Episodes - Page 3 of 35 - A Podcast for Chamber Professionals

Co-Workspace Initiative with Moe Belliveau

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

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Our guest for this episode is Moe Belliveau. Moe has more than 22 years of experience in small business and entrepreneurial management experience including five years in retail management. Two years leading a privately owned nonprofit organization and nearly 20 years as a small business owner mode joined the chamber in 2014, bringing a unique set of skills in administration financial management, community relations, business development, grant program development and administration, economic development and collaboration with other organizations and municipalities. She embodies big picture thinking without losing sight of the details. She is currently the past president of the Massachusetts Association of Chamber of Commerce executives. After rising in the ranks of leadership. She has been a commissioner of the city of East Hampton economic development and industry commissioned since 2015, and advisor to the Hampshire County Regional tourism Advisory Council since 2014. And as served as a member of various boards across the region. She and her husband Mike live in East Hampton with their dog Pearl, and spend their free time working on the land and their farm stead, Hendricks Harvests. Moe, 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.

Moe Belliveau 2:41
Well, hello, Chamber Champions. I’m delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation, Brandon. And something interesting about myself. I don’t know if this is interesting. But I am a fiddle player.

Brandon Burton 2:55
All right, fiddle player, you don’t run into fiddle player every day, you might you might run in those circles that don’t run in those circles that fiddle player. So yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, very good. I should have mentioned as I went through your bio, that you are the Executive Director for the chamber, the Chamber of East Hampton in Massachusetts. So that should help give some context as well. Yes. But tell us a little bit about your chamber just to give us an idea of size, staff budget, scope of work, all those nitty gritty details so we can kind of get our mind shaped around what you present to us today. Sure.

Moe Belliveau 3:33
So we are the Chamber of Greater East Hampton, located in East Hampton, Massachusetts. I our membership hovers around 151 75 200 kind of bounces around. And our budget is about 175 180. there abouts. What else do we need to know we are an office. So we’re tiny, right? So it’s, it’s myself and a part time admin person. But I like to say we’re tiny but mighty.

Brandon Burton 4:07
I love it lean and mean tiny and? Yeah. That’s right. Yes. Yeah, no, oftentimes, it’s chambers, I have to run lean and mean like that, that often will lead to some of these innovative things that are of interest to be able to share here on the podcast. So

Moe Belliveau 4:26
I like how I like to think of myself as being agile, you know, we’re not yes, so big that it gives us flexibility to try a lot of things. You know, not everything always works out. But I’m happy to say most of the time it does and get to be we can turn on a dime if something’s not working out or doesn’t serve our membership or the community or whatever. So that’s the plus side of being tiny. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:50
being agile and that also goes to your board trusting you and being able to work well with the board. You get too big of chamber. I don’t wanna say too big but some of the have really large chambers where they might have 60 or more board members. And that becomes tough to make quick decisions or to pivot. Yeah. There’s value there, but it’s different for sure. Yeah. Yep, for sure. So for our topic of conversation today, and you guys have been behind an initiative of creating a co workspace, their communities. So I know this is something that some chambers here and there have kind of dabbled in. And I see it as a way of really building a sense of community, usually among other small business owners and people looking to get stuff done and looking to collaborate. So I’m excited to dive into this conversation as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Moe, we’re back. So let’s dive into this. I want to hear all about this co working space that you guys have this initiative that your chamber is behind tell us where it got its origins, what it’s about who it serves, all of the good details, the

Moe Belliveau 7:50
nitty and the gritty. So we started talking about the work hub on Union, the CO workspace before COVID hit. Yeah, we own our building here in East Hampton, which is kind of unique also, I think amongst chambers. But in in this area anyway. And so we were tossing around, you know, this isn’t really the best use of this space, you know, it’s 1100 square feet, and it’s just myself and a part time person in that space. And essentially, it was two desks in a gigantic conference room, you know, not driving an awful lot of traffic. And we just wanted to have add more life and you know, serve a broader purpose. And so we were lucky, so COVID to, to kind of propelled us into this direction in the direction of economic development. So we’ve evolved our mission also around economic development, professional development and leadership, education, technical support, entrepreneurialism, all that sort of thing. And so this kind of falls underneath that umbrella. And we consider this to be a program under the Chamber’s umbrella. And we were kicking this idea around, and we were lucky enough to we applied for a massdevelopment grants a seed grant to help us with market feasibility and design feasibility. Once upon a lifetime ago, I used to be a corporate interior designer, space planner and project manager person. And I kind of figured that we could probably maybe fit maybe 10 people in that space, various situations. And as it turns out, we can fit up to 18. At any given moment, we have a conference room, and a little phone booth so that if you need to make a private phone call, you can do that. But we ended up so we had the seed grant, and that kind of got us started. It was the information that came back from the marketing feasibility study. He was yes, this is the program, this is the project that this chamber needs to be involved with, do it do not pass go run. So the board said, Okay, let’s take the next steps. And so we were also very fortunate enough to receive another grant from massdevelopment to help us get started along with some state funding, through an earmark through our legislative team. And that kind of got us on our way. So that’s kind of a little bit of a background. But you know, when people think of CO workspace in this area, I think maybe in particular, because that’s what we have around they’re very large. And I don’t compare us to that it’s we’re only 1100 square feet, it’s again, tiny bit mighty. And it also is, in conjunction with a an entrepreneurial program, which is, we just signed on to the I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of CO starters, but it’s a entrepreneurial program, nine weeks as a licensed program, we just purchased the license. So it says they’re going in, they’re working in conjunction with each other hand in hand in entrepreneurial support. Our focus with the CO workspace will for both programs really is those folks who are in the shadow economy, those folks who are working out of their basement at the kitchen tables, and trying to give them support so they can move from informal businesses to formal businesses. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 11:33
and I think there’s in every community, there’s a, there’s a lot that are shadow businesses, as he called them, they’re operating at home, or maybe don’t feel like like they’re doing some business or bringing in some revenue, but maybe they don’t see themselves as a, quote unquote, real business because they don’t have a staff or they don’t have a building, or they don’t have a meeting space, or any of these kinds of things that might hold them back from really excelling and growing to that next level. So being able to create a workspace like this, really, I can see where it pulls them out and helps them leverage what they already have with other other people other skills, but the chamber just really adds fuel to the fire. Yeah.

Moe Belliveau 12:15
And it’s, it’s exciting. So you know, it’s we’re really working on, you know, creating an innovative co working space where local professionals, they can converge foster collaboration to meet the needs of solopreneurs, freelancers, home based businesses and entrepreneurs and creating small businesses that think job growth while addressing downtown revitalization, because we’re also experiencing a piece of that going on on our street. So yeah, you mean it’s perfect,

Brandon Burton 12:48
right? So is, what’s the what’s the model look like with the coerce space? Is it? Do people pay a monthly fee to kind of use the space? Do they get it in a lot of desk? Like, what access do they have.

Moe Belliveau 13:03
So this is really exciting, because it also gives an opportunity for the chamber to offer opportunities for members as well as non member. So the membership, if that’s what you want to call it, I haven’t even really nail that down and when you want to call it out, but the membership structure is around. If you’re a member, it’s one you can have one pricing, if you’re a non member, you have another pricing, and we hope that you decide to become a member, but you don’t have to, you still have opportunity to participate and engage. And yeah, it will be more of a like a like a like a gym membership, sort of like you know, you get a key cat card, you can come and go. It will be like I think it’s I don’t know how to say this, but three days at a time. So you can be three days for 24 hours. So that’ll break it up. So that’s kind of how it’s looking so far. Okay. Yeah. And I think it’s a good opportunity to give a give a an insight look to what we’re up to what the chamber is thinking about how we’re planning for the future, because the chamber will also continue to operate out of that space. Yeah. So there will be chamber Access for All right. Yeah. So

Brandon Burton 14:28
and no, you had mentioned there’s that private phone booth in their effort of some chambers even doing like a podcast studio where they can rent that out and maybe model are there other other perks that you guys have to offer with the CO workspace or

Moe Belliveau 14:43
no, there will be there’ll be coffee, there’ll be snacks they’ll be you know, we’ll have photocopying that sort of thing. I hope I believe once I get this piece settle down, there will be a virtual office opportunity as well. So if you need an address or that sort of thing, you Yeah, we’re looking to figure that out. So lots of opportunity. Lots of opportunity. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 15:06
that virtual address I think could be a huge that could be kind of a game changer with the whole structure. So

Moe Belliveau 15:12
yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of things that I need a little details that I need to iron out at this point, because we’re looking at wrapping up construction probably within the next two weeks or so. And then furniture will be moving in. So it’s, it’s speeding up. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 15:29
So you had mentioned about the the entrepreneurial programming, the licensee has purchased. Talk to us a little bit more about that. And what the program is, he said, it’s a was a nine weeks, six weeks? Yeah, nine week program. So

Moe Belliveau 15:43
yeah, it’s the CO starters program. It’s a national program. There. I believe they’re based in Texas, I think, I think it’d based in Texas or Tennessee, I think it’s Texas. So um, and it’s a curriculum of over the course of nine weeks, which gives the participants which, which they’re called co starters, because we’re starting something together. Yeah. gives them the basics, you know, and it’s a progressive program. So, you know, so you’ve decided that you want to start a business? So what does that mean? What does that look like? Who is your customer? Who is what is your market? What is? Why is it important to have legal representation? Why do you want to talk to a payroll company, perhaps, you know, an accountant. So all of those little details, you know, cost of goods? And how do you figure that out? And what does that mean for you. And so it’s really very exciting. This is our very first cohort, and it’s moving right along, we have two more weeks left, and then we’ll have a big celebration in May to celebrate them, and they get to share with our guests what they’re up to, and what they plan on doing, and we get to celebrate them.

