level of engagement and as they do this yellow highlighter exercise, oftentimes there’s not a whole lot of Yeah, low on that sheet once it’s marked up. So I think we’ll, we’ll be in for a treat today with a lot of these tips and ideas around how to elevate engagement with our memberships. So we will dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 8:31
All right, Amanda, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re, we’re talking about elevating engagement, you’ve got a book all about it. Some could say maybe you’re an expert on it. And I’m a little bit hesitant at all really setting the stage that way. I think I told you before we got on the recording. It’s like introducing a comedian and telling everybody how funny that comedian is and then your your setup to deliver. So you know, no pressure at all, but I’m looking forward to an engaging conversation. Good. So maybe let’s just start with why did you write the book like what what was it about your background and maybe personal history that led up to this moment where you’re like, there needs to be a book about elevating engagement of these membership organizations? Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 9:21
so Okay, so let me give you just a kind of quick, sober, quick, speedy history to get us to this point. So like I said, I started at Crayola. And then I had a couple of jobs in my career where I worked at an advertising agency and then I landed in a NAT at a national association. So I worked I worked in for a higher ed Association. Super cool. It was the first time that I even realized that associations and chambers and they were even a thing I just didn’t know until that point until I started working for them and I was director of marketing there. And and it just completely We opened my eyes. And I was so delighted by how collegial these professional groups are. They’re, they’re really fantastic. So I decided to open up my own business. And I was a qualitative researcher, my, my marketing focus has always been on research. And I decided to pursue the qualitative research side of things. And during my time, as a qualitative researcher, I worked with 33 different associations and got a chance to personally talk to 477 members from all different walks of life. And the conversations with them did two things, one, I would ask them about their industry or their profession. And the second thing that I asked them about was, what is it like to be a member? What is it like to attend? You know, what is engagement like, and all of that, and as I was conducting these interviews, one thing that I found is there’s this gap between members, and attendees and, and leadership, right. And so, so that’s why I wrote the book, I wanted to close that gap. And just to give you a sense of the gap is, is, you know, members, our members are having an experience there, whenever they engage with us, they’re having an experience, and very often when we’re on the inside, and I can say this, for sure, as the as being a staff person on an association, a lot of what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to provide value, we’re trying to do the administrative stuff very right. And we’re not, we’re not focused on the experience. And so, so that’s what this book is all about. The book is all about closing the gap. And and I’m also doing a ton of keynoting. Right now. And so I start out every time by saying we’re here to close that gap between you and your members.

Brandon Burton 11:52
Yeah, I like that. I think that’s a good summary. And that does kind of set the stage a little bit here. So my background is in chamber publishing. And often I’ll even joke with some of the different advertisers Chamber members that were selling ads to that. I often will hear a chamber member say that they want to advertise and whatever the chamber publication is, because there’s almost a sense of guilt, that they join the chamber at some point. And they see all the emails from the chamber about the networking mixer, the after hours, the Chamber luncheon, annual banquet, you know, there’s always something that golf tournament. And there’s a sense of guilt that they can’t be at all of the things, you know, they work during the day, so they can’t go to the luncheon or they’ve got family life after work. So they can’t go to the after hours. So they see doing some sort of advertising with the chamber as a way to engage. So how would you look at engagement? How do you define engagement? As you look at a membership organization, I guess what counts when it comes to? To engagement? Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 13:04
So So advertising counts and attending accounts. So so let me let me kind of step back, though, because what I tend to do is I tend to define engagement, the way a member would defined engagement and the way members define engagement is almost solely around emotions. And I actually, I asked when I when I keynote, I asked my audience this, I’ll ask them what is what does engagement feel like when you’re really engaged? What does that feel like? And I’ll ask them to, to recount a professional or personal community that they’re very, very engaged in, you know, what, when that makes their heart very happy. And so this is some of what they’ll say they’ll they’ll say, I feel valued. I feel welcomed, I feel belonging, connected, excited, inspired, it’s energizing, I feel included. I feel focused, I feel peaceful, I feel worthy. I feel like I’m being seen. That’s just some of the words this is I got 139 responses. But those are some of the key words that came up over and over again, so. So engagement is all about emotions. And when you’re when your members or our members are making decisions to engage, they’re making very emotional decisions. That what they’re what they’re what they’re trying to work out and might not be even conscious. But unconsciously they’re trying to say is this community for people like me, do people like me join a chamber like this? You know, do people like me go to events like this? Do Am I gonna find my people here? Am I gonna be long am I you know, all of those things. That’s, that’s the kind of what’s going on in the back of their minds. And so, I, I love to define engagement all around how members see engagement, because you’re right when we when we on the business side, talk about engagement. We’re talking about joins and when rules and registrations and opens and reads and click throughs and all of that. So we’re talking about the metrics of engagement. But I love to think about engagement as that, that very emotional emotions and feelings that drive those decisions to engage. And so that’s that’s typically where I’m coming from. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 15:26
What you said almost sound like a Seth Godin quote, right? People like us do things like this. Yeah. And it’ll often talked about enrollment, right? So the engagement level kind of at Next stage is yes, I want to engage. And now I’m going to enroll I am all in, I’m going to fully participate. And I know that’s a few steps down from where how you kind of break down that, that member journey, or that the experience journey. So maybe touch on that a little bit, because I think so much of that, the beginning of that membership journey is where that emotion really is probably at its peak. There’s some reason why they’re choosing to attend the conference or choosing to join the chamber. And I’ll say everybody does it for slightly different reasons. But understanding what that emotion what that driver is, I think, is so key to being able to help them have a successful journey going forward with the chamber. Yeah, can outline that for

Amanda Lea Kaiser 16:28
us? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m so glad that you started touching on well, you know, what, what happens at the beginning, because So, for most professional communities, what they find is new members are the most fragile members. And, and so, you know, people, if you look at your metrics, you might see people join, and then they never engage. And then it’s not a surprise when they don’t renew, right, and, and so, so they’re very, very fragile. And, and so what we need to do is start appealing to their emotions, one of the one of the things that I often will say, when people are asking for, like, what is the definition of engagement, I’ll say, there’s two parts, there’s, there’s value, so we got to provide value. And the other part is positive experiences. So you want to provide good value and positive experiences. And when you do that, members will engage. And I would wager to bet that your chambers provide lots of amazing value, you know, people, all of you chamber pros, you’re doing all of these events, you’re publishing, you’re emailing, you’re providing all kinds of really amazing things and lots and lots of value. And it’s, it’s frustrating when people aren’t joining, and or it’s or renewing or engaging in, in some way. And so the, the piece that’s often missing is the experience part, the the part that triggers all of the emotions, and, and so this is very salient for new members, you know, new members join, they often don’t understand how to really engage, there is the old the emails are coming in there is I’ve heard that, Brandon, that guilt factor that you were talking about in so from so many different types of members, you know, they’re, they’re sending me emails, I feel like I and what they will say is, I’m not engaging, and it’s, it’s my fault. It’s not them, they’re, they’re making every effort, it’s me, right? And, and I can see that there’s a lot of benefits, I can see that there’s a lot of events and in what they would normally tell me is I feel like I’ve got to start going to these events, which I can never do, because the timing doesn’t work out. Or I’ve got to spend a lot of time on their website, understanding what they do. And I just don’t I don’t have the time yet. And, and so I think what we need to figure out is how to connect a lot quicker with them, you know, how to have how to provide a teeny bit of value so that they understand that taking that leap to come to your events makes a lot of sense. And also connecting on that emotional level. And you do that with experiences. So are there phone calls? Are there? Is there kind of a special quick Fitbit fun email that you could write to them, you know, what are all of the experiences that you can provide to new members that will get them saying this is not only going to be worth my time, but I think that this is going to be a really fun group. There’s a lot of energy. I’m super excited.

