Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with John Beaman. Because this transcript is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Introduction
Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host he appreciates on automation software, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:20
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Guest Introduction
Our guests for this episode is John Beeman. John attended Liberty University for college where he studied Business Economics earned an MBA afterwards and later earned a graduate certificate from Yale. Professionally, John started his career in a family owned private equity company, where he successfully started built and sold one of the holdings of the firm. The goal was to flip the business in two years, but they did so in one and a half years while earning a five star rating on home advisor. John currently has ownership in a small business and manages The McGraw Council, which functions as a nonprofit consulting firm to help small businesses achieve their American Dream by implementing proper structure and good management. In less than a year, he helped service 700 clients and delivered resources to over 1500 small businesses nationwide. John, I’m excited to have you with me today on the chamber chat podcast, we would take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can I get to know you a little better.
Something Interesting About John
John Beaman 2:25
Oh, absolutely. Thank you first and foremost for having me on. This is the type of stuff that we’d love to do talking with other local businesses, small businesses kind of about their passion, their why and so forth. A little interesting tip, I’ll give you one that not everyone knows I serve on city council for a small town in Texas and heat. And I’m actually the youngest elected city council in their history. So there’s just a little fun tidbit for them to take where they’re I enjoy giving back. I enjoy serving audits. It’s one way for me to do so. Can tell. So
Brandon Burton 2:53
I know all the Chamber Champions listening is they’ve got their own interactions, the city council members in their city and and I’m here to vouch for you that you’re one of the good ones. Thank you very much, bro business city councilman. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, take a minute and tell us a little bit about your organization, the McGraw Council, tell us what you guys do. Specifically, why I’m having you speak to my audience here on chamber tech podcasts and how it’s applicable.
About the McGraw Council
John Beaman 3:25
Great question. Thank you for opening up with that. So in a nutshell, the McGraw Council is kind of a legacy project for our founder. What we do is consult on the managerial structure side with small businesses. Funny story. When we started, we thought we’re gonna really be focusing on the strategy side of things. But as we started onboarding small businesses, and just for clarity, we define a small business, less than 10 million in revenue, fewer than 20 employees. That’s really who we like to target. Even though the IRS lets you go up to 500 employees, we don’t go that far, there are a lot of really good mid tier consulting firms that work in that realm. But what we saw a lack of supply that really pertain to that small business demographic in that target market that I just mentioned, especially in the service industry. Now we’ve got a total team of about 12. Obviously, it changed a little bit between employees to 99, volunteer, so on and so forth. But what’s interesting is that we are a 100% virtual company. So we actually started during COVID 2020, the summer of 2020. And we use a virtual officing solution called for Bella so it’s like you download this application to computer to your computer and you go into like this virtual campus auditoriums, Expo halls and conference rooms and Office suites. So we literally have a whole office for and one of the buildings and we have our clients come on in there is where we meet with them. It’s where we do our consulting. So our consulting mission pertains like, as I was talking earlier, management structure what we found, the vast majority of small businesses don’t have any manageable systems or structures. It’s very much like the book E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. You have an individual who’s really good at the operations, but they’re not as familiar with the business side. And so they use, I’ll give an example, you see an H back, I gotta tell you what, I’ve been working HVac for 15 years, I’m gonna start HVac business. And we’re like, Heck, yeah, that’s awesome. But before you do that, how are you financing the business? How much do you need? What’s the plan, what’s your marketing niche, what differentiates you from the competition, so on and so forth, that the ideas, we can help them build a tangible asset, something they can liquidate later on, pass along to a family member, and in a perfect world, help them fund their retirement through that now real quick, because when people hear that they think financial advising, we’re not financial advisors, I am not a CPA. That’s not what we focus on, we focus on building the business, the core management structure of the business, that’s kind of how it started and how it’s going. We’re having a great time, it’s a lot of long days, but it is so rewarding to be able to provide to provide a need to provide a service for a knee to fill a gap, so to speak.