Brandon Burton 17:04
So I’m always curious, because for a chamber, it’s easy to focus, the businesses that are on Main Street Are those your new businesses that open their doors, and you’re welcome and do the ribbon cutting and the whole thing, but to find those entrepreneurs that really need the support that a chamber can offer, that are working out of their home that are working in the shadows, like he had mentioned before? How, what’s the secret sauce to to finding these shadow businesses, those people that could benefit from this CO starter program? And from this co working space? How do you find them? How do you attract them? What? What’s that look like? Well, that’s

Moe Belliveau 17:46
the challenge. And we have a marketing partner here. The daily handshake is that they’re going to be helping us work on that and helping to get us helping us to get the word out. But it’s a it’s an it’s a lot of excitement that’s being that’s organically arising from the community. Our board is excited and chatting about this and sharing why it’s important. Why is it important for those who, who may not even use the word cup? Right? Or, or who might not even use the customer’s program? Why is that important? Well, economic development in our city is very important in our region, it’s very important, right? It helps to stabilize a lot of things like, you know, food insecurity, you know, if you if you don’t have steady income, that, you know, a lot of things become unstable, you know, your family will family’s well being job security is also contributes with job, you know, providing jobs as these folks grow and continue to what’s the word I’m thinking of expands, but there’s another entrepreneurial word there. So the scale. So all of that’s important because of those things and the life that’s going to be driven that’s going to be participating in the light. I mean, in the work Hall, you know, it adds to the economy to the economy around us right now, utilizing services, restaurants, you know, there’s cleaners, there’s, you know, folks can just conveniently dropped in they come to work. And so all of that just ripples, ripples, ripples. And the most beautiful thing is, is that it’s not only for the here and now. It’s it’s ripples out for, you know, potentially decades. Right, right. I’m explode. It’s so incredibly excited about the CO starters program because we’ve also coalesced a team of we regional local resource. So supporters or resource team. So like the Small Business Association, the SBA, and other other local regional partners, and they’ve all come in support of that program and the work hub, so that we can be. So all everybody kind of does their own little bit of programming. And we’re not looking to recreate any of those wheels, what we want to do is try is to highlight into raise up, all of us together all of our resource partners. And so as they go through the post orders, the participants go through the program, they’re being introduced to these folks, they can put faces to names, you know, they can participate in these other programs. And then, at the end, when they’re done with all of these things, they’re not just standing there going now what? Right, because the now what team is ready for them? Yeah, who they are. And so

Brandon Burton 20:58
now what team have?

Moe Belliveau 21:02
Yes. So you know, now they know who they are. And maybe they connect and give a call to our friend, Roberto Nieves from common capital here in the area. And if, you know, maybe he doesn’t have the answer, or isn’t. They’re not ready for him at that moment. But he knows who they can connect them to. Because we have an ongoing monthly meeting and roundtable that we get together so that we can learn more about each other. That’s awesome. That’s support.

Brandon Burton 21:32
Yeah. So with this, you mentioned, you’re kind of wrapping up this first cohort. I’m curious if you don’t mind sharing, but how many business owners you have in this first round. And we have maybe some examples of where they came from how you found them. I’m just saying I get the the thoughts going with those listening of where they might be able to find some of these businesses that are operating in the shadows.

Moe Belliveau 22:00
Sure, sure. So we have six participants within our, our cohort, my goal was to have 10 We have two facilitators who are just incredible. I’m delighted to be working with both of them. And I’m a super excited for our participants, because they get to be led by these two incredible women. And and we put it out through social media, we had, you know, it was mostly social media that we put that out to, and we had, you know, quite a bit of, of applicants come in, but through that A, we ended up with six was very excited about that. And they vary, they vary. There’s a couple who have been in business for, you know, maybe a year or so. So they’ve started their venture, but realized, you know, what, I need a little bit of focus, I need a little bit more of a foundation, and then the others are in various stages we’re at in various stages of ideation. Okay, so at this point, they’ve become more clear and more more focused as to what it is that they’re trying to do and how they’re going to do it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 23:15
So can you share with us a little bit about the facilitator aspect of it and where you find the facilitators? Do they need to go through certain training to be able to operate under the license? How does that work?

Moe Belliveau 23:27
Yep, so our facilitators, they’re both local. We have Cynthia West, who is a small business owner here. She is the owner of sonnet and Sparrow, right here in the center of East Hampton. And then we also have Angie Montalvo Greene, who is the regional director for the LGBT chamber here, who is also located there. Western Mass office is also located here in Massachusetts. So she’s on our team. And it’s amazing. So as part of the program, they are, they get a stipend for their time and their dedication. And it’s in they go through training. Yep, they’re trained by CO starters. They’re certified by CO starters. And it’s it’s the real deal. It’s, yeah, it’s not just Mo, like, oh, well, let’s just let’s, let’s build a business plan. I’m really excited about the program. It’s really amazing. I

Brandon Burton 24:29
love that that creates a team effort to in it’s not like you said, it’s not just mo reach into these businesses. This is so right. There’s curriculum, and it’s a it’s a real deal.

Moe Belliveau 24:41
Yeah. And it’s a method and it’s a logical progression, and it’s building and building and building. So that’s

Brandon Burton 24:47
right. Now, I will say at the beginning of this recording, you had mentioned the revitalization of downtown and I had a little vision that you know, maybe the chamber occupies one of those For bigger co workspace as he continued to grow and develop this thing, I could just see it snowball. So well, I

Moe Belliveau 25:06
have to say, and I’m very excited about this. But the woman who worked with us on the marketing feasibility study, she said, you know, my biggest fear for you is that you’re going to fill up so fast that you’re going to wish you had more space. Yeah. I said, Well, that’s a problem I’ll deal with when I get there. Yeah. cross

Brandon Burton 25:25
that bridge. Yeah, we’ll see. Yeah, yeah. Well, I would like to ask for chambers 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 and trying to accomplish that goal?

Moe Belliveau 25:43
Oh, dear, well, you know, ah, these times in chamber, we have, I think, really worked hard. to, to, you know, what, let me back up a minute, you know, we’re living in a time, right, where they change, constant change, we had a major disruption in 2020. And, and ever since then, change has been in our face, and it’s not going to stop, it’s just going to keep on going and keep on accelerating. And chambers all over the country really rose to the occasion, and really stepped into a void, I think, which was really pretty amazing. But I also think as we move on, and move further away from 2020. Being open, and and moving forward with curiosity, and learning, where it’s just going to be constant. Learn, do learn do as opposed to once upon a time you could learn, do the thing, and then you retire. Right? But now it’s going to be now I, in my opinion, learn do learn, do learn do, and if we don’t keep doing that, so you know, learning from our, our, our membership, you know, what is it that they need, be willing to change and let go of what maybe it’s not working and take a risk to see what might right now like, this is all scary stuff. I’m like, Oh, I’ve never done this. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 27:20
Well, and the halls learn, do learn do for a chamber? Yes. So you’re going to learn, do learn, do. But also keep in mind that your members are doing the same thing, like that environment is constantly changing. And we’re in a world where the education the learning is I like to think of it as just in time learning. Yeah, you need to learn how to do a podcast, because that’s the thing. Now there’s courses, there’s ways to do that right now. Yeah, if you need to learn how to do XYZ, there’s YouTube videos, there’s trainings, there’s people, you know, mentors that you can learn from, there’s all these different resources where it used to be the hand to go and get the formal education, you learn, you do and you retire, like, like you said, now it’s learn, do learn do, and you need to constantly be able to find those resources. And hopefully, the chamber is one of those resources to keep these business members up to date on latest trends and to help them learn on demand when they need that, I

Moe Belliveau 28:19
think to being a role model, right? Leading by example. Yeah. Yeah, model it. Right.

Brandon Burton 28:28
So and that that may be leaning into the next question I have is, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Moe Belliveau 28:39
Oh, my goodness. What do I yay, how do I see that? I think it just goes back to the learned, learn, do and we need to be aware, and listen and hear. And if we can do that, I think we can’t be afraid of changing. Yeah. And I like to say that, you know, the East Hampton chamber is not your grandmother’s grandfather’s chamber anymore. You know, and I think, once upon it, you know, how we have been in the past served those times well, but I also think, too, that we get to a point that it’s, it’s can be nerve wracking to let go right. And

Brandon Burton 29:24
things didn’t move as fast. You know, years ago, 60 years ago, things did not move as fast. Now, today, when you mentioned the further we get away from 2020. I mean, here we are for over four years from when the pandemic started, and it’s starting to become a memory and now what we are in the throes of right now, but I think, you know, my son, my oldest son was he was ending I guess he was in his last year in middle school, getting ready to start high school when the pandemic started and now he’s graduating. And so like there’s, there’s time that’s passed. And we’ve learned a lot through the pandemic, after the pandemic, and just that changes constantly there. So we can’t be our grandmother, grandfather’s chamber, because we need to stay current and stay up to see that the times. Yeah.