Brandon Burton 19:35
Yeah. And as you’re saying that it reminds me in the chamber industry, there’s a lot of focus on with the engagement of members to try to make the shift from being a transactional relationship to be more of a transformational relationship and that way, hopefully, if that’s communicated and modeled in correct ways, the guilt factor hopefully isn’t there. as much because they’re not in it, they didn’t join to say what’s in it for me, but they’re they joined to be part of something bigger, that’s making a positive impact in their community. I see some chambers that have the option to join their chamber right on their website, we can enter your name, credit card information, and click Submit. And you’re done. You’re a member. And I’m sure there’s the onboarding emails that come in. But that chamber doesn’t know anything about that member, why they joined, they didn’t really share their mission, their vision, any of that. And oftentimes, those are coming from another member as a referral. So you know, you need to be a part of the chamber, right? So I think right from the beginning, there tends to be a little bit of a disconnect. And I love in the book, you talked about doing a listening tour. And I think that could probably come in and in a couple different stages along the member journey. But to really tap into that emotion and their why you want to maybe expand a little bit on the listening tour, and how that can kind of pull on that emotion. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 21:08
absolutely. So let me let me give you a couple of tangible stories that I heard dirt while I was while I was interviewing members. So. So there’s a couple of associations that were doing a really good job, and I got a chance to figure out what they were doing from their member saying I was on I was the recipient of the listening tour. And so there’s one, one association that did a very interesting thing. Now they had not very many members joining. It wasn’t like they were having hundreds of members join every week, they might have been having 10s of members join every week. And and so the the director of marketing of that particular organization, would schedule a call, it was about a 20 minute call with every single new member. And during that call, she would ask them a series of questions, you know, hey, tell me about yourself. And when did you start working at this company? Or when did you you know, when did you start the company? She would, she would ask them questions about projects, they were working on what their goals were, what their mission was, what if they’re having any challenges, she might even ask them, you know, what, tell me about some trends. And she would, she would take careful notes, and she listen intently. And at the end of the call, probably with maybe, I don’t know, three, four minutes to go, she would say this has been so interesting. And there’s a couple of things that I heard you talk about, that we might be able to help out with, there’s you talked about this really interesting project that you’re working on. And not many of our members are working on a project like this, but I know that Sue is. And I would love to introduce you, it’d be okay, if I introduced you to Sue, I think she’s a couple of steps ahead of you. And, but you know, I can introduce you via email in and then she will, she would also say and I also heard you talk about this system, that we’ve got some data from some of our research, or we’ve got an event coming up where we’re going to be talking about this topic, we’d love to have you I’m going to follow up with some emails. And so you know, she get off the phone and immediately send some emails, one introducing that new member to sue a longtime member and tell in telling Sue and you know, reminding this this person while why she was introducing them, and then she would follow up with a separate email saying, hey, you know, as we were talking, I told you, I was going to send you this research report and this invite to this event and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that that’s very time consuming very hands on for this organization that works. Because they don’t have a lot of members. Other organizations, there is the listening tour where you get into your car, you know, or your your get your staff into a van, and you book breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or you go to people’s offices or places of work or factories and and you spend 15 or 20 minutes with them doing the same kind of thing, asking them questions, touring, just being there letting them be seen. And it’s such a pleasure because now when they come to an event, they already know a friendly face. So there’s there’s that part. The other thing is if you are with a chamber that’s maybe spans a large geographic area, there’s a virtual orientation events. Now the virtual orientation events are not orientation webinars, there are much more responsive than that. So so people come you know, your new members come into a Zoom meeting. And then you ask them the same kind of questions, you know, where, where do you work what what kind of organization is your company? Tell us a little bit about it. What are some of your goals? What are some of the projects that you’re working on? And then as everybody’s feeding information to you, you the host can do some pattern matching for the biggest things that people are They’re struggling with and then make that link for them between their problem back to the to what the chamber provides in terms of, of benefits or upcoming meetings or something like that. So. So I love that you were talking about, you know, these these member listening tours, because there’s so many ways that they actually work, Brandon. And that’s really the key to it all. When when you know your members and you hear them talking over and over about their goals, then then we serve them a lot better. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:30
there was one chamber executive I talked to one time and he talked about how he’ll do three breakfasts each day, they’ll go meet with different members there. The first one maybe is just having a coffee is the second breakfast, awesome makes the third one, maybe a phase three. So he’s breaking it up. But he’s getting to three different member businesses to have these breakfasts. And he’s meeting with other members there. So like the levels of engagement with the organization with the members is on multiple levels, and able to gather a lot of that very important information to be able to better serve the member. And I love that. So it does kind of seem like though in today with everything digital, and we’ve got in person events, we got virtual events, we get emails, get social media, we’ve got podcasts, we’ve got YouTube, we’ve got all these different ways to get our messaging out there. Does that make it harder or easier to engage members? Like how it I think I can see both sides of the coin, but I’d love to hear your approach and maybe how chambers might want to look at this. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 26:41
what I’m hearing across the board is, is engagement is getting harder, it’s harder to engage attendees most virtually and in person, it’s harder, harder to engage members, it’s harder to get those opens and reads. It’s just I think it’s harder. And some people are saying, you know, this is not uniform. There’s some associations and some chambers that are seeing these bright spots, like, hey, we went back into person. And and, and we’ve got some of our in person events are doing amazing. And we’re still doing virtual, and some of those are doing amazing. So this is not, engagement isn’t universally going down the tubes. But I think it is getting harder. And one of the reasons why it’s getting harder is is really time and attention. You just hit on it, Brandon, there’s so many ways that we’re trying to reach members. But there’s so many ways that they’re getting content and they’re connecting. And they’re you know that it’s just sort of, we all have a very frantic pace of life these days. And so we’ve got to do something different to engage members than what we did before. And I’m so glad that you asked that question about communications, because this is sort of a really great time to talk about how you not only provide value, but you also provide the experience so so every time we communicate, there’s two things that we’re trying to do. The first is the what we say. And that’s the value, it’s the message we’re trying to get across. The second thing we’re trying to do is is or the second thing we communicate is how we say it. And this is the tone, it’s the voice. And and this might be something that you’ve talked about a lot in publishing is the tone or the voice. And so I love to think about tone on a continuum. And so on one side of the continuum, there’s the very institutional tone, the very professional polished tone, it’s a lot of big words, it’s when we’ve got our business hat on, that’s the tone we tend to fall into is the institutional tone. On the other end of the continuum, I have a what I call the best friend forever tone, sometimes we’ll also call it the happy dog tone. So if you go into your personal email, and you read, you just quickly, like scan your personal email of all of the brands and companies and products you really love. They’re talking to you and the happy dog tone, there’s emoji, there’s hashtags, it’s casual, they’re talking to you like they’re your best friend. But for some reason, when we’re doing business to business, and we put our business hats on, we talk very, we tend to talk very institutional. And so I just like to remind everybody, that tone is on a continuum, and you can pick anywhere you want to be, and especially with your new members, they’re they’re looking for all of those cues on whether to belong, you know, is this the place for people like me, they’re looking for those belonging cues. And when you can warm up your tone in your emails or warm up your tone and your phone calls, you know, or any of the information you’re sending out to new members. They the sense that they sense that this is going to be a happy, warm, lovely place for them to meet other people and connect.