Brandon Burton 6:03
Absolutely. And, and I see where that need falls. You know, amongst a lot of these small businesses, like the example you’re saying, with the HVac person, I always think of the dentist, you know, you spend all their money, you go to dental school, you learn how to be a great dentist, you maybe work at somebody else’s practice for a few years and decide to go hang your own shingle. And you know how to drill in teeth and do fillings and everything great. But they don’t have any idea how to run a business necessarily, because they don’t teach that in dental school. So it’s there’s a huge need. And it’s
John Beaman 6:33
so true. And that’s where we love partnering with chambers of commerce, because we have so many resources that we can donate for absolutely no cost, including consulting hours, and exactly what you’re talking about. You see someone who’s really good at what they do, perhaps even the best in the industry, but they don’t understand what it means to run a business. And it’s the reason why a huge portion of small businesses still go on today. I know you’ve heard the statistic about 80% of businesses go under in the first five years, we want to flip that ratio. Once we can say 80% of businesses survive and succeed, then we can kick back and launcher the sweet tea and say you know what we did our duty but until then, it’s full steam ahead.
Brandon Burton 7:10
Absolutely. So the the topic for discussion today is we’ll be focusing around customer journey mapping. And I can see several applications to this one for chamber champions listening, how they can kind of take their members along a customer journey of sorts, but also to help them to help their business members with the journey mapping as well. So I’m excited to get into that discussion with you as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Topic-Customer Journey Mapping
Alright, John, we’re back. And as I teased before the break where we’re talking about customer journey mapping, so I’d like to get into this and see kind of what your thoughts are maybe first of all, from a chamber of commerce perspective, as they deal with Chamber members and kind of in May I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap to with how a chamber would approach this versus how a small business would approach the customer journey mapping. But let me hand the mic over to you.
John Beaman 9:20
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. So cut me off if I start going too long here cuz I love talking about this stuff. customer journey mapping is commonly used in the corporate world and in very large firms. They’ll what they find is that I’ll give you a prime example. A lot of auto stores like GE Chevrolet, Ford, a lot of their customer journeys. For people that buy a car, it’s often a couple year process. Small businesses need to take that same rationale the same approach to their business because then they can use it to enhance their forecasting, refocusing on the actual journey. What you’ll find is are generally five steps in that customer journey, you’ll have awareness initial consideration active consideration, purchase decision and then loyalty loop. And each stage is unique each stage is important. But before we go through each individual stage, I want to start off with something that you’re tying, how does this relate to chamber so on so forth. The most common mistake we see in small business is failing to build the customer avatar, I’ll give you a prime example of what that looks like, you’ll have a small business and let’s use a chat business. And those someone’s trying to help them as they tell you what I want to refer you, I know you, I like you, I trust you. Till you press referral, and say anyone with an H back unit goes right over the head of everyone’s mind goes blank, it’s like well, wait, that’s not very much. There, you need to be specific in your target, not necessarily who you serve, you can serve a wide variety. But when you’re investing marketing dollars, you’re investing your time for networking getting involved in your chamber, you need to know your perfect customer, the one that you enjoy working with most, and the one that also makes you the most money, that’s the ideal customer. And as you break that down, you can go into their age, their beliefs, their values, their area of geographic living their area of geographic work, if they’re different. I’ll give you a prime example. I live in Heath, a lot of people in the heath area, live in Heath, but work in Dallas. So knowing that helps us, you know, taught us our target audience and customer avatar to focus in during the day in Dallas, especially in the digital space. And then at night, a little more local. Those are some of the things that you can do to target there. But the other thing real quick, I want to bring up for a chamber of commerce, you probably have multiple customer avatars, let me explain. You’re going to have your traditional small business, your mom and pop business, that’s going to be one client one, customer avatar, you’re also going to have your big corporate sponsors, that’s going to be your bank, your big manufacturer, your big distributor, and they’re going to need different things in the small business. And then they’re also going to be your community leaders, your city council, your county leadership, maybe even your state representation, they all have unique needs. So Chamber of Commerce probably has at least three customer avatars. And it’s not bad if you have 10. But knowing what to present to that customer avatar and who that customer avatar is, what they like, what they need, what they want, that will help you deliver the right solution to them to walk them through that customer journey.