Moe Belliveau 30:19
And there’s going to be, you know, there’s going to be disruption. Again. Yeah, you just don’t know when and so I think, you know, yeah, I think that, you know, and it’s just going to accelerate, you know, I’m also discovering, too, as I move along, you know, not only is the change, you know, accelerating, it’s the rules that were attached to what was right are changing as fast as the change is happening. If that makes any sense at all.

Brandon Burton 30:48
It? It does. And who writes the rules is changing, too. It’s all upside down now. So

Moe Belliveau 30:56
I think to what I’ve learned is that, you know, 2022 took the extra step, just sketch. Yep. Right. But now we get to do whatever. Right, each chamber is different, although, basic, in some ways, the same, but different per per their community. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 31:16
Yeah. But no, this has been a fun conversation. I love the the innovative work that you guys are doing with it around entrepreneurs and creating this CO workspace and training these businesses that are operating in the shadows, help them pull them out, make them legitimate, make them make them be the real businesses that have that confidence to go out there and mix and mingle with others and scale and, and there’s that word scale, scale their business. But thank you for spending time with us today, sharing your example sharing some of these trends that you guys are setting right now. And, and I can see where other chambers are gonna hop on this this type of model in the very near future if they’re not already. So.

Moe Belliveau 32:04
Thank you for inviting me.

Brandon Burton 32:05
I wanted to ask you if there’s any contact information you’d like to share for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more from you? Sure.

Moe Belliveau 32:13
So you know, our website is EastHamptonChamber.org. You can always connect with me. I’m happy to chat with anyone regarding any of this. I’m at moe@easthamptonchamber.org. Um, yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:30
very good. I will get that in our show notes for this episode, so people can find that and reach out and connect with you. Thank you. This has been great.

Moe Belliveau 32:40
No, I appreciate it was fun.

Brandon Burton 32:42
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Communication with a Personal Touch with Cindy Cobb

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

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Our guest for this episode is Cindy Cobb. Cindy is the Executive Director of the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina. Cindy is a lifelong resident of Rutherford County at product of the Rutherford County school system and a graduate of Western Piedmont Community College. She and her husband Andy had been married for nearly 37 years have three grown children and two grandchildren. Her professional career began as a dental assistant. After her children came along she was a full time mom and domestic engineer until they became school age. Her father had a well established independent insurance agency and after consulting with him, Cindy decided to become a licensed Life and Health Insurance agent. Prospecting and meeting new people was something she enjoyed many of these were business owners. Well in the insurance business. She was awarded the Rookie of the Year top agent in the region top agency in the region and was a member of the President’s Club. Cindy was asked to help visit current Chamber members and prospective members temporarily while the chamber looked for a new executive director. A month later, the board asked if she would accept the position of executive director. Cindy’s been in this role now for two years and is looking forward to many more. That Cindy, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Cindy Cobb 2:45
good morning and hello to all of the chamber champions you all are, are just a fabulous bunch of people. And over the past two years I have met so many wonderful people. I have never enjoyed getting up and going to work more. An interesting thing about me is that I am not only a lifelong resident of Rutherford County. My family is lifelong residents of Rutherford County before our country was even a country we were still a British colony. We have been in Rutherford County since 1726. And so I use that to my advantage with van a history buff and love listening to the stories and tales that that my grandparents and parents have shared with me. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:41
no, I’m a history buff myself and to be able to know that history from your family is awesome to be able to hear some of the stories passed down and to feel like you’re part of it is something special. So that is a an interesting factor that you said thank you. It tell us a little bit about the Rutherford County Chamber just to give us some perspective. Before we open up our topic for discussion today. Give us an idea of size, your chamber the scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for us.

Cindy Cobb 4:17
Well, the Rutherford County Chamber as far as chambers go, is not sure if you call us an adolescent, or maybe a teenager we have only been in existence since September of 1992. Okay, before that, each little town kind of did their own little thing and had their so called chamber. And in that day, 92 after one of the chambers had some problems, they decided to merge and form the Rutherford County Chamber, which really just made more sense because we all know that working together and being unified is when you can really get things done it specially in a rural area of Lot, Rutherford County. While we have a large landmass, we are one of the largest counties in North Carolina as far as land size, but we’re, we’re all spread out. There’s plenty of room for us to grow our chamber. We have currently just under 400 members, and we have a budget of $200,000. And, you know, we’re a two person team. We’re located in Forest City. Rutherford Eaton is the county seat. And we were once there but just before I started, they moved to Forest City, Forest City has been more of the kind of the epicenter of activity and our counting. And so that felt like that was a good place for the chamber to be.

Brandon Burton 6:16
That makes sense. Your your comment about being an adolescent or teenager chamber. I see that as you guys were kind of trendsetters back in 1992, because we’re seeing a lot of chambers today that are going through mergers and acquisitions like that as especially through the pandemic and certainly, you know, chambers are stress members, businesses are stressed. And being able to combine efforts to be able to use staff in multiple ways really made a lot of sense for chambers today, you know, in recent, the recent past to to merge, and you guys did it back in 1992. So I would take that as being a trendsetter, so

Cindy Cobb 7:03
I love being a trendsetter.

Brandon Burton 7:07
So for our topic today, we’re going to spend time, the majority of our time today talking about how you go about adding a personal touch to your communication amongst Chamber members and throughout your community. And we will dive deeper into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Cindy, we are back. As I mentioned before the break we’re going to be talking about adding a personal touch to communication today. And full disclosure I did feel a little bit of guilt as we’re lining this up because of automation processes to line up guests and to send reminders and everything and maybe it takes away some of that personal touch but nonetheless it worked. We got you on the show. So and I will say it this came about because of a personal touch and communication from Chris need who introduced us and I believe the the introduction was that he wanted me to meet this firecracker from North Carolina. So No, Chris Mead has a way of adding a personal touch to his communication. But I’m excited to learn more about how you implement the personal touch and communication as we go through this today. But I guess first of all, you see you have this career in insurance, which I see a lot of correlations and building those relationships, and especially when it comes to that personal touch, you know, getting to know people’s names and family members. And you know, what’s important to them? How have you seen that in your previous career translate over into your chamber career. Now, as far as adding the personal touch goes

Cindy Cobb 10:40
on that. I don’t know if anyone has ever really been knocking at a door, looking to buy life insurance. That is something most people don’t get real excited about. And my dad was really old school, and he told me, you know, we don’t buy leads, you have to go out. And you like his term was shake a lot of bushes before you can catch the birds. And so I followed things back. Back during that time, which was quite a while ago, I’ve looked at the newspaper. followed that you started with small town papers, you had wedding announcements of land transfers were listed. Yeah, births. And so all of those things, along with this band were of a new business that would have been was the perfect lead for someone to need life insurance? Yeah, the health insurance would follow. That was something most people realize they needed. And so I had to be really kind of, at ease really comfortable going in and first few times is, you know, it was kind of nervous going in and meeting these people. I didn’t know where to pick up the phone and contact someone. Why should they listen to me? So it was a matter of making them feel comfortable? And not a hard pressure top sales job, really want to approach it? As you know, congratulations of saying you’ve had birth or congratulations on your marriage or new business? Have you thought about this with preparing your future? And so with that, it has really helped me and the, in the chamber world to approach things the same way. Um, these prospective members are the ones that that kind of took under my wing when I came into this that were already members to know that they could trust me, that I was someone they could feel comfortable picking up the phone and calling or emailing me with a request or if they had a question. And I think that was one of the biggest things little did I know, so long ago, that it would prepare me for this time and this, this calling that I have with the chamber? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 13:50
And I think a lot of people can relate with the nerves that you talked about, about approaching businesses, and who am I to kind of that impostor syndrome, as they call it today? And in my career, I’ve had been in sales most of my career, and as I train new salespeople, one of the things I have to remind them because they’re nervous doing the same thing approaching businesses, and what if I don’t know this? What if I don’t present it right? And it’s like, you know, what, this is the first time that they’re hearing about this opportunity. You know, this is the first time you’re the expert in this room. Right? So that helps to alleviate some of that pressure some of those nerves about who am I? Because when you put it in that kind of perspective, it’s like you’re right. So even as you’re approaching prospective Chamber members or current Chamber members, you’re the one that knows the offerings that your chamber has to offer. You’re the one that knows the ins and outs and you’re there to learn about them so you can better align what you have to offer to serve them better. And going with that perspective, I think helps alleviate some of those nerves. That

Cindy Cobb 14:57
and and believe it In your product, you know, whether it was for for me at that time, my the insurance I was offering and believing and knowing the benefits of it. And the same with the chamber. And having lived here my whole life, I do remember when the chamber was organized and the the challenges and the struggles that they went through, as well as the triumphs. And so I’ve really believed it. And before I agreed to go out and see members on which I thought was going to be a temporary thing. I really studied the chamber as study, not only our chamber, US study chambers in general, to know, what we what we’re all about, and the influence that we can have, and how we can advocate. You know, we’re there for them, and, and to bring unity. So that can make our, our area a better place to live. So with knowing the product, and really believing in it, the enthusiasm is genuine. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 16:25
So with our topic today about adding a personal touch to our communication efforts, I see it really is relationship building. And maybe you see it differently. I don’t know, I think when you sum it up, that’s what it comes down to is building relationships and showing that you care to these people, these members that you’re communicating with, what are some of the ways that you’ve learned and adapted to show your care and your interest in these individuals as you communicate with them?

