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Diversifying Programming for Non-Dues Revenue with Sheila Thomas

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Brandon Burton (00:00.638)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Sheila Thomas. Sheila has served as the president and CEO of the Table Rock Lake Chamber of Commerce since 2014. Before joining the Chamber, Sheila served as executive director of the Ozarks River Heritage Foundation.

where she partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to manage several Corps properties, including the Dewey Short Visitor Center and multiple campgrounds. While much of her career has been spent as a successful real estate broker in the Branson area, her professional roots are in journalism, public relations, and marketing, a foundation that continues to influence her strategic leadership style today. Under Sheila’s leadership, her chamber team has earned 20 awards from the

the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri, an international award for digital marketing, and the marketing campaign award from the Missouri Division of Tourism. The organization has also been voted best in Southwest Missouri for three consecutive years. Sheila is a member of the Rotary Club of Table Rock Lake and currently serves as the Board of Directors for the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri. She is a graduate of Leadership Missouri and has been

recognized as one of Springfield’s business journals, 20 Most Influential Women, and by Ingram’s Magazine as one of 50 Missourians to know. Sheila and her husband Gordon have three children and four grandchildren. And when she’s not championing for her community, you’ll find her boating on Table Rock Lake or spending time with her grandbabies. But Sheila, 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

Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you little better.

Sheila Thomas (02:01.751)
Well, thanks, Brandon. It’s good to be here with you. Thank you for asking me. I’m not sure how much interesting I have to share about myself other than now I seem to be most excited about my grandkids. I have four now. And so that has been that they have all been born in the last three years. So, yeah, so that has been quite a life changing thing for us. We we tend to try to figure out how we can go.

Brandon Burton (02:21.972)
wow.

Sheila Thomas (02:31.381)
either north to Kansas City or south to Fayetteville, you know, every weekend just about. So that’s been an exciting thing. And I love living here at Table Rock Lake because I absolutely love being out on the lake and spending time there in the summertime.

Brandon Burton (02:37.3)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:53.364)
Well, you’re doing something right. If the grandkids are pulling you in those directions, you got your priorities straight, right? Well, tell us a little bit about the Table Rock Lake Chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of your organization, staff, scope of work you’re involved with, budget, kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Sheila Thomas (02:57.118)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (03:13.567)
Okay, so we have around 500 members, so we’re kind of a medium-sized chamber in Missouri anyway. We have a staff of six, and that’s a little bit unusual probably for that number of members, but we also handle tourism and economic development for our county, so we have some different programs of work than some chambers.

but we do traditional chamber things also. Membership, know, member services and education and advocacy and all those types of things. So we are here in on Table Rock Lake in Branson West, which is just as the name says, just west of Branson, Missouri, different county. But we are in a county that contains Silver Dollar City and

two thirds of the shoreline of Table Rock Lake. kind of a small, smaller area, but a big, tourism spot.

Brandon Burton (04:22.218)
Yeah, and a beautiful part of the country. It really is beautiful there. So you guys got a great spot. Well, I think that that helps to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. So we’ll focus most of our discussion around diversifying programming and how it can help boost and sustain different areas of work within your chamber. So we’ll dive into that in much more detail as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Sheila Thomas (04:24.693)
Yeah, yeah it is.

Brandon Burton (04:52.362)
All right, Sheila, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break today, we’re talking about diversifying and programming. So as you mentioned in kind of the introduction of your chamber, you guys have the tourism responsibility as well as economic development on top of your chamber responsibilities. But that I think has a lot of strengths to it. Like it can spread you thin, but it has a lot of strengths to it to allow you to align.

your focus and your programming to really move things forward in your community. But I’d to learn more from your perspective as far as diversifying your programming. What does that look like? How have you implemented that as a practice versus a lot of maybe some of the, not to put anything down, but some of the stale programming that we see around Chambers. What could be a fresh look for us?

Sheila Thomas (05:49.292)
Well, I mean, you know, as I said, we do the traditional chamber things, obviously, but and we’re a little bit different area. I understand as in a tourism based economy, it is a little different than just, you know, a town out in the middle of outstate Missouri. But we have we have made an attempt actually within the last

or three years to really diversify. The first thing we did was to become involved in economic development. We were already doing some tourism marketing through some grant opportunities and then we would raise money from our members to help support the things that the grant wouldn’t pay for. But about three years ago we decided that we wanted to embark on an economic development program. There’s no

In our county, there’s no city or county that has an economic development director. So we felt like we needed to fill that gap. And so we hired a company called Opportunity Funding. We created a five-year strategic plan. And then we set about raising money to fund our economic development program. And we got pledges over a five-year period of about a million and a quarter.

that funded the hiring of an economic development director and then the creation of our department and we’re working on some other initiatives there as well. And then tourism, like I said, we had been doing tourism marketing, utilizing a state grant and then some matching money from a tax district that is in part of our county.

But we decided that we needed to place a lodging tax on our on the ballot and so that passed this last year in April went into effect in October and the county contracted with us to manage those funds and do that marketing and so we receive an admin fee from that from that also and so

Sheila Thomas (08:14.829)
that we’ll be able to expand staffing in that department. But we are a small team, we do a lot of big things. And so we really probably are understaffed based on what we do, but we do it pretty well. We’ve managed to do it pretty well.

Brandon Burton (08:35.272)
Yeah, I love that you guys saw the opportunity and the need between economic development and finding solutions for driving the marketing and funding and really just making a charting your own path. You’re not asking for permission necessarily.

Sheila Thomas (08:50.177)
Well, that’s kind of my belief about what chambers should be doing. You know, you find an opportunity in your community or a need and then you figure out how to fill that gap. Related to business and the economy, obviously not a social service type gap, but yeah, we just felt like we were the best equipped to do it. So if not us, then who? So we did it.

Brandon Burton (09:19.144)
Right. Yeah. And great opportunities for you guys to be able to step into those those two areas with tourism and economic development. So I’m thinking for those listening, you know, maybe they’re in small town USA and and they don’t have the same kind of scale of needing the economic development or the tourism driver. Or you have the other end of the scale where maybe they are in a bigger

Sheila Thomas (09:26.72)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (09:47.691)
community and there’s a separate destination marketing organization or economic development organization. What role can, I don’t want say should, but what role could a chamber have in those situations to still look at diversifying their programming to not just rely on membership and networking and things like that? What other revenue sources can they look

Sheila Thomas (09:51.136)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (10:15.902)
look towards or even lean into some of these things that you’ve already addressed.

Sheila Thomas (10:20.686)
We tend to focus very heavily on what our mission is and those things include economic development, tourism, that kind of thing. And then we try to create programming around those activities. One of the things we did several years ago was create what we call Chamber University.

Brandon Burton (10:35.038)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (10:49.558)
and we offer classes that our members can attend. And we charge for those because we believe people find value in things that they pay money for. And we often have experts that are providing, you know, a well-rounded curriculum that you wouldn’t get just anywhere. And so we charge $25 and it’s usually a three-hour, two to three-hour class.

and we poll our members to find out what types of topics they’re interested in, obviously. And then we do a lot of, we have what we call a community partner program, and these are basically folks who contribute above and beyond their membership dues, who just want to focus on mission-based things. You know, any chamber has those members who

join because they just want to network or they just want to they’re big on advocacy, legislative advocacy or those kinds of things. But you also have members who join because they believe in your mission and those folks contribute to us a little bit at a little bit higher level because we’re still on a fair share dues structure. But so it’s kind of a blended structure between tiered and fair share.

Brandon Burton (12:16.158)
OK.

Sheila Thomas (12:17.164)
they contribute above and beyond their membership dues. And then we highlight them in all kinds of ways throughout the year. But I think you just have to get creative for revenue generation. But if it’s tied to what your mission is and not just simply a fundraiser, you’re much better off.

Brandon Burton (12:42.206)
Yeah. So I’m curious about Chamber University. said you’re members and seeing what they’re interested in learning. But what are some of the topics you guys have dove into with Chamber University, just for some examples?

Sheila Thomas (12:47.106)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (12:54.478)
Our members have indicated always a very strong interest in marketing. And so we have had a lot of marketing classes. And because we’re fortunate to have some larger businesses here who have marketing departments and sophisticated marketing departments, they have given us really great class topics.

Brandon Burton (13:13.876)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (13:23.99)
We’ve taught, we just had one on search engine optimization and we’ve had them on search engine marketing and I think the last one we had was more social media based. We have one coming up that’s how to utilize market research in your marketing and where to go for information regarding market research. And so just, we’ve had

variety, a big variety of topics that members have really, we always ask them to rate the programming and we always get excellent reviews. it’s been a really popular thing for our members.

Brandon Burton (14:09.546)
Yeah, that’s good. Is it typically like done over lunch or is it strictly come and learn or what’s the format? Okay.

Sheila Thomas (14:18.186)
It’s usually like 9 to 11 or 9 to noon. And we have a sponsor. We have a sponsor for everything. We have a sponsor who is allowed to, they provide like a, you know, a continental breakfast. And then they are allowed to speak to the group. And we give them a specified amount of time.

Brandon Burton (14:24.606)
There you go.

Brandon Burton (14:38.922)
Yeah, that’s good. And then the community partner program. So I love that idea of having those members who contribute above and beyond that are mission based to be able to lean on them. like you said, every community has them. I think of the big manufacturers that they may not sell any more widgets by coming to a networking event, but they still they see a lot of value in the mission of the chamber.

Sheila Thomas (14:49.998)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (14:55.971)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (15:01.58)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (15:07.096)
That’s right.

Brandon Burton (15:07.818)
So they want to get behind that and whether it’s advocacy or different angles that the chamber’s involved with, they want to be a part of. So leaning into that. What are some of these other non dues revenue areas that you guys look to or have been able to spin up?

Sheila Thomas (15:15.854)
That’s right.

Sheila Thomas (15:24.206)
We do a couple of publications every year. Of course, again, we’re in a tourism-based economy, so we have a need for a vacation guide that we do every year. And every other year, we do either a community guide or an updated lake map, and we sell ads in those publications.

and then we distribute them through a variety of sources. But we make a good bit of income from all of those things. In a smaller community, a community guide would work, definitely. It’s basically a of a combination of relocation and economic development type publication. And so we utilize that.

Brandon Burton (16:02.675)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (16:22.862)
We sell ads on our website. Again, we’re a tourism-based economy, so I get that our website probably has more visitation than some. Let’s see. We don’t do any major community events except a fireworks show that we have been doing for 40 plus years, and we are not going to be allowed to ever not do that event. However,

Brandon Burton (16:28.648)
you.

Brandon Burton (16:48.234)
Nobody will know what to do on the Fourth of July, right?

Sheila Thomas (16:52.876)
That’s right. That’s right. However, we have managed to we have managed to do a really good job with that. And we we give our we have partnered with so we needed corporate donations to help pay for the show. And so we partnered with our local radio station and with a company in Springfield on me on media.

And the radio provides us commercials to highlight our sponsors. And On Media provides us also a commercial. And we get to highlight our biggest sponsors. And so they get something from their donation, if you will. So they’re not just giving to a fireworks show. And we try to do all of our

Brandon Burton (17:42.376)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (17:49.025)
all of our programming that way to make sure that our sponsors really have value in what they get. We have a golf tournament, but we really focus on the networking part of it and the camaraderie part. And we have on-course sponsors that go out and they man booths and do things like that, but they love it. They just love it. And so,

We have partnered with a local golf course to do that and we just try to make sure that there is value there and they’re not just, we’re not just asking them for money as like a donation because we’re not a social service organization or a charity. We are a business organization and so we try to approach it that

Brandon Burton (18:44.852)
Yeah, so that comment kind of leads into, I was going to circle back to your economic development front where you had partnered with Opportunity Funding to do the, we’ll say the funding round, to be able to approach the economic development work. For those listening who may not be familiar with that sort of…

Sheila Thomas (18:52.994)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (19:00.844)
The funny, yeah.

Brandon Burton (19:12.778)
function or fundraising opportunity? Did you guys structure that within a foundation? Is it just within the chamber? How did you go about the asks? I’m assuming people committed to give X amount over a five-year period or something like that. But how was that structured? How did that work?

Sheila Thomas (19:22.819)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (19:28.515)
Right?

Sheila Thomas (19:33.263)
So opportunity funding has a lot of experience in this realm. And so they were a very valuable partner because we created the strategic plan with the help of probably 100 to 100, about 150 probably people in our community had input into this plan and opportunity funding sort of led us through that process. Then once we had the plan completed, opportunity funding

Brandon Burton (19:53.898)
Thanks.

Sheila Thomas (20:02.19)
helped us with the asks. So we helped set up the appointments and then opportunity funding would provide us with information that we could provide the prospect. And so they really walked us through that whole process. And it was a very positive experience for us. It went very well. We had had people telling us for several years that they were really

They really wanted us to focus on economic development and we really hadn’t done anything in that strong in that regard. And so they were, I think, very excited when we stepped into this role. And so we just great response and opportunity funding basically from start to finish plans the process for you and walks you through it.

Brandon Burton (20:58.698)
Okay, so is it all being held within the chamber or did you guys do a separate foundation?

Sheila Thomas (21:03.498)
yes. So we have a foundation and some of the prospects wanted their money to go to the foundation, but we have a management agreement with the foundation and the chain between the management agreement between the chamber and the foundation. And so we are able to utilize both. Most of the money comes into the chamber.

Brandon Burton (21:25.898)
So either way. Okay. Is there any strategic advantages of having it come into the chamber versus the foundation or vice versa that you can identify?

Sheila Thomas (21:37.294)
really, it just depends on how the prospect, they want to donate it to a 501c3 or a 501c6. Yeah, tax write-off or business expense, of, you know, one or the other.

Brandon Burton (21:44.712)
Yeah, get the tax right off or yeah.

Econ Dev Ops is the virtual assistant service built specifically for small Chambers of Commerce and Economic Development Organizations (EDOs)

Brandon Burton (21:51.275)
Yeah. Okay. Very good. And then with the tourism marketing, I think that’s great that you guys took that on to get that on the ballot to be able to get the lodging tax. I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t there already. I thought that was a normal thing for anywhere. You stay at a hotel and you’re paying your hot funds and then it’s going to whoever’s driving tourism. But to see the need there and to be able to take it from idea to

Sheila Thomas (21:57.006)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (22:11.279)
I know.

Brandon Burton (22:21.2)
execution. What was that like trying to get it on the ballot and what kind of challenges did you guys face with that?

Sheila Thomas (22:28.818)
wow, that’s a loaded question. so, we, we met, with, several groups of people leading up to the decision. our County commission was favorable, in terms of putting a tax on the ballot. They, they believe that that is, was a good thing.

Brandon Burton (22:33.748)
Yeah

Brandon Burton (22:48.51)
which has green eyes to bright and green eyes to blue.

Sheila Thomas (22:55.182)
We decided on a lodging tax rather than just like a retail type tax. so it went on the ballot and then we began trying to educate people because it is one of those things. A lodging tax, anywhere you go you pay a lodging tax. But people here are…

Brandon Burton (23:17.115)
Right.

Sheila Thomas (23:22.542)
in our area are very, very tax averse. And so we didn’t know how it was going to work, but it did pass. And it’s going to give us some money that we didn’t have to be able to promote our area. And so we’re in a county of about 32,000 people, but our largest city is 2,500 people.

And so and where my office is in Branson West, that’s about almost maybe 500 people. That’s it. And so there’s a lot of of nightly rentals here and not a lot of big hotels or anything like that, but a lot of nightly rentals. And so we just saw that as an opportunity to give us some money to promote us and our area versus so we’re you know, we’re nine miles, 10 miles from Branson and

Brandon Burton (23:58.185)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (24:20.748)
They have a very large budget for tourism marketing, but we wanted to market our own little corner of the world. And so that gives us that opportunity.

Brandon Burton (24:27.679)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:33.364)
Yeah, that’s great. And I think for anybody who’s considering that, I mean, as far as a revenue source, that’s coming from people outside of the community. So you’re not going to the business owners and the residents and saying, we want to impose this tax on you. But it’s those that come and enjoy our amenities, who use our roads, who come bring business to the restaurants and everything and the retail outlets. Let’s have them help fund the bill of

Sheila Thomas (24:44.801)
Right.

Sheila Thomas (24:53.878)
Right.

Sheila Thomas (24:58.37)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (25:02.935)
Right.

Brandon Burton (25:03.434)
and making sure all of this is up and good for them. So I think it makes a whole lot of sense and I’m glad you guys were able to communicate that through the marketing or everything you had to do to be able to get that on the ballot and get it passed. So great job to you guys and congratulations on that victory. I wanted to ask on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.

Sheila Thomas (25:15.086)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (25:20.43)
Thanks.

Brandon Burton (25:31.016)
What kind of tip or action item might you share with them, whether it’s related to what we’ve talked about today or something totally different that might help them in accomplishing that?

Sheila Thomas (25:37.345)
You

Sheila Thomas (25:40.655)
Well, first let me say, just so that they understand that I understand. When I came to this role in 2014, I started in April and I realized in May that I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to make payroll. And I had to go to our biggest contributor who normally

Brandon Burton (25:59.531)
Thanks.

Hmm.

Sheila Thomas (26:09.998)
would pay for her things like all like in June for the whole year. I had to go to her and say, would you consider doing this in May instead of June? Because I’m in a bad way and she did and fortunately, and so I understand what it’s like to be, you know, that that chamber that is like just trying to keep your head above water. I get it. I do get it.

Brandon Burton (26:13.768)
Right.

Brandon Burton (26:34.889)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (26:38.658)
What we really tried to do and what I have a different team now than I had then, but what we really tried to do is really focus on what we were supposed to be doing. And that is being advocating for business, representing business, helping business owners and not trying to do a bunch of other things. And so we really tried to hone in on that.

And I read a book, I have it here right by me, several years ago called Horseshoes versus Chess by Dave Anderson. Yeah, and you got it too? Yep, there it is. I recommend that book to new chamber execs all the time because you really have to understand the long game.

Brandon Burton (27:16.38)
Yes, Dave Atkinson.

I’ve got mine right here. Yep.

Sheila Thomas (27:37.563)
And I started, I became involved early on in our state organization, our Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri, and attended their conferences and that kind of thing. I had never run a chamber before when I started. so I just tried to get as much education as I could. And so I strongly recommend that for anybody that’s trying to

move up, either get your membership numbers up or get your revenue up or both. You just you really have to just don’t do just what you’ve always done. You have to look at it differently and you have to look at making sure that you’re doing the things that the businesses want you to do.

Brandon Burton (28:19.401)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:32.042)
Absolutely. Great piece of advice. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Sheila Thomas (28:44.782)
You know, ACCE talks about, know, they do a report on this every year and I think their research shows that, you know, chamber membership is not necessarily as important to current generations as it had been in the past.

Brandon Burton (28:52.776)
Horizon, yeah.

Sheila Thomas (29:14.178)
But I believe, you know, especially in communities, we kind of represent a county more so than a city, but particularly in cities, there’s a sense of belonging that people still want and connectiveness. And so I really, I don’t think we’re going away anytime soon. I think if we’re doing the things that the businesses need and want,

then we’re valuable and they want to keep us around and want to be part of it. So I’m not as, I’m not negative about the future of Chambers at all. I think there’s still a great place for the organization in a community.

Brandon Burton (30:04.884)
Yeah, I think to your point, in a world where things are much more connected digitally, chambers will be around for that human connection because as humans, we still need that. We need that to thrive and chambers will be there to fill that space. So as well as a lot of other space, but that’s one key point that I see. Well, Sheila, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information.

Sheila Thomas (30:13.453)
Yes.

Yes.

Sheila Thomas (30:24.064)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (30:30.932)
listeners and they want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the table Rock Lake Chamber. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out?

Sheila Thomas (30:40.942)
If they just want to find out information about our organization, we have our tourism website is visittablerocklake.com. And of course we invite everyone to come and see us vacation here. We have tablerocklakechamber.com is more information about the organization. And then we have

of links to our economic development sites and all those kinds of things in our tourism site. If someone wants to contact me, the best way to do that is email and my email address is sthomas at visittablerocklake.com.

Brandon Burton (31:26.708)
It’s perfect. We’ll get all of that in our show notes to make it nice and easy and people can check out the different websites and see the sponsors you have on there and everything else you guys are doing.

Sheila Thomas (31:29.687)
Okay.

Sheila Thomas (31:35.811)
Yeah, we have, let me make mention. our, my membership development director was recognized by ACCE as one of the 40 under 40 in the, you know, in the country. And she also won the top business development award in our chamber category this last year. And so she’s a great resource for people that are interested in.

Brandon Burton (31:48.788)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (32:04.78)
learning a little bit more about membership pitches or sales, anything like that. And then I have a couple other great resources too, tourism marketing and economic development. So if we can help, we’d be happy to.

Brandon Burton (32:17.716)
Yeah.

Awesome, I appreciate that. Well, Sheila, thank you for setting aside some time and being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. This has been a great conversation and hopefully one that is getting some ideas turning in the minds of the listeners to be able to find other ways to meaningfully add to their bottom line in their organization. I appreciate it.

Sheila Thomas (32:42.946)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (32:46.287)
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

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Benefits of IOM Program with Karyn MacRae

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Brandon Burton (00:00.886)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Karyn MacRae. Karyn is the Senior Director of Institute for Organization Management at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Professional Development Program for Associations, Chamber, and other nonprofit executives.

Since 1921, Institute has educated leaders from across the country, making it one of the oldest and best regarded adult education programs in nonprofit management. Karyn is responsible for setting the strategic direction and vision of Institute in addition to managing the day-to-day operations of the program. She serves as a liaison to the Institute volunteer groups, the National Board of Trustees, four boards of regent and class advisors,

and also works on program logistics, including contract management. She is a graduate of James Madison University. And in addition to her IOM recognition, holds the Certified Association Executive and Certified Meeting Professional credentials. But Karyn, I am excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat.

podcast. So I’ll have to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Karyn MacRae (01:32.904)
Great. Thank you, Brandon. And thank you for the opportunity to be here on the Chamber Chat podcast. I’m very excited and hello to all of the Chamber Champions. Something interesting about myself is that I love to dance. I grew up dancing when I was younger. I actually went into college as a dance minor. I ended up dropping it, but I love everything about it.

Brandon Burton (01:55.502)
Thank you.

Karyn MacRae (01:58.526)
a couple of years ago started taking adult dance classes at the same studio where my daughters take classes too. So, love to dance.

Brandon Burton (02:03.47)
Thanks

Brandon Burton (02:07.502)
Very cool. And I hate dancing, so I’m glad there’s something out there for everybody, right? That’s great. So I like when I have a guest on, usually I have them share a little bit about their chamber, their organization, but why don’t you just from a high level, tell us about the IOM program, about Institute.

Karyn MacRae (02:11.783)
Yep.

Brandon Burton (02:34.766)
I know a lot of people find this podcast when they’re brand new to the chamber industry, and maybe it’d be helpful to kind of help set the stage with what the Institute program is before we dive into our discussion today.

Karyn MacRae (02:47.23)
Sure, absolutely. So the Institute program or as you mentioned in my introduction Institute for Organization Management is its full name. It is a professional development program of the US Chamber of Commerce. So we are located in Washington DC while the US Chamber has a staff of about 500 on the Institute team. We actually have five of us. So a small but mighty group and we are about a million dollar shop on the

Brandon Burton (03:01.032)
Thank you.

Karyn MacRae (03:17.224)
Institute side. And the program itself is for chamber professionals as well as associations and nonprofits. I recognize all the chamber champions listeners of your podcast are on the chamber side, but we do have the opportunity for associations and general nonprofits to join us well. And the program teaches anything and everything that a chamber professional would need to know, would want to know about how to better run their

Brandon Burton (03:28.601)
That’s right.

Karyn MacRae (03:47.099)
organization. So there are classes on leadership and finance and management and non-due’s revenue and all the different areas that you can think about. It is a four

year program or excuse me, it is a four week program. We are actually in the process of reframing our language. So I’m still getting used to it, but it is a four week program that takes place at four different locations throughout the year. A unique element is that they all take place on college campuses. So from the get go, you are in that learner mindset. It’s not like your typical conference where you’re in and out of a hotel ballroom. You are actually in

Brandon Burton (04:10.849)
Okay.

Karyn MacRae (04:31.794)
the classroom on a college campus. So it takes you back for sure at the end of the four weeks.

Attendees will have completed 96 credit hours of continuing education and they will earn the IOM recognition. So it is a commitment, that’s for sure, but in a nutshell, it is professional development and an opportunity to network and to build your relationships with other chamber professionals from across the country.

Brandon Burton (04:49.646)
I have always been a little bit of good-natured person, but I think that’s the only thing that’s important.

Brandon Burton (05:07.726)
That’s a great high level introduction. And today we’ll be diving in more in depth about the benefits of attending Institute. And for those, depending on the organization they’re coming from, even looking at some creative ways to be able to help get you there. So we’ll dive in deeper on that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Karyn, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into the benefits of attending the Institute.

program and you give a great breakdown of what what institute is and and being a four-week program so still for clarification still spread out over four years though is that right so still go with it so you can’t stack and do four weeks in a row and be done.

Karyn MacRae (05:37.779)
Mm-hmm.

Karyn MacRae (05:50.431)
Yes, yes, so it is offered four times a year. So essentially you could go to all four in one calendar year. That is a lofty way to do it. However, there is no wrong way to institute.

Brandon Burton (06:06.51)
Very good. So I just diving in, I mean, one of the maybe more obvious things that I see as far as a benefit from Institute is the relationships that come out of it, you know, with classmates and facilitators and, it really helps professionals develop their tribe, their people that they can lean on, that they can, you know, bounce ideas off of because they kind of go through somewhat of a fire together.

as they work on these programs and projects together. But from your perspective, as you guys organize and facilitate the program, how do you see the value points and what do you guys target, I guess, to be the value and the outcome for those that attend?

Karyn MacRae (06:56.732)
Yeah, absolutely. And you hit the nail on the head, Brandon. The networking and the relationship building is a huge benefit that people get from attending the Institute. We hear from our graduates, our current students, that the opportunities that they get at both the professional and personal level are really second to none. So people graduate, you have this cohort that you can go through the program with. We try to keep the classes a little bit

smaller. There have been some larger classes in the 50s, I would say, if you get a good crop of first-year attendees, people coming for the first time, which we love. But it’s about 50 or so people or less per class. So we try to keep it small enough that you feel like you can not only have an opportunity to ask questions, to share your ideas and feedback, but that it’s really a safe space. We want people to

Brandon Burton (07:36.888)
next time.

Brandon Burton (07:50.965)
you

Karyn MacRae (07:56.539)
be able to have those difficult conversations because like you said, people are going through, you know, putting out fires together. So really having that opportunity to have a safe place and a trusted network of peers to be able to talk freely is a really, really big benefit. I mentioned it earlier that there’s no way, wrong way, excuse me, to institute. So you can choose to go through the program.

by picking the same site and going once per calendar year. So in that case, you would be going over the course of four years. There is an opportunity to attend multiple sites in a given year. That’s what we call fast tracking. And we have seen a higher percentage of people do that since coming back from COVID, honestly. And there are benefits to doing both. One of the benefits of sticking with your same people through

Brandon Burton (08:31.118)
Thanks for

You

Brandon Burton (08:42.926)
Oh, I have to say to you, it’s amazing how much I’ve learned.

Karyn MacRae (08:55.616)
throughout the entire four years is that you are able to develop these deeper bonds and relationships through interaction with the same people.

But on the flip side, you need that many more people by going to different sites and you can still develop the relationships. Absolutely. That is, it’s amazing, honestly, to see you’re really only together for five days in person for each Institute week. And it seems like people have been.

you know, contacts and friends and colleagues for years, even though it’s only been a couple of days. So it’s really neat. I don’t want to give the impression that an attendee can’t develop those strong and deep relationships if they go to multiple sites. That’s absolutely not true. So for sure, the relationship building, that is a big, big benefit that we highlight and that we hear from all of our attendees that go through the

Brandon Burton (09:31.916)
Yeah.

Karyn MacRae (09:57.307)
program. Another benefit is the education, the professional development, the continuing education. Our classes are taught by a variety of different faculty members, many of whom you’ve had as guests on your show before, so we love the crossover. But they really are the experts. So we have a variety of different categories, our industry consultants who go around and specialize in this area for chambers and nonprofits. So

They know what they’re talking about. Another group, of course, are practitioners. So those fellow chamber professionals and associations, and they are…

in the trenches day in and day out. for sure, they really, say the consultants are the experts and no disrespect to them, they are. And our practitioners really are the ones who are dealing with all of the issues and the concerns and the triumphs and everything that our attendees are going through. Our practitioners are also going through as well. We also have our experts who are actual CPAs who teach finance

Brandon Burton (10:41.451)
Thank

Karyn MacRae (11:08.554)
classes, lawyers teach the law classes, et cetera. So they’re credentialed in their specific fields. And then we have a smaller group sometimes of university professors, as well as US Chamber and US Chamber Foundation staff who teach some of the classes too. So you’re getting.