Brandon Burton 12:24
I really liked what you had to say about with creating that customer avatar with focusing on who you enjoy working with. Because we all know that customer that chamber member that we deal with that they are they just don’t fit that ideal avatar that you don’t enjoy working with that one. But you can serve us and still for sure, but you don’t want a whole chamber membership or businesses like that necessarily.
John Beaman 12:49
Exactly. You want to have a diversified portfolio. And then once you kind of have that customer avatar built, then you can walk them through those five steps, you know, building awareness. And that’s really the stage where you go from. I never even heard of that. What is that to? Oh, cool. Yeah, I know you exist. It’s that first impression. And you know, as the old saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. But it’s true for having a good plant execute, to create that first impression through Ambassador programs, online digital marketing, you know, like it’s some type of welcomed community to new businesses or new residents, there’s another avatar for your residents. It will help you generate that positive first impression that awareness campaigns. And then it moves them to initial consideration where they’re kind of feel free to cut me off your first search and you’re good to pass, then you move into that initial consideration phase and they go, Okay, I know who you are. And I like you. I want to learn, I know kind of what you do. But tell me more. If you play that right again, pitching the solution to their needs to their problem, you can move into active consideration in this stage, they’re going okay, I know that I’ve got something I need to fix, I know you have a solution for it, what I’m trying to verify is that you’re the right person to do it. This is where you kind of want to insert that testimonial that guarantee, so to speak, say hey, we’ve done it before we know what we’re doing. And if that goes successfully, then you move them to the purchase decision. They like you, they know you, they trust you. They need one little push to get them across the finish line. If it’s a small ticket item, like a like a restaurant, for example, a small coupon can go a long way. If it’s a large ticket item like a mortgage, it’s probably going to be more about the ease of working with you. Um, if you’re constantly putting up barriers I need this document now I need this document. Now I need this document, it starts stacking up and you can kill it right there. However, if you can make an easy process if you can show your credible, if you can show your trustworthy, you can push them across that finish line and get the transaction to complete. However, this is probably the second biggest mistake people make most small businesses make. They see the cash move from bank to bank and they say I’m done. successful sale that just begins the resale process that begins the loyalty loop. And this is why it’s so important, it’s seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. If you can successfully complete the loyalty loop, you cut out the first two to three stages of the customer journey maps. Remember how we had awareness, initial consideration, active consideration, purchase decision and loyalty loop? With a successful loyalty loop? You cut out awareness, you certainly cut out initial consideration. And sometimes you can even cut up active consideration and bring them right back in to that purchase decision. I think a prime example is like insurance renewals. If you’re doing it, right, that baby just keeps renewing and renewing and renew. And there’s really no consideration. That’s the perfect loyalty loop model. And any company can focus on this. Mortgage lenders. H fac, dentists, there needs to be a very clear and distinct strategy, though, to move people from one time purchaser to loyal advocate. And I think I’ll give a prime example here of what a loyal advocate looks like. How about a chamber ambassador, they’re members of that Chamber of Commerce for years, year after year after year. And not only are they paying customer for the chamber, but they’re also a voice for them. They’re a mouthpiece, they’re out there advocating for the chamber that is perfect execution of the loyalty loop model. And again, any business Regardless of industry can get such an advocate for them, it might take a little while, like we were talking earlier, it might take a couple years depends on your business model. That’s not inherently a bad thing. As long as you plan for it and account for it in your budgeting in your forecasts in your marketing planning, then it’s just data that you can work with to build that consistent model.