Brandon Burton 29:54
Yeah. So when I think of, maybe an in person or even a virtual event I think to on an event stage, it’s a maybe a little easier to gauge the engagement. You can see if people are looking down at their phone or distracted or getting up to get a drink or, you know, just the distraction, where as we try to with these communication channels, I’d love that you brought the the tone and the voice into the happy dog messaging. Besides maybe some of these metrics that we look at the open rates and social engagement tools, are there other ways that we can see if our message is landing, right? If we’re how do we get that kind of feedback when we’re not in a room or a Zoom Room even to be able to get that that instant? Hopefully, positive feedback. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 30:47
yeah. So people are always asking me how, how do you measure engagement and and there are, you know, I think when your members are doing the yellow highlighter exercise, they’re measuring engagement, looking at your renewals, it’s a measured metric and a measure of engagement. And so as you’re engaging members and attendees differently, you’re going to see that metric go up some some organizations use Net Promoter Score, some of them do things as sophisticated as Engagement scoring. And so again, over time, if you’re, if you’re focused on those experiences, you’re gonna see those those metrics go up. But, but it’s engagement is a tough one. Because it’s very hard to make one change, it’s very hard to say, Okay, we’re gonna make this one event more experiential, and we’re gonna see renewals fly off the chart, that’s not the way it works, right? There’s, there’s, there’s not a lot of like one to one direct comparisons, you just sort of see a general lift over time. So So I think sometimes we have to measure engagement, again, with our own emotions, which is, you know, is there what’s the energy like? Okay, so we’re making it we’re making some improvements to try to be more engaging and say this one event? Was the energy better? Did people walk out smiling, you know, for virtual, one of the things that I think is a really good predictor of a virtual meeting is what’s going on with the chat. Now, you can do a lot of things to have a really robust chat and as a, as a very often speaker, I love the robust chat. I love when I’m talking. And people are busy in the chat and they’re talking to each other. And they’re asking each other questions and they’re tuning in to listen to me and they’re plussing up what I say and then plussing up what everybody else says. And that’s for me that schools because because they’re sure they might be listening to me and engaging with me, but they’re in if they’re engaging with each other. That’s lovely, too. So, so if you’re doing lots of virtual events have chat ambassadors in there. And that can be a micro volunteering opportunity for one of your members. Or it could be a staff, you know, job, but have those chat ambassadors in there that are, you know, they’re plussing up what other people say? And they’re asking questions, and they’re, they’re kind of saying, Oh, this, you know, the speaker said this, what do you think about this, everybody and, and really try to foster that excitement and get it going. And that’s, that’s You’ll sense the energy, you’ll, you’ll sense it, whether you’re virtual or in person, and that that’s almost I think, is Valley or it is as valid as some of those tangible metrics.

Brandon Burton 33:26
Yeah. So I hope this doesn’t feel like we’re taking a step back. But I was thinking about the emotion as people engage with an organization that emotion is, you’re able to maybe give them some small wins along the way. So in the book, you talk about, like speaking from stage, there’s little engagement questions or things you can do to warm up the room, right. So they’re engaging on a very minimal risk or risk free environment where they have nothing to lose if they just participate and engage. And as a member joins an organization. And there’s other little quick wins, I’ll say that you can do to kind of trigger that emotion or positively reinforced that emotion of yes, you’re here for a good reason. We’re here to listen to like, all of those things. Are there any strategies or tips that you want to share around maybe those small quick wins to warm up the audience or the new member, to help encourage them to give them that confidence to be able to engage at higher levels as they progress through their their membership journey?

Amanda Lea Kaiser 34:38
Yeah, let me let me tell you about a totally unexpected story that I heard when I was doing those interviews and it’s a it’s a story that I heard over and over and over in different ways with different words. But what I would hear people say is I went to my very first event for this organization. And while I was waiting in the registration Mine welcomer I didn’t know it at the time, but people were circulating, and they were talking to all of us in the line. And in somebody stopped and talked to me, and it was maybe just two sentences. And it was it, it made me feel like this community is super open and warm and welcoming. And it and I felt like I had to step out of my shell and I am going to, to just talk to other people, I’m going to introduce myself to other people and just see how it goes. And so, so it’s like, new members come in, and we have to give them the teeniest little nudge or a teeny little bit of permission, so that they can go and make their experience great for themselves. And so whenever we can do that, it’s great. So So let’s see, how do you do that you can do that with welcomers that in person events, you know, kind of warming up the crowd for in person or virtual events. Think about your icebreaker, you know, what is what is a an icebreaker question or an activity that is super safe and super easy. And so I’ll give you just an example, when I’m getting together a group and I want to get them to be really creative, I want to I want the group bubbling up lots of ideas, I want them collaborating with each other. And the topic is not is not very serious, you know, it’s we’re working on, we’re just going to work together on this problem. And we’re gonna have a really great time doing it. One of the questions that I love to ask is, would you like to be a dragon? Or have a dragon and why? And in the why is the key, you know, you can pick either one, but I love to ask why. And so you can ask that, you know, in person, with a smaller group, you can ask it on, you know, virtual meeting and get people responding in the chat. But that, you know, again, you’re you’re popping them out of the expected stuff. And in the their professional world, and you’re bringing them into sort of a different surprising experience where they can have a little bit of fun with it. They tap in their answer, and now they’ve started participating, which is half the battle, because once once you start once, then you’ll you’ll form that habit and you’ll keep participating. That’s