Brandon Burton (11:22.702)
Let’s go. Open your eyes. Fight.

Karyn MacRae (11:27.154)
a wide variety of experience and knowledge from across the country. That’s another benefit is that it’s a national program. So, attendees and faculty members and our volunteers are coming from all different areas, even though we do have four sites that are broken down and placed by geography.

Brandon Burton (11:49.045)
Thank

Karyn MacRae (11:51.035)
the attendee base doesn’t necessarily stay in that geographic area. So that’s another benefit for sure is getting a wider

exposure to all different parts of the country. And hearing from peers. It’s not just the faculty. It’s that peer-to-peer sharing that we love and that our attendees love because whether you are brand new to the industry, like you said, you have a lot of chamber champions who are just getting their feet wet and trying to learn more about the industry. And we always recommend that they go to institutes selfishly.

Brandon Burton (12:02.158)
Yeah. Okay. Great.

Brandon Burton (12:28.716)
That’s right.

Karyn MacRae (12:31.422)
Want

really neat things is that yes, we do have some attendees on that side. And then on the other side, we have our industry veterans who have been in these roles, have been running chambers, maybe even have started out at the entry level and have worked their way up to president and CEO of their chamber. And they’re in the class together. They’re in the same cohort. So being able to share ideas with one another, you know, the veterans can learn just as much from the newbies and vice versa.

So so really having those opportunities are It’s a big it’s a big benefit And then as far as who we target it’s it’s everyone. No, like I said, there are a whole variety of levels of experience so if you work for a chamber or a trade association or a nonprofit then you are the perfect person to come to Institute it’s anyone who’s looking to improve their

Brandon Burton (13:17.614)
you

Brandon Burton (13:26.166)
I think we have to stay in this situation. That’s the end of the movie.

Karyn MacRae (13:31.697)
organization, know, thus obviously improving their their members and and and their communities Anyone looking to grow their network anyone looking to share ideas and get more ideas? Here from other chamber professionals in the industry as you know, it’s a it’s a unique industry. So getting that

Brandon Burton (13:50.83)
So, we’re ready to start.

Karyn MacRae (13:53.375)
and having that safe space to really be with your people, your village, as you mentioned earlier. So, yeah.

Brandon Burton (13:58.989)
That’s right. Yeah. So I’m so glad that we have you on the show because when I first started Chamber Chat, my experience was working as a chamber publisher and I would meet chambers of all different sizes and experience and some were really doing well. And I could tell by my interaction with their members, right? The members understood what the chamber’s mission was, what they were

Karyn MacRae (14:23.911)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (14:27.48)
doing their purpose going forward, where some other chambers kind of struggled a little bit. And as I met with their members, they’re like, I pay my dues, but I don’t see anything out of it. I don’t even know what the chamber does. the more I kind of learned about it and dove into it, I realized those chambers that were struggling, they, they didn’t go to Institute. They didn’t have, maybe their, their board didn’t allow for them to, you know, have the funding to go to their state conferences or.

You know, some regional conferences or things of that nature where they can learn from their peers. And as we’ve mentioned before, a lot of newcomers to the industry find the podcast and it’s part of their hydration as they drink through a fire hose is just getting all this information. But to have this be one of those key elements that they learn about early in their chamber journey and their experience in the industry, I think is so important.

Karyn MacRae (15:15.262)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (15:25.72)
to help them be able to get educated and to be able to build those connections, build that tribe, because so often in your community, you’re the only one in the community that’s doing your job. And if you can lean upon others, yes, you will have a board and things like that, but some things you don’t want to take to your board because maybe it reduces confidence in you as a leader, but if you can go to a peer in the industry who’s seen what you’re talking about, they can help give some ideas and.

Karyn MacRae (15:45.936)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (15:54.799)
and a fresh perspective on how to approach some of these things. So you’ve hit on a lot of these great benefits and I’m sure we’ll touch on some more as well, but I wanna make sure that we have an opportunity to touch on for those maybe smaller chambers, those who are, I’ll say a little underserved, which by the podcast became something. Can we speak to them for a minute about how to

get involved? can they have those conversations with their board? How can they find the funding? are some ways that they can set that goal to attend Institute and to get to that finish line to actually go and attend?

Karyn MacRae (16:38.062)
Absolutely. So of course, there is a tuition to attend. And in addition to that, we do have other expenses because it takes place at four different locations there is usually unless it’s in your backyard travel involved. So you have to get yourself there. There’s lodging, there’s incidentals, etc. So we definitely understand that funding can be a barrier to entry for for some organizations. And there are a variety of ways we do

Brandon Burton (16:54.19)
you

Karyn MacRae (17:07.936)
offer Institute scholarships. We actually just passed the deadline. Unfortunately for the three summer sites that are coming up, but we do have our winter site taking place in January of 27 and those scholarship opportunities will open in July. So for anyone listening who might be interested, be on the lookout for that. So Institute does have a couple of different scholarships and those are all funded on site by

generous attendees by volunteers, by faculty, by staff, people who would like to and are in a position where they’re able to give back. So we do have a silent auction and we have additional other onsite fundraising opportunities. And that money is all distributed in the form of Institute scholarships for the specific site in which it is earned the year after.

Brandon Burton (17:47.214)
So we’re going to have to a way So thank you.

Karyn MacRae (18:05.026)
So that is for sure Institute scholarships are one opportunity. Also state organizations. So we do have partnerships with many of the state CCEs across the country. And if anyone is involved in your state CCE, I highly recommend communicating with them and seeing if they have any available funding. If they do go through our formal state partner scholarship,

partnership with the US Chamber, then they are given a $500 tuition scholarship to award to a first-time attendee. So that is a formalized scholarship process through Institute that is all the deliberations and everything is awarded by that state CCE organization. In addition to that,

Brandon Burton (18:33.582)
This is

Karyn MacRae (18:54.652)
Sometimes these CCEs have additional scholarships that aren’t technically through Institute, but they have funding available for professional development programs, one of which can be Institute. So I obviously can’t speak to all of the CCEs, but I do know that opportunities are available. And we have heard from many attendees that they were able to get additional funding, not through Institute.

Brandon Burton (19:06.439)
I would say it’s these more organized, more organized, more organized.

Karyn MacRae (19:20.284)
but rather their state CCE organization. that’s definitely an option. And something that we’re hearing more and more about that honestly, I will say I had not heard of this and I had not realized this and I’m slightly embarrassed because I’ve been here for so long until a few years ago I learned this, that some of our volunteers and attendees have gotten their tuition funded by a member. They have gone to

Brandon Burton (19:44.94)
him

Karyn MacRae (19:50.191)
A local utility company is one that we’ve heard a lot of, but a local member and have said, hey, there’s this opportunity. I need some assistance financially. And here are the benefits. Here’s what I can take back and apply to produce ROI for our community and for your business. Would you be interested in helping to sponsor me? So what I have heard from those people

Brandon Burton (19:59.917)
you

Karyn MacRae (20:20.064)
people who have had that opportunity to have a local member sponsor them is that after the first year of the program, or should I say first week, excuse me, they have taken the ideas learned and applied them and the ROI that has come out of it.

has been so great or so impactful that their board at the chamber has been like, okay, I see what you’re talking about. I see the benefit. We will make it a point to find the money and budget for the professional development for years or weeks two through four. So of course, that’s a perfect ideal scenario. I recognize that that doesn’t always happen, but we have heard that it can happen. utilizing your network within your…

Brandon Burton (20:50.158)
Bye.

Brandon Burton (21:00.845)
Right.

Karyn MacRae (21:08.794)
own community and and reaching out we do have a couple of testimonials available on our website and certainly happy to make connections if someone is struggling and would like a little bit more guidance or you know advice on that also utilizing our volunteer network our volunteers are amazing again many of which have been guests on your show already so they are all graduates of the program and they want to give back

Brandon Burton (21:17.39)
and the public health and the public health system. This government is not going to be able to do anything about this.

Brandon Burton (21:32.952)
Great.

Karyn MacRae (21:38.577)
I can sit here and talk about all the benefits of Institute and and I do obviously But I get paid to do that. Whereas our volunteers and I do I do truly believe in our program This is this is genuine passion and excitement, but our volunteers, you know They they truly see the benefits and they want to pay it forward and they want to give back They have had many a conversation with chamber professionals who are finding it difficult

Brandon Burton (21:44.942)
That’s right, it’s your job.

Karyn MacRae (22:08.5)
to get that approval to find that funding. So I know I’m volunteering, our volunteers, to have those conversations. But if anyone listening really would like to be connected, definitely reach out and we can make those connections, because that is certainly an opportunity as well.

Brandon Burton (22:14.978)
Great.

Brandon Burton (22:28.087)
That’s perfect. I’m so grateful for you sharing those different resources, not only from funding, but those connections to the volunteers and to really, I think, help have a good argument. So if you go to your board or you try to find that member to help finance, you know, your tuition and travel and whatnot for Institute to really have those talking points down, this is what you can expect out of me.

going and getting educated and bringing this back to the community. So I wanted to ask, as far as the faculty goes and the curriculum, is it a set curriculum for each campus and by each week, I’ll say, instead of year?

Karyn MacRae (23:01.374)
Hmm?

Karyn MacRae (23:08.67)
Thanks for listening.

Karyn MacRae (23:13.882)
Great question and yeah, I should should dive into the curriculum. Absolutely. So it is a set curriculum It’s actually tied to the bodies of knowledge of the CCE the certified chamber executive credential offered by a CCE and then on the association side, which I realize your listeners are not on the association side, but I do need to mention because it is part of it the Certified Association executive credential offered by ASAE

Brandon Burton (23:34.723)
Yeah.

Karyn MacRae (23:41.369)
So we do have representatives from those two organizations who actually sit on our Curriculum Committee as well as our National Board of Trustees and we make sure that we are in line with their bodies of knowledge the trends and everything that they’re hearing and experiencing throughout the industry that Institute matches that and that we are staying abreast of all the Important topics in areas that we should be so the curriculum is set and our faculty

members do go through a rigorous interview process and they are selected and placed based upon a variety of factors but one of which is area of expertise and experience. So based upon who is qualified to teach each certain class.

They are given a syllabus where all of the classes have three or four course objectives. That’s all the same throughout every institute site. Where it differs is the faculty members own experience and perspective and presentation style. So they are asked to teach the same course objectives, but how they deliver that information and how they do their coursework and group work, will say a big

of Institute that I have not yet mentioned is that it is very interactive. There are long days, it’s 96 hours as I mentioned over the course of the four weeks, but each week is 24 hours. So attendees are in class starting at 8 a.m. Sometimes the longest day starts out very, very long and then it gets shorter throughout the week, but it’s until 6 15. So it’s a lot. Obviously there are breaks and meals and whatnot, but it’s a lot of…

Brandon Burton (25:04.891)
Yes.

Karyn MacRae (25:27.388)
being in class and listening so we yes exactly

Brandon Burton (25:30.042)
The interactive part of it is what helps build those relationships that you come out of it. And I guess if you’re one on a fast track, you where you’re hopping around to different campuses, you don’t have the entitlement to say West is best or anything like that. And maybe you do because you’ve tried them all, but you don’t have that same affiliation and affinity to the same group that you went through with. But the interactivity is what’s going to build those bonds because you’re working on these problems together.

Karyn MacRae (25:38.107)
No.

Karyn MacRae (25:42.566)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (25:56.919)
and coming to solutions together as well. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but.

Karyn MacRae (25:57.247)
Thank you. Again, I could talk about Institute forever. It’s a problem. But no, absolutely exactly what you just said. that engagement and that inactivity is so important, not only for.

You know and learning and sharing best practices, but candidly just to get through the day. It’s a long day So, you know, it’s it’s not just our faculty who are amazing. It’s not just them standing up in front of people lecturing for three hours It’s very interactive. So Again going back to your original question. The base curriculum is the same however, you can take the same class at a different site and sometimes people do when I actually

Brandon Burton (26:23.971)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:31.342)
So, we have the question, the answer is yes.

Karyn MacRae (26:47.22)
through the program, I took the same elective because those are opportunities where you get to select. Whereas the core classes, they are assigned to you based on the year of the program of which you are. So I took the same elective multiple times and I got something different out of it each time because the faculty member changes, the world changes. mean, especially, you know, these classes weren’t around when I went, but the AI and

Brandon Burton (26:51.726)
you

Brandon Burton (27:12.247)
Right.

Karyn MacRae (27:17.188)
know, advanced technology classes, things are changing a mile a minute. yes, yes, the curriculum is the same and you can get different things out of it each time.

Brandon Burton (27:28.94)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. So this is going to be a loaded question, but as I see our time getting short, I wanted to see, there anything else that we need to touch on as far as the Institute program for the listeners? You want to make sure that they know about and that we cover before we move on.

Karyn MacRae (27:36.199)
storm.

Karyn MacRae (27:44.433)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, thank you. would say the only other thing that I had not mentioned yet is that we do offer year-round programming. So the Institute week itself, of course, is five days on site, very intensive. You are locked into those five days. For those who might not be able to make that commitment, it be financial, time, you know, whatever it might be, we do have other opportunities that do take place year-round.

That don’t involve travel so we have a monthly webinar series. We have our own podcast Which hopefully branding you’ll be a guest on soon and we also We have an Institute blog and we have our new Institute faculty office hours and that is an opportunity for Three to five is when we typically have three to five different faculty members It’s it’s essentially and ask me anything in AMA session for an hour where attendees

Brandon Burton (28:22.68)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karyn MacRae (28:45.952)
prospects, graduates, volunteers. You don’t even have to be connected to Institute if you stumble upon it through LinkedIn or maybe you will get some new participants through the Chamber Chat podcast. And it’s just an opportunity to chat with our faculty members. So all of these opportunities are free and again you don’t even have to be affiliated with Institute. We hope that you become but you don’t have to be.

Brandon Burton (29:01.464)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:15.82)
Right. Now those are great resources to plug and put out there and I’m glad I asked that question. So maybe that took from your next answer, but I like asking everyone I have on the show, for those who are listening, who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you share with them as they strive towards that goal?

Karyn MacRae (29:15.943)
So.

Karyn MacRae (29:22.692)
Yeah, no, thank you. Didn’t even think about it.

Karyn MacRae (29:41.297)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. aside from going to Institute, which, you know, have to say really, and yeah, we’ve talked, we’ve talked about this throughout the podcast, but, but leaning on your people, I’d say that would be, that would be my piece of advice or recommendation that there’s no silly question. mean, again, to reiterate, the chamber industry is so unique and it’s, it’s really unlike any other.

Brandon Burton (29:44.726)
Right. Aside from the obvious.

Karyn MacRae (30:11.2)
You know taking advantage of that network that you have and if you if you don’t already have a network reach reach out you know to your fellow chamber champions and And don’t be embarrassed everyone who is in a position where they are now has likely Already gone through the things that it’s somebody newer to the chamber industry is is going through now So I would just say don’t be shy and and lean on your people

Brandon Burton (30:38.476)
Yeah, that’s great. So my next question, I ask it to everyone I have on the show, but I’m interested in your perspective since you guys are keeping tabs on the trends that are going on in the chamber industry and everything. But how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Karyn MacRae (30:50.812)
Yeah.

Karyn MacRae (30:55.102)
I think just given where we are in today’s polarized climate and

uncertainty and changes and everything that’s going on. I really do believe that people will continue to look to Chambers to be that voice, know, that advocate, that convener in the business community. And I think that’s such an important role that I really don’t see going anywhere. Obviously, there are

Brandon Burton (31:31.16)
you

Karyn MacRae (31:36.965)
challenges and struggles in each organization, no matter how big your budget and what support you have from your board. Everyone’s going to experience these challenges, but I think that makes it that much more important for members to show up and to provide these resources and to be advocates for your members, specifically the business community. So I really see Chambers continuing to play this very important role.

Brandon Burton (31:40.012)
Thank

Brandon Burton (31:54.766)
based on our findings from the previous investigation.

Brandon Burton (32:02.639)
and we’ll

Karyn MacRae (32:06.848)
And I’m interested to see where where it all goes, but I don’t I don’t see us going

Brandon Burton (32:11.503)
That’s right. Yeah, that’s great. I wanted to give you an opportunity, Karyn, to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect or learn more about the Institute program and enrolling or some of these other resources you offered. Where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to connect?

Karyn MacRae (32:32.472)
Absolutely. Thank you, Brandon. So our website, I think has all the information that you could ever want to know. It’s a institute.uschamber.com. You can also send us an email. This is might be easier to remember at IOM@uschamber.com and then follow us on socials. We’re on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube. The handle is the same. IOM educates with an S and that’s

is where we’ll post all sorts of information about deadlines and registration launches and all of the opportunities to the programs that I mentioned previously with the faculty office hours and webinars etc. All of those things are available to you. I highly highly recommend checking them out.

Brandon Burton (33:21.603)
That’s perfect. We’ll get all of that linked in our show notes for this episode. But again, I wanted to thank you for setting aside some time and being with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast and talking about all the wonderful benefits of the Institute program. And I hope that those listening take some action on this, you know, whether it’s, you know, registering for Institute and going all in or showing up for a webinar and learning a little more, picking that curiosity and building up.

but learning more about how to better serve your community. And thank you again, Karyn, for being with us today. I appreciate it.

Karyn MacRae (33:58.057)
Thank you so much, Brandon. Really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Relationship Building with Ray Hernandez

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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.

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Brandon Burton (00:00.93)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the show, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Ray Hernandez. Ray is a seasoned leader in community and economic development with a proven track record of driving transformational growth across Texas. He currently serves as President and CEO of the Lake Houston Partnership.

Prior to this role, Ray served as the president and CEO of the Huntsville-Walker County Chamber, where he led efforts to pass Huntsville ISD’s largest bond election in 23 years. As president of the Lewisville Area Chamber of Commerce, he played a key role in securing Mary Kay Cosmetics’ $110 million R &D relocation from Dallas to Lewisville.

Ray also previously led the Kyle area Chamber of Commerce and the San Marcos Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. In 2009, Ray spearheaded development efforts for two major regional milestones, the largest hospital between San Antonio and Austin, Seton Medical Center, Hayes, and the largest community college in the region, Austin Community College. He is a U.S. Army veteran. or as a U.S. Army veteran,

Ray Hernandez (01:07.561)
. Okay.

Brandon Burton (01:21.166)
He also has earned his IOM designation through the US Chamber of Commerce at Layola Maramount University. He graduated with honors from Southwest Texas State University, completed economic development training through Texas A &M’s College Station Extension Office, and is an honors graduate in the Innovation ADA Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Ray Hernandez (01:35.352)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (01:49.496)
Throughout his career, has served on regional, state, and national boards. He’s married to his wife, Belinda, and together they have four children. But Ray, I want to welcome you to Chamber Chat podcast. We’re excited to have you with us today and wanted 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 little better.

Ray Hernandez (02:11.326)
Well, thank you for the opportunity to come and visit and share a little bit about what my career has been in the industry. Certainly, when we think about

Something that’s interesting about myself, I think many of us never thought about getting into this line of work, but I think for me, it’s a calling of service that was placed in us by our parents. And so I always love to tease and say that I come from a small family of 11. So I have eight brothers and two sisters and I’m the 10th child. And so it was always a big gathering of folks just coming home.

Brandon Burton (02:41.976)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (02:51.691)
every day, so it was a good fit. But mom especially really instilled in us a life of service. And when I look across my siblings, all of us have played a role where there was Rotary, J.C.’s, Alliance Club, serving as an elected official at city council someplace. There’s always been a life of service for all of us. And my career has been that. I believe that I don’t have a job. It’s been a calling to serve.

whatever community or organization that I’ve been engaged in. And so when I think about something interesting, that’s the thing that I think to, without me knowing that, that was instilled in me. And then it’s something that I took on and continue to grow as my 27 year career has transpired. And I’ve been very blessed to be surrounded by some incredible talents, some folks that care deeply about community and others.

and been lifted up by other servant leaders throughout my career.

Brandon Burton (03:56.673)
Yeah, it is interesting to be able to take a look back, you know, kind of take some perspective and see how the situations in your life have prepared you, the people in your life have prepared you for what you’re doing today. So I appreciate that. Well, tell us a little bit about the Lake Houston Partnership to give listeners an idea of the size, scope of work you guys are involved with, staff, budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Ray Hernandez (04:06.282)
That’s right.

Ray Hernandez (04:22.942)
Yeah, the partnership Lake Houston was founded 102 years ago, and so the organization has continued to change and develop and innovate throughout all that time, and especially in the last 10 years. And so it was led by some folks that are well known in the industry. Charlie Drumble is probably one of the most well known chamber executives, and he was here.

about 15, 10 years ago. And then after that was Jenna Armstrong and Jenna’s been a great leader and someone that was a good friend and served on the state board of directors for Texas Chamber of Commerce. Yeah. Yeah. She, she, she served alongside, beside me. And so the organization has said it has, has changed and under Charlie and Jenna’s kind of transition.

Brandon Burton (05:04.974)
Jenna was on the podcast several years ago, so yeah.

Ray Hernandez (05:19.228)
moved from the Umbal area Chamber of Commerce, that’s still our name of the organization, our DBA is the partnership like Houston. And so first I’ll say this area that we serve, primarily our service area is the Northeast quadrant of Harris County. And Harris County is huge, right? Houston’s the third largest city in the United States, but from the Beltway to the South, and then that encompasses Summer Creek, Summerwood, Atoska Cedar, the city of Umbal, which is a pretty small city.

Kingwood is our primary service area. Now we reach out to out into the Porter New Caney Spring area, Aldine to the to the West and just a little bit further south of the Beltway into the Sheldon area. So our service population is about 400,000 and so some of that’s in the city. Some of it’s in the county in the the unincorporated area and for those that aren’t familiar with Texas.

There’s 254 counties in the state of Texas, and so Harris County is one of the largest, most densely populated counties. And so we serve that quadrant and so. The the biggest landmark to our West is going to be the Houston Airport, the George Bush International Airport, and so they’re they’re very engaged with us and they abut our community.

on the on the West Side and then to the South we have the Port of Houston that that’s that’s there. And so we have commuter rail and all that that’s around in the Houston area with Houston Metro. We have a bus line and those things, but the organization itself. Has a budget just under $900,000 and so that’s through a lot of different revenue streams. It’s the traditional membership and events.

But we also have an economic development partnership. And so up until this year, we’re the only chamber of commerce, quote unquote, in the Houston market that actually carried the flag of economic developments. And so what I mean by that is traditionally in my career, chambers were involved with economic development. But that was a separate entity either through a foundation or through a city or through a county.

Brandon Burton (07:37.047)
Bye.

Ray Hernandez (07:44.637)
they were the actual economic development driver. Well, the city of Humboldt has partnered with us and some others, McCord Development and some others, and invested in the work we’re doing. So we actually have an executive vice president of economic development. His name is Owen Rock. He has over 25 years of experience throughout the country, Indiana, central Texas, the Gulf Coast here in Texas. he’s originally, interesting about Owen, he’s originally from Ireland.

So very diverse staff, he, I mentioned him because that’s something that really differentiates our organization is that yes, we’re a chamber of commerce and we do all the things traditional chambers do. But one of the things that we do differently is the economic development part of our work. And so that entails doing business recruitment, retention programs tied into.

Brandon Burton (08:15.118)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (08:41.512)
Main Street revitalization programs, working with some of the partners like I mentioned earlier, the Port of Houston, United Airlines, Houston Airports, the Governor’s Office here in the state of Texas, the Greater Houston Partnership. They’re one of our biggest advocates for the area. Big organization. I believe they have over 45 staff and they’re deeply involved with economic development. we work closely with them on actually

answering requests for proposals when businesses are looking to relocate or to grow here in the area. And so Owen spends a majority of his time working on that, but that’s kind of different. Now Shannon takes care of events, Kara’s our membership development. have Teresa on communications and Erica on the team, and so we’ve been very blessed with the great board of directors currently led by Greg Milky. He’s the.

who’s an attorney in town and he served on the board years past. And so he’s come back on to assist us with with the redevelopment of the organization. One of the things that I appreciate about the board is that they have gone through. You know when you when you change organizations and you develop new things, it can be a little cumbersome and a little bit of challenging. And they’ve been very open.

Brandon Burton (09:42.638)
Yes, that’s what is coming.

Brandon Burton (10:00.047)
to be a change proposition for you about the things that could be of concern to them and to you.

Ray Hernandez (10:10.279)
They’ve been very patient and they’ve been very rolling up your sleeve. Get your hands dirty. know, board should stay at the at the the at the high 40,000 foot level strategic, but this board at sometimes it’s had to come into a more tactical engagement as well. And so they’ve they’ve understood their role and they’ve assisted me and continue to help.

Brandon Burton (10:20.974)
you

$40,000 for a here at the sport. And sometimes it’s after.

Ray Hernandez (10:40.037)
move the organization forward. So we’ve been very blessed that we have some great partners.

Brandon Burton (10:40.366)
Very good. And for those not familiar with Texas, Texas has some cities that are spelled a little differently or pronounced a little differently. Ray, he mentioned umbel. So the H is silent. So it’s spelled as humble, but it’s pronounced umbel for those that are curious where it’s located. But I appreciate that background about the organization. Today we’ll focus our conversation around the

Ray Hernandez (10:59.664)
That’s right.

Brandon Burton (11:09.742)
relationship building, especially in an ever-changing industry, being in the chamber industry. So we’ll dive in deeper on that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Ray, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today we’re focusing on the value of relationships.

So specifically, I mean, we all have relationships throughout our lives, but specific to the chamber industry and just being a, in every evolving industry, you’ve been around, you know, the state of Texas, you know, a good handful of different chambers, but they have some significant impact in the state economy and everything. What are some of these lessons that you’ve learned from developing these relationships and, and how have

You leaned on those relationships as the industry evolves.

Ray Hernandez (12:00.647)
Yeah, think part of that comes back from what I mentioned before, you know, growing up in that household with the small family of 11, right? They’re very diverse relationships, even within the family. I have the firstborn is a retired attorney. She was an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas. I have a brother that works on campus on a landscaping crew. Very diverse education levels and employment levels.

of family structure levels within my own family. And so you take that and you pull it out into the business world, right? And so Chambers of Commerce, I often hear people say, well, how many members do you have? And so to me, I get it, we’re a membership-based trade organization. I get that piece. But to me, what’s more important is how many of the members that we have are engaged either physically,

Online or through some interaction and that’s the piece. I think that that brings back that relevance of relationship. Right, so for I’ll give you the example of Chick-fil-a. So we not at this organization that I’m now, but a previous Chick-fil-a owner said, right? Why should I join the the organization? The Chamber of Commerce and I said, well, he was. I got my own marketing. I don’t need a ribbon cutting. I’m well known. I’m nationwide. Why should I?

Brandon Burton (13:23.374)
Be sure to like, and subscribe.

Ray Hernandez (13:25.99)
And I said, well, it’s those relationships. You’re new to this community and you’re going to learn people, but it’s not enough for you to know who the mayor and the Superintendent of schools is. There are the heads of those organizations, but to impact your organization, even on employment level, you need to know some of the lower levels and that’s some of the areas or not the lower levels, but some of the variety of levels within those organizations that we can connect you with.

Brandon Burton (13:44.142)
you

Thank you.

you

Ray Hernandez (13:55.652)
And so I’ll give the example. He was looking to stand up a culinary hire students, right? High school students at the Chick-fil-A. So through our connection with him and connecting them with the director for the culinary arts program within the school district, he was able over the course of two years created a culinary arts program within the school that then fed him prospective employees in his shop. And so that’s, think the biggest takeaway for when I think about relationship building that.

Brandon Burton (14:00.089)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (14:12.782)
We are responsible for maintaining and supporting employees to this extent. Thank you.

Ray Hernandez (14:26.15)
The first thing we should do is when we meet and engage a potential member or even a current member is to ask the question and then just stay quiet and listen. Listen, digested. I had a meeting yesterday with a relatively new member and so we talked about all this, you know, kind of their background and things that are important to them and how do we tie that into some of the activities we have. And so we got back to the office of my membership director.

Brandon Burton (14:34.894)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (14:51.246)
Yes, sir.

Ray Hernandez (14:54.245)
Said, hey, I got this email and I’m ready to send it out. Are you ready to go? And I said, hold on. Let me look it over. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, which is today. And so the email was great. It talked about all the great programs. But the piece that I’m going to help her do today is how do we tie the opportunity to the event or to the engagement in that relationship, right?

And so let’s this is a construction company and they want to meet architects. So how do we get in that conversation tie the introduction of an architect? Into the room so they can build a relationship. Right, which is very, very different than what people think is a traditional role for a chamber or doing networking or ribbon cuttings, which is all important, but it’s that.