Brandon Burton 16:49
So and I think you hit on a lot of great points, especially as you as you move through that customer journey, those five points. I think for the most part, chambers are pretty good, at least those first four, you know, the building the awareness, initial consideration, active consideration, and even the purchase decision. Can we maybe talk a little bit more about building that loyalty loop from a chamber of commerce perspective? I mean, I have I have a few ideas. But I’m curious to have you riff on it a little bit about how a chamber can go about building that, that loyalty loop with their members, once you’ve already done the hard work of identifying your avatar doing that marketing and getting feet on the ground getting your ambassadors there, they finally join the chamber, how do you retain them for the life of the business?
John Beaman 17:38
You know, we’re actually a part of several Chambers of Commerce nationally, and what we’ve seen with chambers that are really growing quickly, they become the advocate for their members, they are their mouthpiece, so to speak. When a chamber of commerce acquires a member, and they start getting them year after year, after year after year, they’re really engaging with them, they’re really bringing them in. And I think that’s something that chambers of commerce that are really successful and growing, that they’re really able to hone in on, they’re able to focus on the vision of their organization, what they ultimately want to be for most Chambers of Commerce. That’s, in essence, in a nutshell, oversimplified, it’s probably a community bridge, they want to be that community connected, they want to connect people with business with government in all different ways. That’s probably the overlying vision. And so continually pursuing that, and then that increasing and adding value to that value proposition so to speak. That’s really where it can tie into the chamber membership, because our economy is changing. If you rewind about 50 years, we don’t really have any type of digital content, digital media or anything like that. Everyone would immediately goes, Hey, here’s our customer journey map, we go to the chamber, the customer journey map has changed words, let’s go online and look for it. However, I can tell you firsthand experience. If you go to the chamber in person, you’re still going to get way more information than you can find online. But what chambers really, I think need to focus on based on what we’ve seen in working with them, meeting people where they are providing those different connectors to different parts of the community. And really getting in front of the, you know, the popular question that people that chambers always know, what does the chamber do for me? Well, first and foremost, they build community, they build those connections, that’s what they’re there for. They can give you the keys and the roadmap to the end destination where you want to go, they can’t walk the journey for you. But the chamber will walk the journey with you every step of the way. And I think that’s the messaging and the kind of value proposition that chambers can focus on to say, hey, here’s what we do for you. Here’s why it’s important. Oh, and by the way, here are testimonials, people that have been with us for 30 years, you know, 20 years of 10 years. Here’s, you know, small business that joined last year and they close, you know, four deals, they’ve got ROI on their investment by about 5x. That’s how you can consistently build that loyalty loop. And then to your point earlier about, you know, not taking the foot off the gas pedal Once the transaction takes place, always working with them engaging with them, checking in on them, Hey, how are you doing? How are things going? What can we do to serve you? Or I’ll give you a local, you know, local issue being on council, maybe it’s a road bond or a school bond. Hey, what are your thoughts on this? Is there something in here that impacts your business? If so, what does that look like? Because then as that community connector, the chamber can take it back to local government say, hey, our business community is saying these things, we probably need to consider it. That’s how you generate that loyalty where they’ll, when it comes time for renewal, they won’t even say how much you’ll be. Here’s my credit card. Yeah, that’s the goal. This is not about the money, it’s about the value.