Cindy Cobb 16:56
Well, if at all possible, if they have a social media page, follow it. And I interact with them on layer, that that helps them to know that we’re watching that we know what’s happening us if I see something interesting, some type of announcement, they don’t always contact the chamber about it. But I see it there. So I can repost that with some personalized comments. And I can also share that with my assistant. And let’s include this in our newsletter, this is big news, or if it’s something on accomplishment, forum, you know, we’d like to do that. People, people like to know that they’re being noticed. So there’s some things that I do.

Brandon Burton 17:59
So I’ve seen it, I don’t mean to cut you off or interrupt. I think this ties in well, I’ve seen some chambers where to make sure their members feel noticed is for those who maybe purchase an ad space in their chamber directory, or there’s their chamber map or the sponsors of certain events, to give them special shout outs on social media, and even resharing. Like if it’s an ad in your chamber directory, for example, to share that ad on social media and leverage that a little further add your personal touch on it, but it also drives people to the awareness of promoting the chamber in whatever publications or events that you’re promoting with that. So yes, I think it’s two birds with one stone.

Cindy Cobb 18:45
Yes, that that is really just the, I see it as the very least that we can do. If people are willing to be a sponsor. We, we always, always make sure that they are acknowledged in our newsletter, or any emails, our social media, always make sure I do that. And you know, it is is this something that is like they really feel like, Oh, why I’m getting the recognition, I am getting that exposure. One of the things that I’ve recently started doing is a local radio station has a community Morning Report. This is something you probably wouldn’t have in a larger city. But in our little area, they call around. They talk to different people and they give a report for each community. I watch them on Facebook Live so that way I can use the live chat and it’s a good right way to do plugs for the chamber. anything as far as, like a new member or ribbon cutting, I always mentioned that on layer. If we have something special coming up, like, for instance, we have our annual golf tournament and fundraiser that’s coming up soon. And the sponsors would that, always make sure to mention them that way? It’s free advertising for us. Yeah. But they’re getting advertising, too. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:34
It doesn’t cost the chamber really anything. But a few minutes to post it. event, it makes a huge impact for that business. So next time when they consider being a sponsor, or participating in whatever event, instead of saying what’s in it, for me, at least they know that tangible thing, the Chamber went that extra step to make sure that their business is being noticed. Yes. Adding that personal touch.

Cindy Cobb 20:59
Yes, that’s right. That’s right. You know, when you’re reaching a whole other audience, like with this with the radio station that may not have thought about following the chamber on Facebook, but I have found since I’ve been doing that, that our Facebook following has increased? Yeah, yeah, there’s, that’s a different group that listens at seven in the morning, to a community kind of round up and report with what’s going on with the union meals area. Nobody, but someone in Rutherford County knows. Union meals, where’s laps? Right,

Brandon Burton 21:51
right. Yeah, those are, they’re gonna tend to be people who care about the community and want to have more involvement possibly. So Right. That’s, that’s key. What are some of these other ways with personal, the personal adding the personal touch and the communication that you? Well,

Cindy Cobb 22:10
face to face? That, that is that definitely a personal touch, you can’t get much more personal. So when someone joins our chamber, or they renew their membership, and the certificates are printed out, you know, not only sign those and frame them, take them and deliver them, to them with their new little claim for their door to their business. And I just hand deliver it and, and thank them for renewing or becoming a part of the chamber, and inform them about the benefits membered member discounts, and I encourage you, you know, you need to, you need to try this. And this, you know, letting them know less, I have enough time to come out and see you now do Trump planet, to where when I know where I’m going for the day, I have those things with me that are going to be on my route of where I’m going. But it doesn’t take much time to drop that off. And just stop by and say hello and see how they’re doing. It really makes difference not have found. Everyone always has come for at least a brief chat. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:44
yeah. And even without an appointment, necessarily. I mean, you’re gonna run across it, where they’re in a meeting, and they can’t see you. But if they if they can, and you’re dropping something off for them, you’re going to show gratitude for the investment they’re making in the chamber. They’re gonna take two minutes to say hi, and and receive that. So yes, I love that. So I know. I mean, in today’s world, people are so busy, especially when you look at chamber executives are so busy, you know, there’s so much going on, that we’re looking for ways to maybe shortcuts or ways to systematize or be able to leverage our time in a in a more efficient way. So what would you say to those who are like I need to really hone down my time to encourage them to add the personal touch, what are you? What kind of return are you seeing on that investment of taking that time to add the personal touch and your communication? Well,

Cindy Cobb 24:46
I’m sure I’m not the only one that has their email account on their phone so they can check their emails because I have found if I’m just sitting in the office, really not doing my job. So I will. I’ll be checking emails when I wake up every morning. That’s one of the first signs that I do. And so I look at it, we just recently had a presentation, our professional women’s group called the chamber cheeks, by the way, now take that later what it means that the program was on time management. And so there was some good things have learned from that. So prioritizing the ones, go ahead and read them, go ahead and look at it. And then if it’s something where I can answer quickly, I try to go ahead and answer it quickly. If it’s something urgent, definitely try to try to answer that. And if not, if it’s an a male might be where they’re just wanting us to check on something. Yeah, I will, I will forward that to my sister, Lily, and then she’ll take care of it. So I’m not answering every one of the emails because any of these other chambers, they can tell you. And I’m sure they could share a lot more with me because their years of experience. A lot of the emails are kind of sale you set up then OR gate day, they said, those are the ones that kind of go into file 13. Right.

Brandon Burton 26:45
That makes sense. That makes sense. So I know, we’re gonna start wrapping things up here, but I wanted to give you an opportunity of to share any tip or action item for listeners who are looking to take their chamber to the next level, what kind of suggestion or tip or advice would you offer for that?

Cindy Cobb 27:08
I would say, first, listen to what your members are saying in a nice way, or I think the relationship part is important when they listen and observe what’s going on with their business men where their struggles are. And if at all possible, try to help them through that. Through that rough patch, whatever they may be dealing with. I’ve really feel like this important. Also, in our case, not just mentioned our women’s group. I saw a need and, and also, as I shared the idea of forming a professional women’s group that a lot of ladies were interested in that. So we’ve only had two meetings now. But each one is growing and spreading more people are talking about it. I’ve got spine this language checks. Yes,

Brandon Burton 28:19
I was gonna ask you you had mentioned that gave us that teaser. Tell us tell us what that’s about? Yes.

Cindy Cobb 28:25
So I can’t think of okay. You know, I’ve got to think of something where people can remember it. And I saw some of these were women on fire, fire or power up and all these really strong things. And I’m like, Oh, my gracious. I don’t I don’t know, I’m not sure what I don’t want to do. And I don’t want to mimic somebody. I want it to be something that’s original. I’m sure. The there’s been some other chamber cheeks, but ours is an acronym. Okay. Shakes stands for community health, influence, connection, knowledge and support. And I feel like that pretty much sums up what our group is about. We want to help our community, promote women’s health, the influence of the each of those women on hmm to know they’re vitally important to the to the success of that group, because their sphere of influence can make an impact. The connections, obviously, you know, if you’re a business woman, that those connections layer, you can Meet people that you may not you may not know about this is brought some out of the woodwork that were even some home based business women. One lady for instance, she she’s in like the cryptocurrency another one is a marketing firm that she’s just working from her home. And making those connections, the knowledge, like the, the program on time management, that was something I felt like every one of us could benefit from, and support so that we’re there for each other. There’s a variety of ages. So whether you’re a young woman starting off in the business world, you have these mentors that can help support you, and kind of carry you through whether it’s with your business or even in your personal life, those things. So that’s what Chix stands for.

Brandon Burton 31:07
Yeah, I love that I love that you were able to make an acronym out of it gives a little more meaning to it shows the intentionality behind the name. But another maybe tidbit when it comes to creating a name for a group like this or an event. And I did this when I started chamber chat podcast that was trying to figure out what would be a name that people would remember that they could tell us what it is without, you know, being too wordy. And if you can come up with the name that you like the most. And have some casual conversations with other people. Maybe it’s Chamber members and say, hey, you know, we’re thinking to do in this women’s networking group and maybe call it like chamber chicks or something like don’t have that be the focus of the conversation, but drop it in there. Right? And then like two weeks later, circle back with that person say, Hey, do you remember that conversation we had about this women’s group? Do you remember the name that I told you were considering? If they can repeat it back to you? You got a winner? Right? Yes. Whereas they’re like, I remember, I don’t remember what the name was. But you just casually drop it in there. And if it doesn’t resonate, go to the next name on your list and have those casual conversations with some other people until you get a winner.

Cindy Cobb 32:25
Yes, that’s that is something that that I have. I have been doing slug. I’ll say someone’s like, hey, we would love it. If you could join us. Would you like to get away at least once a month during lunch? Was mother ladies? And when I tell him the name, they always smile. Yeah, no. And they, you know, I’ve had some that, that haven’t even mentioned that too. And they’ll they’ll say something to me what? Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about you cheeks.