How is our relationship with an architect architectural firm here and introduction to a construction firm? And then tie that into a city that’s sending out our piece request for proposals for a big project or let’s say a hospital or a school district. Tying that all together so that member can be financially successful or at least have a potential. And I think that’s the big piece for me is that we have to.

Brandon Burton (16:00.013)
you

Brandon Burton (16:14.178)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (16:19.62)
Build the relationships one person at a time, one organization at a time, one member at a time. And we have to customize it every single time. We have to customize it based on that individual’s perspective. And you have to also remember that individual perspective may change over time, right? So what was 100 % true today, next year may be completely obsolete. We’ve seen what’s happening with AI and technology right now and things are changing so fast.

And the priorities will change, and so we have to be flexible. And I always love to say, you know, if you’re not flexible, you’re going to end up like Radio Shack. I don’t know if anybody I’m dating myself there a little bit, but what is Radio Shack? Right. It was a it was an electronic story that doesn’t exist anymore because they didn’t innovate like they that they could have. And so in part, that that’s why they’re not here. And so I think that’s that’s important. Take away when you think about a relationship, just. One person at a time, one conversation at a time.

Brandon Burton (16:57.07)
Yeah, what’s that? No, I’m just kidding.

Ray Hernandez (17:17.668)
One email at a time and just being very intentional on how we engage that you. think sometimes we’re we’re we just want people to come and we just sent out the same email blast to every single person. But it’s going to fall in death ears and I do want to share a little bit about what chambers and this is one thing that we do. We traditionally have not done a good job in building those relations with communications is that.

Brandon Burton (17:31.459)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (17:45.686)
Every week we send an email blast about all the cool things happening. Now we know that only about 70, about 20 to 30 % of our membership at any given time attend events physically. So 70 to 80 % don’t. But every week we send them an email about all these cool things that we’re doing that they can’t attend. So they’re sitting in their office, taking care of their clients before the sun comes up, after the sun goes down.

And we’re sending a message about things that they can’t come to. And they start, you know, over time, we’re sending every, so 52 weeks a year, we’re sending this, or they don’t want to come to them, right? We’re sending them this messages and they’re like, well, there’s no value because they see the value in the, in the physical engagement. And while there is some value in physical engagement, absolutely in building those types of relationships, there’s also some value in some education and imparting and some connection outside of that.

Brandon Burton (18:20.75)
worse things that they don’t want to come to, right?

Brandon Burton (18:31.287)
attendance.

Ray Hernandez (18:40.983)
So one of the things that I’ve done, and I started this, I wish I’d started earlier in my career, but just at my last chamber and currently at the partnership, we send the email, it’s called the Partnership Press on a Wednesday. And the first thing that when they open it up is a learning opportunity, either for themselves, something they can share with their staff. We’ll use little videos from our stories from Seth Godin or different speakers.

different articles about how to take care of your team or or you know, you’re stressed out because of Christmas or just some kind of little. It’s not an ask. We’re not asking for anything. We’re not asking for money. We’re asking for engagement. We’re not all it’s like a little appetizer to say. The first thing you see when you engage with us in this newsletter is a little learning piece to us, and that’s very different, right? Now we’re still going to afterwards. We’re still going to list all the ribbon cuttings and all the other stuff,

Brandon Burton (19:32.79)
Are you? Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (19:40.333)
You know what we’re going to do as well, right? Because those we’re going to showcase those business, but the first taste every time is not is a is a kind hello and here’s a little gift and you think about when you go to somebody’s house right for the first time. You know, at least in my culture you you show up with something. Maybe it may be a know box of cookies. It may be a bottle wine, but you show up with a little gift and I like to think that we’re giving our members a little gift unsolicited about something.

Brandon Burton (19:51.064)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (20:08.642)
that they can be useful in their lives, either personally or professionally, every single week. And we didn’t make an announcement about it. We just did it. We didn’t make an announcement about it. We just did it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (20:13.698)
Yeah, I like that. You hit on so many.

Yeah, you do it. So Leads of Value and you hit on so many good nuggets. I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, there’s a book that I read some time ago called You’re Invited. And it’s all about curating events where you’re like, you talked about being more intentional about, you know, who’s being invited and connecting people intentionally and things of that nature. And so often as chambers,

there’s a networking event and like you said, you send out the email, everybody’s invited, you want everybody to come and you get 20 % maybe if you’re lucky, right? Versus a curated event where especially, I mean, you guys have economic development responsibility. You gave the example, the architects and the construction companies, how do you make these introductions? Well, maybe it’s under the arm of economic development where you do a curated networking where you have construction companies and architects and…

Ray Hernandez (20:52.174)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:14.902)
Maybe some banks, because you need access to lending. And so these are people that are need to connect and need to know each other. And I can guarantee you get them all in a room and connections are going to be made that help generate revenue throughout the community. So being intentional about it, there’s so much value to that. But even your Chick-fil-A example, great example. And I suppose that people asking you that question, know, Ray, why should I join your organization?

Ray Hernandez (21:16.925)
Sure. Financial.

Ray Hernandez (21:26.113)
Yep. Yep.

Brandon Burton (21:44.397)
The answer might be slightly different depending on who it is to your point. You just, got to listen and see what their needs are. Right. And then again, be intentional with your response and how you’re engaging them and building. It starts with building that relationship with them, but then helping them to build those relationships that are going to help further develop their business and, help them see value in the organization. So you hit on a ton of great points.

Ray Hernandez (21:46.438)
Good morning.

Ray Hernandez (21:54.525)
Yep.

Thanks.

Brandon Burton (22:13.326)
Any other examples throughout your career and ways that you’ve been able to lean into either developing these relationships yourself or helping others develop these relationships? I’m sure you’ve got a catalog of examples that you can share, but what’s maybe another one or two that stand out to you?

Ray Hernandez (22:21.217)
Okay.

Ray Hernandez (22:35.361)
I will say, so when I was in Kyle, we were looking to bring Austin Community College into northern Hays County. So the largest city in Hays County, which is just between Austin and San Antonio, is San Marcos, a big destination place. There’s a river that flows about 287 miles from there to the coast of Texas. There’s a big water race every year on canoes.

And and kayaks and so so we’re in in in Kyle in northern Hays County and awesome. Community College is the largest community college in central in central Texas at the time, and they’re looking to expand it to northern Hays County or into Hays County itself. And so we met with with with some of their folks and had those conversations and they broke up the effort in two different ways. So one was northern Hays County.

And the other one was San Marcos itself. And so have those same conversations and we we created committees and and totally separate right there efforts were totally separate from from the northern Hays County effort. And so early on, Dick Burdick, I Dick Schneider, sorry, Dick Schneider was the president of the Buda area chamber. Another small community next to Kyle. And so.

We said, absolutely. We want to help them do this. We need a community college and educated workforce in our vehicle here in our community. And so Sam Marcus is home to now Texas State University, previously called Southwest Texas State University. And so we got up. got it. We started working on our deal and so we went to the first meeting with a gentleman by the name of Jimmy Ferguson. He owns about 7 McDonald’s in the in the South Austin Kyle Buda area.

And so at the first meeting, one of the things we came out and agreed to is that we would find leaders to help lead the committee. And so when we first proposed it, Dick Schneider said, great, we’re the chamber presidents, we should be leading this. I said, look, traditionally we should be leading it, but let’s think about this for a second.

Brandon Burton (24:47.15)
It’s not nice to eat.

Ray Hernandez (24:52.544)
This is a community college. We need the fierce soccer moms, the strong Boy Scout dads to be leading. We need them to be the face of this project. Is the business community going behind it? Absolutely. But if we want this to be successful, we need the community’s face. People that aren’t elected officials, people that only know the space in their church or in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or on the soccer clubs, we need them to be the face. So we gathered.

Brandon Burton (24:56.27)
and I’ll see you next time.

Ray Hernandez (25:21.895)
a collection of about 45 folks from all different types of background, educational levels, economic levels, political levels, religious levels, just all types of engagement. And so when we went to Austin College to the board meeting, Bob Barton, who’s since passed, had the Hayes Free Press newspaper, he was there in the lobby, older gentleman at the time, and I said, Bob, what do you think about this? He said, we’ll never get

Brandon Burton (25:29.134)
you

Ray Hernandez (25:52.083)
this diverse group of people to agree on anything, but they agree that we should have education opportunities for their children and our children. And so we came down and the vote passed. We passed something like 64 % in favor and San Marcos failed about 60%. And I believe to this day that it was those relationships we built on the ground level, on the grassroots level with those soccer moms and Boy Scouts dads, people like Vince Collier, who was with, he did

I did mortgage lending, folks like that that were just on the ground level because they were fierce, right? If there’s a rainstorm going on and they’re coming home from church and the sign that we have promoting this effort falls in the middle of the field, the bank president may, but probably is not gonna get out of his car and walk across that field to put that sign back up. But you better be darn sure that mom that cares about it.

Brandon Burton (26:34.188)
you

Brandon Burton (26:42.99)
you

Ray Hernandez (26:51.135)
her daughter playing that soccer team is going to get out of that car, stop that van and run across that field and get that sign up. And that’s, that was different, right? We had to curate that relationship and that, passion and then align it. And so, uh, I left, uh, Kyle before the building was open. They built a, they, uh, it passed. was a 90, it’s, it’s a 96 acre campus, a five story building.

Brandon Burton (26:57.102)
Thank

Brandon Burton (27:01.001)
So, bye.

Brandon Burton (27:15.694)
you

Ray Hernandez (27:19.358)
And when I left they they said, Ray, what’s the one thing I was going to Louisville to become the chamber president there? They said, Ray, what do you what do you want to? What do you think about one thing that you wish you had? You had finished before you left that you didn’t. I said, well, the Austin opinion college and somebody better invite me back for the ribbon cutting whenever it opens. And so I left in April. It opened in I believe in January and I did get invited back and I and I got to be part of those festivities. And so when I point to something that.

Brandon Burton (27:37.544)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (27:47.166)
Because my kids are grown. Our daughter just graduated from A &M. Our son’s over at Seministons State University right now. two oldest have degrees from Texas State University.

What was happening in Austin being college wasn’t affect me personally, but it was going to affect that community. And so yeah, that that but it’s that relationships one on one different levels, different sizes, different times with different folks that really created something. And that chamber is is thriving. And I think in part if you go to Kyle today, it looks completely different. They have built out. There’s hotels there. There’s just it’s.

Brandon Burton (28:03.096)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (28:21.486)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:26.434)
Bye.

Ray Hernandez (28:30.053)
huge amounts of retailers come in there, housing developments, manufacturing has come to that community. And all because, I think in part because two chamber executives were willing to put their egos aside, step back and support the leadership of others. I think that’s very different, something that I’m very, very happy about and pleased. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:46.158)
Yeah.

I love it. That’s a great example, great case study. So Ray, I like asking everybody having the show for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item that you share with them as they work towards that goal?

Ray Hernandez (29:14.494)
I think the one thing that I wish I had thought about this so much earlier in my career, but making time to invest in yourself. If you want to be a leader, then you need to have the tools to be able to lead others. And the way you do that is to take those seminars, go to ACCE, go to the US Chambers training, go to Texas Chamber of Commerce executives if you’re here in Texas training.

Go to as much training as you can, right? You still gotta take care of the business. get that piece. Pick up an easy read of a book. Try to find a lesson. Pete Habel is a good friend of mine. He wrote a book called The Arsonist in the Office. And in that book, it talks about organizations that don’t wanna deal with arsonists that’s within their organization. And it’s a good learning takeaway that we, know. And so it’s all those learning, invest in yourself, and then also invest in your team.

So one of the things I’m most proud of when I got to Louisville at the Louisville area chamber, the very first board meeting, I looked at the budget and I sat down with my board and I said, Ray, what do we need to do? I said, I would like $8,500 for professional developments. And they looked at me, what kind of trips are you doing? What are you gonna be doing? I said, none of it’s for me.

I want this money so I can invest in my team. And so I’ll use the analogy of the story of a CFO and the CEO. And the CEO is sitting in his office. He’s happy. It’s a Friday afternoon. And the CFO, the chief financial officer, runs in the office. And it’s April. And he’s livid. And he tells the CEO, what is wrong with you? What are you doing? The CEO says, hey, calm down. What’s going on? He said, you have spent all the professional development money for the entire year. And it’s April.

Brandon Burton (30:54.222)
And, you know, what we’re doing is we’re going to use this free online learning program.

Ray Hernandez (31:05.456)
And the CEO just leans back and smiles and said, yeah, isn’t that fantastic? And the CEO says, no, it’s not fantastic. You spent the whole budget for the whole year and it’s April. He says, what’s going to happen if these people leave? And the CEO says, what’s going to happen if these people stay? They have all the tools they need to help us be more successful because we invested them early on. And I think so if you want to be successful, invest in your board training.

Brandon Burton (31:06.158)
I’m

Brandon Burton (31:22.915)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (31:33.775)
invest in your staff training and invest in yourself and invest in your volunteers. Give them some, you know, it doesn’t have to be a whole day seminar. It could be a little nugget. You know, at some level, you know, I talked about the partnership press. We’re investing on members every time we send them a little article. That’s a little investment. They don’t even know that we’re investing in them, but we’re doing it every single, every week when we send them something. But I think it’s important to invest in others, right? If you want to, I’ve been successful in my career because I’ve surrounded myself with the best talent.

that I could find in people that were much smarter than me. But it also takes that you have to invest in them. And people have invested in me as well throughout my career. I’ve been very blessed to have some incredible mentors throughout my career. And so you should do the same for others as well.

Brandon Burton (32:19.584)
Yeah, very good. I also like asking as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ray Hernandez (32:21.115)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (32:29.936)
You know, I think I’ve touched on this a little bit throughout our conversation today is be open to new ideas, be open to old ideas. Seth Godin in one of his talks talks about, says, you walk into a room and there’s a group of folks and you give a presentation and you say, okay, share me your good ideas. And the room is silent, just silent. And no one’s saying a word, right? And he said, okay, people.

I need your ideas.” And finally walks up to one young man and says, what ideas? And the guy’s got his head down. He says, I’ve seen you’ve been writing in your lecture, in your book, all during class, all during the seminar. You got to have some good ideas. And he’s looking down, a little distraught, and he says, I don’t have any good ideas. You don’t have any good ideas? No? Well, great. Show me some bad ideas.

And Seth Godin talks about, and I keep this, if you go into my office, there’s a lot of books with a lot of scribbling. Nobody can read my handwriting. Sometimes I have a hard time writing, but I write a lot. take a lot of notes. in the middle of the night, I may wake up and in my bed stand, I might write a note there. And so Kath Godin says, if you don’t have good ideas, give me your bad ideas, because the good ideas are within those bad ideas someplace. And if you go on my LinkedIn, and I’ll paraphrase here.

There’s a quote that have on there. I don’t know who to attribute it to, but it says, we don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And it doesn’t matter how much money or time that we have. I cannot see the backside of where you’re sitting right now. Right? It doesn’t matter how much time and money you have. And so we only see the world as we are. And so that’s why we need a variety of different perspectives and experiences to be able to move the organization forward. I would say that to…

Brandon Burton (34:05.198)
Thank

Ray Hernandez (34:27.386)
to your organizations, if you’re an association or Chamber of Commerce or any organization, business organization is, especially for Chambers, is be representative of the community you serve. Does your organization, does your board look like and have the talent and experience of the community you serve? If you do that, I think you’ll be on the road to being successful and you’ll also be open to innovation, right?

If your organization and your community is willing to innovate, then your organization is going to be willing to innovate. You got to take chances. You know, don’t, you

have success if you don’t take that chance, right? And so I like to play golf, right? And so I’m not a great golfer, but if I don’t at least go up and hit the ball, you know, I’ll never have that opportunity to have that fantastic shot someplace. It’s like, you know, you’ll miss every shot in basketball you don’t attempt, right? So at least try. And so one thing I would say for the organizations of the future is be courageous enough to fail.

Brandon Burton (35:29.132)
That’s right.

Ray Hernandez (35:40.505)
courageous enough to ask the hard question, courageous enough to close our mouth and listen. I know sometimes that’s a hard thing for even me to do. Some days, because I’m so enthusiastic about something, so passionate about something and I want to impart, but sometimes I just have to, and my staff can tell, they’re like, my God, Ray, you had a hard time in that meeting, did you? I was like, yeah, it was really hard for me to sit on my hands and not say something. He says, you had some great ideas, right? And I was like,

Brandon Burton (35:51.086)
All right.

Brandon Burton (36:01.654)
Thank

Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (36:09.313)
I have some ideas. don’t know how great they are, but I had some ideas, but it was hard for me because I wanted to make sure that others are heard and then reach out to people that don’t speak up and ask those questions. I had a CEO of a creative union in the last few years come to me and I was in the community. had been there as a CEO for over 20 years. And I asked her, said, how come you’ve never served on the board of directors for the chamber? And she said, Ray, no one’s ever asked me.

Brandon Burton (36:38.455)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (36:38.81)
I said, what? No, no, no, no. We send out emails. We do flyers. We’re in meetings and we ask for nominations all the time, every year. What do you mean? She said, Ray, no one sat down and asked me, physically asked me. And so it goes back to the start of our conversation, right? The relevance of conversations and connections, right? Is sometimes, you you would think, why does a CEO of a big cretina

Brandon Burton (36:54.21)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (37:02.562)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (37:08.501)
needs somebody to sit down with them one on one. But she needed that, right? She needed that, that little personal touch. And sometimes you don’t, sometimes you don’t need that personal touch. Sometimes just that email is gonna suffice. But for some people, you have to find that nugget, that trigger, that piece that’s gonna turn that key to open that door. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (37:13.23)
They’re still personal.

Brandon Burton (37:28.812)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Ray, this has been a great conversation. I love that you brought up Seth Godin.

Brandon Burton (37:38.542)
But I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and just learn more about your perspectives and things you’ve shared. Where would you point?

Ray Hernandez (37:50.649)
So I will do that. just wanted to thank a couple of people. Frank Kenny in our industry has been fantastic. Kyle Sexton has been one of my mentors throughout my career. But there’s been a whole bunch that have really lifted me up. But in order to reach out to me, I think it’s easy. Just send an email to ray@lakehouston.org is probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. Just send me an email and I’ll be happy to answer as we can or direct you to someone that can offer you some guidance. But my parting word is just, you know, take care of yourselves, make some time for yourself, both personally and professionally, and wish everyone continued success.

Brandon Burton (38:20.27)
So, thank you very

Brandon Burton (38:38.228)
Awesome. Thank you for that, Ray. Again, this has been a great conversation. We’ll make sure your email is in our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find you. But appreciate you coming on and setting aside some time to share your experience and perspectives and lessons that you’ve learned throughout your career. It’s been valuable. So thank you.

Ray Hernandez (38:57.347)
Thank you for the opportunity.

Creating a Clear Focus with Brian Anderson

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Brandon Burton (00:00.928)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a dynamic leader with a deep commitment to community and economic development. Brian Anderson is the President and CEO of Chamber RVA, the regional Chamber of Commerce serving Greater Richmond, Virginia.

A native of Florence, South Carolina, Brian is a proud graduate of Francis Marion University with a degree in economics. His career journey is nothing short of inspiring from serving four years as a U.S. Army and Military Intelligence Officer to nearly two decades in the beverage industry with giants like Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch to serving as chairman of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners in Georgia.

Brian transitioned to the chamber world in 2008, leading the greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce and later the greater Columbus, Georgia chamber before taking the helm at Chamber RBA in 2019. Brian has earned his IOM designation and is a certified chamber executive. He is a recognized leader in regional collaboration and workforce development.

Brian currently serves on several key boards shaping the future of Virginia’s economy. He brings to this conversation a wealth of insight on business leadership, regional strategy, and the importance of public-private partnerships in driving long-term growth. But let’s dive into an engaging and energizing conversation with Brian Anderson. Brian, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say…

Hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Brian D. Anderson (01:57.651)
Well, hello, Brandon. It’s a pleasure to be with you today and to have a conversation about, you know, not just our industry, the things we’re doing because we are very proud of what we do. But I’ve been around this long enough to know that our chamber colleagues out in the listening audience, we all learn from each other. We can all do better at what we do by understanding how each of us has faced different opportunities and challenges. So happy to be with you today.

interesting about me. I think the biggest one that I tell young professionals when I meet with them most of the time is how I got here. And it’s interesting more and more that I meet younger leaders coming into the industry. I didn’t start the Chamber when I was 42 years of age, which is a late and never knew what a Chamber would do, what a Chamber does. But I felt that

Brandon Burton (02:25.752)
Thank you, Mark.

Brian D. Anderson (02:53.201)
going coming out of the beverage industry after 20 years, I wasn’t having the impact I wanted to make. I was doing well as far as their their goals and their measurements, but I didn’t feel like things were that I made a contribution. And so opportunity came open through my political life that the Chamber of Commerce in Dalton was in need of a leader. And I. You know, wanted to try something different. I didn’t know what that really meant.

But I got into it and here I am 18 years later and found that intersection of business and government to be a really sweet spot for me as an interest and also a passion for me to help make a difference in not only the life of the communities I’ve served, but also me feeling that I’ve validated my skill set and things I can do well and give back.

Brandon Burton (03:40.973)
Yeah, absolutely. I like that, you know, being able to want to make a difference and feel like the work you’re doing is making an impact and that’s important and Chamberworld is a great fit for that. But thank you for your service as well in the Army. We appreciate that.

Brian D. Anderson (03:53.291)
Here it is.

Brian D. Anderson (03:57.643)
Thank you. That was fun too. I tell young and younger people, you can get leadership development anywhere. Just get it. Whether it be through the military, whether it be through a service organization, you just, just you learn leadership by doing it, not by necessarily reading a book. That’s helpful. But you got to just go out there and experience things, make some things happen, make some, you know, fail at times, but then fail off. And so I think experience can help you in any way, any way you can get it.

Brandon Burton (04:13.219)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (04:19.587)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Good piece of advice there. So I’d like for you to share with us a little bit more about Chamber RVA just to give us an idea of the size, staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Brian D. Anderson (04:38.921)
Well, I’ve been here six years and the organization is, it was in good shape when I took over, which is not always the case in my other two stints, but Richmond is a wonderful region to live in. Our chamber serves nine localities in Virginia. You don’t have cities within counties. They are separate jurisdictions. So we serve one city, the city of Richmond, a town of Ashland, and then seven counties ranging from Chesterfield and Wrico and over.

Colonial Heights, Guchelin, Palitan, and Hanover. And that’s a pretty large geography, but they’re also contiguous in the sense of not only being connected in geography, they all work well together. So we serve that region to be an enabler across the full region. We have 12 staff members, which is not enough. We could use 15 or 16, but 12 is what we have currently.

And they are all wonderful teammates that are in the right seats doing the right work. And so I’m fortunate to have a very qualified team. They’re not all experienced. There’s some of them are young and have just could joined us, but they’re the right people for the work we’ve hired them to do. Our budget’s about three and a half million dollars up from about three one when I took over. One of the areas we had not done well when I got here was membership development. We have been declining.

And now for six years in a row, we have added net new members and net new revenue. And we’re very proud of that. And we serve about 725 members. We don’t count locations. So those are actual member companies. So if you have 10 locations or 15, it’d be more. We serve companies. And that’s about a population of about 1.4 million people in this region.

Brandon Burton (06:23.276)
It counts as one.

Brian D. Anderson (06:34.443)
We currently are operating and we just finished our first year of the three year strategic plan. We used 2023 and 24 to develop that plan. Because before that, we felt we were like a lot of chambers, a little bit not as focused as we needed to be, kind of a little bit of everything. Anytime somebody asked to do something, we’d go do it. Had a lot of events. And I’m not sure we were making the impact that we needed to make. So we, as a team and with some volunteer board members.

and a strategic consultant coach went through a process and said, how do we become more impactful in the work we do? And we settled on kind of revamped things we were already doing, but also cut out some things. And we settled on four strategic pillars, two of which chambers do every day. The first is we connect people. We have events and we build relationships. We build capital and we continue to do that. But those events we have now are

very targeted to the work we do and or the audience. We do some small business events, we do some lead investor events, I host a CEO round table monthly, any way we can connect a member where they are. So that’s been a real focus and really paying dividends for us. Advocacy, we are in the middle of the General Assembly as many states are and so we are at the state house daily advocating for bills that are pro-business or trying to

have bills that aren’t, we oppose those. And we also take no action on some. They have nothing to do with the business community, we ignore them. We do the same level of advocacy at the local level. We’re always weighing in with our jurisdictions, whether it be zoning and planning, whether it be budgeting and how they’re gonna do bond referendums. So we try to take an active role with our local governments as well in the spirit of how does their actions, their policies make the region stronger.

Our other two are a little bit different, probably from some chambers. The third one would be economic development, economic empowerment or economic mobility. And that’s looking at our data coming out of COVID. We knew the thing, we knew where we were going in, but the numbers post COVID showed the disparity or the difference between those with means and those without. And so we’ve been very focused working with the Brookings Institute, the Urban Institute, our regional partners.

Brian D. Anderson (09:00.445)
on understanding what drives economic mobility and how we can help every family and individual move up that ladder to some degrees. We’ve been very focused on that the last, really five years, but really intently the last three. And then the fourth one, again, some chambers have some role in workforce development. We have taken on that as a primary charge. Again, not to deliver programming. We have plenty of partners that can do that, but we are working with NextGen

Brandon Burton (09:01.518)
Thanks.

Brian D. Anderson (09:29.417)
sector partnerships out of Nashville to really put the business community at the center of the conversation, C-suite executives telling us what’s not happening in the development world, development, and what they want to happen or need to happen. And then those of us around the outside of the room, community college, four-year institutions, K-12, Boys and Girls Club, any of those that can have out of school or around school activity.

they now are leaning in differently to try to get the outcomes we need. Being able to get young people to go into the paths that we need, construction, IT, health sciences, advanced manufacturing, and then having those programs deliver faster outcomes. You can get a certificate, a degree, all the way up to a four-year in a faster way. So those four pillars drive us every day. We’re very focused. We just had our annual meeting recently where we talked about how we successfully

Brandon Burton (10:19.8)
Here we go.

Brian D. Anderson (10:27.512)
executed those measures in 2025 and how much we have left to do in 2026, but very focused on again the work we have to do to make the best difference for our region.

Brandon Burton (10:38.594)
That’s fantastic and that that leads in very well to our discussion today.

to stand on is really just as a chamber developing that clear focus, that clear direction to go with your core work and things that you’re working towards to really move the ball forward in your community. like you mentioned, a lot of chambers get involved and get pulled so many different ways because something comes up in the community and everybody wants to volunteer the chamber to take that on, right? So.

Brian D. Anderson (10:52.555)
.

Brandon Burton (11:12.578)
So we’ll dive in deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Brian, as we mentioned before the break today, we’re talking about creating a clear focus for your chamber. you had mentioned you guys just went through your strategic planning process and kind of the four areas, the four pillars of work that you guys are focused on that really helps chart your work and makes things a little bit more clear.

as things are presented to you and what direction you guys need to go in. Talk about the adjustment, you know, from how things were in the past to realigning that focus to make it really work within those four pillars.

Brian D. Anderson (11:40.832)
Mm-hmm.

Brian D. Anderson (11:45.148)
Thank

Brian D. Anderson (11:57.115)
The first step, I think that you should start with and we did. I’ve always had this experience because we get better at it as we do it. Start with your mission, vision, values. We had a good mission statement, a good vision statement. Wasn’t as crystal and crisp as we needed it to be a little bit too broad. Even just refining the words within that. That took six months of not just what was in the mission statement, the value statement, but the words we chose.

And then from that, you have a lot more license to again, narrow down what’s really critical to the business community. Now, the other thing I’d say real quickly is, you know, what’s your chamber’s role in that geography? If you’re a local community chamber serving a city or a county or a very defined geography, you may have a different set of expectations and things you need to be focused on. As a regional chamber, we had a little bit more license to what we can and can’t do.

And we’re very upfront about like, I’ll give you an example. A florist is probably not going to get much value out of being a chamber member, a chamber RBA. We don’t do retail type chamber activities. We are focused on large regional issues that affect cross jurisdictional populations. And we’re clear about that. And every meet the chamber, we have to talk to prospects. If you’re a retail type operation, you’re probably not going to…

Brandon Burton (13:14.99)
Okay.