Brandon Burton 37:12
awesome. Having read the book, I knew that was the question you’re gonna you’re gonna bring up it’s I was waiting for the dragon question. So I’m glad you glad you brought it out. As we begin to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask usually I’ll ask for maybe a tip or action item for listeners who want to take their organization up to the next level. And what you would offer I think I may want to read phrase that too, for an organization that a chamber listening who would like to level up the engagement of their members to the next level? Where should they start? Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 37:50
yeah, absolutely. Oh, let me backtrack and tell you one other one. So if you’re looking for more icebreakers, or energizers the other one that is surprisingly, super fun, and people get you know, they have this very fun argument about it is, is a hot dog a sandwich. So what do you think Brandon? Is the hot dog sandwich? Or is it not a sandwich?

Brandon Burton 38:13
I’m gonna go yes. Is it the same way a cheesesteak is the sandwich.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:17
Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So so interesting. Usually, usually groups completely divide. And there’s some squabbling around if a hotdog is a sandwich and to my knowledge, there’s no real answer, you know, just like, Alright, are you know, is white chocolate, chocolate, you know, again, you get the you know, those are those are fun cup questions to ask.

Brandon Burton 38:40
In cornbread, and you have a corndog. Now, that’s a whole nother topic. I don’t agree with that. Yes,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:47
yeah. Yeah, that feels not sandwich like to me, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so. So what, you know, what can they do to take things to the next level, what, what I would suggest is go and start identifying all of your transactions anytime you have a transaction. So joining as a transaction renewing as a transaction, opening an email is transaction registering as a transaction registration at your events as a transaction. And in so think about and so like, anytime the staff has a job to do, you’re doing administrative stuff for that transaction. So think about how you can seamlessly keep doing the administrative part of it, and then layer the expensive experience on top of it. So that’s, that’s how you close that gap is to keep doing what you’re doing in terms of the transaction and the administrative stuff, but now figure out how to layer the positive experience on top. It’s easier than you think it is. So like, let’s say you’re, you’re you’re doing registration at one of your events, and you’ve got you know, 100 people coming through the door, and you need to give them all badges within 10 minutes or something like that, you know, people are coming at you, and you’ve got to log them. And you got to give them all their badges, even even in those moments where you’re so busy and so frantic, just smile, like just keep giving them a genuine smile. And now you’ve layered on that positive experience. I

Brandon Burton 40:22
love that. And I was thinking, I don’t know, man, I don’t know if this holds true all the way through or not. But if, in talking about those micro wins, as you know, micro positive experiences and micro engagements. Hopefully, if they’re engaging on that small risk free level, a way of maybe measuring that as if they’re engaging again, like if they’re taking another step, you know, on that journey. And if they’re, if they’re stalling out, if you make that initial engagement, and they stall out, maybe the communication needs to be refined, maybe you need to get more information. But they hopefully should be making another step and other engagement along the way. Would you agree with that? Or is that just totally my own thought? totally

Amanda Lea Kaiser 41:13
right. So I have identified it fine. I’ve identified six stages of engagement, and is exactly what you’re talking about that that at each stage, there’s generally speaking, a barrier for people to take that next step into the next stage of engagement. And so to the extent that we can be aware of all of those six, six stages, and just constantly helping people have those micro wins, and in sort of taking that next step, if they want to, one, one thing that happens is you know, sometimes like, boards will get burnt out and a new member, a new face will come to an event for the first time and a board member will rush up and say, We’re so happy you’re here. Have you ever thought about being on the board and the new members panicking and saying, oh my gosh, I don’t even know who you people are yet. And so you can’t rush people up the six stages of engagement, but what you can do is make the opportunity available if they want to. So if you you know, the book is elevating engagement, and right there in the beginning, I detail all of the six stages, and each chapter is devoted to one of those stages. And I talk about the the kind of go no go decisions that members are making at every single one of those stage stages. And then I just try to give you hundreds of ideas for helping them move from one stage to the next. Again, if they want to work, we don’t rush them, we just make those opportunities all available to them. And, and yeah, I think I love I was taking notes while you were talking Brandon, because this idea of micro wins or micro engagements. I just I love that terminology. And I hadn’t thought about it or articulated it that way. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to steal that from you. Because I think it’s cool.

Brandon Burton 43:04
Yeah, just reference me twice. And then you can own it after that. So a real life example that, that I was reminded of and reading the book, you you mentioned that the board members, you know, maybe seeking a replacement for their seat during the board recruitment. So my, my wife was the volleyball Commissioner for our local youth volleyball organization. And our two youngest, well, all of our girls played volleyball through it. So we felt invested. And she was giving back to the community and doing her thing and just ended up with a lot of things on her plate. And she was completely overwhelmed. It was draining all of her energy. So she would talk to the other volleyball moms, she would say, this is wiping me out. Do you want to take it from me? Do you want to do you want to do this? And everyone kept saying, No, it was like, You need to change your approach. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It doesn’t have to be a negative experience. You don’t need to lie to them, but just share what it entails, share what the upsides are, and let them make a decision. But if you sell it as you know, this is so time consuming and is totally drained me. I think the example he gave in the book is a board member saying you know, I’ve I’ve been affected finite, you know, negatively financially, you know, in serving on the board. Nobody’s gonna want to take your spot, right. So you don’t want to scare people away with being over engaged, maybe? Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 44:35
And then then a staff members, we can also get a handle on that as well. You know, if, if we feel like it’s hard for volunteers to volunteer, we can look at their roles. We can look at the time commitment, we can look at dividing things up we can but just like it just like we were talking about with new members, you know, we want to take new members and give them that little nudge to help them keep progressing along their membership journey, you can do the same thing with volunteers. I love thinking about the volunteer journey as well. And, you know, start the volunteer journey with a micro volunteering opportunity and then slowly build. And I think a lot of time as a staff people, we tend to think about volunteer roles is very specific things if you’re on a board, if you’re on a committee, those are volunteer roles, but to members welcoming as a volunteer role speaking is volunteer role hosting as volunteer role, right, and, and so, so think about all of those non traditional things that we want to do to engage members like like being a chat ambassador, and have that be a volunteer role. And, and so, you know, maybe people are spending three minutes volunteering, or 10 minutes volunteering, or 30 minutes volunteering, but now you’ve just flex their muscles so that if there’s a chance to do another volunteer role, they might take you up on it. Right.

Brandon Burton 45:59
I love that. So I like asking everyone that I have on the show this question that as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, and I’ll broaden that and say, just associations in general, how do you see the future of chambers and associations going forward?