Brandon Burton 33:07
I love it. Well, 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? Oh,

Cindy Cobb 33:22
I think while it is a really an age old and tried and true resource for businesses is something where we have to continue to educate because there’s new generations that don’t realize what chamber is. But when take the time, and you share with them, and you let them know. They’re excited about it too. And they they do like that personal touch the interaction. Some meaning especially during COVID Everything was done remotely. And from you know, just behind a screen. And when people can be a part of a chamber and it’s like, oh, this is promote my business. It’s, it’s really a good value. Look what you get. And you get to meet all these other really great folks that have businesses and wow, this is really gonna help man I love this. It says stories when people connect and they do business with one another later. But I think it’s something where we can’t just sit back and leave people educated about what the Chamber’s about is a process that way or this having to repeat there’s this those foundations that we have to lay, but are really see that there’s a real name for it. Because in today’s economy, some of the things are not always pro business. And it’s making it tough for them. So knowing that they have someone an organization of backing, that’s their advocate, and keep them and touch with these grants are available or this go to this resource, this, this will be great, or even just some simple things slack. Up until just this past year, we did not offer a monthly dues, or it could be, you know, drafted. And I saw how some of the businesses were struggling. And so when we allow that, oh, Ma, they just they’re like, Oh, that’s great, because I really want to stay, I really want to retain my chamber membership. And that just, that just really lifts me up. Because then it’s like, well, they, you know, if they’re really, you know, they’re struggling, but they see and they really want to keep this ties with the chamber. I think that’s a great testimony as to the future of both chambers.

Brandon Burton 36:31
Right. But you’re doing a great example of keeping the community informed on what chambers do with your involvement in these Facebook groups and chiming in and saying, Well, this is what the chamber does. They’re given the plug where it makes sense, not hijacking the conversation at all, but just being there is that voice of voice for business? Right saying, chamber does? I think it’s a great example. And yes, with a membership dues, I think, in today’s world with the way software is structured now, with your invoicing, it’s so easy to set them up on a monthly dues schedule, if that’s what makes sense for him. Why would you eliminate somebody because they can’t do the one time payment or quarterly payments, just make it easy, make it fit for them, meet them where they’re at, and support their business, they tend to be the ones that need the most support from a chamber. So that’s

Cindy Cobb 37:22
right, those that have struggled, when you’re sticking with them, they tend to be the ones that are growing faith and whilst loyal to. And that’s something as I look back with my past career, when, you know, something tragic happened, and some I had to do a death client, and you deliver that or with, you know, they can use their cash value at their policy to go in and have a downpayment for a home, and it’s helping them to get established. They remember that, right? And so some of those from my past are now my Chamber members. Yeah, yeah,

Brandon Burton 38:14
that’s great. Well, Cindy, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and build a relationship or learn from from things that you’re doing what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Cindy Cobb 38:30
Well, they can always email and my email is cindycobb@rutherfordcoc.org. Can also if they would like to call the chamber 828-287-3090. That’s one way. We are on Facebook. Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce. There is a Rutherford County, Tennessee. We occasionally will have those that are in Tennessee, that

Brandon Burton 39:09
are members in Tennessee, you know,

Cindy Cobb 39:12
believe it or not, we’ve had some where they start following our Facebook page. And they applied online to our chamber.

Brandon Burton 39:21
They just liked the work you’re doing. Yeah.

Cindy Cobb 39:25
Well pick up the phone and give him a call. It’s like Thank you. You may have applied to the Rome chamber.

Brandon Burton 39:32
That’s good. It’s funny. This has been great. It’s a so it’s a good conversation just to have these reminders of adding that personal touch building those genuine relationships, having those those touch points on a regular basis, not just when you’re asking for dues and renewing a membership or sponsorships. So building those relationships and keeping it genuine I think is key but say appreciate you being with us today here on chamber chat podcast sharing your insights and experience and the value that you brought to the show today. Well,

Cindy Cobb 40:08
thank you so much. It was quite an honor. And the Kismet that keep it simple, stupid, does some simple things can make a world of difference. That is correct.

Brandon Burton 40:23
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Strategic Planning Pitfalls with Carol Hamilton

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Carol Hamilton. Carol is principal of grace social selector consulting, LLC, and host of mission impact podcast. Carol helps organizations and teams become more strategic and innovative or greater mission impact. She facilitates strategic planning, mapping an organization’s impact and organizational assessments for nonprofits and associations. Carol, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Carol Hamilton 2:42
thank you, Brandon, thank you for having me on the podcast. It’s an honor. Yeah, I so my name is Carol Hamilton, gray social sector consulting. And I, I was trying to think about, you know, what, what interesting thing could I share, but I think one that informs the work that I do is that I am the younger sister of a person, my brother has significant disabilities, he’s autistic and profoundly deaf and developmentally disabled and growing up with him, you know, as as, as my older brother, I definitely saw the way in which the world was not built for someone like him. And so for me, when I’m doing my work, I’m always trying to contribute my small part, to really building a world where everyone can thrive where there really no exceptions to that. And so that’s that kind of what is what motivated me to, you know, come into the to the nonprofit sector and want to be part of movements and groups and organizations that are really trying to help build a world where everyone can thrive.

Brandon Burton 3:52
Yeah, I like that it’s nice to to have that that driver you know, behind you that that background that really motivates you to you know, for greater good. So, I think that I imagined that will come into our conversation today and inclusion aspects as a topic today. But based upon your work and the kind of the focus that we wanted to take our conversation today on the podcast is going to be focused around common strategic planning mistakes. So I’m sure you have some examples and things that you can share with us from your experience and meeting with different organizations and going about strategic planning and I’m excited to dive in deeper and learn from these experiences as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Carol, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about strategic planning mistakes. So for chambers that are tuning in, creating a strategic plan is a integral part of their organization being able to know their mission and purpose going forward. And as they go about creating strategic plans, what are some of these key things that you see that stand out that organizations maybe ought to be aware of? And some of these mistakes, etc, that maybe we can help these chambers avoid some of these pitfalls? By sharing some of your experiences? Yeah,

Carol Hamilton 7:13
yeah, I think pitfalls are probably is a good way to put it. Because certainly nobody goes into the process trying to, you know, have it not be productive and effective for the organization. But I think one of them, and I’ll be a little, I don’t know, whether controversial or contrarian here is that the common wisdom around boards and staff, and I’m sure that there are many of your listeners who are probably maybe on the volunteer side of local chambers, but where they do have staff, it’s been seen that the board, or traditionally been held that the board is the one who’s in charge of strategy. And I, you know, that’s certainly an important role for the board. But I like to take a whole organization approach where really every brain, every part of the brain, both that analytical side, and all the complexities that people bring, all of them are important to the organization’s future, and kind of opening up the conversation, to include more people into how you structure and frame up your vision and will really serve the organization well to help have people be motivated and more motivated to be behind. Whatever you ultimately as a group decide are your big, big goals, the big vision that you’re moving forward. So I would invite leaders to, you know, bring and bring more of a kind of big tent approach so that when a lot of people talk a lot about buy in, and then you know, if they do it with a small group, and then bring the plan to other people and wonder why they’re not excited about it. I would say get the people in the room with you, they’ll get excited about it. Because they’ve been they’ve had a hand in creating that vision. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 9:05
and I think that’s such an important part of creating a vision is getting buy in from as many people as possible and being able to feel like they had a voice and creating that plan. So as it’s unveiled and in you get rubber to the road, you get more people that are willing to participate and help move that mission forward. I like how you, you mentioned how typically, you might see how a board that might be a pitfall, right, where if it’s just the board sitting in a room creating a strategic plan. Maybe they’re missing insights from others in the community. So when you talk about getting more people involved, if you are looking at a chamber of commerce, what examples might you give of other types of people or organizations or what where would you look to to get more involvement in creating that strategic plan? And or chamber. Yeah,

Carol Hamilton 10:01
and I think when I say that it doesn’t mean that everybody is ultimately at, you know, the the planning session or the retreat, it’s that you’ve taken the time to get feedback from a variety of stakeholders, you’ve identified who those stakeholders are, who are important to, you know, moving the vision of your organization forward. You know, the people who are you’re very involved volunteers, your staff, your members, but then wider than that people in the community that you have partners with other other organizations that you have alliances with, the people that you serve, all of those folks will be important, they won’t necessarily all end up in the room making the decisions about the organization, but taking that time to talk to people and get feedback. And oftentimes, that’s where an external party consultant can help out because folks will be more willing to kind of share candidly, with someone who doesn’t have a stake in the outcome. You know, in terms of that, that feedback and input, and will also help to synthesize all that information, because it’s a, it’s a big lift to talk to a lot of people, and then you’ve got so much information, it can feel overwhelming, but how do you sift it down to some of the important nuggets, that then you as a as a smaller group of board, and staff can really chew on and say, Okay, this is what we’re hearing from people, this is what we’ve set ourselves about what we want. And this is a, this is what, you know, this, this is the significance that has for us in our future going forward. And oftentimes, I find that, again, that kind of fear of that big tent is that folks will be overwhelmed by the number of opinions, ideas, all the different things. And in terms of when I’m talking, when I’ve done this work with groups, I’ve actually found that they’ve been surprised by how much agreement there actually is. And pleasantly surprised. And it often will bring issues onto the table that maybe they were thinking and they talked to somebody in the hallway, but you know, after the board meeting, but they they weren’t weren’t willing to bring up in the in the formal session, and so that this process can give, make it safer to have those conversations about critical issues.