Brandon Burton 20:44
Absolutely. And you hit on a lot of things that I was thinking of. So my background and chamber publishing, I get to be kind of the bartender, you know, I get to meet all the Chamber members and hear their stories and what they love about the chamber and what their frustrations are. And I hear from some, you know, I gave the chamber my money to join, and then I never heard from them. Well, that’s a problem, you know, exactly. Got it, you got to stay in that connection, you got to show them the value of the chamber. But I think also being clear on what the expectations are. So when a person joins a business joins a chamber, here’s what you can expect from the chamber, and then lead them through that. So they see where they’re having that expert expectation being delivered upon. And then be active about telling the story of how the chamber is servicing the business community, how they’re building the community. And I’ve seen chambers do this successfully when they send out the renewal notices. And they’ll include the the customer testimonials in the renewal notice, and or they’ll leave a voicemail for somebody and you know, here’s what, you know how the chamber served XYZ business, Sir, here’s how we served you through the pandemic or sent you know, real life examples they can relate to,
John Beaman 21:56
I think something you touched on, which is absolutely paramount, concrete deliverables. I’ll give you one example for our organization, we’re often confused. With coaching, technically, we’re different. And there’s a very distinct difference. We really prefer the term consulting, because we have key concrete deliverables. And so again, when we started, we were self admittedly, we were a little soft, a little qualitative on our value proposition. When we reevaluate it with focus groups, with studies done internally with our existing membership and our existing clients, we tweaked it to where we have key deliverables at specified points in time. And that’s what we started to see the exponential growth, a very clear value proposition with stated delivery, you know, talk about setting the expectations, you do this, this is what this happens after this is when it happens. It’s that type of controlling the narrative, saying, here’s what’s going to happen, and then backing it up to where it’s predictable, sustainable, measurable, these are all critical components in that value proposition and the chambers that are able to do that are the ones that are really able to take their chamber to the next level.
Brandon Burton 23:03
So I’d like to get your thoughts on creating some of those deliverables on the front end, I know, some chambers will get into an email campaign or email marketing campaign, somebody joins, and then they have a automated email series, maybe right first three, three to six months, maybe the first year of their membership to kind of lead that chamber member along. What are your thoughts on something like that, where it’s digital and automated versus the in person? And I know you can only spread yourself so thin. But I’m just curious kind of some of the pros and cons to both approaches.
John Beaman 23:43
You I think the this is a prime example. A lot of times it’s so easy to get pulled into an either or, and the answer is both. You can never replace in person interaction. Even though we are a 100% virtual company, and I absolutely love it, I will also be the first one to tell you there’s nothing like shaking someone’s hand and looking them directly in the eye, you need to have that type of community connection. That being said, you also need to harness digital technology, we have an entire bull, actually, we have a 90 day program was six different courses. And one of those courses is dedicated solely to customer journey mapping. But one of the things we touch on, we are in a digital economy. If you look at the value of digital transactions and such, it’s about it’s a little under two trillion with a T as n tree and T type is a huge, huge economy. We are in the digital world. If you look at customers journeys, over two thirds of them complete their entire journey online from awareness all the way through loyalty purchase. If McKinsey This is a fascinating one, because this study was actually conducted right before COVID started. In 2020 McKinsey and Company found that 75% of consumers purchase their goods and services on the line. So we know for a fact we are enabling Digital Economy, you need to have those automated emails, you need to have those digital service offerings, those digital product offerings. And with chambers, it gets a little complex because you know, being community connected in person interaction is huge. However, there are things you can do to harness digital technology, kind of like what we did at the McGraw Council, where we use virtual office space virtual office sharing, we can connect with people on the other end of the country, we can connect with people in different spots of our region. I’ll give you a prime example that helped us in the DFW area. There were times last year when Rockwall County was open, and Dallas County was shut. And so that we can say, tell you what, rather than worrying about where we’re going to meet who’s open, who’s not just jumping over to office space. So to answer your question, you need both you need to have in person interaction, but you need to harness and leverage those digital technologies, they will make you more effective, they will make you more efficient, and they will increase your value proposition.