Amanda Lea Kaiser 46:17
Yeah, I see it really bright. There’s, there’s such a need, you know, when, whenever there’s a need in the community, there’s the business propositions, I think the future is really bright. And it’s just about how to engage differently. And I, from the research, I see that the answer is in the experiential side of things. And again, I think I said this a little bit earlier that I would wager to bet a lot of your chambers are offering a ton of value. And if you offer even more value, that’s great. But it might not get you to engagement, what you got to start doing is focusing on those positive experiences. And so a really quick way to think about that in this is something that you can play with you with your staff or talk to your board about or your committees about is just start saying, you know, the any, anytime somebody starts asking what do our members need, you know, what do our website visitors need? What are our attendees need? What do people need? Start laying or layering on that question, which is how do we want them to feel? And so? So when you ask, how do we want them to feel? And this is an easy thing that we that you could try even tomorrow, right? The next time you’re writing an email, think, how do I want the reader to feel and you kind of lock in that emotion in your brain that you want them to feel happy or joyful or hopeful or something like that. And when you type your message will actually totally change in quality? In in, that’s a really great experience. So just always, always keep asking, How do I want people to feel? How do I want them to feel when they come to our website? How do I want them to feel when they walk in the door of our event? How do I want them to feel when they’re advertising or hosting or sponsoring or any of those things. And that that’ll that’ll get you to the experiences part. I

Brandon Burton 48:11
love that that’s a good gauge right there just to kind of make sure that what we’re doing is the right thing and getting people to to engage and feel good and hit on those emotions that brought them there in the first place. So Amanda, I enjoyed this conversation and having you on the podcast, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or share where they can find your book or anything like that, that you’d like to share with the audience feel free.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 48:42
Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me at amandaleakaiser.com. It’s Amanda, Lea, and then Kaiser like the role.com. There’s information about the book there. It’s there’s information about speaking, there’s a newsletter all about engagement that I put out once once a week that you can sign up for if you’d like or you can type elevating engagement into Amazon or any online bookseller and you’ll find my book there.

Brandon Burton 49:09
I love it. Well get that in our show notes for this episode. But like I said, this has been an engaging conversation and I hope the listeners feel so as well. And that it may prompt them to make some micro wins to put themselves out there a little bit to touch on those emotions understand why their members are there and what can you do to make them feel the way that you’d want them to feel. So Amanda, thanks again for being with us today and for sharing your your insights and for for sharing this book as well.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 49:41
Thank you so much, Brandon, this has been delightful.

Brandon Burton 49:45
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Fostering a Sense of Belonging with Velma Knowles

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Velma Knowles, Velma is a Gallup strength certified coach, human behavioral expert and best selling author from helping to build the Conservation Legacy of the Bahamas to leading award winning membership growth for associations. Boundless passion is helping organizations build a value driven culture of belonging. Velma enjoys photographing birds riding bikes and pretending she likes to exercise, Velma and mix excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Velma Knowles 2:37
Well, Brandon, thank you so much for having me here today on your Chamber Chat Podcast. And thank you for the kind introduction. Something that listeners might not know about me, other than you’ve revealed my big secret, which is I’m from the islands of the Bahamas, now living here in the United States. But one of the things that they may not know is that I cut a demo recording at the age of 17 in the hopes of becoming a big country and western singer, which we know by the end of this episode, that did not happen.

Brandon Burton 3:18
That’s exciting, though. Not everybody can say that. And it’s kind of putting their their neck out there. So to speak, and and take a risk. So good job. So I’m curious where in the Bahamas are you from? Yeah,

Velma Knowles 3:31
so I was originally born on the island, the island of Nassau New Providence, like so officially now. And I have family throughout mostly in the Abacos and in Long Island.

Brandon Burton 3:43
Okay, well, hopefully you have a chance to get back there often.

Velma Knowles 3:47
So I do try to go several several times a year. Yeah, that’s

Brandon Burton 3:52
great. So I like giving all of the guests that I have on the show and opportunity just to tell a little bit about the work that you do. Kind of your business structure how you serve, especially when it comes specifically to Chambers of Commerce. How your your work aligns with chambers. Sure.

Velma Knowles 4:12
Yeah. Thank you again for that opportunity. For those that might not know me or a little bit about me, my career includes 20 Plus, and I always say plus because after 20 years to stop counting, but yeah, does 20 years working inside so I’m one that has been inside the not for not for profit space, especially in the association and world of providing services to members. And my span of expertise encompasses marketing, a membership engagement, retention and growth board, strategic planning and engagement and then of course, leadership development. And I want to just caveat that leaders To me are across the organization, they’re not those that are in higher positions. But I think everyone in the organization is a leader in one way or another. My last position was the vice president of member experience with a little brand that folks might have heard of called AAA. And so today, triple A services about 60 million members across the United States, and then Canada, Europe worldwide for the other arms of that Federation. In 2017, I had the opportunity to venture out on my own, and I felt called to serve more associations. And so today, I have my own business. It’s called leaders pathway where leaders go to grow. And that word leaders means you as the individual and your organization, I believe that your organization can only grow higher as you as the leader grows higher. And so it all starts inside, in order for it to grow outside. I work with chambers, not for profit, which could be donor based organizations, member based organ associations across the country. And my focus is really to help them create this culture of belonging where the members, the employees, and the board, which is that that ultimate leadership in there, they feel like they belong in that organization. And I know we’ll talk a little bit more about that as we go forward. But I truly believe that when you as an a leader of a member based organization, when you create that culture of belonging, you’re going to solve the challenges that you face around engagement, which I know is like top of the line and on everyone’s buying, retention, which we are we’re struggling with across the board, and then ultimately moving from stagnation or, you know, a declining growth to a sustainable model for growth. So I hope that level sets a little bit about me, I do executive coaching, I do strategic planning, I do public speaking for workshops, and conferences. And I also do employee retreats and membership planning. Very

Brandon Burton 7:18
good. Now, that definitely gives us a good snapshot of the work that you’re involved with. And I love the focus on leadership. And I think no matter what position you serve at at a chamber, that you are a leader, you’re helping to drive the vision for your community. And if you are the chamber executive, you should be thinking about training the next leader, right? So at some point, you will leave and you want to make sure you’re leaving the organization in a good position to continue growing and have that strength. And I love to you when in the context of leaders, you talked about kind of hitting the the potential and everything I think it’s John Maxwell talks about the lid, yes, the organization is only as as good as the leader right if the leader caps at a certain point and the organization caps so we want to be able to unleash that lid so that the organization can grow so well Velma and I’m excited to get into our conversation today. And we’ll be focusing our you know, the bulk of our conversation around the idea of fostering a sense of belonging as you alluded to, and specifically to impact membership growth. So we will dive deeper into this conversation as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:52
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 11:50
All right, Velma. We’re back. So as we talk about fostering a sense of belonging to impact membership growth, what does that look like? From your perspective? I know you had mentioned, you know, fostering a sense of belonging for members B, it also mentioned for the board. So how do these dynamics play together for the strength of the organization? Yeah,