Brandon Burton 12:33
I like the point that you make about bringing in a consultant for that specific purpose, because I think there’s a lot of value in bringing in somebody from the outside. I’ve seen myself in that role it were a, I’ll joke about being the bartender, you know, we’re the members, the members of the organization, they’ll tell you all their gripes and all the things you know, that they see wrong with the organization, and the things that they like, and the things that they’re excited about. Sure, exactly. But things that they may not be as open to just telling the chamber directly or to get the face of the chamber executive and say, I disagree with this or that or so having a third party come in, there’s a lot of value to be able to flesh out that real, meaningful data, that information that you can get from people that you wouldn’t get just having your normal day to day conversations. And I think for a chamber staff to be able to try to collect all this feedback, on top of doing their day to day job, it’s a big lift to try to do that and make sense of all the information they’re bringing in. So having a consultant somebody who’s focused on that, and being able to go through with all that information means and present it in a way that makes sense. And you can look at a report and kind of go over and say, Okay, it’s good feedback. So in soliciting that feedback, you’d mentioned talking to individuals. So I imagine there can be an interview portion of soliciting feedback, talking to some of those key stakeholders, surveys, what what are some of the ideal ways you see in soliciting that feedback that have been effective from your experience?

Carol Hamilton 14:24
Yeah, so it’s going to depend on each organization and, and the scope and the scale and, you know, their capacity, the budget, all those things, but generally, it’s a combination of interviews, one on one interviews, focus groups with, you know, groups of people up to eight to 10, and then surveys, and so, some combination of those will will, you know, enable you to really get into what people perceive as the strengths, the challenges, the opportunities, and all the things that are important for the Future of the organization. And I think another mistake that organizations make is thinking that strategic planning is just about about having a retreat. And so for me that that date, that kind of listening tour that you can go on, is a really important fundamental piece to get that good snapshot of where are you at this moment? Where is the organization right now? You know, what are people are saying, across the board? Are challenges and things that are getting in the way? And then what are the strengths that everyone’s seeing and the opportunities? So really being grounded in that kind of what’s our current reality? Right.

Brandon Burton 15:39
And before that retreat happens, you need to have good accurate data to go off of exactly decisions. Right. Exactly. There’s the planning before the retreat that that takes place. Yeah. So

Carol Hamilton 15:51
that’s, that’s part of that data gathering process. Yeah. So

Brandon Burton 15:55
as I’m thinking of these interviews, I think my first thought goes to with the chamber to go to the members of the chamber to get feedback from them, I think it may be important to even solicit others in the business community who are not members to find out what what do they see the role of the chamber being? Why are they not members? You know, they have they been members in the past? What can we get from that experience? But also, committees, right? So there’s different committees within organizations and getting their feedback on their role? And how they see that being a part of the greater organization? And how can things maybe be more efficient? And I don’t know, I’m just trying to think of all the different sources to gather data from to be able to create a rock solid strategic plan. Are there other areas that you would think have to go to for to gather that information?

Carol Hamilton 16:57
Yeah, I mean, you know, usually, I’m working with the organization and a set of small, smaller set of folks from the organization, usually a combination of, you know, staff leadership and board, to really identify who all those important stakeholders are. So the organization will know, you know, who’s really important for us to talk to, and so we’ll work together to come up with that list of okay, who are we going to kind of reserve that one on one interaction with who are we going to invite to more of a group experience? Who are we going to reach out to via a survey? So really thinking through those those important points of you know, who, who most matters to the future of the organization? And also, what do we want to learn from them? You know, what are the big issues that we see that we’re curious about, that we also we kind of know, our perspective on, but how, you know, is that in alignment with how other people are seeing it? So kind of getting that cross check of, you know, is how we’re seeing the things aligning up with everybody else? And, and where’s their agreement? And where’s their, you know, some some divergence of opinion. I

Brandon Burton 18:07
like that. And you said, Something stood out to me, you said, what do we want to learn from them? And that should be the basis of all these interactions? Right? Right, what do we want right from them. And that takes me back to the thought of inclusion when you shared the tidbit about your brother and kind of that lens that it gives you in looking at your work? How do you go about inclusion, and specifically getting these opinions of voices that may not be heard, as regularly as they probably should be?

Carol Hamilton 18:42
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important to think about, you know, as you’re making those decisions about who you’re going to prioritize, to interview and do focus groups, and surveys is really the power dynamics within organization of, are you only favoring people who already have the most power and already have the most voice and already have the most influence with the people that you you talk to one on one? Or are you doing more of a cross section or of the organization so that you get that rich feedback from a variety of people. So it’s it thinking about it in those terms that will help help define and really put inclusion at the at the center. As an organization, if you want to grow, you know, being able to see the wider net is going to be important. So,

Brandon Burton 19:39
yeah, so we’ve talked a lot about gathering that information, the data, and then the retreats is usually what people think about when you think of a strategic plan. So let’s focus a little bit more on the actual implementation of the plan. What how should that look? What are some of those pitfalls that you’ve seen that people need to be aware of to avoid as they go about implementing their strategic plan?

Carol Hamilton 20:07
So before we jump to the implementation, there’s one thing I wanted to say about the retreat, which I think is also another pitfall that people can fall into. And it’s kind of the, I think it’s the thing that leaders fear when they bring a lot of people in. So they fear a retreat that ends with just flip chart after flip chart, after flip chart, have nice ideas. And they haven’t taken the time to talk together. And I actually asked people to do this at the very beginning, before they start brainstorming ideas of how are we going to decide what we’re actually going to do, because you can never do it all. And you can’t do all the good ideas, you know, so you need a way to discern which ones are going to be the ones that you focus on. And so having that conversation upfront of how are we going to make some decisions, and then ensuring that somewhere in the process, you are making some decisions and discernment is so important. Because otherwise you end up with this laundry list plan that isn’t really a plan. It’s just a wish list. And so if you end up with a wish list plan that that gets in the way of implementation. But yeah, I think that’s that’s another key point that being clear with everybody all along the way that you’re going to have to focus on a couple things, you’re going to have to make some decisions. And if you can be clear with everybody, okay, these are the things that we’re looking for, you know, we’re looking for things that are going to grow revenue, we think we’re looking for things that are going to increase member satisfaction that are that are going to, you know, improve our reputation are going to, you know, contribute in some way to community health, whatever it might be. You’ve, you’ve agreed ahead of time, what those criteria are, that they it all aligns with our mission. So that then when you have that long list, you can go through and actually make some decisions.

Brandon Burton 22:12
Yeah, no, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I know. A lot of times, people and even other organizations will come to the chamber and say, here’s a great idea of something that you should do, right? And then it becomes that wish list of others. So I can see where you can have those turns ended up being a long wish list. Yeah, it’d be great if we could do this and that, but when it comes down to it, you need to have the resources to be able to execute and be able to do it well, right? You don’t want to just take something on and then have it be lackluster, and have it end up being a bad representation of your organization because you’re not doing it well. So yeah, moving beyond that wish list and having a solid plan is is huge. That’s important.

Carol Hamilton 23:03
Yeah, so and that list of criteria that you come up with can be great in that instance, of all the different people coming and saying, Well, you should do this. Well, we can run it through this kind of rubric decision making flowchart, if you will, and decide whether it actually fits, you know, fits our goals or not. But I think in terms of moving from, okay, we’ve got a plan, you know, it’s got three to five big goals, no more than that. We’ve identified, what are some of the action steps that we’re going to take, we’ve really gotten clear and gotten shared understanding about what does success look like for each of those. So oftentimes, I’ll see plans that have that big goal, have a couple action steps, but don’t necessarily go that next step of saying, Okay, if we take this action, what do we expect is going to happen? What do we think that’s going to look like that in the way so that we can know whether we’ve had the success. So this is where you get, you know, your your performance indicators, whether that’s some of them will be, you know, quantitative, but some of them may be qualitative, some of them may be, you know, we decided we’re going to take a new approach in membership. And we’re going to work with somebody to come up with a plan around that. And so, you know, the first success item is going to be we, we have a plan. So there’ll be a variety of different things. So with that, then thinking about okay, so this is a plan over three to five years. How do we actually what are we actually going to do in the next six months, just focus on that and not try to predict what you’re doing in year three, I see a lot of people getting caught up in wasting time, trying to nail down every detail over the five year three, three to five year period. And I say just take that for next six months, that next year. And that’s where you do your implementation plan of who’s going to do what by when? I

Brandon Burton 24:56
like that. It’s hard sometimes to Do you get caught up in the big vision, the big plan and you forget that it’s the day to day actions that execute on that five year plan. So as you talk about these performance indicators, it’s probably good to review what those performance indicators are in some sort of a regular interval. Do you have any suggestions on how how often to look bad like, because you can also get caught up on the data and continually look at it and not move the needle or feel like you’re moving the needle? So what’s a? And there’s probably not a straight answer for it. But what would be your guideline to being able to check those performance indicators and see, you know, how things are trending?