Brian D. Anderson (13:23.787)
be served by us well, so don’t join and write a check that you’re gonna regret. I’d rather you go join the local chamber or some other place you can get the value you need. We serve, but with that, we serve about 60 % of our membership, or 50 employees or less. We serve small, medium, large. We have all the corporate partners. We have the Fortune 500 companies, but we serve a good mix of people. So with that, we’re focused on professional type companies.

rather than the retail type. being knowing your mission and who you serve is the first kind of step. And then the third might be what’s your member value, member proposition. What does a member want out of the work you do and how can you deliver that? So we spent, again, a long time defining that and understanding it before we got into what are we gonna do. But eventually you get to that point and you’ve got all that focus.

you say, okay, what’s the most critical things we can do as a region and what’s the business community’s part of that, then it’s a little easier to get into, okay, these three things or four things will drive that. I’ll tell anybody having not done it this well in the past, don’t have six, seven, 10 strategies. Get it as close to what you can get down to this manageable and again, is also going to give you the biggest impact and how you deliver that. So the four I mentioned earlier are what we got.

Brandon Burton (14:21.326)
So thanks for watching.

Brian D. Anderson (14:51.881)
got our focus on. And right now, again, at least through 18 months or 15 months, those strategies are delivering the tactics we need to execute. And now we can see through some measurements how that’s generating the impact we want. So mission statement, member proposition or member value, member benefit leads to how you get the strategy right to go forward.

Brandon Burton (14:54.006)
I like it.

Bye.

Brandon Burton (15:08.526)
you

Brandon Burton (15:20.43)
Yeah. So you have that strategic plan with those four pillars that you mentioned earlier. You guys also have taken on a regional vision as well. So you want to talk to that and how that aligns with your strategic plan as well?

Brian D. Anderson (15:32.331)
you

Brian D. Anderson (15:37.385)
Yes, and in this case, they’re very much aligned because we already had the economic mobility focus within our strategic plan for the chamber. But again, coming out of the pandemic, working with two regional partners, which now grown to five total. We knew that our business union had a role with economic mobility, just like the local government has a role. So does philanthropic activity. So all of those focus.

on how we lift families up and people up, we take that and drill it down to say, how does the business community weigh in there? So how do we have a different member, have a different employee benefits program? For instance, maybe 401k is not the best thing I need right now as a 22 year old, I’d like down payment assistance or help with childcare. So helping our member companies think about mobility difference in a different way.

so they can help their employees be successful and meet them where they are in their life. So it’s taking that regional thought, drilling it down to again, what individual companies can do and then us as a business sector weighing in together. So RVA Rising, which we now call it, came out of that five year journey of deep diving into data. Dr. Raj Shetty from Harvard has a whole lot of data across the country from a study he did.

that basically can tell you kind of what your economic mobility number is. And we found we were pretty low. I Charlotte, in 2013, Charlotte was the 50th out of 50 cities as far as not having economic mobility. We weren’t ranked, we weren’t big enough. But when you look at the heat maps of that data, we looked just as poor in economic mobility as Charlotte did. So we said, okay, let’s partner and understand what Charlotte’s doing, drill it down to the level of what we can do and now track that over time.

From all of that work, we worked with the Urban Institute, we worked with the Regional Growth Initiative out of the Brookings Institute, with eight other communities around the country. And that again validated that we were on the right path, but also gave us some metrics to understand what mobility looks like. So that regional visioning now has a deeper dive on affordable housing, a deeper dive on workforce development, and a deeper dive on what happens with health delivery.

Brian D. Anderson (18:02.409)
both modality and inequity. And that’s the three we’ve kind of worked on so far with a couple more coming later. But that’s where all of us like leaning in now on those three priorities in the forefront.

Brandon Burton (18:07.662)
Bye bye.

Brandon Burton (18:17.249)
Yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned, you know, working with different institutions, like you mentioned the Brookings Institute. how do these, you know, arrangements come about when you work with these institutes? Is there formal agreements? And I’m asking for those chambers that are listening, I’m asking on their behalf if they want to take on this kind of a focus, how do you get started and how do you build those relationships to be able to help drive

Brian D. Anderson (18:33.355)
Thank

Brian D. Anderson (18:44.223)
Great question. I’ll tell you, sometimes it’s intentionality, sometimes it’s luck. In our case, it might have been a little bit of both. Yeah, because we were already, I guess, in tune with what’s happening in that kind of economic mobility space, the conversation. One of my colleagues, mean, Vice President Strategy, kind of learned about this thing out there, something you could apply for with Brookings. And she said, I think we should do this. I said, of course we should. So we kind of pulled together a team and.

Brandon Burton (18:50.872)
Take either one, yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (19:13.385)
We applied to be a part of this regional growth initiative network. There was going to be eight regions around the country that were picked and we were selected. And I’ll tell you, not know even from the application, I couldn’t have told you how much, how impactful it was going to be at the end. We thought we would just do some sharing and we would do some learning. We would do some, you know, data work, but we, basically had eight convenings. Each city hosted one over about 18 months.

And we went, had a very curated two day discussion in each city by the Brookings folks who brought us in some cases, things happening around the country. And then they’d say, now, how do you react to that? So sometimes it’s being in the right place, the right mindset, meaning what you’re listening to, and then having the will or willing to take the risk and spend the money in some cases to go be a part of something bigger. That was the first one that really, and then from that we would have never known about wealth. We may not have known about next gen.

sector partnerships, having not done that work. But since we went through it, we learned what somebody else was doing. We said, you know, that really could apply to us and how we’re thinking about workforce. And so, you know, one good idea, one good pursuit turned into a second one. Urban was our community foundation, very forward thinking organization. We’re doing some work on their own. How does their work make an impact? They learned about Urban Institute and all the work they’ve done around the country and all the data they now have from working in those.

Brandon Burton (20:21.88)
So, thank you for watching and have great

Brian D. Anderson (20:41.439)
those communities. So they were working parallel with Urban, while we were working with Brookings, and now we’ve brought all that together under RBA Rising. And they both have been critical to helping us see how we’re doing or not doing, how we can measure success and progress. And we’ve now leaned in more heavily with Urban because their data is much more far reaching. They’ve got 16 or so measurements of how you can determine if you’re economically mobile. And we’re using their first five pillars right now.

Brandon Burton (20:51.822)
you

Brandon Burton (21:04.622)
So, excited to be here.

Brian D. Anderson (21:11.071)
to keep us focused.

Brandon Burton (21:12.758)
That was my next question with RVA Rising is what metrics are you looking at to measure success and see that things are moving in the right direction?

Brian D. Anderson (21:20.675)
And I encourage the listeners to go just Google Urban Institute. They’ve got a whole lot of information on their website that, can be applicable anywhere. don’t have to just be like that. Because I think the thing I’ve learned again after 18 years is every community is different. Every region is different. We have similarities, but you got to know what’s happening in your geography and how you can impact that. they’ve got 100 different measurements that could be tracked and looked at.

We’re now taking their wide ranging set of information from all these communities around the country and we’re picking which ones matter to us. So we’ve got a whole group at our Plan RVA, which is our local government, regional commission type entity. They’re taking the lead on building us a dashboard or a scorecard or whichever term you’re happy. They’re looking at what measurements fit our region and will determine whether or not we’re

Moving the needle quick example a lot of times you’ll hear people talk about our poverty rate 12 % of our our citizens live in poverty Well, if you have a whole lot of people move in to make good money That number could go down to 9 % or 10 % and you haven’t affected the people who are already there who live in poverty So we’ve we’re looking at data that says how do we get down very granular? Into the zip code and the neighborhoods and the families to measure whether or not mobility is happening or not

Brandon Burton (22:50.062)
super helpful and being able to have that dashboard or scorecard to be able to see how things are moving and growing and developing is going to be super helpful as things progress.

Brian D. Anderson (23:01.739)
Yep. And it’s hard. I mean, we give a caution. It’s hard. We’ve just been trying. I mean, I don’t have anything I can hand you right now that says this is how we’re doing, because every time we think we’ve got the 10 or five or whatever, something else kind of comes in. So it takes time, but I’m confident we’ll get there. But again, we’ve got to get away from measuring things like in education or workforce development. Graduation rate really doesn’t mean a whole lot. Yes, you want your students graduating from high school.

But what happens after they leave? they going into a post-secondary track to get a credential or a certificate or a diploma? Are they going straight to work? And if they’re going to work, is it fast food, minimum wage? Or is it into something that can build? So you got to be careful, again, how the data can be, one, understood by the group you’re talking to, but secondly, is it really measuring something that’s important?

Brandon Burton (23:56.897)
Right. So I’m curious between your strategic plan that’s recently rolled out and your regional vision, you guys have your focus. You guys are really honing in on those things that are important to really move the needle in your community. Throughout this process, did you guys have to address any sacred cows or have other ideas been presented to you since? And how do you respond in saying that this isn’t

Brian D. Anderson (24:03.061)
Thank

Brandon Burton (24:25.538)
the focus of the chamber at this time.

Brian D. Anderson (24:28.491)
Often, I mean, just last night, the last thing I looked at before I left the office was, again, a good partner that we work with regularly said, hey, we’re going to, this group wants to apply for a grant. We want you to be a part of it. We looked at all the information. We didn’t see anywhere that it made sense for us to do anything, write a letter of support or not, but certainly encourage them to do that work. So I think every day you creep in because again, I…

You got to be careful when you have the brand power a Chamber of Commerce does because that can work for you or against you. And too often it gets you pulled into things you shouldn’t be a part of. Now, I also wrote a letter of support last night from one of our local government officials to be recognized as a C-suite executive for the contributions he’s made. So I don’t mind doing things and lending the Chamber brand, the Chamber horsepower when it’s needed. What it can’t do is distract our team going down another path.

Brandon Burton (25:01.965)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (25:24.731)
that pulls us from the things we’re core. I’ve joked about in my career, I think I it at the Institute, but I’ve certainly carried it. Don’t do the Christmas parade if you can get out of it. Now, some places, the chamber has to do that because it actually is core to who they are and core to that town. But most chambers probably should not be doing the Christmas parade. It’s a lot of manpower, a lot of cost, and maybe not gonna get you where you need as far as policy.

and working on the other things you need to work on. But that’s the kind of example that we work, and I call it, don’t let it be the Christmas parade project that pulls you into something you don’t need to be a part of. We had a few, ours remained on the event side. Chamber people also think you gotta have something going on every hour of every day. So I’m constantly kind of reminding our team, when you plan a, you, your team, little part of the bigger team, plan a breakfast, and then another part of our team plans a lunch or a dinner the same day.

Brandon Burton (26:02.167)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (26:21.791)
That causes some of us have to be, you know, almost half our days committed and we’re just there as participants. So we’ve been very careful to make sure everybody looks at a master calendar. We try not to have anything of significance the same day and maybe same week. We cut the number of events, probably 25%. We’re very focused on ones we have to make each one count rather than let’s just have another one. But then we use that filter when people say,

Brandon Burton (26:37.4)
See

Brandon Burton (26:48.92)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (26:51.563)
Hey, I want you to plan a dinner and do this topic and invite these people. If it doesn’t answer the first two or three questions of our filtering, it doesn’t happen. We politely say you ought to go partner with somebody else.

Brandon Burton (27:02.38)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And just having those events that you do choose to do, having them fit those, the areas of focus that you guys are honed in on is so important because it would be very easy for a member to say, well, I was just at the breakfast yesterday. Why do I need to go to this thing today? And I mean, they’ve got their own calendars they’re trying to deal with. So the things that they’re involved with need to be focused and impactful as well. So being respectful of their time and resources is just as important. So.

Brian D. Anderson (27:16.683)
.

Brian D. Anderson (27:29.695)
Yes.

Brian D. Anderson (27:32.975)
And I have to another question just for regional chambers are some that may cross two or three different jurisdictions. We even go so far we plan something we try to go reach out to other parties. Is anything happening? Especially it’s a big signature event or the tourism folks got anything that week or the economic development people. We talk to our partners so we try to also not contaminate or take away from other people’s events because we know what happens when we plan something to find out.

The city’s doing something at the same time.

Brandon Burton (28:06.35)
Exactly. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, this has been a great conversation and reminder for all of us listening to hone in that focus and sharpen it. But I always like asking for some sort of a tip or action item for the listener who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level. What would you offer them as they strive to do that?

Brian D. Anderson (28:30.955)
A of quick ones. The ACC, which I’m a member of the board for the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, has a ton of data, ton of information. You can go get all kinds of reports that they keep as a repository. If you haven’t been to IOM as a young or entering leader of a chamber, I highly recommend IOM. It’s the best place to get the grounding for our profession. And then if you’ve been around the industry for a while and you need some personal motivation or maybe to validate that you know what you’re doing,

CCE is a good process to go through too. You need to be, I think, five or six years experienced in the role and some other criteria. on the ACC website. But all three of those will help you have the things you can have sort of at hand. You can go out and just get those. Another more, another area you can think about is have a mentor or a partner. Somebody that you respect either in your state, in your state association, maybe somebody you’ve met at

Brandon Burton (29:22.988)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (29:28.829)
a convention or a conference, have somebody you can call when you’ve got a question you can’t ask your chairman. You know, this just happened. I’m nervous about it. My website had something happen and you don’t want the boss to know that you’re dealing with something. Have somebody you can call and share that with. All of us have been there, at least if you’ve been there as long as I have, you faced a lot of different challenges. Reach out to somebody in the industry. We’re all, we’re only as good as all of us are together.

because this is a tough job. met a young lady yesterday who’s running a one-person chamber. Her job’s 10 times harder than mine because she’s got, she’s expected to be on all the meetings I’m expected to be at and to deliver the same value as I’m expected. But I’ve got 11 partners on our team that help us do that. So help each other. Each chamber should be talking to each other regularly. We are not competitors. We are collaborators. If we do those kinds of things, I think you got a chance to be successful in a very rewarding profession.

Brandon Burton (30:04.878)
you

Brian D. Anderson (30:26.027)
that I’ve enjoyed for the last 18 years.

Brandon Burton (30:28.34)
Yeah, I love that. I also like asking as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brian D. Anderson (30:38.591)
Challenging, you younger business leaders, entrepreneurs aren’t joiners as other generations have been. You’ve got to work harder to get people into your community, your fold, get them to be investors. Secondly, on the political front, we’ve never been more divided. We can’t even debate topics anymore. Either you’re in or you’re out or you’re pro or you’re con. So chambers are going to have to bring that business voice into the policy arena even more than they ever have.

use the trust that people still have in the corporate or business community to your favor. We’ve got to be in conversations that are probably more more uncomfortable, but that’s why we’re there. We’ve got to make a difference on the policy side. And then lastly, just talent like everybody else, finding good people to do what we all need to do because you don’t go to chamber school necessarily. We hire people who have a skill set and maybe a good experience or two, and we turn them into chamber professionals.

Those are the three things that I’m watching right now that give us challenge every day is just, do we stay focused to what we can control, but also influence sometimes what we can’t control while we find a different.

Brandon Burton (31:50.936)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I wanted to give you an opportunity, Brian, to share any contact information for listeners out there who may want to reach out and connect or learn more about your strategic plan or about RBA rising and really sharpening that focus. Where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to connect?

Brian D. Anderson (32:13.355)
Well, chamberrva.com has all of our information from what we’re doing. As most chambers, we have a really good website, got our contact information on it. But my email is brian.anderson@chamberrva.com. Reach out to me, happy to help. Our team is very talented. We got a lot of good people that would be willing to help as well. So if you’ve got a question, we’re happy to help you.

Brandon Burton (32:35.028)
Awesome. We’ll make sure we get all that in our show notes for this episode. this has been great having you on. Chamber chat with us today, Brian. I appreciate you setting aside the time and sharing your experiences and things that are making a difference in your community and really just helping all those listeners out there to adjust their focus and make sure the work that they’re doing makes an impact. So thank you.

Brian D. Anderson (32:39.295)
Wonderful.

Brian D. Anderson (32:59.947)
Thank you for what you’re doing, Brian. This is a wonderful way to help all of us be better. So thank you for the work you’re doing.

Empty Building Tours with Deb Brown

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Brandon Burton (00:01.024)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a leading voice in rural revitalization and a fierce advocate for the potential of small towns. Deb Brown is the co-founder of SaveYour.Town.

where for the past decade, she’s partnered with Becky McCray to deliver practical, inspiring solutions that help rural communities take bold action and create lasting change. Deb’s expertise is grounded in real world experience, from her impactful work as a Chamber of Commerce Executive Director to her varied background in retail, insurance, and entrepreneurship. She brings an energetic, no-nonsense approach that resonates with community leaders and grassroots

doers alike. She’s also the author of From Possibilities to Reality, Savior Small Town, a hands-on guide that brings essential reading for those working to breathe new life into rural places. Whether she’s leading workshops, crafting strategies, or sparking conversations, Deb Brown brings insight, connection, and deep belief in what’s possible when a small town takes ownership of their future.

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

Deb Brown (01:40.504)
So first of all, thank you for the lovely introduction and for having me on your podcast. I am a fierce advocate for belonging to the chamber and being active in your chamber. So I’m glad to be here having conversations with you. Now, what do you want to know about me that might be different?

Hmm. I know how to set off fireworks. In fact, I’m a licensed pyrotechnician and I learned to do that while I was a chamber director in Webster City, Iowa. So it goes to show many things can happen when you work with a chamber.

Brandon Burton (02:08.277)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (02:19.104)
That’s right. It just shows how Chamber Executive wears many hats and carries credentials that you never dreamed you’d have to carry, right? That’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about your organization, Save Your Town, just kind of how it started, what the vision is, what you guys do, and kind of anything you want to share about

Deb Brown (02:23.15)
Indeed. Yes.

Deb Brown (02:43.478)
So we, Becky McCray is the rural small business advocate and she started a small biz survival back in 2006. And it is one of the first early blogs that talks about small businesses and rural communities and actions you can take. And I had been following her on Twitter of all places, right? When I first started on Twitter and I didn’t know any better. So I just reached out and started talking to her.

Brandon Burton (03:12.94)
There you go.

Deb Brown (03:13.452)
I guess I still do that, right? Anyway, we met in person at a bloggers tour in Hutchinson, Kansas and hit it off and started doing some things together. I was living in Iowa at the time and she lives in Oklahoma. We were involved in the 140 character conferences, which again is a Twitter-based conference.

Brandon Burton (03:34.05)
Twitter.

Deb Brown (03:37.059)
We just really got along and thought along the same lines. And she came to visit me one day and we’re sitting over dinner and she said, you know, I think we should do something together. I’m like, okay. So our first venture was a toolkit on how to do a pop-up in a small town. And my first question to her was, are people really gonna pay for this? And indeed, indeed they did because at that time not very many people were doing that.

Brandon Burton (04:01.12)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (04:06.83)
And we have grown over the years. I was still working at the chamber at that time and went out on my own with Becky in 2017. we’ve grown and spent many, many hours in rural communities across the United States and Canada. And it’s work that we love to do and we like being on the ground and hearing.

what people’s challenges are and working with them to figure out ways to overcome those challenges. That’s a short synopsis for you.

Brandon Burton (04:40.226)
Yeah, no, that’s great. It gives a good background. So I’d mentioned in your bio that you were a chamber executive. You mentioned it with the fireworks. Maybe just to continue helping to set the stage, tell us a little bit about your experience as a chamber executive.

Deb Brown (04:59.566)
Oh, sure. So my father had had a heart attack and we moved from North Carolina back to Iowa. And I was looking for something to do. So I volunteered at the local chamber in Hampton, Iowa. And lucky me, the director was phenomenal. And I ended up actually doing the communications, Main Street work and social media work. This was 2009, right? A while ago.

Brandon Burton (05:28.162)
Great.

Deb Brown (05:28.904)
and learned a lot in Iowa has phenomenal main street and chamber organization. So I really did learn a lot and the position for executive director came up in 2013 in Webster city. And I thought, sure, let’s apply for it. And danged if they didn’t hire me. So I was able to be a director there for a little over four years. it was for me.

Brandon Burton (05:47.03)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (05:55.511)
I had some background, of course, in chamber, but more in communications and tourism and talking to people and conversations. So I was given the opportunity at that chamber really to set the stage for the things that we could do in that community that would really make a difference. They had lost a major manufacturer two years before I got there.

employed 2,000 people in a town of 8,000 to kind of give you an idea. It was a company town and had been there for a long time. So you, many of your listeners will know exactly what that feels like. And there were some challenges, but as a community and as a chamber, we figured it out and really had a good time reinvigorating the community and getting more people involved and got past that.

Brandon Burton (06:29.858)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (06:36.32)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (06:51.416)
pour me stage into look at who we are. We’re phenomenal. What else can we do? So that’s my chamber experience. I just tried new ideas all the time.

Brandon Burton (06:57.43)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:06.274)
Very good. Well, it definitely helps to give us some background so those listening know you understand chambers. You’ve been in it. You’ve been in the throws and some of those, you know, deepest, toughest struggles that we see.

Deb Brown (07:12.993)
yeah.

Deb Brown (07:18.54)
And I wanna throw in here too that I do have my IOM certification and that is probably one of the best educational trainings that I have received in my lifetime. I was fortunate to have a great class, but also the instructors, it’s unbelievable training. And if anybody has the opportunity to do an IOM, please do it. And no, I’m not being paid to say that.

It’s just been huge in my life going forward from that point.

Brandon Burton (07:45.654)
Yeah.

Yeah, very good. Well, for today’s topic, we’re going to spend most of our time talking about what I see as a very unique revitalization tool, we’ll call it, to help revitalize some parts of maybe your downtown or town square that maybe is looking a little empty, a little quiet, a little, you know,

It needs some help, say. We see this in small towns all across the country. And Deb’s got some great ideas on how to address that. And we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Deb, we’re back. So as I teased before our pause there, today we’re talking about this unique approach to revitalizing downtowns, town squares, some of these areas where we see

parts of towns that maybe get forgotten. Maybe they had a great historical impact in this community, in any community USA, right? We see it all across the country, but I’m gonna let you introduce what this approach is and how you go about doing it.

Deb Brown (09:08.47)
Absolutely. So we’re going to talk about the tour of empty buildings. And I want to tell you a story about how we came up with this entire idea and this concept. So I mentioned before working in Webster city, when I went over for the job interview, I counted 14 empty buildings downtown, 14 in a town of 8,000.

And I knew if I got the job, I was gonna be responsible or one of them to help fill those empty buildings. And I got the job. And yes, of course they said, so Deb, what are you gonna do to fill these empty buildings? And my first response is, well, what are we going to do? I have some ideas, right? And my thought was,

The beautiful, some were beautiful historical buildings. Most of them had a great story. I know that people are curious and they want to see what’s in places. Like if I can go upstairs and see where they stored their things in the old bank vault, I want to do that, right? So we came, I came up with the idea, let’s showcase these buildings because instead of hiding them or ignoring them,

Brandon Burton (10:08.033)
Yes.

Yeah

Deb Brown (10:24.844)
We want to fill them, so let’s showcase them. And it’s vacant or underutilized buildings. You can do that for. And actually, the tour’s design, it raises awareness about these building vacancies and inspires the reuse and revitalization ideas.

In a month’s time, we figured out, we scheduled a tour of empty buildings. Now, would I recommend doing that in a month’s time? I might tell you to take two months, just saying, but I didn’t know any better. And I had a group of people that were ready for change. They were tired of the story that we failed because it didn’t fail, things just changed and that’s life. Life happens.

Deb Brown (12:00.003)
So, you know, we had some really great members and people were ready to try something new. They were tired of that we failed story because that was just a story. In real life, things happen and change is the only constant, right? So a group of us,

Brandon Burton (12:02.082)
Okay, sounds good.

Deb Brown (12:24.906)
members got together and said what can we do? So we made a list of the empty buildings, got in touch with the realtors to ask them do you know the owners, which ones are for sale. We’re fortunate to have a local historian in the community and Nancy put together stories about each individual building which was great because it’s good to know the history right and our chamber champions those

Brandon Burton (12:48.588)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (12:51.5)
were the retired individuals that were still members. We called them chamber champions. And they stepped up to say, well, I’ll tell that story. I’ll go in this building and I’ll tell that story. So we put the tour together and it was, you could come and go as you please. It was over a time period of three hours. A local engineering company made the map for us.

Brandon Burton (12:56.802)
I love it.

Deb Brown (13:15.182)
And we made that available both online and at the chamber office. So you could come and pick it up or print it off. And the biggest secret I can share with you both before and after the tour is we talked to everybody. We had conversations with everybody. Have you heard about the tour of empty buildings? Are you coming? And people had not heard and it involved being out in the community and being in the places where people talk.

One of my favorite stories is I went to the morning coffee where the old guys go and all have coffee, right? You know this group, most small towns have them. And crotchety group of old guys. And one of the fellows said to me, Deb, what are you doing? It’s not gonna work. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Why should I share about it? And I had to think for a minute and I said to him, you know, where’s your daughter live?

Brandon Burton (13:47.2)
you

Brandon Burton (13:52.266)
Yep, yep.

Brandon Burton (13:58.019)
is that we have a front-end center that we’re able to start moving. And just in some cases, why should I share a back-end? And then I think, well, it’s not too bad. It’s not too bad. It’s fine. But I think that we have to be very careful.

Deb Brown (14:11.182)
Because well, you know, she lives at the state capitol. I’m like, yeah, that’s right. You got grandkids, right? And he goes, yeah. I’m like, what would it be like if your daughter can move back home with her family and start her own business in one of these empty buildings? And it’s like the light bulb went off over his head. Everybody has a motivating factor and that was his.

And now he saw reasons where he could share that story. And he became one of our biggest advocates and in fact did share the story amongst his group of peers and organizations. It was just wonderful. And so a month later we had the tour, 44 people came and I declared that a success because that was 44 people that not only got to see the empty buildings, but also took their stories and shared them.

Brandon Burton (14:35.094)
Yeah, I it.

Deb Brown (15:03.018)
outside of the tour with their friends and families and associates. And we continue to share the local newspaper got on board every time somebody rented a building, they showed up and took pictures of the new renters and made a big deal about the ribbon cutting and shared about those people’s stories and the kind of products and services they were providing. The local radio station got involved.

It was, it became just so much fun to see what was happening in all these different buildings. And there were 12 buildings on the tour. In 18 months, 10 of those 12 buildings were filled.

Brandon Burton (15:42.53)
Wow

Deb Brown (15:45.571)
And they weren’t filled with another factory or some new big conglomerate from outside of our community. The majority were filled with entrepreneurs and local businesses that may have been expanding or ready to move from their garage to a brick and mortar building. Why did it work? Because we kept talking about it. And we shared every story possible and we use social media because

Brandon Burton (15:53.154)
you

Brandon Burton (16:09.034)
That’s awesome.

Deb Brown (16:13.742)
This was 2013, social media was important, much more important than before all the stuff that goes on with it now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just people being in touch with their families and sharing stories. So I love talking about the Tour of Empty Buildings because I know it works. We heard from Natchez, Mississippi that does the Tour of Empty Buildings just about every year.

Brandon Burton (16:21.826)
all the algorithms now and how they manipulate it.

Brandon Burton (16:44.309)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (16:44.312)
Buildings come and go, business owners come and go. know, things don’t stay permanent. So for them, it made sense to do that little bigger community. We heard from a group in Australia, and I think it was in Sydney, who said, you know, we do tours for tourists to go see different things in our community. We have added one empty building into that tour because you never know when a tourist might want to start a job.

Brandon Burton (16:57.868)
Ha.

Brandon Burton (17:10.914)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (17:13.454)
We were just hearing all different kinds of people wanting to take advantage of this tour. And we got the phone calls from some of our neighbors. Hey, can we do one in our community? And of course, what am I going to say? Absolutely, you can do one in your community. And here you and I are 12 years later, still talking about the tour of empty buildings. I want to go a little bit further and share another story from that.

Brandon Burton (17:28.758)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (17:35.33)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (17:41.773)
the local movie theater closed my first week on the job. You know, that’s just wrong. In a small town, the local movie theater is really important, right? And I think it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people in town. And so I said, let’s bring a bunch of people together and talk about this. So I just said, hey, let’s meet in two weeks at the middle school and see what we can do.

Brandon Burton (17:46.114)
I don’t mean… Right?

Yeah.

Deb Brown (18:08.458)
huge group of people showed up that wanted to save the theater. So that told us right there was an unofficial informal gathering to just see who was interested. And there were a lot of people interested. This group ended up forming a 501C3. They raised money. Now it was going to cost $90,000 to upgrade from old film to digital.

and had to buy the building and the building was for sale for $30,000. That’s a lot of money, right? But we didn’t care because we knew we could raise the money. People wanted to save the theater. The alumni associations in town jumped on board. We decided to sell the seats at $300 a pop, not actually sell the seats, but you could have your plaque on the back of it.

And the alumni associations bought those like they were giving them away free, made a huge difference. The students at the high school created movie trailers about the project that could be shown on social media. mean, everybody jumped in and got involved. And it was, the majority of the funding came in five, 10 and $25 donations. There were a couple of $10,000 donations, but the majority of it was small. And that

Brandon Burton (19:13.186)
That’s really cool.

Deb Brown (19:30.164)
speaks to the power of a small town that knows what it wants and someone or some group of people is there to help guide them to achieve that. That’s just one story from those 12 buildings.