Velma Knowles 12:12
sure. Well, if the if you haven’t heard me speak yet, you’ll you’ll hear this message over and over again. And that is that I believe that there are three things that everyone everyone wants in life, it doesn’t matter if you are the board member, the member of the organization, the staff and employees, there’s three things that everyone wants. And what they want is to be seen, to be heard, and to be valued. See, to me fostering a sense of belonging is you have to build a connection. And in order to do that, you need to be able to see people for who they are to hear them the voice and the things that are on their mind. And then to value them and their contribution. Engagement is not an activity. And when I when I look at what the you know, my my clients are doing what chambers and associations or member organizations in general, what they do is there like a heavy focus on engagement, and I totally my whole heart understand why. But engagement is is not an activity that you do, you don’t, you know, have this webinar or have this conference to get people engaged or recruit people into volunteer, it’s about a connection. And when people are connected to the mission, and when they’re connected to the individuals. That’s when you see this sense of belonging happening. I’ll give you a good example. Myself, okay, I was a member of an organization that shall remain anonymous, because we’re not promoting anyone. And then, you know, this worldwide pandemic, came into play some time in our life here. And in the end, all of a sudden, a lot of things kind of shut down. And so when it was time to renew my membership, I was like, Well, you know, I can’t I can’t go to the functions that can’t do things the normal way. And so I, I paused, I know, I paused my membership, or full disclosure, and I said, I’m not going to renew. And then you know, as things started to get back into what we would consider the next stage of this work, force, the next work environment that we’re in and, and moving on to the future. I said, you know, what, I miss my connections. I miss the people that I was so close to when I was there. And so literally, I really, you know, reinstated my my membership and they took me back. And the big idea whether it was a webinar, which is, you know, a service you provide, or whether it was the annual conference, or whether it was the mag Xen I got or whether it was, you know, a lunch and learn that they had or coffee club that you got to go to whatever the Chamber’s had available to us. It was an opportunity to connect with those people that I have a relationship with. And so I say that to say that when you create a sense of belonging, you’re really creating a place for people to connect. People need to feel like I’m seeing when I’m there, people recognize me, Hey, Brian, great to see you. I, you know, me, and you’re connecting with me, you hear me? If I tell you that I have this problem or this challenge in my business, you hear what I have to say. And it’s not just listening for the sake of listening, but it’s listening with a focus on how do you help me solve that? And if you can’t solve it specifically from the chamber, how can you connect me to a resource that you might have that can help you solve that? And then do you value me, and I don’t mean value in the sense of the dollars that I pay for my membership, I mean, value me in the sense that you appreciate what I can bring to the table, maybe there’s a specific strength that I have, or a specific expertise that you could tap into, that is a resource for someone else in my community here in my chamber, that that has a need. And so I just feel like personal connections, build engagement. And engagement is, is fortifies retention, and retention gives you results. But connections are not products. It’s a personal connection. It’s not a product, like a webinar, or conference, or any of the beautiful things that we use, those are just vehicles to help us create that connection.

Brandon Burton 16:59
So you’re really upsetting the paradigm they’re not an activity and personal connections are not a product. Right? So, man. I appreciate the three things you talked about. Everybody needs to be seen, heard and valued. And, and I think from a board perspective, as as a chamber executive working with the board, I think those three things are, they’re super important to implement. And I think you can be very strategic with how you do that. Because you’re, you’re dealing with a limited, you know, a finite amount of people, right, that you’re trying to have seen be seen, heard and valued. As you open that up to the membership in general, everybody tends to join the chamber for different reasons. They I mean, they all join probably to raise their bottom line, right to make a little more money, benefit their company, but the way they the vehicles to get there, they see different value with the chamber. Right. So as a chamber approaches individual members, how do you make those personal connections to help them be seen heard and valued? Sure.

Velma Knowles 18:15
Yeah. And I think it gets to how do you create those communities within the community. And and I say that because coming from, you know, working inside a very large Association, and then working voluntarily with some chambers offering support to help them in their membership growth. As a member of that chamber. What I’ve found is that, you know, all members are important. Get ready for this one, but all members are not equal. And so what that means is that if you as a an association, you have a very small staff, even if you’re a big chamber, you have a small staff, and you can’t be all things to all people. And so marketing segmentation, which is not anything new here, but really trying to understand that 8020 principle, but warming what is known as these micro communities, or a community or, you know, a special interest group is another way of labeling it, but it’s a community within the community. So you have a member base, and then you look at that member base, and you say, who’s really, you know, my, my big 8020? Right, the the members that are truly engaged, that are volunteering, that are sponsoring that are doing the things that elevate the whole chamber, and then you say what of those individuals what is the needs that they have and form groups so that other people can connect on a smaller scale to get their problem solved and see a greater value in In the return for the dollars that they’re investing in, so I think it begins with really understanding, you know, where it where are the chamber champions, we will use your word a coin here, which I love. Where are those champions, those chamber friends that are inside the association and organization? And how can you create those sub communities that allow others to come in and feel seen, heard and valued, because it’s a smaller group, where everyone can have a place? You know, when you when you when you look back, and you research the whole idea around? Why chambers exists? Why, why what is a chamber of commerce, a Chamber of Commerce is really a place to, we’ll use the word network, which is the kind of the old school hat, right? Because that kind of has a different connotation. What is networking, ooh, nobody likes to network, I want to bring that forward to today’s and I want to modernize it in the 21st century. And it’s connection, it is not networking here, here’s a business card like speed date, it’s truly connecting and being seen, heard and valued. And I think when we can put on that, that member, first that people first sense of, of a culture, we’re trying to build those connections in a genuine way. And I really want to say genuine, genuine rapport. That’s when you reap the benefits of greater engagement, retention and growth.

Brandon Burton 21:34
So great, great response, the thought that comes to my mind, is this unnamed organization that you are a member of and drop the membership for a short time and then miss the connections that you had. Was it the connections with the leadership of that organization? Or was it the connections with the other individual members of the organization?