Carol Hamilton 25:42
Yeah, so so the two step for me of really making a plan, integrating it into your into how you do your work, is creating that that shorter term implementation plan, but then also coming to agreement about, okay, so we’re going to check in on this at this meeting. Every you know, quarter, or every six months or every year, whatever, you have an agreement again, ahead of time of how you’re going to do that. And then to remember that the strategic plan it you know, we talk about things being living documents all the time, but somehow, in people’s head, once the board has approved it, it becomes this, like, you know, written in stone, sacred document, and it’s not, it’s a plan, things will happen that you can’t anticipate strategic planning is not about predicting the future. It’s about setting your intentions about where you want to put your energy. So you’re going to have to readjust, you’re going to So it’s that kind of balance between, we have some goals, we have some strategy, we have some structure, and we’re going to be flexible. It’s not an either or it’s a both. And so having an agreement about how you’re going to do that, and who’s going to be able to make some updates is really important as well.

Brandon Burton 26:53
Yeah, I think that pandemic taught everybody that need to be able to be flexible. It’s a plan, but we need to be able to pivot and make adjustments where needed. Yep. Yep. So that’s a great point to make. Are there other things when it comes to strategic planning pitfalls that we haven’t addressed that come to mind that we want to make sure to touch on?

Carol Hamilton 27:17
Yeah, I think, um, you know, it’s, it’s when you’re actually doing that decision making about what are you going to focus on over the next three to five years, it’s balancing, you know, we want to stretch, we want to improve, we want to grow. And we don’t want to, again, it’s kind of a different version of that long laundry wishlist. But if the if the aspirations are so beyond where the organization is, it’s also going to fall flat because it just doesn’t match the capacity. So not to just say, Okay, this is this is all we can do, because that’s all we have right now. But being realistic about where you are, and what’s going to move you forward to actually, you know, so that you have the resources to do what you want to do. So having not having those two things be decoupled. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:08
reminds me and I’m terrible at attributing quotes, but I’ll say the quote, you can look up whoever said it, but something to the effect that individuals underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years, but overestimate what they can do in one year. So Oh, my God, or one week, right? Yeah, one way Yeah. You go out and you say, and this year, I’m going to do all these things. And really, it’s like, no, like, you got to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Right? Right, we’re in a 10, five, or even less strategic plan is three to five year plan. Because we see the quote unquote, failures on those smaller timelines, we don’t feel like we can shoot big because we’ve we’ve seen the smaller steps not come through, but we sell ourselves short in realizing what that cumulative effect of having those small effects has over that longer time horizon. So

Carol Hamilton 29:01
yeah, so it’s, it’s the tricky part of trying to find that Goldilocks spot of, you know, just enough stretch, and also, you know, tempered with some realism about, you know, what can we accomplish with what we have? Yeah. And then what do we need to get if we want to do you know, when we want to do more?

Brandon Burton 29:19
Absolutely. Well, Carol, as we start to wrap things up, I like asking for chambers who are listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you have to share with them as they try to accomplish that goal of raising her elevating their, the level of their chamber?

Carol Hamilton 29:40
Yeah, I mean, the the tagline that I use for my podcast is, you know, people who are in the non in the nonprofit sector, who wants to do good in the world without being a martyr to the cause. And so, I think the thing that I’ve been hearing a lot from people recently is when leaders get in their own way of having the organization be overly identified with one person, and to step back and realize that it’s a group effort where it’s always a collective effort. That’s why we have organizations. And so how can you take small steps you were talking about that eating the elephant, one bite at a time to start building leadership capacity throughout your organization. So, you know, asking a staff member to share and facilitate part of a board meeting, if you do the whole thing all the time? You know, just taking small steps, what’s one thing on your to do list somebody else could do? And they could learn from it. I know, it’s easy for you to probably you could probably do it faster. And it might take a little longer to give them all the context. But I think the more we’re building leadership capacity, the the we’re also contributing to the strength of the organization long term.

Brandon Burton 30:53
Absolutely. And I think that’s such a key point to not have the organization be about one person. So it’s about relying on your board and your organization’s your ambassadors are all the different committees and different things that are involved. And I don’t know who eats elephant anyway. But well, right.

Carol Hamilton 31:13
Doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate it. And it doesn’t sound very tasty.

Brandon Burton 31:17
That’s right. Sounds tough. But I also like asking, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how how would you view the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Carol Hamilton 31:29
Well, I guess, I would hope that chambers would join me in my, my goal of trying to contribute to a world that really thrives for that really is built so that everyone can thrive without an exception. So whatever businesses can do to to contribute to helping their community thrive. And have it be you know about about all of us, versus, you know, a few people I, I would love, I would love the chamber movement to be part of that.

Brandon Burton 32:03
Yeah, I think that’s great. Carol, for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about your offerings, and how you might be able to help their organizations, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Carol Hamilton 32:17
So my website’s Grace social sector.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, although my name is pretty common. Carol Hamilton. So also check out mission impact. It’s on all the podcast platforms. You can find me there. So

Brandon Burton 32:35
that’s awesome. And everybody listening is listening to a podcast so they know how to find exactly so looking permission. Carol, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast. I appreciate you setting aside some time and being with us today and bringing the value and experience from your perspective and strategic planning and helping to give these chambers that are listening to an extra boost as they go about doing that and there are organizations that really appreciate thank

Carol Hamilton 33:03
you so much. Thanks for the opportunity.

Brandon Burton 33:05
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Tricks of the Trade with Travis Toliver

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Travis Toliver. Travis is the is currently in his 10th year serving as executive director for the Waverly Chamber of Commerce and the Waverly Main Street Program in Iowa. Travis continues to use his acquired skills to help better the Waverly business community the state of Iowa in the upper Midwest. He proudly serves on the board of directors for the Mid American Chamber executives Waverly Area Development Fund, and several other local organizations. Travis is past board member for the Iowa Association of Chamber of Commerce. During his two terms as board chair Travis helped to lead IACC through a management change a rebrand and name change, and a revamp of IAC ces conferences and education programs. Travis is a 2020 IOM graduate in 2021, Travis was appointed by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds to help empower rural Iowa initiatives grow Task Force, which focuses on addressing the recruitment and retention of emerging leaders in rural communities. Travis, we’re 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 share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Travis Toliver 3:20
Well, thanks Brandon for having me on the show. I really appreciate it a big fan of the podcast and just glad to be one of many amazing chamber directors out there that have been featured on your on your show. So thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 3:33
Absolutely. We try to only get the best. So you fit that criteria.

Travis Toliver 3:39
That’s a high bar.

Brandon Burton 3:41
Well then tell us a little bit about your organization about the Waverly Chamber of Commerce and Main Street programming as a kind of group together with the two the two friends there but tell us about Scope of Work size a chamber staff just kind of set the stage for our discussion. Sure. Well, the

Travis Toliver 3:58
way really Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1937. And so we’re, we’re over 85 years old. And in 1989, we really became one of the first main streets communities in Iowa. About five years later, the two organizations decided to stop chasing the same money in town and merged together as the Waverly Chamber of Commerce and Main Street program. We have nearly 300 business members and investors in our organization. We’re in a town of the size of 10,000 people. We also the home to Wartburg College, which is a four year liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. And we’re also the home to an array of amazing businesses from big corporate entities such as TruStage GMT, a lot of manufacturers in town, Nestle, anything that’s powder base that Nestle makes is made right here in Waverly. So our town always smells great. Right on down to right on down to small businesses and mom and pop businesses that

We We really cherish and our community. And so we’re really located in northeast Iowa, just north of Waterloo and Cedar Falls, were a wonderful stop along the Avenue of the saints to 18. And just really enjoy in this community, our organization, we have four staff members, myself, and another director who does our tourism and special events, our full time. And then we have two part time, folks as well, who helped us with marketing, and another one with administrative responsibilities, our books and those kinds of things. We have an amazing board of directors, I’m always blessed every year to have great people serving on our board. And then probably another additional 80 volunteers that help us throughout different communities or sorry, committees or different community events that we host. And so it’s truly a volunteer led organization. And I’m serving in my 10th year now as executive director and really find myself in a great place and love love being here. That’s great. I love doing these shows, because every chamber is so different. So we get a little bit of perspective from different types of chambers and the different work that they’re involved with. So

Brandon Burton 6:13
I’m looking forward to the perspective that you bring to the show today. Thank you. Yeah, so as we discussed, you know, some back and forth ideas about what to cover on this episode. Today, we settled on the idea because you had a lot of good ideas. So we wanted to kind of hone it down a little bit to just some tips of some tricks of the trade rather. So some of the things that you’ve learned throughout your career as a chamber executive, and just some of these things that maybe somebody new in the industry can hopefully pick up and adopt earlier on. And maybe those who’ve been in the industry a while longer, who are kind of banging their head against the wall might feel to take some of these tips as well and be able to implement them into their life as well to hopefully make things a little easier. So we look forward to diving deeper into that topic and discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Travis, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break today we’re talking about some tricks of the trade when it comes to chamber work. And I imagine over the last 10 years, there’s been a few things that you’ve figured out maybe or I don’t want to say shortcuts because I think shortcuts kind of cheapens the idea of things but ways to be more efficient will say absolutely.