Brandon Burton (19:40.205)
Yeah. Great story. Yeah. So I do, I’ve got some questions about the empty building tours. So, with this initial tour that you did at the 12 buildings, you had 44 people come to do the tours. What was your initial goal going into it? Like what, if we can accomplish one thing out of this, doing these tours, what would that be? And then with that goal, you mentioned talking about it everywhere, but

Deb Brown (19:48.142)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (20:10.22)
Who was it that you were really targeting to be on those tours?

Deb Brown (20:14.114)
Very good question. So the initial goal was to change the conversation from, we suck, we have empty buildings, to look at the possibilities. Look at what we do have. There’s place for lots of new businesses here. And that’s important because if you’re thinking positively, these are the kind of things you can accomplish. But if you keep that negative attitude around you, it’s just hard to break through that.

So that was the initial goal, get the building shown and maintain that good conversation and get people excited again. Excuse me. Generally, we’ve seen chambers, economic development groups, even local community organizations do put these tours on.

And you want to fill them with people that want to start businesses actually. So maybe it’s entrepreneurs, maybe it’s another business that wants to expand its footprint. Perhaps it’s, we never looked for big businesses. We were looking for the smaller businesses and how we can make that happen. A good example is three of the empty buildings went into the incubator project.

Brandon Burton (21:20.648)
So, that’s the plan. And that is the plan. And this is what I’m going to do.

Deb Brown (21:35.885)
which was just something I made up. I approached the owner and said, what if we helped entrepreneurs start a business and they could do that in your building, free rent first three months, reduce rent the rest of the year, they pay the utilities, the chamber will help with marketing and the SBDC will come in and help with the tools that they can provide. And she said, fine, sounds like a great idea.

Brandon Burton (21:47.011)
Because the treatment is being done in a way is not going cause any harm by any of the other things. And it must be a similar kind of treatment that involves the type of treatment.

Deb Brown (22:04.73)
And that really worked. That was phenomenal. And not just that, there were several different people that tried that idea out and a couple of them ended up buying buildings in town and expanded their initial footprint. So you just have to think a little differently, a little outside the box, give people a chance, lower those barriers to entry because that’s what an incubator project does.

If you think about buying a building, you know, there’s $100,000, another hundred grand to rehab it and fix it, and you haven’t even tried your idea out, makes no sense, right? So an incubator project gives you that opportunity to do that. I hope I answered your question. It kind of went off.

Brandon Burton (22:38.242)
Right.

Brandon Burton (22:50.722)
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, yeah, you did. In fact, as you were giving your response, it reminded me I had heard I was trying to remember where I’d heard it from. And I’m pretty sure it came from the book 13 ways to kill your community. Yes. And he talks about one of the ways to kill your community, obviously, uses reverse psychology, right? You don’t want to kill your community. But if you did, one of the things would be don’t paint. Like don’t

Deb Brown (23:06.146)
Doug, yeah.

Brandon Burton (23:20.514)
don’t keep things fresh, don’t keep things looking good. And he talks about the downtown environment and where there’s vacant lots, some communities put a little park, you know, in this vacant lot and, you know, updated the facade on the buildings. And I think it was in here where he even talks about putting posters up in the windows of some of these vacant buildings to show, you know, either how that building was used in the past. when there’s

When you’re walking down Main Street and you see this empty building, maybe it used to be a barber shop and you’ve got posters of a barber in there doing this, you could put posters, these screen posters on the windows to help people imagine what the space could be. And it’s not necessarily getting them in the doors and doing the empty building tour like you’re talking about, but it’s drawing attention to what can this space become?

What has it been in the past? What can it become? And keeping it beautiful, keeping the area looking nice, making sure that there’s not broken windows in these buildings, because that just spirals into bigger things.

Deb Brown (24:31.234)
And you know, I want to piggyback on that because it doesn’t have to be the building owner that does all of that. You know, I follow this lawn mowing service on TikTok and they actually go to people’s houses and mow the yards for free. man, that stuff is addicted. But we call those ninjas where what if…

Brandon Burton (24:46.4)
Yes, yes, I’ve seen that.

Deb Brown (24:54.54)
Me and a couple of my friends went and washed windows on one of those empty buildings. Just wash the windows and swept the sidewalk. That makes a big difference because people notice, are they doing in there? Look, the windows are clean. Sometimes if it’s a local owner, they get a phone call that says, what’s going on? I see your windows are clean. It’s little ninja things that other people can do. What are they gonna do? Are they gonna tell you to dirty the windows again? Of course not, right?

Brandon Burton (25:23.04)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (25:23.342)
So how can we as community members become a ninja and help? What things can we do? You have an empty lot in town and you’d like a restaurant, you know what, go take a card table with a couple of your friends and eat lunch there every day. Because you know, people are going to drive by and go, what the hell is Deb doing over there? And they’re going to stop or call me and I’m going to say, we want a restaurant here. So we’re trying the idea out.

Don’t be afraid to take those tiny steps to get people thinking and talking about what you’re doing. It matters.

Brandon Burton (25:59.009)
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Those little things matter. So back with the focus on the empty building tour, I imagine there’s some level of coordination when trying to track down the owners of the buildings, if they’re a local owner, if they’re out of town owner, if they’ve got a realtor that they’re using. How do you gain access to these buildings and coordinate?

Deb Brown (26:07.522)
Yes.

Deb Brown (26:22.548)
So that’s easier than you think. The majority of small town realtors that I know anyway, know their community very well. And they know the history of the buildings that they’re responsible for. For us, that was the perfect outreach to get in touch with all. We asked all the realtors in town, let’s sit down and visit because we want to do something with these buildings you’d like to sell or rent or fill, right?

Brandon Burton (26:25.324)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (26:31.948)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:48.065)
Right?

Deb Brown (26:50.048)
So those were willing partners in the progress of it. Like I said, I counted 14, 12 came on the tour. And one of those actually backed out at the very last minute because that kind of stuff happens, right? And ended up he had a building that probably shouldn’t have been toured. And that’s why he backed out. It happens, right? It happens. you know, one person, the chamber director does not do all this work by themselves.

Brandon Burton (27:05.75)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (27:11.456)
Yeah. Yeah.

Deb Brown (27:19.948)
You will lose your mind. This is an opportunity where you can, yeah, no, you need to gather as a crowd and people that want to participate in this project with you. It will be usually the realtors and the building owners. Some of the local ones just pick up the phone and call them. Or you know they go to lunch at this restaurant every Wednesday, go sit down and visit with them. You know these people. This is not difficult.

Brandon Burton (27:21.73)
I’m glad you said that.

Brandon Burton (27:44.406)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (27:48.399)
Often we make projects hard. You know, so maybe I don’t know Connie, but I know that my board president does, and I’m going to say, can you go talk to Connie, and here’s what we want to know. So use your connections, and don’t be afraid to ask other people, what are your ideas? What do you think we should be doing? The newspaper was thrilled to be involved, and they came up with their own idea about follow-up and how

Brandon Burton (27:48.512)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (28:16.3)
they can be most effective with these new businesses. So the more you work with lots of people, the more ideas, and you want to try them all because you don’t know which ideas are going to work and which aren’t. if the idea doesn’t work, so what? It just didn’t work. Go to the next one, right?

Brandon Burton (28:28.876)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:32.714)
Yeah.

So would you have everybody meet up at the chamber office and then walk to these buildings or would you caravan or how would you gather to begin this tour? Right, yeah.

Deb Brown (28:38.9)
No.

So to do the actual tour, mean? So we didn’t do it that way because we wanted people to come and go, say, you may only want to look at three buildings. You don’t want to look at all 12 buildings. So you would pick up your map or download it. And you knew from four to seven, you could go look at the buildings. So counting was interesting because we had somebody in each location that counted the number of people that were serious. They came in to look at stuff.

Brandon Burton (28:55.678)
Okay, gotcha.

Deb Brown (29:12.43)
By serious, mean stayed, had a treat, and asked a few questions. That’s serious enough, right? So I wouldn’t recommend doing a ride around tour unless that’s something you want to do. Maybe you have a group of, Centerville, South Dakota had this idea. They had empty buildings that were not open.

Brandon Burton (29:19.009)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:27.852)
Red.

Deb Brown (29:39.819)
So they decided to meet downtown and they did a walk around of their empty buildings. And I think there were six or seven. And the economic developer knew, again, somebody that knew most of the people in town. And they just walked around and talked about the history of the building and what could be possible, answered questions. And I think they had maybe 14 people on that tour. It’s a tiny town. It was perfect for them. Esteline, I think they’re South Dakota.

Brandon Burton (30:02.452)
Okay.

Deb Brown (30:09.58)
The weather was not the greatest when they did theirs. So they decided to do just a mini tour for their board and a few building owners. They wanted to try the idea out. Let’s work with our board and see how this is going to work. And that worked for them because it was a smaller group, a new director that didn’t quite know how to be a chamber director yet. He’s really learning and he’s great. But this was good for him to try it out and see what his board thought.

And of course it was positive because you bring a group of interested people together talking about the possible success of your community. How could it not work out?

Brandon Burton (30:49.322)
Right. Yeah, I love that.

Deb Brown (30:50.754)
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be huge. can be work what works in your community.

Brandon Burton (30:57.1)
Yeah, yep. And you’ve shared some great examples of how different communities have taken it and adapted it to fit and work for their communities. So I love that. Well, Deb, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask you on behalf of the chamber leaders that are out there listening who are wanting to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they try to accomplish that goal?

Deb Brown (31:27.79)
So I have a couple of things. The first one that I suggested just about everybody is to host a coffee and calendars event. And how this works is perhaps you want to work with a select group of people.

it might be your nonprofit organizations, invite them to come over for coffee and bring their calendars. And what you’re gonna do is talk about the next three months on the calendars of what people are doing. You wanna share information and see if there’s any way that you can collaborate or work together. The way that we did it is, I think we, maybe 10 people there, and we met.

I don’t even remember where we met. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be at the chamber at City Hall. can be at the coffee shop for that matter. And I asked people to go around and tell us who they were, what organization they were with, and tell us one thing that we may not know about their organization. And we found out that Building Families, a nonprofit organization, had funding to give to daycare, possible daycare owners to help

Brandon Burton (32:17.27)
Good evening.

Brandon Burton (32:26.914)
and the other organization. And without them, there’s no chance of a government to get money to make the big bang without the contribution.

Deb Brown (32:41.358)
If you have a house and you wanna start your own daycare, but you need to get licensed, it would help with the licensing. Maybe buy new toys, maybe put a fence up, just those small things that are necessary, but an individual may not have. That’s huge. You know how hard it is to find childcare these days. So to have an organization have that kind of funding, was a big deal and we didn’t know it. And I’m the chamber director and might’ve thought I should know it, right?

Brandon Burton (32:45.214)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (33:06.73)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (33:08.64)
So you start with that so you learn about each other and then you start looking at calendars. So maybe you’re having an event February 14th and so am I at one o’clock, both of us. Can we partner? Can I do mine at 10 and you do yours at one so we can have people in town the whole day? Begin to have these coffee and calendars kind of conversations on ways to work together to collaborate for the benefit of the community.

Brandon Burton (33:35.648)
That’s a great idea. Great.

Deb Brown (33:36.36)
Anybody can do that. Chambers can do that, but so can the local church society. mean, think about who could do that. So that’s my first tip.

Take the small steps. Not everything has to be a big deal. Find out from your membership, what is it that they want? I used to have one of my staff, part-time staff, was a retired school first grade teacher. That should tell you. Nobody told Joanne, no. So she would make the phone calls to members and say, Deb wants to come over for half an hour and have a conversation with you. And book the appointments. And I’d go with my notebook and just simply ask, so.

Brandon Burton (34:08.396)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (34:19.244)
What can we do for you? What is it that you want? And they were frankly surprised because nobody had ever asked them that. Generally we go with our hand open, right? Find out what your members want and how you can help them and how each other can help each other. We’re in the business of making our communities the best they can possibly be by supporting our local businesses and our members.

Brandon Burton (34:29.751)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (34:48.332)
Remember that. Continue to support your local businesses and your members in the way that they ask for help.

Brandon Burton (34:54.498)
Great pieces of advice. I love it. I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Deb Brown (34:59.629)
Thank you.

Deb Brown (35:11.386)
We live in this space, particularly those of us over 50, where we have one foot in the old way and one foot in the new way. So the new way of doing things is generally taking the small steps, building connections, gathering our crowd, figuring out how to work together as a group or as an organization. And the old way is letting your board make all the decisions and, and

deciding without input from the community, figure out how to get from the old way to the new way. Those communities that can do that are going to do really, really well. Yeah. And I’m not young, just you’re saying, I understand the old way and I know why it worked when it did, but it’s time for a new way. Let’s support as many people as we can.

Brandon Burton (35:52.578)
Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (36:04.395)
Yeah.

And change can be hard. And if we can be helpful in helping to bridge the old way to the new way, let’s help make that transition a little bit easier.

Deb Brown (36:16.204)
And know, change is the only constant. There’s always gonna be change, right? The other stuff comes and goes too, right? Yeah.

Brandon Burton (36:20.438)
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Well, Deb, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners or anywhere you’d want to point them if they wanted to reach out and connect and learn more about what it is you have to offer or how you can help their communities. Where would you point them?

Deb Brown (36:42.898)
So to find out about us, if you go to saveyour.town and it’s S-A-V-E-Y-O-U-R dot T-O-W-N.

Wealth of information, sign up for a free newsletter, read the stories and the articles about what different small towns are doing and enjoy yourself at the site. Both Becky and I have written books and we’re pretty excited about it. Mine is, you mentioned it, From Possibilities to Reality. And you can find that one at saveyour.town. You’ll find the article that talks about the books. If you go to saveyour.town/books.

You’ll see both of our books there. Just sign up for the newsletter. It’s free and we share stories from people that we meet on the road, emails that we receive, from people like you that have stories to tell us. We are committed and invested in our rural and small towns and we want everyone else to be as well.

Brandon Burton (37:47.01)
Yeah, very good. I will make sure that’s in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for listeners to find the website and find you and find the book and reach out and connect. But Dev, this has been a great conversation. I’m glad we’re able to get you on the show and to really explore this empty building tours idea and some of the success stories that have come out of this, not just in your community, but in other communities that have adopted this strategy. I think it’s a really great idea.

Deb Brown (37:51.544)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (38:16.384)
So thank you for sharing it with us.

Deb Brown (38:16.707)
Thank you. And thank you so much, Brandon, for having me on the show. feel for anybody has a chamber question that I might be able to answer, just shoot me an email, deb@saveyour.town. Be happy to answer.

How Forward-Thinking Initiatives are Reshaping Communities with Linda Parsons

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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.

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Brandon Burton (00:00.972)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a seasoned leader in the Chamber and Association Management with more than 25 years of experience, advancing economic development and community collaboration. Linda Parsons has served as President and CEO of the Moore County Chamber of Commerce. since 2014. Under her leadership, the chamber has been nationally recognized as a four-star accreditation from the US Chamber of Commerce and twice named as a runner-up for the National Chamber of the Year. In 2025, Linda was honored by her peers as the North Carolina Chamber Executive of the Year, a testament to her impact across workforce development, business advocacy, and strategic planning.

Her leadership extends far beyond her role as she actively serves on a wide range of local and state boards focused on education, healthcare, childcare, and economic growth. Before relocating to North Carolina, Linda gained valuable public policy experience with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and served under two Ohio governors as a state and local government commission. She holds a degree in politics and government from Ohio Wesleyan University and is a CCE and a graduate from the US Chambers Institute for Organization Management. Please welcome to the show Linda Parsons. Linda, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so you can all get to know you a little better.

Linda M. Parsons (01:50.836)
Well, Brandon, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. It’s always great to connect with our chamber colleagues across the country. So a little bit about myself. I think you asked for an interesting fact. And a lot of people do not recognize that I am artistically inclined. I was a ballerina until I was 18. And I am fluid in piano, violin, and a vocalist.

Brandon Burton (02:04.59)
That’s right.

Linda M. Parsons (02:19.341)
I am a painter and I have thrown pottery throughout the years. Currently not doing that, but so artistically, that’s always what’s motivated me and it’s what brings me joy when I have the time to do it.

Brandon Burton (02:34.7)
Yeah, I love that. And I wish we would talk more about that just as a society, just the joy that comes from creating things, know, just being expressing your creativity. There’s so much goodness that comes from that. So I’m glad you’re leaning into it. It is. It is. Yeah. Very good. I love getting those those little interesting facts about people.

Linda M. Parsons (02:49.299)
It’s also relaxing.

Brandon Burton (03:00.494)
If you would tell us about the Moore County Chamber just to give us an idea before we dive into our discussion today. Help us understand the size, staff, scope of work that you guys are involved with, budget, just to set the stage for our discussion.

Linda M. Parsons (03:14.291)
where I’d be happy to do that. So the Moore County Chamber of Commerce is located about an hour south of Raleigh in two hours from Charlotte, North Carolina. We are a population of about 110,000 people, one of the fastest growing counties in the state of North Carolina outside of an urban area with a projection to grow 50,000 people by 2050.

So it’s a lot of growth that is expected. I’ve also seen figures of another 70,000 residents. So we shall see. We are a tourism-based economy, and we also have a strong healthcare economy. We have currently 620 members with a staff of three, with just shy of a little over a half million dollar budget. And we are a mighty three.

Between the three of us, we have almost 40 years of experience in the chamber industry. All of us have a chamber background, which is extremely rare in the chamber industry. I’ve gotten both of them from seasoned chamber organizations, one in our state, one in the state of Texas. And we work very hard on a variety of issues ranging from workforce development, childcare is a very strong advocacy area, housing.

Brandon Burton (04:19.607)
Yes.

Linda M. Parsons (04:39.315)
transportation, leadership training. We have one of the oldest leadership training models in the state. And then of course, you know, just supporting that general member, whether it’s a solopreneur or a large corporation in our area. Golf is heavy. are home of the second home to the USGA. They built their second headquarters here in Moore County. And we also are home to the World Golf Hall of Fame.

And so if someone is a seasoned golfer, they’re probably very familiar with Pinehurst Resort, who is in the process of building another course in our community. So we have about 43 courses within 15 minutes of our community.

Brandon Burton (05:23.402)
Wow, well that is a great snapshot, but also painting a picture as you do, right, with your creativity, but painting a picture in the mind of what the community looks like. And I’m picturing with these beautiful golf courses and whatnot, just the beauty of the area as well. That definitely does help to set the stage for our discussion today. And as we kind of went back and forth a little bit on trying to figure out exactly what we wanted to cover,

Linda M. Parsons (05:24.263)
I’m out.

Linda M. Parsons (05:34.298)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (05:52.943)
I see a lot of the things that you guys are doing there in the Moore County Chamber as being very future forward, leaning and thinking. So we’ll dive into some of that future thinking, as well as some of the more actionable things that you guys have been doing to really take action on those thoughts and vision of what the future looks like. And we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Linda, we’re back.

As I mentioned before the break, today we’re talking about some of these future looking things that you guys are doing there at the Moore County Chamber of Commerce. One of the first things that I wanted to learn more about is I know you guys recently have gone about this, a new co-working space in your community and really targeting those people that work from home or those entrepreneurs and.

individuals like that, businesses like that. So please tell us a little bit more about the co-working space, how that came to be, how it works. know different chambers have co-working spaces, they’ve stood up, they all have their own nuances. So I’d love to hear the approach that you guys have taken and hopefully others listening will learn some things and be able to take some notes as to what they might do in their community as well.

Linda M. Parsons (07:12.209)
I’d be happy to do that. And I think one of the things that’s been very fortunate about our chambers, we have a board that has had progressive thinking throughout the years. They understood that if we remained the same, we would no longer be relevant in our community and for our region. We do serve a six county region, meaning we have a lot of traffic that comes into work and a lot of traffic that comes out. And we are also 45 minutes away from the largest military installation outside of the Pentagon.

So back in 2014, literally 30 days after I was hired, our building sold. It had been on the market for quite some time and I was working at the chamber at the time, but it wasn’t CEO. And so we sold our building and went to a temporary home and really tried to develop what our vision was. And we had heard about a particular business in downtown Southern Pines that was going to be building a building, three story building in the historic district.

So I approached him and asked if we could go into the building with him together and take the top floor. Fast forward to 2020, we built a building during the pandemic. We started that building in 2019 and finished it in 2020. There was some delays with supplies, but he was very forward thinking as the owner of the building, majority owner of the building where he had a lot of supplies dropped in before the final roof was put on. So a lot of the people that were having delays,

We didn’t necessarily have some of those delays. We did with appliances. But we went from a 10,000 square foot building that was built in the late 80s and was able to take that investment and turn it around into a 3,500 square foot penthouse suite in the downtown historic district of Southern Pines.

Brandon Burton (08:41.741)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (09:05.18)
It was probably one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. I literally threw the spaghetti on the wall and said, I think this is what we need to do. And when we do it, we need to open a collaborative workspace. Obviously not realizing that the entire world was going to shut down in March of 2020. So at that time, this construction had already started and I didn’t have the ability to shift the layout, but we moved forward and kept got creative. So we have a platform where people can drop in and work on a daily basis.

with a drop in rate. have subscriptions very similar to some of the corporations you see across the country, such as WeWorks, where they can pay to play a couple of days a week and a month. And then we have a conference room space that serves as overflow for individuals working quietly, not on Zoom calls or other things like that nature. And we have that ability to rent out that space.

One of the most popular things for us has been that remote worker who works for Fortune 500 companies across our country and they regularly use our space, they consider it their home. It does help where above a bar, but we also serve in adult environment if they so choose, as well as other snacks and coffee. I never thought an espresso machine would be so popular as it is. But one of our biggest leaders really has become the military

Brandon Burton (10:19.234)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (10:29.806)
Bye!

Linda M. Parsons (10:33.78)
component. So we have a lot of groups from the military that use that space sometimes for transitioning veterans to learn what they need to be doing to acclimate into the civilian world, as well as other training opportunities that they do in our space. And so I would say that is the majority of our user with the second being our members. And based on their membership, they have that option to use the space. So we have a lot of people that do team meetings, interviews.

Um, if someone is opening a new place in town, they have that opportunity to do other interviews if their growth is still under construction. It has been a revenue generator. So we were able to eliminate the God, the events that were a burden. Shall we say a time sucker for the stack. And now we just have to manage a calendar, which is fairly simple because we kind of have a regular users.

Brandon Burton (11:19.202)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (11:29.628)
And from there, it’s got a website, it’s got a following, and we are regularly booked. And it’s been a great investment for the organization and for our community.

Brandon Burton (11:43.437)
Yeah, I love that. love the, again, the forward thinking of being able to have that kind of space and before, you know, COVID even hit and to be able to see where needs are going and to be able to address that before they even really showed up in mass numbers like they did after the pandemic. I think there’s a uniqueness too of being able to serve

So you mentioned the remote workers, also entrepreneurs and startups and kind of that vibe that comes into it because they’re getting associated with the chamber early on in their journey. But I’ve also, I’ve seen and heard of some coworking spaces that are not connected with the chamber as being almost a chamber in themselves as far as the networking aspects go.

and who you meet within that networking space. Do you have any additional thoughts or insights on those points with the entrepreneurs and startups and the networking effect that happens in the coworking space?

Linda M. Parsons (12:52.752)
It absolutely is true. It is an opportunity for people that are working there to connect with others that may not have in otherwise while sitting in their living room navigating their children or their barking dog. And so I’ve actually seen some relationships form where they have now gotten into business together. Meaning we have a couple of consultants who have been able to do some work with some of our other workers.

During the holidays when everybody kind of took a break, it was fun to see everybody come back in January. How was your holiday? What are you working on? And we actually have one gentleman who used our space transitioning in his career, not military, but just a career transition. He got his MBA while in the space, was able to connect with one of those military groups and has now opened a consultant business.

So it’s fun to see those success stories, as well as the members who use the space as they grow and upsize their business and utilize it for team meetings and see that growth of those businesses or nonprofits that are using this space.

Brandon Burton (14:04.6)
Yeah, I love those success stories. What’s the relationship like with the work, with the chamber itself, kind of the space that you guys have within this top floor versus a co-working space? it kind of blend into each other? Is there distinct areas for chamber and co-working space or what does that lay out?

Linda M. Parsons (14:25.202)
It’s a complete blend. So we went with an urban design, meaning open ceilings, lots of metal. We did not shy away from comfortable furniture. We have standing desks. I’ll be honest, my board gave us complete discretion. They said, here’s your budget. You make it work.

And so we have an office in the front that is a collab space with a desk, a desk and a standing desk and a round table so people can have meetings. Then our offices are with incorporated within the middle. And then there’s another office in the back that gives a little more privacy. Again, conceivable, fix people. And then the conference room space is off of a massive kitchen and what we call the gathering space. So.

Great example on Friday mornings from seven in the morning until nine a.m. We have a group of military veterans that move our space for coffee. And when we come in at nine, they’re wrapping up, they clean up our kitchen, they go about their day. They’ve had their time to have a private coffee and we’re able to jump in through our workspace and do what we need. I do have a standing nine a.m. meeting every Friday. They know that. And even if they stay behind, they respect the fact that we are in our space.

working and doing our thing, but it gives a good blend. So our collab users have key fobs. can come and go as they please. And if we’re not there, they have access to the space, they have access to the kitchen and it works really well. So it’s a good blend. and it, it makes it feel like home. I don’t know how it’s. In fact, one of our coworkers users use that term this week.

Brandon Burton (15:48.93)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:08.77)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (16:13.875)
It’s a place that I call home.

Brandon Burton (16:17.132)
Yeah, that’s nice. That’s very nice. So I’m curious with the design and building it out, just from the little things from the scheduling to the key fobs to having the kitchen stocked. And did you guys consult with somebody else who’s done this before or was dreamed up on your own amongst the staff and the board and you guys like, let’s go do this. How did things come together?

Linda M. Parsons (16:44.479)
So when we initially came up with the concept and got the board approval, A, to move forward with the building and B, to do the collaborative workspace, we did visit several co-working spaces in our state. Most of them were corporate or other forms of, they weren’t connected to a chamber. And so we took some of those ideas, particularly knowing we were gonna be above a bar.

You know, we even discussed putting taps all the way from the first floor to the third, but we felt that we wouldn’t be able to go through a keg fast enough. So then we created relationships with local breweries. And so those breweries were able to put in the beer, can beer, so that the shelf life was a little bit better. We looked at those spaces from, you know, aesthetics, furniture, comfort.

Brandon Burton (17:17.219)
Right.

Linda M. Parsons (17:32.47)
And those things were very important to us. Standing desks are extremely important, but not everybody likes the standing desk. Some people like the sit. Some people like high tops, so we have high top tables. And then we very thoughtfully configured our conference room. If anybody remembers their science days from high school, you had a black top science lab table with wood legs. We reversed it. have

Brandon Burton (17:52.877)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (17:58.368)
custom-made tables made in the state of North Carolina out of ash wood with black metal legs all on casters. So the room can be configured in whatever format somebody wants. Whether it’s a large conference table, they want to do classroom seating for a training session, which obviously works really well for the chamber when we hold a session. I’ve seen it done in pods where people are working with individual teams.

Brandon Burton (18:09.368)
Very cool.

Brandon Burton (18:17.944)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (18:25.225)
And that has been very good. And then the other thing is we went with very top of the line technology. We did not shy away from technology. I talked to our IT guy and I said, I want you to bring in the best IT that you can possibly bring in. If the chamber is encouraging businesses to be on the top of their game as it relates to marketing, IT and other things, we can’t not do the same. So we have a seven-point television.

that does direct streaming. have access so that they can do Zoom meetings or other video type teleconferencing. We have mics around the room. We have a second TV in the room, because it’s kind of an L shape. So you can have a private session in the other part of the app. We have the same technology in the other offices. And we’re not shying away from updating it. With some of our military folks, we have some more restrictions.

Brandon Burton (19:12.622)
Okay.

Linda M. Parsons (19:25.211)
in reference to how they access technology. We’ve been working with them as well so that they can still access due to their firewalls and be able to utilize the space. So we didn’t shy away from the technology. And when we had our full budget, that was something that we thought, Philippe, thought about. Plus we have TVs in the lobby. So if they need to stream something while they’re in the kitchen using space or highlight a sponsor.

whatever their program is, they can do this thing. As it relates to the key fobs, it’s part of our security system. Probably the biggest challenge is if we lose internet and power. That’s a problem. But we can work around it and we have, but technology’s great, but you can’t control mother nature. And a couple of years ago, unfortunately, Moore County was

Brandon Burton (20:07.342)
Ugh.

Linda M. Parsons (20:24.277)
had a massive power outage that was done by a human, not by Mother Nature. And so we could not access our space because the town with the county was out of power for seven days. I was the only one with a computer, but all of our collab users completely understood because they couldn’t work either.