Velma Knowles 21:57
Very good question. And so let me let me do this. First and foremost, it is the members first, and for to me, they were members in that association or organization that I couldn’t wait to hug again, I couldn’t wait to see to talk of old stories and to make new memories. But did I have a connection within the leadership, I would say that it was selected. And, and it’s because you know, when you when you have, when you have a staff, and I’ve been in those shoes, you’re working in a small organization where you got a lot of members, but you’ve got a job to do. And so you’re very focused on trying to get the job to do and, and sometimes you can miss the person, when you’re focused on getting that project. And this is in any organization, you know, we tend to focus on project project project, but then we missed the person. And I think for me, it’s been where certain individuals in the leadership of the organization has seen me, and they hear me and they value me, and they’re like, oh, yeah, great, you know, and there’s that connection. But then unfortunately, that doesn’t trickle down to the entire team, even if their entire team is five people. And so that’s why I go back full circle, that, to create that culture of belonging has to begin on the inside, you know, if your employees feel like they’re seen, heard and valued, you’re going to foster that type of behavior, that’s going to then trickle outside. And then any member in your organization any prospective or like, I like to call them future member, any future member is going to be like, I gotta belong, they have random makes me feel like I missing out on something, I gotta, I just want to be there. Because I want to be among that, you know, people like Brandon. And I think that’s where the opportunity, that’s why I’m heavily passionate about, you know, your, your leadership has to in leadership across the organization, they have to buy into this culture of belonging, and then live that out every day for your members to be able to experience that and then want to stay.

Brandon Burton 24:10
I thought that’s where your response might go. So like,

Velma Knowles 24:18
oh, my gosh, I feel like Okay, pass the test.

Brandon Burton 24:24
So, I love the line that you had said about how all members are important, but they’re not equal.

Velma Knowles 24:31
Yeah, I

Brandon Burton 24:32
just need to let it sink in. Right. Yeah. Usually

Velma Knowles 24:35
when I say that, when I’m at board, you know, when I’m with my clients, and I do a board strategic planning session and, and, you know, we were talking about membership member engagement, member experience, and then they’ll, you know, they kind of throw some things at me and I’ll say, Well, you know, just let this sit for a minute. Okay, I’m gonna let this just let this plane land here. And and I tell them, you know, members are important. And everybody’s like nodding their head. Absolutely. You know, because they’re all members, everyone on the board is a member, right? Yeah, in different levels of capacity representing their companies. And I said, but all members are not equal. And then I’m like, will they ever bring me back to work for them again, right? So you know, and then it kind of sinks in, and then one or two people will say, Well, can you expand on that a little bit. And so I think that it’s, it’s not to take anything away from the the value of each individual in a member, you know, organization or customer if for that matter, because, you know, I wrote the book, the valuable leader, that’s my shameful plug in. And so I, I truly believe everyone brings value, but you’re running a business, the chamber is a business, it’s not for profit. It’s not nonprofit, right? It’s a it’s a business. And so you have to apply some strategic business processes. And that that’s one of them. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:03
and I think oftentimes, those members that are of higher value and value, there’s different ways to assess value with a member, right. But you talked about an 8020 rule. So you may look at that 20%, that are really bringing in 80% of those key metrics. And that may be a good pool to look at, as you’re looking for future ambassadors there, people get what your chamber does, or people who can get on board with your vision, and help make those connections with other businesses in the community. So I love that you point that out, you draw attention to the 8020 principle, and, and lean into that. So there’s a lot there. So I feel like I have to ask you, you have a term called Tiger Teams, can you tell us a little bit of Tiger team is and

Velma Knowles 27:00
yeah, tiger team. So when I was working inside the association world, one of the things that I got tasked by the CEO to do was to turn around a membership deficit. Now, you know, this is a big number. But if you put everything in perspective, wherever you are in the world, if you are losing members, it is a big number. Okay? Because it’s a problem that you have a big challenge you have to face. And so we had a, we had a huge member deficit that needed to turn around. And I was in the marketing department. And if you work in any support area of a company, you know that you’re there to serve the operations teams. And so to be called on to lead such an important task. First and foremost, I had the considered it a career opportunity for a promotion, or a career limiting move. And, and so thankfully, it turned out that I had the opportunity to literally turn this deficit around. But I didn’t do it by myself. And I always say that whenever I engage or work with, you know, coaching for for clients, or if I’m a part of the board planning, I always say that I don’t, I don’t have all the answers. But all the answers are in this room. And so I had this idea creatively, to tap into the various what I would call experts in each department. And so no matter how small your organization is, it’s got individuals that have a different discipline, a different set of lenses, if you will, that they look at the business every day. And so they see things and have a perspective, that’s very different than yours, right? And sometimes, I know we can, we can have such a deep focus on what we’re doing that we end up with blind spots, I like to call them blind spots where we just can’t see what’s what’s outside of our vision, and someone coming from a different lens can see what maybe you can’t and so, the idea was to bring together this group of people and the marketer in me said, nobody wants another job to do especially in a small organization. How do I how do I, how do I motivate? Or how do I inspire? How do I, you know, just bring this group where they want to belong to this to this challenge that we have this task force and it was called the task force, the membership retention Task Force, and I was like, Ah, I think you know, that just painful, right? And so I decided that I was gonna rebrand it, and I came up with teen Tiger. And so the tiger was a inside marketing strategy, if you will. that I created. And so I came up with a new name. And the team Tiger consisted of those that were going to be very passionate about running after, you know, running after the members that we were losing in the hopes of bringing them back and setting the stage to really give a roar, if you will, around how important it is to belong, the value proposition that you would get and really shoring up some of the things that that we felt we were missing. And so team Tiger became known throughout the organization, I just started talking it up. And it was interesting, because within eight months to a year, after testing a lot of ideas, I had people volunteering, can I be on Team Tiger? And so I was like, Well, you know, we’re really right now we’re just trying to kind of manage, because we didn’t want it to be too big either. Because then it becomes, you know, it becomes a place where it’s harder to have everyone be seen, heard and valued, right, becomes too big. So we did, we did rotate folks off because of other responsibilities and to bring in new perspectives. But it worked. So well. And you know, that it, we not only turned around the deficit, but we exceeded our goal within the time of budget. And so it’s safe to say I was able to keep my job. But then after, after that time, in the in that organization, I got tapped by another CEO, because sometimes people think, well, that’s a one and done. And, you know, it was a silver bullet. And you guys had some tricks of the trade. And for a while there, I thought that to Brendan, but then I got tapped by another CEO. And he said, I heard about what you did in this organization leading this team Tiger. And I was like, wow, you know, news travels. And he said, I would like to, I’d like to talk to you about doing some consulting workforce. And I was like, Well, I don’t really consult but I coach, there’s a big difference, you know, because I think you’ve got the power and you’ve got the talent, they just need a different lens, a different perspective, right, someone to come in and kind of cheer them on champion them and their cause and their tie in and reenergize them. And, and so I had the opportunity to engage with them, it was three weeks of doing some preliminary roll, you know, just kind of getting the lay of the land. And then I was asked to go to present to the board. So they flew me up for a 20 minute presentation. And I couldn’t even go to the board meeting, this was so funny, because they flew me to did to go to the board. But I can only come in the board room at the time of my presentation, which was only going to be for 20 minutes. And so I was like, okay, so I went in, I really didn’t have anything to report on. I mean, it’s three weeks, so you can’t really get a good feel for Okay, here’s, here’s the solutions you need right now. But I, I did present a business case. And, and not only a case, but a pathway forward, if you will, I call it the pathway principle. And it’s just really four things for them to have to look at, you know, know your numbers. And so really getting into your your data, your member data, know your numbers, know your resources, you got to know resources. And when I talk about resources, I talk about who you have in the organization, and who you have outside your organization, resources, like staff, or like members that are a part of your organization in your chamber. And they have expertise, but but also your partners, and your vendors, right, or industry vendor partners, because they’re due or different. Sponsors may be different as well. But those expertise, so know your resources, number three is you have to know your value. So is the value that you bring to your member base, relevant, as my good friend, Mary buyers would say, is the relevance there today as it was when you first started. And I think you know, for all of us, we have to take a look at what our value is, as we go forward. And then the fourth step on that pathway principle is really to know your plan. And that sounds very simple. But it’s not easy. Because everybody’s got a day to day job. And so I just presented that pathway principle and the thesis that I had so far, and at the end of 20 minutes, my my time was over. And we met when we met at around six 630 for cocktails, and it was then in there that the CEO said I’d like To bring you on board 100% full time, we want you to work with our organization to turn around our membership, retention deficit. And I thought, Okay, I got a year. And three years later with Team Tiger inside another organization, we won the Federation growth award for the highest net growth. Year over year, every year, we exceeded budget. So it’s not me, I really, really really don’t want to, to shortchange anyone here it is the collective connection. I’ll go back to that, again, of having the right people on Team tiger with with a focus of creating that culture where they want to belong, and where people want to belong as members to