Brandon Burton 25:55
Absolutely. I know most chambers that are listening, have some sort of a CRM, some kind of management software. And if you can schedule, you know, a member joins and you schedule a you know, a trickle decane of emails, but then schedule in there and in person visit you know scheduling a phone call, make sure they’re getting your emails, I mean, the worst thing would be a year later you go back to him for renewal. And they’ve never gotten a single email because it all ended up in their spam folder. For some reason. You are preaching
John Beaman 26:21
to the choir, a good written process, standard operating procedures. At month one we do this month two we do this month three we do this, we asked this question at the first meeting, we asked this question at the second meeting. That’s something that’s predictable, it’s sustainable, it’s measurable. And you can write it out in a job description, which helps you grow your organization say, Hey, we’re looking to fill someone or hire someone to fill these roles and duties, you are preaching to the choir, my friend.
Brandon Burton 26:51
And then of course, there’s the storytelling aspect, you know, what a chamber, how they can go about telling how they’re servicing the members in their community. I think every chamber out there is embrace Facebook, you know, they all are doing that, because it’s easy and free. For the most part. YouTube, you know, a lot of jumping on that some are jumping on podcasting. But there’s various channels out there to be able to tell the story. So you have that automated or scheduled, you know, campaign to be able to retain your members and onboard them more or less, but then have some content available that if they want to learn more they can they can freely find it and engage with your chamber.
John Beaman 27:31
Absolutely, absolutely. Providing opportunities to engage making it easy to engage that also, for lack of a better term, make it fun. If people don’t enjoy it, they’re probably not going to come back. Yes. Where it being in business, you need to earn a profit. If you’re not earning a profit, you’re going to eventually have to close doors. However, making up earning a profit having fun are not mutually exclusive things you can do both. That’s the whole idea why a lot of people start with, hey, I want to have fun and want to make money. Awesome, good combination, making it a good fun experience. It’s also profitable. That’s the goal.
Brandon Burton 28:06
Absolutely. Well, John, this is been a blast to visit with you about this, I wanted to get your thoughts on maybe a tip or an action item that a chamber champion listening could do to help lift their organization up to the next level.
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
John Beaman 28:20
Oh, I love action items it takes it takes theory and applies it to the real world. So it’s no longer just theory knowledge, its application, my action item would be this. We get this kind of like perverse secret sauce. So listen closely, or identify three of your favorite clients, and then interview them and ask them questions about those five stages of the customer journey map. How did you first hear about us? What made you talk to us? What made you consider us? Why don’t you buy from us? And then lastly, why do you love us so much that you keep coming back each and every year? As you go through that process? You’re going to be able to build a system for selling that is predictable, that is sustainable. That is measurable. And that is the key to your scalability.
Brandon Burton 29:08
Absolutely. I love that idea. Hopefully in those interviews, it’s not you know, you’re hopefully you’re not getting the answers of I just love the chamber president. You know, we’re good friends, you know, I’ve been friends forever. Well, is that helpful? I mean, it is in that in that process.
John Beaman 29:23
It’s not it’s not sustainable. And that’s exactly you hit the nail on the head, it will tell you what you’re doing well, it’ll also show show you some of the shortcomings that you need to tweak and change. And I’ll stop there because I can talk about this for another entire day. But you know, you hit the nail on the head.
Brandon Burton 29:39
But John, what would be a I like to ask everyone this question as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
John Beaman 29:48
Now granted, I’m a little biased because I work with chambers. We’re members of chambers actually serve on the board for one chambers? Well, I think one of the things that Chambers of Commerce need to do there are a couple of things. Number one, they need to continually digitized not at the expense of in person, but adding it to, they need to really control and focus the narrative on being the connector and their community, the bridge builder. And they need to find a way to increase the value proposition. Granted, again, that’s all admit that I’m biased here, adding a tear of consulting to the small businesses that are really mom and pops. That is very powerful, because the mid to large sized companies get the importance of the chamber, and they want to give back, it’s like a dual approach there. For a small business where 100 bucks is a really big deal and can kill them make or break their monthly budget, you need to have immediate pragmatic solutions that can be applied right off the bat, that the results can be seen almost immediately, you need to have something like that. And it might even pertain to some of the things that you do with publishing, you might have a special package, you know, for small business today with his complements of your chamber membership. And you can build all these things into the pricing. But what you want to have is clear deliverables that they can taste, touch and feel so to speak. Right after they sign up. That is a critical component. In my opinion,
Brandon Burton 31:13
I would agree had given them those quick wins. So they can say, Oh, I’m getting a return already on this investment that I made the chamber. I’ll give you a quick northern
John Beaman 31:21
example. It’s because I’m originally from Wisconsin got down here 10 years ago moved here as fast as I could. It’s kind of like building a snowman. It starts off with just a little snowball, but you start rolling that baby and keep going, it becomes a huge 50 pounds snowball. That’s a beast to move. And but it can also become the rock or the foundation. And it’s those little wins early on that build that momentum momentum builds whether it’s good or bad. So started off with a few good things to your point, those few quick easy wins, build the momentum, and it will start to build from there.