Brandon Burton (20:38.328)
Move.

Brandon Burton (20:45.39)
Brave.

Linda M. Parsons (20:46.005)
We didn’t make the national news and it’s unfortunate that someone chose to do that to our entire power grid. But those were good lessons to learn. How do we overcome that? We put in some other parameters so that we can get into our space, but sometimes you just can’t control technology. So it’s great, but Mother Nature or unfortunately some people have other plans and you just have to work around them. And we’ve got great people. They’re like, understand it.

Brandon Burton (20:56.27)
Thank

Brandon Burton (21:05.059)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:15.778)
Yeah. So there’s been a few different times and ways you’ve mentioned the forward thinking of the board and of your staff. It sounds like historically, at least in recent years, there’s been a very forward thinking board for your chamber. What are some, a few other examples maybe of looking to the future and planning ahead and not getting caught, you know, with the

unexpected with what the future presents.

Linda M. Parsons (21:47.328)
think I’ve been very fortunate in my tenure as president to have a board that understands that the three of us do have chamber experience and we look thoughtfully at studies, whether it’s ACCE studies, whether it’s our own studies that we’re doing and monitoring our membership trends, things of that nature. And so we bring things to the board and we make our recommendations on not what’s happening today. You’re always gonna have your

these events are happening or this program is occurring, we are always moving five years ahead. So a great example back in 2014, I actually made my board read the book, The End of Membership as you know it. And I’ve used a lot of those books and guides to help them understand that if we continue to, I used to use the term be our grandfather’s chamber, maybe to some it’s a

great grandfather. Not that they didn’t do wonderful things, but we wouldn’t remain relevant in our community. There’s a lot more competition. There’s a lot more ability to do things digitally. There’s just a lot of competition. And so by being able to stand out as a organization who’s been around for 59 years, I think always looking ahead, how can we do something differently? So we eliminated a majority of our events and we really focused on some key

leadership, HR training that’s connected to workforce development, childcare, housing study. So we’re investing in a different wave, the long-term of our community and our employers in our area, whether they’re a nonprofit, a small business, a large business. And it’s been really good. I think that members, we still do networking. You’re always gonna have a little bit of networking.

It’s a critical piece, but sometimes you can remind them you can network differently. You can network digitally, even through our own organization. You can connect with a military person and help them as they develop their resume and transition into the civilian life. And so it’s really been, we’ve been really fortunate to have that board who really hasn’t stopped us from trying something. Have we had failures?

Linda M. Parsons (24:13.233)
Absolutely. And I think those failures too.

Brandon Burton (24:15.726)
I’d hope so. Otherwise, that means you’re not taking any risk, right?

Linda M. Parsons (24:18.641)
Exactly. And I love to take risk, calculated risk. The building was probably one of my biggest calculated risks. That’s a pretty big risk. But I know that if it is a beautiful building, it is set in a beautiful place. And a lot of people think it’s an historic building. To me, that is a win.

Brandon Burton (24:24.195)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:30.318)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:44.514)
Yeah, that is really cool.

Linda M. Parsons (24:46.037)
I had someone recently come in, they’re like, so how old is this building? And I’m like, five years?

Brandon Burton (24:51.47)
But with the spirit of 100, right?

Linda M. Parsons (24:56.731)
Exactly. I think, you know, analyzing what programs are successful in a chamber. What does the chamber industry look like in five, 10 years? What are trends that we’re seeing? For example, AI, know AI is an important trend. So we’re in process of developing a curriculum in partnership with our local community college to help our business community navigate AI to their benefit and learn it so that

they’re doing things safely and that they’re doing things that are going to be helpful to their business as they continue to right size their business. we’ve held a session last fall. We sold out in seven days and we did it in our our own respective conference room and we’ve had a request to have it again. And so it’s it’s been great to see that excitement and the people that were in that room for that program are

were not traditionally attending events. And so I think you have to, you can’t just do one size fits all. Our chamber is not a one size fits all. We like to…

Brandon Burton (25:57.708)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (26:08.437)
cater things to the members’ needs, whether they’re small, medium, or large.

Brandon Burton (26:15.918)
I love that. So as you’re giving that response, my mind’s racing with all these different things, but like you’d mentioned, networking is always going to be some aspect of the chamber and paying attention to tools that are coming. I recently did an episode with the founder of an app called Chamber, but with a Y, so the C-H-A-Y-M-B-E-R. And it’s all about being able to network digitally or you meet somebody in person, but then you connect digitally and

continue to build that relationship and that networking. And there’s great tools and resources available that we just need to be aware. And like you mentioned, AI and being able to stay on the forefront of some of these things and introduce them to your membership and help them gain the confidence to use some of these new tools because change can be scary, right? I mean,

just human nature, like if you wanted to survive, you don’t change, right? So being able to help hold their hand through some of this change is so important. But being from Ohio, you may be familiar with Matt Appenzeller, Southern Ohio Chamber Alliance, but he’s made the distinction between with chambers being either a lamppost, where you’re shining a little bit of light on a

portion of town square or being a lighthouse where you’re really showing, you’re shining the light of where the direction needs to go. Really, you know, bringing people along to where you see things are going and guiding them that way. And that’s, that’s what I see you guys doing there at the Moore County Chambers, being more of a lighthouse and really shining that light, saying this is where things are going, come along with us because this is where the future is bright.

Linda M. Parsons (28:03.125)
We talked a little bit about in the beginning about my artistic background. I’ve always said that sometimes a chamber is kind of like a conductor, a conductor of a symphony. We may not always have the answer, but we can connect and collaborate with different organizations or people to help make our businesses and our local economies be successful. I may not always have that answer, but I can connect a business to our local school system. I can connect them to the college.

Brandon Burton (28:11.011)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (28:30.447)
When everybody was saying, what are we going to do? Everybody’s leaving the workplace. I need employees. I need more students to go into this career path. OK, well, let’s start a workforce development collaborative task force so that we can work in partnership instead of all working in silos. A lot of times, that’s what happens in communities. Everybody’s working on something, but they’re not talking to each other. OK, well, it’s not going to be successful if you’re not talking to each other, being direct and open. And events will always have their place.

Training will always have its place, but our world is changing and we’ve got to change with it to continue to remain relevant to our members, otherwise known as investors, who are investing in us and our community.

Brandon Burton (29:17.08)
That’s right. I love that. Well, Linda, as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask on behalf of the listener who is striving to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive to accomplish that goal?

Linda M. Parsons (29:34.804)
I do think reading the book, End of Membership as you know it, is a really good idea. And I really think taking a pause and stepping back and doing an analysis of everything that you’re doing, what is successful, how much time are you putting into it. The people time does cost you money. And if you’re doing an event to turn around to do in another event to pay for that event, is that really the most cost effective thing?

Brandon Burton (29:54.99)
We are finished.

Linda M. Parsons (30:02.101)
for your organization and the members that you serve. Sometimes taking that pause is scary, but by doing an analysis of everything that you’re doing, helps you move forward. While we did that back in 2017, we actually had a discussion yesterday that we’re gonna be doing it as a team discussion again, so that we’re prepared for this next 10 years. And…

and are able to continue to serve that investor of our community. So I do think that’s important. I also think if you’re really new in the career, find a mentor, find somebody that you, an organization and a person that you can regularly check in with. Being at the top is lonely. It’s a lonely place to be and one of the most exciting places to be, but it can be scary. Taking those risks are scary at times. And so being able to talk

Brandon Burton (30:53.539)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (30:57.599)
through those things with somebody I think is important.

Brandon Burton (31:01.324)
Yeah, absolutely. And really the idea of looking 10 years in the future and trying to plan and work towards that before too long, you have a 10 year plan, but you probably have to readdress it on an annual basis and see, we still on track? And I had heard a recent interview of Elon Musk and somebody was asking him about how he sees the future. And this is the man who’s literally building the future, right? With self-driving cars and robots and

Linda M. Parsons (31:28.341)
Correct.

Brandon Burton (31:31.286)
putting people on Mars. And he gave a great forecast of in the next one to three years, but himself, he said, 10 years? I have no idea. I have no idea what the future looks like in 10 years. And I think it’s good to have a plan, but we need to constantly make sure we’re still on course with that plan, that we’re going in the right direction.

Linda M. Parsons (31:51.638)
Absolutely, because you never know what curve ball such as COVID, which a lot of people got thrown at, know, nobody knew that was coming and you had to pivot and you have to be able to pivot quickly.

Brandon Burton (32:00.751)
Yeah, exactly. Well, Linda, I feel like this whole episode we’ve been talking about the future of chambers, but I’m going to ask the formal question that I always ask towards the end of an episode, which is how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Linda M. Parsons (32:21.449)
think we are at a great place to really excel our communities forward. Kind of looking at that road where you have two choices to go, Chambers had the opportunity to really pull their communities and help them in the areas of workforce development and bring employees to their employers, whether it is cultivating that relationship as young as kindergarten.

to others who are maybe second chance individuals looking for employment, veterans, the opportunity is there. And I think the chambers that embrace that and start working as collaborative units in their communities are gonna excel and be extremely successful.

Brandon Burton (33:09.526)
Yeah, I love that. And that visual again, that road, I think Alice in Wonderland, right? She comes to the fork in the road and she asks, which way do I go? Right? And the Cheshire Cat says, it depends on where you want to go. You know, and you got to know where you’re headed. Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (33:15.658)
Mm-hmm.

Linda M. Parsons (33:20.277)
She does.

And every community is unique. Every community has its place. Every community isn’t the same. And yes, we borrow things from communities, but you have to look at your own community and what does that future hold?

Brandon Burton (33:38.004)
Exactly. Well, this has been a fun discussion. I’m grateful to have had you on the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more maybe about the co-working space or how you guys are navigating the future. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Linda M. Parsons (33:58.176)
So they can contact me directly at the chamber, 910-692-3926. If they want to see a little bit about our space, they can visit thirdfloorcollabspace.com. And if they want to visit a little and learn a little more about the chamber, it’s moorecountychamber.com. We do get confused with Moore, Oklahoma. In fact, today we have an application for a membership in Moore, Oklahoma.

Brandon Burton (34:15.371)
you

Linda M. Parsons (34:24.937)
We are not in Moore, Oklahoma. We are in North Carolina. So please be mindful of that. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, as well as LinkedIn.

Brandon Burton (34:32.334)
Very good. I’ll make sure to get those in the show notes and make it easy for people to find and connect with you. But Linda, thank you so much for spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast sharing your experience and some of these things that you guys are doing to really position your community well for the future and look after those investors that are within your stewardship. I really appreciate you sharing those things with us.

Linda M. Parsons (35:00.106)
Thank you, Brandon, for the opportunity and I wish the Chamber community all the best.

Leading a Frontier Chamber with Shelley Batty

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Brandon Burton (00:01.11)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is Shelly Batty. Shelly is a proud native Orgonian and with a rare distinction of having lived in every tourism region in the state of

She currently serves as the Chamber Director for the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, where she champions local business and regional tourism. Along with her husband, Shelly co-owns Tall Town Bike and Camp, a go-to hub for cyclists, skiers, hikers, and backpackers seeking to explore the breathtaking landscapes of Lake County. When she’s not promoting her community or adventuring the outdoors,

Shelley dedicates her time to civic service as president of the Lake County Library District Board and an active member of several organizations, including the Historic Society and Oregon CBB. Her passion for Oregon runs deep and she’s here today to share insights on rural tourism, community building, and life on one of the state’s most scenic and welcoming regions.

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

Shelley Batty (01:30.768)
Okay, well, we’re in the middle of Lake County, which is known as Oregon’s Outback. Sort of a play on words because the same way of Australia’s Outback is this vast space with very few people, we are the same. Lake County is 8,000 square miles and 8,000 people, so we’re not even considered rural. We are truly frontier.

Brandon Burton (01:56.768)
Wow, that is, I’m trying to wrap my head around that. 1,000 acres per person, it’s how that equates. Or square mile. Yeah, wow, even more. Wow.

Shelley Batty (02:04.86)
No, a square mile per person. Right. So it’s like rural is 25 miles from any big population center. And by comparison, we are four hours from the nearest airport, four hours from the nearest freeway, four hours from the nearest big box store. We have a Safeway.

That’s about the size of a good size bodega. And other than that, nothing with a corporate logo on it.

Brandon Burton (02:39.746)
Wow, that’s amazing. So that was going to be my next question is, well, have you tell us about the Lake County Chamber, size, staff, scope of work, budget, to kind of give us perspective, but often with that comes with a little bit of description about the community that you serve as well.

Shelley Batty (02:58.27)
Well, the Lake County Chamber is really unique because I serve a Chamber Director for a community of 8,000 people that is the same size as the entire state of New Jersey. So I have Chamber members that are 127 miles away from my office one way. I have

Brandon Burton (03:11.832)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (03:21.294)
Crazy.

Shelley Batty (03:22.266)
one part-time administrative assistant so that there’s someone to answer the phone while I’m driving 127 miles one way. And our budget is about $150,000 a year plus whatever grant funding I’m able to bring in. And we have 100 members and unlimited recreational opportunities. So it’s like, which hat am I wearing? Which minute?

And we are in a really beautiful 123 year old building in the heart of downtown Lakeview, which is the only town in the state of Oregon, everything else incorporated as a city.

Brandon Burton (03:50.647)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (04:08.398)
Wow, that is very unique. That’s amazing.

Shelley Batty (04:10.913)
It is very unique and Tall Town is kind of the background of everything because we are right at 5,000 square, 5,000 feet above sea level which makes us the highest elevation community in Oregon, hence Tall Town.

Brandon Burton (04:26.67)
Okay, yeah, that’s very interesting. Very cool. Well, that leads in well to what our topic is today. It’s at the stage very well. So today we’re gonna be talking about balancing your ability and the way that you approach, I guess, to balancing the local issues, but also driving tourism development. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Shelly, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today we’re talking about for you specifically as a frontier community, how you go about balancing the local issues, especially when you got so much area to cover while also driving the tourism development. So I don’t know what part you want to start with to dive into, but let you dictate that.

Shelley Batty (05:15.282)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (05:23.857)
Well, it’s always sort of a smash of doing everything all at once. Working with local businesses, you know, we’re a rural advocacy chamber. So I have most of our state and even some of our national congressmen and representatives on speed dial and making sure that they don’t forget that the

Frontier needs for small businesses are really unique. Basically, you talk about specialty retail as an example, you need 40,000 customers and 10 square miles or whatever the current version of that is. When we have 8,000 square miles and 8,000 people, you’re never going to get that tipping point of

being successful based on just the people walking in the door every day. So you have to have ways of diversifying and doing a little bit of everything or running multiple businesses because that’s what it takes to kind of piecemeal your life. And so that tourism as an economic driver to keep small businesses in business and to keep reminding people that yes, we really are out here and yes, we really do need

assistance for being able to continue this Western lifestyle that doesn’t exist almost anywhere else in the world.

Brandon Burton (06:57.024)
Yeah. So I feel like you framed that very well. What are some of those, definitely uniqueness for these business owners, but as you advocate, what are some of those special considerations and needs that on a state level, and as far as advocacy goes, that you are trying to fight for, that you’re trying to draw attention to, to stand up for those businesses in your community?

Shelley Batty (07:26.503)
Well, a lot of that is right now very, very tourism focused and getting that tourism dollar into the region and then advocating for health care and keeping our hospital open and how do we make that happen? Advocating for seniors because like most frontier communities, the population is aging out. Our kids are our biggest export.

so that they go away to college and then suddenly get a job opportunity that keeps them from coming back home and so there’s nobody left at home. And then there are

Brandon Burton (08:07.555)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (08:11.709)
our tourism economic structure and kind of an education piece of yes, we know we need those tourism dollars, but we like being small. We like being insular. We like knowing everyone that we see on the street. So do we really want those people or just their money? And how do we make that happen?

Brandon Burton (08:33.921)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (08:35.165)
My way of dealing with that is that because we’ve got so much space and we have such incredible recreational resources and natural beauty, working on telling people, know, we can get a lot of tourists in 8,000 square miles and still not feel crowded and making sure that everybody has a comfortable room.

Brandon Burton (08:52.802)
Right?

Shelley Batty (08:55.793)
and have great tourism partners with Travel Oregon and Travel Southern Oregon, regional destination marketing organization. In 2024, we were awarded the Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary Destination, which is two and half million acres of what is documentably the darkest skies on the planet.

It’s really easy to find Lakeview if you look at a night sky map of the state of Oregon, find the biggest black spot, and we’re in the middle of that.

Brandon Burton (09:24.366)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (09:31.47)
Like, that’s great. Yeah. So one of my questions is going to be part of that, that struggle of you need to drive the tourism to bring in the dollars and self support these businesses. But do the people there, the residents, do they want that? Do they want to keep it rural? Do they want, not even rural, do they want to keep it frontier? Do they, do they resist, you know,

the growth and the business come because they want to keep it small and very much the way it’s been since God created it? What kind of feedback do you get?

Shelley Batty (10:15.111)
Well, I am sort of the change agent, I guess you would say. I interviewed for this job in 2013. And I was talking about adventure tourism and tourism as an economic driver for frontier communities. And one of the board members who was interviewing me said, and what if we don’t want those people here?

Brandon Burton (10:22.67)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (10:44.076)
Wow.

Shelley Batty (10:46.288)
And they didn’t hire me. And so then in 2023, I am their choice. And they at least recognize the need for tourism, even if they’re not 100 % comfortable with the idea of all of those people coming here. But then the other side of that is

Brandon Burton (10:50.552)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:03.084)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:11.128)
Sure.

Shelley Batty (11:14.821)
As long as you don’t look at the Facebook page, these are the most friendly, welcoming, hospitable, give you the shirt off your back possible. It’s so funny that ranchers that are not at all sure that they want tourists buy inner tubes and keep a bike pump in the barn in case there is a

bicycle tourists that wanders onto their property having problems. And because we don’t have cell coverage other than right in the town limits, if you have trouble alongside the road, unlike anywhere else in the country, people are gonna stop and offer assistance and bail you out or drive you to town or whatever. So it’s a very special place and they may or may not

Brandon Burton (11:49.23)
you

Brandon Burton (12:01.634)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (12:09.747)
tell you they want tourists, but they are so welcoming when we do get them that it is a magnificent spot in the world.

Brandon Burton (12:15.22)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (12:19.356)
Yeah, so you had mentioned the ranchers and you’ve got your business, it’s adventure tourism. What are some other examples of different industries that you guys have there in your community that keep things going, but also that might help draw tourism?

Shelley Batty (12:38.523)
Well, as a dichotomy of what you would expect, Lake County, in addition to being a ranching hub, and we have some of the best alfalfa in the world, if you eat Kobe beef or something like that, chances are the feed that those animals were fed came from Lake County.

most of our alpha gets shipped overseas. It’s amazing. We also are the greenest county in the state of Oregon. We are carbon neutral. We have wind. We have solar. We have geothermal.

Brandon Burton (13:02.71)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (13:14.614)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (13:20.379)
which not only makes for great hot springs, it also powers the state prison that we have in the county, it powers our hospital and our schools. We have a new industry in town, it’s really interesting, it’s called Ecomaterials, and they took samples of the cement from the Coliseum and reverse engineered it and have created a additive to your basic Portland

cement that’s 30 % lighter and 80 % stronger and 90 % less carbon usage to create it. And so we have a plant here in town that is making that additive through Ecomaterials and they use perlite, which is those little white bubbles that you see in like potting soil.

Brandon Burton (14:00.206)
Wow.

Shelley Batty (14:18.577)
and we have a pearlite mine on the outskirts of town so that Ecomaterials is right up against the property line for the pearlite mine and they simply take pearlite over the fence into their procedure. So very kind of

Brandon Burton (14:24.447)
Bye.

Brandon Burton (14:35.852)
Wow.

Wow. I learned something new today. I didn’t realize it’s mined like that. that’s interesting. So on the tourism side, in bringing in and drawing the tourism, obviously there’s the adventure. There’s the outback, right? How are you guys drawing the tourism? What’s the focus? What’s the draw?

Shelley Batty (14:45.617)
Yes.

Shelley Batty (14:53.137)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (15:07.918)
How are you attracting the tourism?

Shelley Batty (15:10.173)
Well, having the largest dark sky sanctuary in the world draws a lot of tourists. We also have a number of very large alkaline lakes. So we are one of the primary stopovers for birds on the Western Flyway migrating. So we get a lot of bird-watching tourists. Fort Rock and a number of other cave systems here in Lake County

Brandon Burton (15:29.558)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (15:39.937)
are the location of the oldest documented evidence of modern man dating back 18,000 years. So that’s really interesting. We are also really interesting in that we have Indian tribes all the way around Lake County, but no

Brandon Burton (15:52.844)
Wow.

Shelley Batty (16:05.529)
Indian tribal presence in the county because we were the summer powwow grounds where the different tribes from all around us would come to exchange prisoners and trade and negotiate their contracts. So everywhere you go in the county you can find evidence not of one tribe or another but of all the different tribes from the area.

Brandon Burton (16:24.706)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (16:34.365)
We have lot of mastodontesks being dug out of farmers’ fields and those sorts of things. We have the starting point of the Oregon Timber Trail, which is a 760-mile mountain bike path from the California border to the Washington border.

Brandon Burton (16:43.681)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (16:57.821)
And while it’s not super well known nationally, in the last seven years, we’ve had people from 32 countries come specifically to Lakeview specifically to ride the trail. We are the mids point resupply for the Oregon desert trail, which is a 730 mile hiking trail that is advertised as the hiking trail for people who think the PCT is for wimps. Be prepared. It’s awesome.

Brandon Burton (17:09.698)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (17:25.122)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (17:27.775)
tons of petroglyphs. We also have five world-class launch sites for hang gliders and paragliders. So it’s more launch sites in a contained area than anywhere else in North America. And all five sites have their face different directions. So regardless of which direction the wind is blowing, there’s somewhere in the county you can launch.

Brandon Burton (17:37.762)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (17:51.197)
The wind’s going, yeah. Wow, that’s fascinating. Yeah, yeah. So the tidbit about the Indian tribes and coming with their powwows, it just shows the long history of chambers of commerce there in Lake County, right?

Shelley Batty (17:56.477)
So I think I should keep going.

Shelley Batty (18:12.477)
This chamber was founded in 1932.

Brandon Burton (18:16.832)
Okay, yeah. So it’s whether formal or informal, commerce has been going on there for a long time. Yeah, very cool. So I mean, you you rattled off a long list of very attractive things there in in Lake County, as should be with with part of your job. So how do you go about promoting those? I mean, obviously, you’re on a podcast today talking about them, but I assume

Shelley Batty (18:23.421)
forever.

Brandon Burton (18:45.152)
social media has an impact.

Shelley Batty (18:47.229)
The social media has an impact. Oregon is really lucky in we have a unique tourism echo structure, I guess. In 2003, the state

instituted a one and a half percent motel tax for Knight State and that money goes to the tourism bureau that’s called Travel Oregon. Travel Oregon takes a portion of those funds and

Brandon Burton (19:11.022)
Mm-hmm.

Shelley Batty (19:23.631)
provide seven regional tourism development centers, which ours is Travel Southern Oregon. And so a lot of tourism marketing and how we get the word out travels from Travel Oregon through Travel Southern Oregon. They also provide a lot of grant funding to help us develop those tourism resources and they finance social media influencers and

ton of magazine and newspaper coverage of what’s really going on in all these remote parts of the state. And, you know, we are four hours from the Bend, Central Oregon area. That’s one of those places that has been super discovered and almost overused by tourists. And so they spend a lot of time marketing in that area, what’s going on in Lake County to move those people my direction.

Brandon Burton (20:02.701)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (20:14.797)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (20:23.872)
Okay, that’s helpful. as far as when the tourists do come, is it majority camping? Is there lodging? As far as accommodations go, what do they do? And does that drive any of your funding as well?

Shelley Batty (20:35.29)
There is

Shelley Batty (20:38.843)
We just.

Shelley Batty (20:42.469)
Right. We only have about 150 lodging rooms in the whole county. And then we have well over 500 RV sites that are designated RV locations. But we also have 76 %

Brandon Burton (20:48.75)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (21:02.813)
Publicly owned land for a service fish and wildlife National Parks service and all of those government agencies because it’s government land so it’s our land allowed dispersed camping you find a beautiful spot and just set up your camp and there you are and So it’s like a market to a very specific

Brandon Burton (21:24.12)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (21:32.665)
Tourist groups that are willing to be out on their own Really want the solitude of nature We’ve got a couple places that are you know really As a friend of mine was a bougie ready for that level of tourists But for the most part these are people that really want to get out into nature and really want to experience something that they’re not going to get anywhere else

Brandon Burton (21:49.036)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:54.307)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (21:58.971)
We don’t have the pool and the cabanas, but you can set up your cot without having to worry about putting a tent around you and look at a sky where you can not only see the Milky Way, you can see the colors of the Milky Way.

Brandon Burton (22:14.766)
That’s awesome. You’re selling me, Shelly. You’re selling me.

Shelley Batty (22:18.663)
Well, it’s like 75 % of the world never sees the Milky Way. And 95 % of the world, even if they see the Milky, that people that do see the Milky Way, they see this kind of vague light. Whereas we have colors of clouds, of stars, of light. It’s just the pictures that you’ll find on the internet are not filtered. They are not colored. That’s really what the sky looks like.

Brandon Burton (22:36.365)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:44.942)
That is really cool. So the next question came to mind as you’re talking about being a frontier community. What other challenges do you come across with being a frontier community that you confront and take on as a chamber to overcome these challenges? Or maybe because you are a chamber, the challenges are coming up and there’s uniqueness to that. I think just being a frontier community in general.

presents unique opportunities and challenges. So I’m just, curious about some of other things that you face.

Shelley Batty (23:27.015)
We, you know, our big competitor is Amazon or, you know, internet, whatever. And when you only have, you know,

Brandon Burton (23:31.469)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (23:39.421)
10 or 15 retail establishments in an entire community, it’s really easy to get sidetracked by, I’ll just go to Amazon, rather than finding out what our local businesses have before you search that direction. And that’s always a trick. It’s really hard getting the word out about things. We have a radio station. We have a weekly newspaper.

Brandon Burton (23:56.141)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (24:08.879)
We don’t have a television, anything, even the network televisions you have your regional. There are no stations that cover our region. Even you get on a big like a Portland, it’s the big town in Oregon. You go to a Portland television station and they show the state and they show the state.

Brandon Burton (24:18.973)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (24:32.893)
500 miles north of us and we don’t even exist and You know California you come out of San Francisco and they don’t show this wide swath that’s right where we are at so How do you get? Information out to everybody. I have like weekly conversation. I didn’t know that was happening and it’s like

Brandon Burton (24:35.596)
Yeah, right.

Shelley Batty (24:58.639)
Well, we have it on the radio. We don’t listen to the radio. We have it on the newspaper. We don’t get the newspaper. We have it on Facebook. We don’t do internet. We put up flyers and posters downtown. Well, we don’t shop in town. So, you know, knock on doors. Will you come?

Brandon Burton (25:14.651)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, word of mouth. Everybody just get out. You guys need a podcast. You need a podcast to highlight some of these things. Yeah.

Shelley Batty (25:21.405)
word of mouth. You know, it’s like I’ve got, I’ve got a list of everything that I should be doing and that I want to be doing and I need to be doing. But we go back to there’s one of me and there’s 8,000 square miles.

Brandon Burton (25:31.232)
Right?

Yeah.

That’s right. That’s right. Keep making the list. At some point, those things will rise to the top that are most important. Well, I wanted to ask for those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive towards that goal?

Shelley Batty (25:44.421)
you making the list.

Shelley Batty (26:00.125)
Think outside the box. A great example that I’m something I’m working on that I never thought I would be working on is the community of Lakeview is like many small communities in real financial straits. And so one of the things that they did was they canceled snow removal. And we’re

Brandon Burton (26:05.24)
And.

Shelley Batty (26:28.029)
5000 square feet. We sometimes have three feet of Not this year, it’s 55 degrees today. usually there is a huge amount of snow in the summertime. So a group of community members, not the chamber, not the town, just a group of community members got together and decided that they should raise money for snow removal.

Brandon Burton (26:32.194)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:38.403)
Right.

Shelley Batty (26:52.709)
and one of their members named Margo Dodd had just seen the movie Calendar Girls with Helen Murin about a small town in England who did a PG naked calendar to raise money for cancer research. And so they decided to do an Outback Naked Calendar and they got 12 business owners.

Brandon Burton (27:01.646)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (27:14.306)
Go.

Shelley Batty (27:18.685)
and well-known community members to pose for their naked calendar. And the photographs were taken by family members or local photographers who donated their time. And this calendar has gone viral now. It’s… I mean, I’ve…

Brandon Burton (27:25.656)
I mean…

Brandon Burton (27:34.88)
I did see the calendar on your website. Yeah, I did see that.