Brandon Burton 35:51
very good. And your right, team Tiger sounds way more sexy than membership retention task force. So for anyone out there who’s on a membership retention Task Force, maybe, you know, think about rebranding it. Yeah,

Velma Knowles 36:03
I tell you, it goes. It’s just built curiosity. And you know, curiosity sparks interests, and interests, then return gives you a return on your investment.

Brandon Burton 36:15
Right? Well, Velma, as we start to wrap things up here, I want to ask you for any chamber champions that are out there listening who wants to take their organization up to the next level? What kind of tip or action item might you share with them that they can implement it their organization?

Velma Knowles 36:33
Right? Oh, yeah. When I thought about this question, because in full disclosure, you gave me all these questions. And, and I thought, well, what would what would I want someone to say to me, and I could rattle off several different tactics that you can test. But I think they’re shortchanged. And I don’t think you have to know more about that chamber in order to really give them good direction there. So for me, I would say, if there’s one thing I would, would challenge, or even encourage my chamber champions to do is to, first and foremost, look at, look at your, your organization, your communication to your members, and to your future members. And ask yourself, Am I focused on communicating how I solve the problems that I know they have? Or am I focused on communicating the services that I offer? I think there’s a big difference between, you know, when you say, I’m going to communicate the problem, the solutions to the problems I solve, versus the services that I offer. Services are, you know, things that you get from membership. But everyone has those services, right? I mean, just about even even for profit organizations now have member based organizations, Facebook, and Amazon, and they have magazines, and, you know, they may not have conferences, but they’ve got a lot of different other benefits that that that are traditional in our membership model. So I think when you focus on selling the problem that you solve, giving them the solutions to the things that you can provide, I think that that over the service, because it services services, that is what I expect, solutions is what I need. Right?

Brandon Burton 38:27
I had heard a quote, it’s been a few years back now, but it went to the the effect of if you can define the problem better than your future customer or client member, whoever it is, they assume that you have the answer. So if you can get good at defining their problem, they will assume that you have the answer. So to your point with communication that is key. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Velma Knowles 39:00
Oh, you are going to be so surprised by this one. But I think the future of my chamber champions out there, and I would, I would invite all businesses, so if they they listen in anyone outside of this listens in, I think that your greatest future opportunity is focused on connection. You know, the Surgeon General of the United States here has reported in this timeframe that we’re in that one of the greatest health crisis is not it’s not heart disease, it’s not, you know, smoking or cancer or any of those other really, you know, detrimental health issues that that we face. It’s it’s loneliness. And the solution to that is connection, and it brings us full circle because the primary reason of the existence for our chambers is to connect people So I really, really believe that I’ll use the quote that, you know, if you want to be stronger. You know, if you if you want, how does it go, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go further go together. And I think partnerships through collaboration is a way that you’re going to be able to provide solutions to problems that don’t even exist today for your future members and existing members. And it’s going to allow you to be viewed as innovative, creative, and a leader in really bringing organizations together. And I think that is going to elevate your board leadership. It’s going to elevate your member engagement, increase your employee retention, and it’s going to give you a sustainable organization for the future.

Brandon Burton 40:56
Very good. I love it. Getting back to the basics back to the roots of what chambers are all about. Well, Velma, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information or places you’d like to point people to follow you or connect with you and learn more about the services you offer. Anything you touched on today. Where would you point them to? To connect with you?

Velma Knowles 41:19
Yeah, sure. Thank you. Thank you, again, so much, Brandon, for the opportunity to be on the Chamber Chat Podcast I and to be such a an easygoing post. So I appreciate that. No real tough, tough questions here. But thank you so much for helping me be well prepared for our listeners. It’s really truly my honor to serve today. And I’m very easy to find. i My website is my name Velma Knowles and so it’s VelmaKnowles.com. And if you go there, I have some resources that are just free that you know, anyone can tap into some of them are on membership, and some are on leadership blindspots communication things that can help your team inside the organization level up, if you will, and then help your help your organization from a growth retention engagement standpoint. So I would just suggest go to VelmaKnowles.com, of course, I’m on LinkedIn, under the same name, and, and so and social media channels as well. I’m in on YouTube, I have a small podcast, a YouTube podcast called Your Leadership Chat.

Brandon Burton 42:32
Very good love podcast. So I know you check out Velma there. And we’ll we’ll get all of that in our show notes to make it easy for people to click and follow yes and learn more about what you have to offer. But I appreciate you spending time with us today. Here on chamber tap podcast, you provided a lot of value, a lot of perspectives. I took a lot of notes, and a lot of good. I don’t want to just say one liners because I think that shortchanges them but those lines that make you think you know and make you kind of look internally a little bit more and a little deeper on the the comments he made today. So thank you for for coming on and sharing that and I really do think you’ve provided a ton of value for us today.

Velma Knowles 43:14
Thank you, and thank you to the listeners and for supporting the Chamber Chat Podcast.

Brandon Burton 43:21
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