Brandon Burton 31:51
I love that momentum builds whether it’s good or bad. Amen, brother. Well, John, before we sign off here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to put out some contact information for you maybe get a little bit more specific on the services you offer for chambers so they can if there’s chambers out there interested they could reach out and connect with you and and see how you can help serve their Chamber members to give some of those quick wins and build that good momentum.
Connect with John
John Beaman 32:13
Oh, fabulous. Some of the things that we can do for chambers is deliver no cost resources to their membership, including donating consulting hours, donated products and services, donated ebooks, the list goes on and on. There are a lot of resources that we can provide at no cost to their membership. In terms of getting in touch with us, obviously, we have our website, we have Facebook page, Instagram, YouTube, we have podcast channels, very much like what you’re doing here, where we talk about the journey of small business owners. In terms of reaching out to us, you can send us a Facebook message, you can send an email, I’m gonna give you two emails, we have a company email, which is info@mcgrawcouncil.com. But if someone wanted to reach out to me personally, I’ll give my email as well. That’s going to be john.beaman@mcgrawcouncil.com. Shoot me an email, I’ll tell you what, I’ll get you access to a virtual office space or private space. And we can we can have a little bit of a virtual cup of coffee sometime. guarantee you’ll get a kick out of the experience.
Brandon Burton 33:09
That is awesome. Do you want to put the name of your podcast out there too, and we can get that
John Beaman 33:14
fabulous? Thank you the name of the podcast is called Real Small Business with The McGraw Council. If you were actually on our podcast a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things we love about it. It’s all about being real and authentic. It’s showing what business ownership is really like the good, the bad, the ugly, the up the down. I think there are a lot of people who have misconceptions about small business, they’re like I’m going to be profitable at month three. No, statistically it’s going to be two years but hang in there. Or oh, you must have tons of spare time on your hands as a business owner. Yeah, I’m actually getting less sleep than my corporate job right it’s just things like that, but it’s we have a good time.
Brandon Burton 33:50
So it could go either way. If you’re not in business yet you may you may want to listen to see the reality or you may not want to keep the blinders on so
John Beaman 33:58
Exactly. So true.
Brandon Burton 34:01
Well, I will get that and your your contact information updated in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode 147. But John, I appreciate having you with me today on chamber chat podcast and thank you for spending time with us.
John Beaman 34:16
Thank you so much for having me, Brandon, the honor was mine.
Brandon Burton 34:19
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Izzy West 34:51
Hey, this is Izzy, publisher of the Chamber Pros Planner, a weekly monthly planner that you can get on Amazon or Etsy. I wanted to give a shout out to Diane Sawyer of the Reidsville Chamber who emailed me saying I am loving this stuff my admin assistant bought me the planner for Christmas before I could purchase it for myself. The responses and feedback I get from my fellow Chamber Pros are a big deal to me and in fact the updates I make each year if you like physical planners, please check out the 2022 Chamber Post Planner at theizzywest.com That’s theizzywst.com.