Shelley Batty (27:40.399)
I’ve talked to CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, the BBC, Atlantic Magazine, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. It’s crazy. And they’ve sent calendars to like 12 countries and 49 of the 50 states and have made 10 times what their goal was to raise money for a basic service that

Brandon Burton (28:01.442)
Hahaha!

Shelley Batty (28:10.437)
Most parts of the country don’t even think about needing to raise money for snow plowing. So you gotta think outside the box because you never know what’s gonna happen.

Brandon Burton (28:17.504)
I love the creativity. Yeah, I love the creativity. Yeah. Yeah, think outside the box, but you know, it also doesn’t hurt to take ideas that somebody else puts out there. So there’s community listening who’s struggling with snow removal funding. Yeah, maybe consider a naked calendar. So.

Shelley Batty (28:25.466)
outside the box.

Shelley Batty (28:33.609)
Or, you know, what other thing that sounds really silly that, who knows, you know, keep, what is it, throw spaghetti against the wall until something sticks?

Brandon Burton (28:42.894)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:47.086)
That’s right. Yep. Well, Shelley, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Shelley Batty (29:00.018)
What?

Shelley Batty (29:04.791)
One of the things that I say far more often than I wish I had to was I’m not the county party planner. Prior to my coming on board, people…

Brandon Burton (29:14.659)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (29:19.553)
if they wanted a festival or if they wanted a special event or if they wanted another parade, call the chamber. They’ll do it. And you end up spending all of your time playing hostess. And while that’s a lot of fun, and there’s a lot of people that really enjoy doing that, it doesn’t really move business forward.

Brandon Burton (29:32.598)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (29:42.277)
the chambers nationally that are really growing and are those that are relevant, that are doing political advocacy and really working for a cause and talking to chamber members about it’s not what

the chamber can do for you or your specific business is what you as a part of the chamber can do for the community. that the community is strong and healthy, then you have people there to support your business and to support what you’re doing. But

Brandon Burton (30:12.791)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (30:25.661)
Don’t go backwards and say, you know, everything I do is giving bodies into businesses. Everything I do is building up the community so there are bodies to go into those businesses.

Brandon Burton (30:39.022)
Right. I think that’s good perspective and view as well. Shelley, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about working in a frontier community and some of the solutions you’ve had to come up with with your creative out of the box thinking. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Shelley Batty (31:07.985)
The best way is always through the website. It’s really easy. It’s all about Lake County dot com. The contact information goes directly to my email. I think I even have my cell phone number on the website, but it’s all about Lake County got to come.

Brandon Burton (31:26.1)
And when you visit that, you can pick up a naked calendar. So that’s great.

Shelley Batty (31:29.575)
Cooke of Anika County and find out about dark skies and hang gliding and mountain biking and all of the other great things that we have going on in Lake County.

Brandon Burton (31:41.324)
Right. Well, Shelley, this has been great having you on the podcast. I’ve learned some new things today and some of those unique things that you face there as a Frontier community. And I appreciate you taking the time to be with us and shedding some light, even though you’ve got the darkest skies in the country. Thanks for shedding some light on this today. And I appreciate you being with us.

Shelley Batty (31:58.877)
you

Shelley Batty (32:03.847)
Well, I thank you for asking me to come on.

Managing Growth & Retention with Chris Heck

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 (00:00.706)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest brings three decades of Chamber leadership across Pittsburgh’s economic and business development landscape. Chris Heck is the President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce.

where he’s been instrumental in driving growth and innovation. Under his leadership, the PAACC has seen remarkable expansion and he’s the visionary behind the airport area corporate partnership and initiative dedicated to advancing economic development throughout the region. Chris’s executive experience spans top tier organizations, including the Pittsburgh Technology Center, or excuse me, the Pittsburgh Technology Council.

Marsh USA, K &L Gates LLP, Fifth Third Bank, and the SMC Business Councils. A proud graduate of Florida Atlantic University with a BA in Business Administration and Management, Chris also serves as a second class Petty Officer in the US Coast Guard Reserves. Deeply committed to community service, Chris currently chairs the Allegheny County Airport Authority Foundation.

and holds board roles with institutions like the Pittsburgh Technical College, Robert Morris University, and Rosedale Technical College. He’s also a proud member of Leadership Pittsburgh Class 35. Chris Heck is a dynamic leader, a seasoned strategist, and a passionate advocate for relational prosperity. Let’s dive into this incredible conversation and insights with Chris Heck.

Chris, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. Love to.

Chris Heck (01:56.578)
All right, Brandon, thank you. Thank you for that introduction. know, as we craft our bios, you never really get a chance for someone to recite them back to you in a public forum. it was cool to listen to that and look at my background from where I stand right now. So thank you for that. But it’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Brandon Burton (02:09.814)
Right?

Brandon Burton (02:21.688)
You’re welcome. We’re glad to have you. I like asking the guests that I have on the show to share something interesting about themselves so we can get to know you a little bit better before we dive into our conversation.

Chris Heck (02:35.797)
Well, totally unrelated to the chamber world. You mentioned my collegiate experience with Florida Atlantic University. And as a lover of the ocean and the sea and the water, yes, I was in the Coast Guard for six years and parlayed a lot of that to

diving and fishing and living in the Keys. If anyone has ever had the opportunity to visit the Florida Keys, it’s something. I did something very unique with a former petty officer, friend of mine. I went skydiving in the Keys, which was very, very interesting and jumping out of a plane at 3,500 feet with water everywhere.

Brandon Burton (03:23.182)
Huh.

Chris Heck (03:32.047)
and land very, a very short strip of land to land on. was both challenging and one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done in my life. So that was a little bit unique.

Brandon Burton (03:40.034)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (03:47.758)
That is unique. That’s something I hope to never do, but I’m glad you did.

Chris Heck (03:55.573)
Yeah, was in my early 20s, Brandon, when I did that. So that was a long time ago.

Brandon Burton (03:55.65)
I’ve done the indoor skydiving.

Brandon Burton (04:03.918)
Yeah, that’s great. And thank you for your service too. We appreciate that. Well, tell us a little bit about your chamber. Help give us an idea of size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to set the stage for our conversation today.

Chris Heck (04:08.693)
Absolutely.

Chris Heck (04:14.474)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (04:19.221)
Yeah, yeah, I’d to. knowing my audience is a chamber leadership audience, most of you are familiar with the basic building blocks of the Chamber of Commerce. And when I was recruited to come here in 2017 is when I came here, I never thought that a Chamber of Commerce would be where I would end up.

Brandon Burton (04:38.616)
Thank you.

Chris Heck (04:48.799)
Okay, I had some great association management work in the past, but I never really thought that this would be where my final landing pad would be. And the Pittsburgh Airport area Chamber of Commerce is a 120 year old chamber. So we’re ingrained in the community here.

Brandon Burton (05:12.718)
Thank

Chris Heck (05:17.657)
And when I learned about what the opportunities were to lead this organization, I was thrilled and humbled, if you will, to be asked to do that. So the chamber is not the largest in the East Coast, if you will. We hover around 850 companies.

Brandon Burton (05:35.224)
Just…

Chris Heck (05:43.003)
And as you know, as chamber leaders, that number tends to go up and down. But one of the unique things that we have is we’re situated in a high growth, high density corporate area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that has a population growth

Brandon Burton (06:07.341)
Thank

Chris Heck (06:12.757)
of probably two or 3 % annually right now. there’s unlike any other area, we’re very fortunate to be in this area that has an international airport as the nucleus of the 31 communities that we represent. So when you have something like that, which is an anchor

Brandon Burton (06:36.782)
So, I mean, that’s the thing about the state of…

Chris Heck (06:42.313)
business that offers critical mass for companies, for members and things like that, you’re in a good situation. And we know that the airport itself is really part of some of our success. one of the very first things that I did, getting back to the chamber a little bit, we’re small in terms of staff. We have four and a half…

Well, four and a half employees, one is part-time, but we’ve got about seven different committees. And that’s where we’re really able to grow and manage growth of double digits every month. And it’s unique as I go across the state and the region and speak to other chamber leaders.

Brandon Burton (07:26.958)
Thanks

Chris Heck (07:41.408)
I don’t know of another chamber that has sustained double digit growth over the last two years. We’re talking 11, 12, sometimes 18 new members. we’re very, very fortunate to see that growth. Our chamber has a fabulous reputation of being the type of organization that really embraces

the companies that we represent, but more importantly, the community that we represent. And that is very, very important to us. I’m sort of the spokesperson in the media, in economic development circles, as the guy to go to in the airport corridor, it’s called, at his 31 communities that we represent. And we have a great mix.

Brandon Burton (08:37.784)
Cheers.

Chris Heck (08:41.319)
of companies. And I always say, you know, lot of these chambers that are around us have the majority is retail. And to me, a chamber that has 80 70 80 % retail is not, you know, really what what what I I want to I want to be where the business is driving the local economy. And that is where we are. We have energy companies like you have in

Brandon Burton (08:44.718)
Thank

Brandon Burton (09:02.19)
you

Chris Heck (09:09.909)
in Texas, the energy companies, because of the natural gas excavation that we have here with the Marcella Shale, we have so many things going on that are diverse. And it really makes a great mix of companies that we represent. And it just makes my job a lot easier.

Brandon Burton (09:33.485)
Yeah, it does in some regards, right? And others we’ll talk about as we get into our episode here. But that definitely helps to give that perspective that, you know, where you guys sit in the region and the communities and that whole outlook. So today we’re going to dive in deeper on just overall, just chamber management. How do you manage that growth and retaining those members and just chamber leadership in general? And we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Chris, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking chamber leadership. And you mentioned some of the things that you guys are blessed with there in your region and there in Pennsylvania. Growth, you mentioned it makes your job easier and it does, but it also comes with challenges too, as we’re familiar with. Me being in Texas, we see the growth and the challenges that come with it as well. But if you could talk to us about

Chris Heck (10:24.617)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (10:34.066)
what it’s like to manage the growth while also paying attention to those current members and being able to retain those relationships and memberships long term. What’s your approach like and hopefully don’t make it too complicated.

Chris Heck (10:50.269)
Yeah, no, and it’s really it’s no secret. I think a lot of your audience probably does, depending on their maybe length of service, if you will, with their their particular chamber, you figured out that, you know, to be to be really hands on. Let me just back up a minute. So I’m the President and CEO. I do have an executive director. I do have.

Brandon Burton (11:18.904)
Okay.

Chris Heck (11:19.541)
Okay, so a lot of chambers just have that one level of executive director and then maybe a membership director and an offense and an office manager, you know, that we went a little bit different because I’m very fortunate to have an executive director that’s been here for 24 years. So she knows all the ins and outs about, and that gives me the opportunity

Brandon Burton (11:40.014)
There you go.

Chris Heck (11:47.798)
to be extremely hands-on with our members, okay? An example of that is we decided not to have a director of membership sales. We’re gonna give that a try, and we’re in our second year of not having a full-time membership salesperson because…

Brandon Burton (12:07.714)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (12:14.291)
between myself and our executive director, we feel that we can manage the incoming, we could do that sort of that sales work on our own without a true sales professional, whatever it is. And that seems to be working quite well. I will say we stretch ourselves pretty thin when it comes to.

managing the growth and what is what do I mean by managing the growth? Well, when you have 12 new members every month, you have to make sure that your process for onboarding, you know, that critical time when you bring those new members on, it’s so critical that first year, actually, the first six months is critical to the retention that you’re hoping to get.

for the next few years out of these, right? So we have an onboarding process that I feel is second to none with our ambassador committee, with myself, with handwritten notes, a membership box, all sorts of things, and a phone call and a meeting from me to welcome those companies onboard. Again, very hands-on and…

Brandon Burton (13:13.592)
Right.

Chris Heck (13:38.654)
We stress to the new members that we understand why you joined and we’re here to help you connect, make some contacts and you’re not on an island by yourself once you send us that membership check. So if I could stress anything, it is a lot of work to manage the growth.

Brandon Burton (13:40.814)
you

Chris Heck (14:07.945)
We seem to have a formula in doing that, which is hands-on and making sure that every phone call is answered, every email is answered. you know, we started the whole conversation by this whole thing is not rocket science, we’re able to make a decision if someone is maybe just, you know, they’re unhappy.

Maybe with something that we do, we all have the ability to fix that problem, whether it’s extending their membership another three, six months, or offering them a few events that they could come to at no charge, if they bring a guest and things like that. So even though we’ve been around for a long time,

I have implemented a culture here that whatever my staff thinks is best, to keep that member happy, we will do. And I think they all understand that. And it’s been something that we have kind of lived with. And I think that’s one of the other areas that make our retention level of 87 percent.

plus pretty high up there.

Brandon Burton (15:39.842)
Those are some creative ideas with retention that you talked about. I’ve not heard of other chambers that will extend maybe three more months to help a member who wasn’t satisfied with some certain outcome.

Chris Heck (15:48.958)
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, realistically, Brandon, is it any skin off our back if we extend someone’s membership three more months or whatever it is? No, no, it’s not. so, you know, there’s, I’m gonna talk a little bit about affinity programs because everybody’s had, you know,

Brandon Burton (15:55.971)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:01.261)
Now.

Chris Heck (16:18.303)
people come in and pitch an affinity program, a non-revenue, non-membership revenue stream, non-due stream or whatever it is. We’re very, very selective of those companies that we partner with. And I personally start those programs with an introduction from me. I just did two today to a new energy provider that we’re gonna give a shot with for the next year because we…

Brandon Burton (16:24.108)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (16:48.127)
think that this is the right fit for us. And I’ve committed to making about 20 introductions to high-use energy use companies. And so far, every one of them has said, sure, bring them in, introduce me to them. And it’s a little bit more hand-holding than most, but it’s worth it. It’s definitely worth it.

Brandon Burton (17:13.9)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if it all ends up being a win-win-win, that’s what matters, right? A lot of times, those affinity programs, you really have to be careful and examine them and just look at the details before you get too far along.

Chris Heck (17:21.855)
That’s right. That’s right.

Chris Heck (17:32.104)
Yeah, and don’t be afraid to cut them loose if they’re just, they talk the talk at the beginning of maybe a year cycle or whatever. And then you’re looking at the reports every month and you’re saying to yourself, really, you said that you were going to bring in X and I don’t even see the activity that you’re doing out there. think, know, so I’ve had the, I’ve been in the position to do that more often than I would like to.

Brandon Burton (17:59.235)
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. So I wanted to circle back to your onboarding process. You went down a list quickly of different things that you do in the onboarding process. But I think that’s so important for that long-term retention and being able to do it in a way that’s sustainable when you are seeing a high amount of growth. I can see where it could be difficult where you commit to

Chris Heck (18:11.977)
Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton (18:27.342)
You had handwritten notes as one of the things you mentioned. And I can see, you know,

Chris Heck (18:32.565)
It’s so unique, Brandon. So, just to give you a little synopsis of our onboarding process, a new member comes in, the membership gets processed through accounting, receipts are sent and all that other stuff. Within 48 hours of us receiving the application and the payment for that, our executive director, a phone call

goes out to them. As soon as that phone call of welcoming them to our chamber and thanking them for joining our chamber, I’m the next call. So now the CEO and President is basically doing the same thing, getting to know the person. And after a quick thank you for joining, I ask, tell me about your business.

You know, I don’t want you to listen to what I have to say. You’ve joined the chamber already, right? I want to hear, I want to hear why you joined. I want to hear about your business. want to hear about some opportunities that you might be thinking about of connectivity with our members, whatever, you know, and they really appreciate, my God, the President of the chamber called me and is asking me about our business and people up to talk, right?

Brandon Burton (19:30.882)
Yeah, this is about you.

Chris Heck (19:57.078)
So those are very, very two simple things. Then the entire list of let’s call it 10 new members goes directly to our ambassador committee. The ambassador committee of 23 people they meet monthly, they take that list and they distribute each new member company to an ambassador. So an ambassador now,

Brandon Burton (19:57.57)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (20:25.351)
is assigned to that company, but every ambassador sends a handwritten note welcoming them on their own station or their stationery. If it’s PNC Bank, we’re welcoming you to the chamber, whatever it is. So now they’re getting a bunch and they also get that chamber welcome kit, that box.

Brandon Burton (20:42.093)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (20:53.203)
I don’t know if that’s a little old school, but there’s an actual box that they get with a bunch of stuff, the bylaws, the board list, calendar of events, some affinity program things or whatever for, you whatever, but it’s, a little plaque, I’m a proud member of the chamber. so they get that and then,

Brandon Burton (21:15.597)
Yes.

Chris Heck (21:22.303)
Then they get a call on the operations side to make sure that everyone from their company that they want to be a part of the account and get the invitation is listed, you know, not just that one person that sent out. goes, the primary is the primary, yes, but you could add 10 other people to that account.

Brandon Burton (21:38.306)
Yeah, not just the primary rep, but yeah, get the HR person, or the accounting, or sales.

Chris Heck (21:50.026)
because we understand that from a revenue generation side, we put a lot of quality in our events. That’s where we’re able, you know, if someone’s spending $450 on membership dues, that’s nice. That really doesn’t pay the bills. You know, it’s nice to have that ongoing.

Brandon Burton (22:14.402)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (22:18.421)
revenue. The key is engaging them from the beginning. now you get three or four employees every month or every quarter spending 50, 60, 80 bucks or whatever on events. And that’s where you start to see the event. And try to tell that we had a whole sales team.

Brandon Burton (22:39.682)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (22:44.585)
before we had a sales manager, had sales reps, had all that stuff. And I tried to tell them that, that the importance, the model that we have on the revenue side is not about that one shot of the company that sends us, know, Jimmy John’s sandwiches, they want a ribbon cutting, right? So they join.

Brandon Burton (23:09.036)
Yeah, they do the ones for the ribbon cutting and that’s it. Yeah.

Chris Heck (23:11.827)
And they do that one thing and you never hear back from them. I mean, what does that get us? So I think you understand that that is where, and we’re all on the same page with that. And we have had members come to us and say, you know what? We belong to five or six different organizations. Never have we had an onboarding process that was so personalized.

Brandon Burton (23:20.59)
But it’s a great strategy.

Chris Heck (23:41.021)
and authentic as yours was. And I think that really helps.

Brandon Burton (23:43.523)
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a great strategy, making sure that their list gets built out beyond their primary contact, because a lot of times a primary contact maybe is not the one that gets super involved. But then a couple of years down the road when they’re making a decision, maybe they have a harder financial year and they’re trying to decide, do we stay with the chamber?

And if they’ve got a list of eight different employees that are involved and you got six of them advocating for involvement with the chamber, because they see the value, then that makes it a whole lot better. Just stick around. Yeah. I love that.

Chris Heck (24:09.834)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (24:18.611)
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, Brandon, exactly. So another, the last thing that’s a little bit new, and you and I spoke offline about this a little bit, is, you know, we’re in an area where higher education technology, in particular, we’re in the backyard of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

So with that comes the technology boom. have so many autonomous vehicles. We have all these different technology for robotics and AI. So I was like, how do we incorporate some of the things to our chamber to make us relevant, to make us unique, make us different?

Brandon Burton (24:55.608)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:14.35)
You’ve got to show you’re leading, right? Yeah.

Chris Heck (25:17.619)
And that’s where we engaged with our friend Craig Turner. And I said, look, I joined a chamber. He goes, I’ve got a very simple AI related platform. They join, they log on to this AI platform. They answer a few questions and they get what we call a a value.

roadmap and that value roadmap tells them, okay, you’ve answered these five or six questions. Here is your roadmap of maximizing the value that you can get out of this chamber. And that report goes instantaneously back to them. We get a copy and all of a sudden the guy’s like, wow, I just joined this chamber.

five days later, I’m filling out an AI questionnaire and I’ve got a value roadmap that will give me some suggestions on how to maximize the value that I’m paying for in this chamber. So it’s a nice little modern trinket and it seems to be working pretty well.

Brandon Burton (26:33.838)
But it’s important, like you said, you’re a hub of innovation and technology and as a chamber, beyond just being relevant, you have to show that you’re leading the way, that you understand the technology, the implications of technology and AI in their business. And look, we’re using it too. You’re leading by example. Yeah.

Chris Heck (26:57.011)
Right, right, right. And who would ever think, I mean, a chamber of commerce, there’s thousands across the country, right? Some of them are very small and some of them are very old school where you, you you join a chamber and you go, you go to a local restaurant and you have a beer and you meet some insurance broker and that’s basically all you do.

Brandon Burton (27:16.822)
And that’s the end of the story. Yeah. That’s great. Now you’ve definitely you’ve hit on some great points here. And as far as the managing the growth and leading into that longer term retention and really just leading out, I was hoping we’d have time to touch a little bit more on the committees. I think when you talk about leading a chamber, you’re effectively using committees, it sounds like.

Chris Heck (27:46.217)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (27:46.294)
and that makes your job a little bit easier. Do you want to take a minute or two and touch on that and the implications?

Chris Heck (27:50.014)
Yeah, yeah, we, you know, the largest is the ambassador committee. I look at our board as a committee as well, because we lean on them often for just a lot, you know, a lot of a lot of different things. We have a government relations and advocacy committee. So the larger companies do have that community relations and government relations director.

So I’m the one who’s doing the work with our elected officials on a regular basis. So it’s very important that that committee understands what our priorities are for accuracy. So we do have that. We have about five different signature events. Each one of those signature events has its own committee. So the golf outing, for instance, just to give an idea.

There’s 15 members of the golf outing committee. They do everything from ideas of additional revenue generation to getting auction items for the golf outing. So we don’t have to do more. And then there’s four or five other events that do that. We’re introducing this year two new networks, once a peer network, which is a HR peer network.

Brandon Burton (29:01.282)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (29:16.179)
So we’re going out to those companies that have a dedicated HR professional and saying, hey, you’ve been a member of our chamber. Here’s an opportunity for you as the HR director to meet with your peers and talk about whatever you want to talk about. We’re not going to drive that. There’s no money involved. It’s just, you know, and I’ll tell you what, HR people

Brandon Burton (29:36.344)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (29:45.51)
love to get out of the office and meet with peers and exchange ideas. The other peer network is the sales and marketing peer network, which totally goes off the rails sometimes. know, a bunch of sales guys in a room. So that those are those are a couple of networks are not committees necessarily, but we’re introducing those.

Brandon Burton (29:49.312)
I’m sorry.

Brandon Burton (30:01.25)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Chris Heck (30:15.093)
a marketing and communications committee and that helps me because now you have social media that everybody’s talking about, right? And how do you manage that correctly? And so that committee does everything from design to does the posting and does a lot of that stuff. So that really helps. So you can see where we go with these committees.

Brandon Burton (30:39.288)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (30:43.221)
and we have a very small staff, but the committees really, really help. The ambassadors are great. I know I’m missing a committee somewhere. Government Affairs, Marketing and Communications, the board, and I think that might be it. I think that’s about it.

Brandon Burton (31:05.004)
Yeah. I set you up for that to, yeah, to forget a name or something. So that one’s on me. But, as we start to wrap.

Chris Heck (31:10.431)
Hahaha

Brandon Burton (31:18.638)
you for those listening who are wanting to take their organization up to the next level what kind of tip or action item would you leave with them as they strive towards that goal?

Chris Heck (31:30.255)
wow. I, you know, I think, I think this is kind of more of a life lesson than it is a lesson in managing or leading a chamber. and I just had this conversation yesterday, so the timing is pretty good. I do have a philosophy that the first thing in the conversation that I have is

put myself in their shoes. If I put myself in their shoes and I’m listening to what I have to say, it better be something that I truly believe in. I think it’s important that when you’re talking to someone,

Brandon Burton (32:02.424)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (32:26.293)
The customer is always first. We know that. That’s old school. But it’s important for you to understand, wow, whatever I’m going to say or whatever I’m going to pitch or whatever I’m going to sort of put in play here, if I don’t sincerely believe it myself, then it’s not going to work. So that seems to really help me.

in putting myself in the shoes of that person on the other side of the table, right? And is it something that is truly honest and effective? And what I buy that, what I buy, because we’re all selling, right? So what I buy, what I’m listening to. And that’s, I think my dad told me that. My dad was a salesman all of his life. And he’s like,

Brandon Burton (33:01.208)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (33:09.87)
Right.

Chris Heck (33:23.871)
Hey, you know, if you don’t buy it yourself, nobody’s going to buy it. So that’s just something that I’ve used and tried to. You the other thing is chamber membership is not rocket science. It’s very, very basic business development, marketing, connectivity, support of a great organization that you should believe in.

Again, I think the integrity of what we do as chamber leaders is pretty good to hold on to. You never really question whether or not you’re selling a bunch of crap or are you really, really passionate about what you do. And I’m pretty passionate about chamber membership, because if it’s done right, you know, it really does help.

someone’s business. It really does make a difference.

Brandon Burton (34:22.316)
Yeah, can make a big impact. Yeah. Very good. Well, Chris, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers. So how do you see the future of Chambers of Commerce and their purpose going forward?

Chris Heck (34:34.439)
Ooh.

You know, I like to say that, know, the sky’s the limit with the Chamber of Commerce. And I sometimes look at what the future is of the way we do business, the future of how people interact with each other. I have four children.

And I’m the first one to say, get off your phone and just talk to people, you know, face to face and all that. you see these trends with AI and with these different things that are so much different than our generation would use because I think, so I hope that Chamber

Chambers of Commerce continue to add value and add benefit. I’m not 100 % sure that in the future we’re going to see as much as we see, have seen over, you know, what was the last time that you were in a room with 200 people, 250 people listening to someone

who was really, really interesting. It’s not every day, right? It’s not every day that you’re able to do that. And that’s what I’m afraid we’re kind of, as a society, as a business community might be moving away from. And that’s scary to think of, is that’s what a chamber of commerce does bring. It brings that personal, you know,

Brandon Burton (36:09.944)
Well, let’s see. No.

Chris Heck (36:34.641)
opportunity to learn something where a lot of people right now are thinking, I could learn that online. I could do that. I could literally do that on something, you know, not as personal. So I’d love to say, I think, you know, the chamber of commerce world is is is absolutely going to, you know, break every record and do everything like that.

Brandon Burton (36:37.954)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (37:04.179)
I hope so, but there are some variables that we never thought would be there, right? That are there now, which that old handshake and that whole, know, hey, Bill, I’d like you to meet Jim. He’s a great so-and-so. He could probably save you a lot of money. That whole thing, you know, is what I hope, I hope continues.

Brandon Burton (37:10.818)
Right.

Brandon Burton (37:28.812)
Right? Yeah.

Which is scary because that’s a reflection on society as a whole. And you want to see society hold up. we’ll hope for the best and work on preserving it.

Chris Heck (37:37.397)
That’s right.

Chris Heck (37:46.389)
Yeah, well, I know we’re getting ready to wrap up and I don’t know who’s going to be listening. But again, my name is Chris Hack. I run the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce in about 11 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. And, you know, 412-264-6272 is our number here. Our website is

If you ever are in the area or would like to chat about anything, I’m happy to spend some time with you and learn about what you guys are doing.

Brandon Burton (38:31.01)
That’s perfect. Well, make sure we get that in our show notes for this episode and make it easy for listeners to reach out and connect if they have some further questions or want to learn more about how you’re doing things. But Chris, this has been great having you on the show. I’m glad it worked out with our schedules. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun and covered a lot of good ground. So thank you.

Chris Heck (38:42.687)
Please do, yeah.

That’s been fun. Yeah.

Good. Good, Brandon. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Brandon Burton (38:53.974)
You bet.

Chamber Foundations with Jeff Meredith

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 (00:00.942)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a true force in the world of Chambers and community development. Jeff Meredith brings over 16 years of experience in the Chamber industry, earning his IOM designation in 2017 and completing his MBA in

in 2022. In 2023, Jeff made the leap into full-time economic development where he’s already helped his community secure more than 3.5 million in grant funding. Known across the chamber world as the Foundation Guy, Jeff has guided over 50 chambers through the process of establishing 501c3 foundations. On top of that, he offers nonprofit consulting services

Helping organizations with everything from getting started to reviewing bylaws and performing financial analysis. Jeff’s strategic mindset and deep expertise make him a go-to resource for Chambers, nonprofits, and communities looking to grow stronger and smarter. So get ready to take some notes. But Jeff, 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 all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and

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

Jeff Meredith (01:30.15)
Sure, well, Brandon, first of all, thank you for hosting me and for all the Chamber Champions watching this show. Again, Jeff Meredith, he’s already introduced me some. But a few things that you all might not know about me from within the Chamber world is, in addition to my full-time economic development job and a side hustle as a consultant, I also very much enjoy refereeing soccer.

It’s mostly a lot of youth. I tend to do U15, so basically not high school. I also do adults. I do speak English and a pretty solid Spanish, which is very useful in the soccer world, especially here where it’s 35 % Hispanic. It’s always interesting when I am referring because I don’t necessarily tell people I speak Spanish.

Brandon Burton (01:53.921)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (02:12.803)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:19.183)
That’s smart.

Jeff Meredith (02:22.298)
But I do give a warning because there are certain things that if you, for example, you curse at me and say certain words, I show a red card and I send that person off.

Basically, they’re done for the day. I usually give a warning when someone says such a thing in Spanish to let them know I do know what they just said now and they should not say that again. And I normally just kind of tap the red card as I pull it out of my pocket to remind them that I do have these available. So a lot of soccer roughing. Anyway, not much spare time in my life, but I enjoy it and I stay busy. So yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:50.178)
Yeah.

you

Right. So where did you pick up Spanish? How did that become something that you could add to your…

Jeff Meredith (03:03.098)
It’s actually funny, when I was first going to college for my bachelor’s, I was studying to be a bachelor’s, again, a bachelor of arts in history. For a BA, you have to have four semesters of one foreign language. So I chose Spanish. During the day, I had the book work, but at night, I actually was working in, well, Ryan’s family steakhouse, which is now bankrupt.

or no longer in existence. And one day they said, hey, this is Antonio. He doesn’t speak English. You guys are going to work together. So I was able to have the book work during the day, speak Spanish at night. And honestly, since then, I’ve used Spanish in several different restaurants. I can tell you stories about how I used to get free cake for speaking Spanish because I was a server.

Brandon Burton (03:28.696)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (03:49.752)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (03:52.41)
They said, we need to speak Spanish. I said, no, like we’re paying you like, uh-huh, $2.13 an hour. That’s not a skill. Bring in a translator. It’ll cost you more than the five bucks for the piece of cake. So I got lemon cream cake from Olive Garden anytime I had to speak Spanish.

Brandon Burton (03:52.717)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (04:05.133)
Right?

Brandon Burton (04:10.542)
That’s great. I love it. Well, this is the point where I usually ask you to tell us about your chamber. since you’ve kind of shifted focuses professionally, tell us what your chamber background was and kind of the size of chambers you worked with and that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Jeff Meredith (04:13.924)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (04:33.094)
Sure. So I have worked for two different chambers. My first chamber was the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, which is a larger chamber. At that point in time, they had approximately 1200 members. I think total staff of 17 or 18 in the building between the various economic development entities that were present there. And when I started, I was the administrative assistant. I didn’t know how to spell. I didn’t know what chambers did. I wasn’t sure.

Brandon Burton (04:34.542)
Sorry.

Jeff Meredith (05:01.195)
and but I discovered it was something I was decent at. I’m a friendly guy and then I got promoted to be member relations at the Joplin Chamber.

Brandon Burton (05:03.726)
Thank

Jeff Meredith (05:09.914)
While there, the Joplin tornado came through, 2011. And so that brought me some experience in dealing with disaster recovery, seeing what the community did. And then approximately year later, I did go to Monette Chamber, which is a small chamber. The chamber itself had a staff of two, but because we had a very good non-due revenue stream, we actually had more employees and it was, we were able to accomplish a lot because we had a nice budget.

Brandon Burton (05:10.35)
Well, I’ll you in the next one.

Brandon Burton (05:15.906)
So,

Brandon Burton (05:28.302)
and self-cultivation.

Jeff Meredith (05:39.75)
So I’ve spent two years in the small chamber and was able to leverage all of the financial resources available to complete all kinds of professional development while there.

Brandon Burton (05:40.142)
And there it is.

Brandon Burton (05:46.223)
and so they’re successful in a number of first of all. Very good. I remember seeing you at MAKO conferences and things like that over the years. So that professional development pays off.

Jeff Meredith (06:01.03)
I was on the Mako board for, I don’t know, five years, I think. In fact, I was past chair the year we canceled Mako because of COVID. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (06:06.444)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (06:11.63)
Yeah, there you go. So it’s fitting that our topic for discussion today is going to be all about foundations, since we’ve got the foundation guy on the show. So we will dive in deep on that topic and what it takes to start a foundation and all things foundations as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Jeff, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, today we’re diving in on foundations.

You’re the guy to have on the show to talk about foundations. So I know chambers throughout the country, pretty healthy amount have foundations now. Some of them are pretty new. Some have had them for a decade or more. And then there’s another big segment of chambers out there that just aren’t sure where to start with the foundation or how to make use of a foundation or any of those things.

Let’s talk specifically to, I’m thinking mainly that segment of where do I start? How do I use a foundation? But even for those that have foundations, I’m hoping there’s still good value that they can lean out of this as they see how they can better leverage their foundation. we can start where you want to start, wherever the best point is. I’ll let you decide on

Jeff Meredith (07:34.726)
Sure, so, and I can just kind of ramble on for a minute, Brandon, and obviously if you’ve got questions, please pause me. I’m rarely at a short for words. So as far as where to start with foundations, I mean, let’s just kind of start with the basics. When I’ve had these discussions with chambers and their boards,

Brandon Burton (07:41.218)
That’s perfect.

Brandon Burton (07:45.038)
All right.

Jeff Meredith (07:55.794)
I remember one time someone said, so why? Let’s keep it short, Jeff, or we refer to things. Keep it succinct. Why should we do this? And if I had to do it in three words or less, it would be one word, which is money. A 501c3 has access to funding that a 501c6 simply can’t touch.

This is available through grants. Other 501c3s can give to you if you have a 501c3. In some states, you get tax exempt benefits for the c3 that the c6 does not get. And you can also get donations of things from various corporate entities in the country if you have a 501c3. And it’s just really kind of a money thing. So that’s where I would start. And some say well.

Brandon Burton (08:31.15)
This is not the end. We must forget the actions of the farmers, the families of the people of the country. And if you have a thought, look, the values of the

It’s where I live, it’s where I come from. And so I’m home. And I’m home, and I’m done with this.

Jeff Meredith (08:49.862)
How do I know if I can get money with a C-3? I mean, this may be a little bit of a tip as well. Ask. You know, most chambers, you probably have a board of directors for local leaders. Find out if there are 501 C-3s or charities in your community. You can also look some things up. You can Google if there are simply charities in the area.

Brandon Burton (08:57.838)
to to really want to travel to a smaller country. But I want to find a place to experience the beauty of this unique country. But also to think about the people who are so unique. Most ancient long-distance travel is happening in the world. This is where the time travel for the world can be. But it’s in the right hand. It’s in the past. But the world is still coming. And we have not lost it.

Jeff Meredith (09:12.75)
Most major corporations have their own charitable giving because it’s a way to take money from their left hand, put it to their right hand to receive a tax benefit for it, and then actually still direct their giving as well by passing from their right hand. So, that’s a good place to start.

Brandon Burton (09:26.988)
Yeah. I know Dave Adkinson and his book Horseshoes versus Chess calls out the importance for Chambers to have a foundation. And he gave an example, I can’t remember which chamber was that he worked with at the, or that he was at at the time where this happened, where he established the foundation. there was a family in their community that had a significant amount of wealth. And there was the

Basically the last remaining member of the family was getting ready to pass away, didn’t have heirs to leave it to. And because they had a foundation, that was a landing place where a great sum of money came into. It wasn’t everything, but it was a good sum of money because they had the structure to be able to receive it. And obviously they’d been doing the work in the community to show their value and build that trust for a family to want to.

to leave money to the Chamber Foundation. But yeah, it all comes down to money and being able to be a valid recipient of that money, whether it’s grants or these other examples that you put out there. So when it comes down to money, maybe it would be helpful just to talk about some ways that Chambers utilize foundations. I’ve seen some with

you know, that are chambers and they’ve got the economic development responsibility, which that seems pretty obvious in ways that they can utilize that. But if you’re a standalone chamber or if you’ve got tourism or economic development, what are some, some ways that are good utilizations of a foundation?

Jeff Meredith (11:09.606)
Sure, so most chambers, 70 to 80 % of what a 501C6 does could actually be a usage of a 501C3. And I start to think about what I see communities and chambers doing. There’s maybe some workforce programs.

that might be available. A lot of chambers they might give away a small scholarship to someone graduating from their school. Maybe they have a leadership program that they’re hosting currently. Foundations are good ways to offer this sort of thing because

There are, again, by leveraging those funds, you can get some sponsorships and some donations from some of these entities to support that same workforce program that you were doing before. And then you can actually kind of help fund it onto the chamber side.

Economic development is a prime example of something that a 501c3 is helpful for. In fact, sometimes you might even want to have more than one c3 set up that you have some control and access to because they’re for different purposes. And you can actually start to get really convoluted where you are having transactions between them based upon who’s doing what.

For example, where I am now as an economic development organization, we are a 501c3. So I can certainly speak to that degree on some of the things. As a c3, I’ve been able to leverage that status, again, to get grant funding for community development projects. And not because I was in economic development org, but because of the c3. Things that I’ve seen some chambers do that my EDO has done.

Brandon Burton (12:31.818)
Thanks.

Jeff Meredith (12:53.344)
is maybe you need to get a housing study done for your community. Perhaps you’ve thought about getting a hotel study done for your community. Let’s determine what that looks like for those areas. I got a grant from a governmental entity to pay for half of those studies that I was able to match with a private grant. And it was a rural development funding opportunity. Simply because my community was less than

Brandon Burton (13:15.747)
them.

Jeff Meredith (13:21.798)
50, 20, something, the threshold was higher than 15,000 because we were below where we are. And again, that’s a funding opportunity to do something that the Chamber wants done to support your businesses and members, but you don’t want to have to pay for it yourself.

Brandon Burton (13:23.342)
Sorry.

Brandon Burton (13:27.874)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (13:40.056)
Good.

Jeff Meredith (13:40.858)
Those are the opportunities. The same thing with the educational side. In fact, if you have a chamber foundation, in addition to providing educational courses to others, I’ve seen some that leave their own foundation to pay for their own institute experience.

Brandon Burton (13:46.41)
you

Brandon Burton (13:50.031)
Yeah, that’s good examples.

Jeff Meredith (14:00.364)
It’s professional development, education related, as long as you don’t specify, must be for high school students or children or something such as that. It’s still a perfectly legitimate use.

Brandon Burton (14:17.388)
I’ve seen some that have the economic development contracts, responsibilities as well, use it to acquire land as they are attracting a big industrial company to make a move to their community. then able to refund that, know, get that money recouped once the transaction is closed, but the chamber is able to be that instrumental piece in being able to make the deal work out. So lots of different ways.

to utilize the foundations.

Jeff Meredith (14:48.888)
Yes. And a lot of it, again, you’re doing similar programs. It’s just under a new umbrella. And that new umbrella just gets a little more favorable look when you start talking about some of these funding opportunities. I mean, some of the grants that, you know, the 3.5 you mentioned in my introduction, the first one of those was a million dollars from a trust that I was able to leverage for a million five that I could get for the city.

So I mean, put together five, you know, was ultimately a $5 million purchase between public and private funds my first month on the job, simply because we had the 501C3 and there’d been some planning done.

Brandon Burton (15:27.17)
Yeah, yeah. So for those listening, some may be intimidated at the idea of starting a foundation. I mean, they’re already busy at their chamber, right? Trying to keep their head above water. So what does it take to establish a foundation? What thought, what kind of planning needs to go into that? Who’s buy-in?

Do you need to be able to do something like that? What would you suggest?

Jeff Meredith (15:57.798)
Sure, so typically when most people start thinking about a C3, it’s either something they’ve had on their mind, they’ve seen a lot of these discussions, maybe they went to a training of some sort. So typically you need to get the buy-in of your chamber board upfront. Because the chamber board, you’re gonna need some startup cash to start a C3 and the chamber is a good source of that funding.

And while once you actually get the new entity set up, the chamber board no longer governs that entity, they’re still usually going to sign off on the bylaws to some degree and obviously the donation of the funding to get that going.

Brandon Burton (16:26.104)
Thanks.

Jeff Meredith (16:38.958)
Outside of that, it starts to be what is it you’re wanting to do that your C6 can’t do? Is there a pot of money you’re hoping to access out there? Is there a new program? Has someone said, will give you money if you have a C3 and do this? Again, just go ahead and ask people. Talk to your major employers. If we had a C3, that open up opportunities? And start that discussion.

Brandon Burton (16:40.846)
and sort of like bursting out. we do to people, what we do citizens, what we do. What’s going on, what we do, what we do to ourselves. It’s your very own work. And someone’s own behavior, and you’re not just doing it for me. Thanks.

Brandon Burton (17:00.398)
I’m not going to lose. I’m going to win.

Jeff Meredith (17:08.806)
as far as the steps to actually create a C3. I mean, it’s you set up a corporation with your state and then you do some things with the IRS and you’re good to go. I mean, and I say that in a drastic oversimplification because I’ve done it a time or two, but truthfully, we can get the process done in less than a month if we can get the appropriate approvals on the local entities.

Brandon Burton (17:23.15)
So, thank

Brandon Burton (17:28.718)
So how about like establishing any bylaws or selecting a board or any of the structural elements of building a foundation? If you’re starting from scratch, what direction do you give?

Jeff Meredith (17:36.986)
And then you just wait for the IRS.

Jeff Meredith (17:57.223)
Well, first off, would in this day and age, I would never start from scratch on almost anything. You know, think about

Brandon Burton (18:03.778)
Great advice.

Jeff Meredith (18:07.898)
because again, there are groups out there, there are resources out there. mean, many states offer sample bylaws for certain organizations and entities. So that’s not a bad place to start. Since we’re focused on chambers, I remember that my chamber colleagues were always more than happy to rip off and duplicate a little bit of R and E.

And then you would just say, hey, I’m looking for some examples of this and then you can share them with that and you start to kind of decide what’s going to make sense. As far as your foundation boards go, your chamber board is a decent place to start for some of those members. Again, when I work with.

Brandon Burton (18:47.662)
I was going to ask, do you suggest utilizing some of the same board members or having it be a different makeup?

Jeff Meredith (18:54.274)
I utilize some of them. Now again, whenever I work with an entity, I say your foundation board should be a minority of which is currently on the chamber board. And there’s a specific IRS that says this because chamber foundations want to be a public charity, not a private foundation. If you want to be a public charity, a majority of your board cannot be related by blood, marriage, or business.

Brandon Burton (19:07.374)
and I’m going to be signing this. I’m to be signing this with the Proudly Stranger of the United States. Proudly Stranger of the States.

Jeff Meredith (19:23.174)
Now, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t claim to be, but if the reason people are all part of a different entity is simply because they’re serving on a board together, in my non-legal opinion, they are related via business. So I keep it a minority. And when some say, well, that’s what we want to do, I then question, do they not have any other willing participants in their entire town other than these 12 to 25 people that they have involved with their chamber already?

Brandon Burton (19:25.582)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (19:42.014)
Excellent. Now we have a new program that discusses the importance of our lives. For which we find out about it.

Jeff Meredith (19:52.25)
You want to have some separation. And so then we start to pick out those other ones that you want because when you write your bylaws, because you’re starting from some level of scratch ish, right? Say who you want. My bylaws said we wanted someone from the school district and somebody from the city because we were going to do community economic development projects. I wanted that city. We did scholarship things. I needed that to the school district to promote my scholarships. Talk about appropriate.

Brandon Burton (19:57.327)
of the country and its people.

Brandon Burton (20:04.078)
So, I don’t know if that’s gonna be a good time for me. That’s all I have to say.

Brandon Burton (20:16.046)
As far as ongoing care and maintenance of the foundation, what is there to be considered there?

Jeff Meredith (20:21.968)
Now generally, we have the superintendent and the senior administrator, but they’ve got to pick who they want to trust. Find the focus and get the people that you’re looking for.

Brandon Burton (20:43.711)
And how involved, for example, as a chamber executive, how involved would they be with a chamber foundation on the day to day?

Jeff Meredith (20:52.614)
Sure, so as far as the ongoing maintenance goes, with a 501C3, there are two things, three things you’re required to do on an annual basis. You’re required to have at least one board meeting, and that’s just for standard corporate compliance. You are required to file a tax return of some sort, and depending upon your state, you have to keep your corporation active.

Now, some states only require that every other year or every three years I’ve seen. And as far as the tax return goes, depending upon your gross income, it could be a 990N, which takes, it almost takes you longer to log in to the IRS website than it does to actually complete the tax return itself. And if you’re making.

Brandon Burton (21:39.756)
That’s unheard of.

Jeff Meredith (21:41.286)
I know it is and I’ve helped people with that before and then they’re shocked how simple it truly is. So that’s kind of it and then as far as the involvement in well it all depends upon what you’re doing with this new tool. Are you taking programs the C6 was doing and you’re just doing them with a new hat on your head as the C3 then your workload’s not changing very much.

Brandon Burton (21:49.336)
That’s it.

Jeff Meredith (22:06.406)
Are you starting this new entity and because you have a C3, you’re suddenly launching new programs and new strategies or initiatives? Your workload will absolutely increase. But if by doing so, you’re generating enough funding to pay for an additional staff, then that’s a way to kind of help really maximize the chamber itself. And one benefit of having this relationship is,

The C3 can actually generate funding from various grants and sources and ultimately pay the C6 to actually carry out that scope of work as long as the fees being charged are fair and reasonable.

Brandon Burton (22:44.886)
So I understand some people are a little intimidated with the idea of grant writing and constantly be thinking about deadlines and applications and so forth. Is it worthwhile having somebody to run and manage the foundation separate from a chamber staff? Or I’m sure you’ve seen it done both ways, but what thoughts do you have around that?

Jeff Meredith (23:11.122)
I mean, again, if you’re growing that entity large enough, absolutely. Sometimes you could have a position you had already, perhaps a work first coordinator or something that maybe becomes the foundation director to some degree because there’s a natural crossover there. And if you’re a larger organization with a larger foundation, absolutely it makes sense because you’ve got the funding to support it. But if part of the reason, if you’re a smaller entity that’s trying to access fresh dollars from an outside source,

you creating a C3 to support the C6 and then having the sudden overhead of a new employee to manage it kind of defeats the purpose of leveraging that for the C6. I work a lot obviously with the multiple jobs we’ve talked about.

Brandon Burton (23:52.014)
All

Jeff Meredith (23:57.644)
and I’m cheap. whenever someone approached me at one point about, let’s throw in some money to help support a, at the time it was a Main Street director, I said, no, I don’t want to give my money to that, but I will work harder in exchange of not giving the contribution towards. And we accomplished a lot of things because we were able to do that. So every person is different.

Brandon Burton (23:58.134)
And that’s

Jeff Meredith (24:21.742)
I know some chamber execs, like to outsource a lot of their duties because there are experts in those fields. I’m more of a keep it in-house and reap the benefits and frankly learn along the way by doing so.

Brandon Burton (24:27.502)
for all those firms in this area.

Brandon Burton (24:36.8)
Yeah, just probably good advice. Keep it in house as long as you can until you get to that certain level and where it makes sense to hand off some of those responsibilities.

Jeff Meredith (24:46.438)
And you mentioned grant writing and things as well. I know that because there are some grants chambers can access and they say, well, I don’t want to spend the six hours or eight hours or whatever working on that grant application. And then I asked them, you know, I’ve seen one, was a 50, let’s keep it simple, $1,600 grant for eight hours of work. I don’t know of many chambers that are making $200 an hour.

Brandon Burton (24:54.21)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (25:12.806)
or that can go out and do anything else within their community to generate $200 an hour of return. So I believe that that is a great use of time and resources. And perhaps it’s just a different situation of prioritization versus allocation.

Brandon Burton (25:30.53)
Yeah, being able to shut off some of those other, you know, dings and lights and whistles and everything that beg for your attention when you’re busy at a dream group. That’s right. That’s right. Hunker down and get that application done. What other things need to be considered as somebody who’s looking to start a foundation and any pitfalls to avoid or things to look out for as they

Jeff Meredith (25:40.324)
I the cell phone out the door.

Brandon Burton (25:59.865)
Go down that path.

Jeff Meredith (26:01.806)
As far as pitfalls, I would just kind of look around and make sure there’s not some entity doing things you are already doing. And that’s not to say that maybe you can’t do it better.

But it’s an opportunity to, instead of setting up this whole new corporation, maybe partnering with an entity. Again, I’ll just go back to my time referencing the Main Street organization. We used the Main Street org to do a lot of community development activities for MONET because it had that C3 at the time. It was better known. It made sense. There were funding opportunities for that entity. Whereas we use the Chamber Foundation, which was also a C3 separately from, focused on just specific things.

So it’s really just kind of finding out what is that best usage. But I made sure that the C3 chamber was not doing downtown stuff. I wasn’t trying to take on any sort of facade grants or beautification or flowers or anything downtown. And we did a little bit of a mural project, but simply because the Chamber Foundation had the match, whereas Main Street didn’t.

and I guess this is just a secret to success for any community, you can accomplish a lot of things if you don’t necessarily care which entities actually getting the credit.

Brandon Burton (27:20.482)
Yeah, that’s a great point.

Jeff Meredith (27:23.278)
In fact, I remember once I was talking to my wife about something about, hey, she’s like, you’re working harder on that. I’m like, well, but it’s not. It’s the Chamber Foundation. And she’s like, you are a, you know, called me a name that I won’t repeat for your viewers. It’s still you. You’re just doing the work with a different hat on that day. Like, yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:46.456)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (27:48.09)
So Main Street’s getting credit for work that the Chamber Executive was accomplishing and the Chamber Exec was technically paying to do the Main Street thing, but it made the Chamber job better so it all worked out in the end. So if you have lots of entities, chat before you talk about setting up a new one, make sure that there’s not a crossover.

Brandon Burton (28:02.456)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (28:11.372)
know, maybe I maybe should get on the board of something else. Now ultimately we did have them separately because there were separate missions and separate purposes. So yes.

Brandon Burton (28:14.765)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:22.08)
And how specific do those purposes need to be in the foundation when they’re established and how easy is it to change focus if you get in, you know, 10, 20 years down the road and things. What we originally set this up for is not so relevant anymore. Let’s shift focus. How hard is that?

Jeff Meredith (28:40.294)
Well, so I usually tell people, when you’re setting up a thing, to keep the purposes somewhat generic. So it’d be workforce, economic development, community development, arts, tourism, education. But then within this, because you have to also have the vague and be specific. should the IRS, depending on which path you’re choosing, if they come back and ask additional questions, if you say you’re going to do workforce things,

If someone says, what’s your workforce program? You need to have an answer of that workforce program is I’m going to go and talk to middle school kids about the job opportunities or about career fairs or interview skills or something, or I’m going to host a leadership program for adults. You don’t necessarily have to have that in place yet, but you have to have a plan versus just saying I’m going to do workforce things because it sounds good.

And then should your focus or vision change in the future, again, you can always go back and amend those articles. You can refile those articles in the corporation. And then with the IRS, should your NTE E code, which basically describes what line of business the foundation is in, should that need change, you can also update that with the IRS as well in the future. So it’s really kind of a thing of, and I know it’s somewhat contradictory.

Brandon Burton (29:55.469)
this week.

Brandon Burton (30:03.47)
This was my best.

Jeff Meredith (30:06.31)
You want to have it vague, but also have the ideas of the specific programs and things in your mind so that you can kind of go from the vague to actually make it real versus just this ethereal world out there of all the things you hope to do, and you know, actual planner idea on what it is or how to accomplish it.

Brandon Burton (30:06.862)
And also that they are very much in the group as the Foundations. So it’s kind of both a problem for us to deal with. And we’re a lot of work to help you. And we’re happy to help you with your work. That makes sense. Is there anything else that we’re missing when it comes to Foundations? I’m sure there are several things, but as far as these are concerned.

Jeff Meredith (30:29.062)
There’s lots of things we’re missing. So really, guess, just a key thing, and maybe this kind of goes into what might be a tip. With 2026, charitable giving has changed. Individuals such as myself, who generally take a standard deduction on their taxes because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

and I’m married, in addition to my standard deduction of, I think, $31.5, I could actually take an additional deduction of $2,000 for giving charitable contributions. Now, that’s relevant because, A, for those people who want to make a little charitable contribution or have been in the past, you can now get a deduction for it. But more importantly,

for those who might think about a C3, you suddenly opened up the world of people who could get a terrible infection for giving to you from roughly, I think I remember it was 15 % of the population, you knew almost 100 % of the population.

Brandon Burton (31:30.35)
Yeah, that is a big deal. So yeah, I usually ask for a tip or action item for listeners who are trying to take their chamber up to the next level. Do you have something else beyond that that you wanted to put out there and offer for the audience?

Jeff Meredith (31:46.182)
Absolutely. And this one may seem like a foreign concept for some chamber execs because I remember we’re all hard workers, right? You want to get everything done that you can. When I used to do community events at the chamber, if the event made an extra $4,000 above budget or whatever, I did not get a bonus.

And this is relevant because I think in a lot of chambers, this is what happens. They can generate additional funds and frankly, we bust our butts to help an entity make a whole lot of cash, but in exchange, you’re not getting a dividend. Now I’m not trying to be selfish here, but what I’m circling back to is, I learned that instead of killing myself to stand underneath a tent for 12 hours on the 4th of July,

tying myself to that, I could pay someone, at the time it was $15 an hour, to do the same thing that then freed me up for additional tasks that were more important. In this case, at the 4th of July, as example, making sure that things weren’t going bad somewhere else, introducing bans and whatnot, interacting with my vendors who were paying me money to be there, and I wanted to make sure that they were fine.

So I’m not saying you should outsource everything, but there are certain skills that can be done by almost anyone. Don’t be afraid to find that because the old 80-20 rule, remember, 20 % of your job probably impacts 80 % of your actual performance.

Pick out those things that are most important to your job and your responsibility that someone else can’t do or can’t do as well as you and focus on those and those little things, especially with community events. Why work 16 hours for something when you could have someone do part of that job for a couple hundred bucks for the day and you’re better rested, you’re less stressed and frankly, the event goes better because now if you’re the face of the organization, they see you where you need to be.

Brandon Burton (33:22.734)
That’s

Brandon Burton (33:31.889)
And that’s how it is. This is the first time I’ve done anything like this. I don’t know how this gets to the end of the video. But you can have some of it.

Brandon Burton (33:43.47)
You must be one of those friends who really get that much fun because now if you have a fifth form of social, you’ll see that you’re not getting any less than what you’re talking

Jeff Meredith (33:52.472)
not sitting under attend, dealing with the rank and file attendees. that’s my work less hard and accomplish more.

Brandon Burton (33:58.807)
Yeah. I love it. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers and how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeff Meredith (34:15.234)
I Chambers will continue to exist in the future. I think they are still an essential function and an organization and the services that Chambers provide are very necessary. Even if you just focus on the networking aspect, which is something that a lot of Chambers are very well known for, even as we have moved on to social media and during COVID and things with the distancing, I know that people love that human and social interaction.

So chambers will continue to be a powerful force and they just have to make sure that they find their niche to provide their services. Because chambers, like a lot of 501c3s, can do many different functions and still be legitimate and legal. So find the things that your community needs and someone else can’t provide and the chamber can maybe provide that service. So that’s good for the longevity of the chamber.

Brandon Burton (35:06.894)
That’s good.

Jeff Meredith (35:08.87)
It’s good for the future growth of the chamber and if it’s a service for which you get money, it’s also good non-due revenue for the chamber, which also ensures all of those things continue on in the future. So I think the chamber outlook is very good.

Brandon Burton (35:12.59)
Just like I said, I’m going to take it So I’m going to help you to tell us what you want to about all these things that you want. Yeah. I’m going tell you what going to Very good. Glad to hear that. Jeff, this has been great having you on the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information or anywhere you would point listeners who might want to.

Learn more about foundations or about how you might be able to help them. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to connect?

Jeff Meredith (35:44.07)
Sure. So, well, I’m always happy to connect with anyone that wants to more about foundations. My first consultation is always free. And if you want to reach out to me to get that discussion started, I am in central time. So I generally do these before or after my work hours or else at noon central time. So I kind of play a little time zone math there.

but you can find, I do have a website. My profession is not web design, so don’t hold that against me. It is jeffmconsulting.com. I do have a Facebook page of the same name, or if you’d like, can just send me an email, which is joplinjeff@gmail.com.

send those messages out. We’ll schedule a time that kind of works for both our schedules and let’s have a chat to see if a foundation is good for you and whether you decide to use my services or not. I’m always happy to answer questions on that first call.

Brandon Burton (36:24.814)
and I’ll you time.

Brandon Burton (36:36.612)
That’s perfect. We’ll get all that linked in our show notes to make it nice and easy to find you. But Jeff, thanks for spending time with us today and for going over these ins and outs of Chamber Foundations. think listeners will find this valuable and it’s a good one to have in the archives as well. So I appreciate it.

Jeff Meredith (36:41.851)
Awesome. Well, thank you.

Jeff Meredith (36:56.71)
Well, thank you, Brandon, and thank you to all you glorious chamber people. Have a wonderful day.

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