Travis Toliver 9:54
Absolutely. And you know it’s great to get on podcasts like this or or get on a webinars are conferences that talk about really big picture stuff. But sometimes I feel like when you just kind of narrow it down and like you said, drill it down to just the little nitty gritty tricks of the trades that helps you be more efficient. Certainly, as chamber directors, we know that our time is precious and valuable. And we don’t get a lot of time to do the things that we really need to be honing in and focusing on. So I thought I’d put a list together of things that would hopefully help others that I’ve learned, and certainly will, will keep improving upon. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 10:30
So I think it may be best just for us to kind of work our way through the list and tell us how you utilize these different tools, these different tricks? And yeah, absolutely expand on it from there. So yeah, the first one I know is we set up this appointment, I use Calendly as a tool to schedule and to book guests onto the show. And in your quick dimension, the E is Calendly as well. So talk to us a little bit how you use the scheduling tools like like Calendly, to help alleviate some of the pressures in your life?

Travis Toliver 11:07
Well, yeah, and a lot of these are, you know, anxiety based, right. They’re, they’re supposed to be anxiety relievers. And so Calendly came along, somebody mentioned it to me, and I looked into it, and found that I was just really frustrated with how long it took to go back and forth with somebody to set up a meeting. And then found Calendly Sure, there’s other scheduling apps out there just like it. But it really helps to eliminate a lot of the back and forth. And so when you’re trying to set up a meeting, sending a link to your calendar, to your calendar, that Calendly links to, and having the other person choose a time that works best for them, is really, really helpful. In addition, I would also say to that if you’re going to use Calendly, and you maybe don’t want all of your free time to be options on there, make sure to block off other times on your calendar for yourself as well. If you’re working on a project, or you know you’re going to be out for a meeting or something like that, just make sure that those those times are noted on their calendar so that they’re they don’t become options on Calendly as well. But yeah, it really eliminates the back and forth. And I was really excited when you sent me a link to your Calendly. I was like yes, another person that’s using it. Fantastic. Yeah, and

Brandon Burton 12:19
I’ll say I’ll add just a couple things that I’ve learned in using it is one there, like you’re saying, there’s a lot of features within Calendly, where you can set your available times you can say if you only want to meet with people on these three days of the week, because then you’ve got office time or you know, office hours the other time, you can set that. But right. I’ve also learned that I need to be more disciplined in adding things to my calendar, like for my personal life. So if if my kid has an awards thing at their school, I need to put that on my calendar such as an you know that time slots occupied on my calendar. So when someone goes to Calendly, it doesn’t double booked me. Yeah, right.

Travis Toliver 13:03
Right. And if you really want to drill down to Calendly has a feature where you can embed certain time marks on your email to a person. So if you have certain options that you only want to give somebody, you can embed those into an email, and then just give them those choices and nothing more. And that’s very helpful as well. I think there’s also a kind of a polling option, so that you can pull multiple people on an email for different times. It’s just got a got a lot of great features, and they keep enhancing it year over year. And so it does cost a little bit to be a part of, but I think it’s certainly worth the investment.

Brandon Burton 13:41
Yeah, and I want to say, I just got an email the other day saying that the I’m hoping it was Calendly and not a different platform I use, but they’re saying about a pricing increase, and it was gonna work out to be like, I don’t know, 87 cents a week or something increase and like totally worth it.

Travis Toliver 14:01
Totally worth 88 cents that my question about 87 Yeah, 87 we’re

Brandon Burton 14:07
in a good deal, right. So along the lines with scheduling and managing your calendar and protecting your time, but also being available to those that you need, how to utilize out of office to work into your calendar time.

Travis Toliver 14:25
Yeah, so you know, a lot of people only use their out of office when they’re actually going to be out of the office, right on vacation or maybe a conference or whatnot. But I have found that if I that you can also use out of office when you need to you have some time to yourself, again, some of those white spaces that we talked about with Calendly on your calendar. If you want to block off time to maybe do some research or do some reading or just you know, maybe just simply get through emails. You know, putting it out of office on just letting people know that To expect a delay in your response, I think it’s very helpful. It’s, I think, maybe borderline too transparent. But at the same time, it just lets people know that, you know, hey, you’re focusing on something right now, and you’ll get back to them when you can. I think so many times people get caught up in responding to emails so fast and being a part of conversations. And this is just kind of my trick to make sure that emails are maybe a secondary priority, during certain times of the day, so that I can focus on, on things that really do need to get done. And so just just letting people know simply that there’s just gonna be a delay in your response, if you can gauge it out even better, if you can say, hey, you know, I’m not going to get back on my emails until you know, 4pm, or something like that, or the next day, I think that’d be very helpful to to let people know that, you know, there’ll be expecting a response from you in a certain amount of time. But again, just trying to carve out that whitespace for yourself, and, and just letting people know that you’re, you’re, you’re not going to be responding so quickly. And I think that’s very helpful to them. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:03
when I think of all the responsibilities that are put on a chamber staff, you know, there’s, you’re getting pulled so many different directions. And if you utilize your out of office response to say, something to the effect of, you know, I check emails between 8am and 10am each day, and, you know, if it’s after 10am, expect a response tomorrow, or, you know, that sort of thing, whatever your parameters are, it sets an expectation because we have become a world where people expect that instant response, and even in an email, how often have you email to somebody and they email right back. And then like, you might as well be texting, right, because the back and forth that the emails Exactly. And in I’ve used a tool called Boomerang. So if you use a Gmail platform, Boomerang is an add on. So even if I see the email, and I can type it out the response, and then I can schedule kind of a delay in when it gets sent. So I can say, send it tomorrow morning. That way, the person on the other end doesn’t think that I’m sitting here doing a back and forth with them. But it gets off my list. And I don’t have to think about that email anymore.

Travis Toliver 17:14
That is a that is a great tool. And of course, Outlook has that ability as well to schedule emails to go out at a later time. And I think for night owls out there that don’t mind, you know, opening up their laptops on their couch at 10 o’clock at night and started going through emails, that’s a great way to respond, rather than shooting off emails at all hours of the night. Some people surprisingly enough, you know, looking at their emails if their phone lights up. And you know, I typically try to, you know, turn that feature off at a certain time of the night, but others don’t. And so if you don’t want to be that person that gets caught, you know, sending out emails that obscure hours of the night. That’s a great feature. Absolutely. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 17:52
I utilize that quite a bit. So all right, good. Let’s get to No, no, but I think it’s important to block your time, you know, to be able to protect certain time and know, I’m going to be out visiting members, or we’ve gotten these events going on, like, I’m not going to be in front of the computer to respond to emails or my phone to respond to emails. And if it’s urgent, people can always call, you know, right, they can still get a hold of you. But email doesn’t need to be the first option for those urgent things. Absolutely.

Travis Toliver 18:21
And I would also mention to to make sure you block off that time on your calendar as well. So it doesn’t show up on your Calendly. Yes,

Brandon Burton 18:28
good idea. So I think this is progressing. Well. So as we talk about calendaring, you know how that translates over into email and managing your calendar and your time and the whitespace. But you had mentioned using Outlook, and I know other email platforms have similar options. But how do you utilize your Outlook to kind of prioritize those emails as they come in to you?

Travis Toliver 18:57
Yeah, so this is what I struggled with for years. I think all of us get an obscene number of emails each and every day from really important information to advertisements and just junk. And I was getting frustrated with trying to find different organizational methods to really get my my emails in a priority list, right? And to try to triage them in some way. And a few years ago, I had an assistant that came up with the idea of using the rules tool on Outlook. I’m sure it’s something else on another platform, but using rules to identify certain senders that might be of more importance than others for their emails to go to a certain folder, and then try to triage that way. So the way I set my email up, and it’s good that we get a lot of emails, it means we’re doing a lot of things. We’re involved a lot of conversations people want us to be in the know and that’s great. But I found myself finding that I was just getting better Ready with emails, a lot of important emails are getting buried under non important emails. And so this was just a really great way to eliminate that. So I set up three different folders, folders, one, two, and three. And this takes about, Gosh, I think maybe one or two months to really get implemented. But every day, when you start out, you set up these folders in your inbox or your your your outlook. And every day you go into your inbox, and each person that sends you an email, you’ve got to really think about how important that sender is to you. And so if it’s a board chair or board member of staff member, the mayor, the city administrators, somebody from, you know, some key stakeholder, a CEO of a large investor or something like that, I find those people to be you know, people that I really probably need to get back to pretty quickly. And so I set up in roles that all their emails, go directly into folder number one. Folder number two is folks on the secondary level that you know, people that don’t necessarily need an immediate response or don’t usually send as important information as others. But you still want to get back to you in a timely manner. Those folks go into folder number two. And then honestly, folder number three just ends up being mostly the rest of the emails, which usually is newsletters from other chambers or other organizations that you’re involved in, in your community, different businesses that might be sending out periodical emails, those go into folder number three, and fold number three, honestly, it gets checked maybe once a week, maybe even twice a month, sometimes just depending on how much time you really have. And so I have found that triaging my emails in this fashion really helps me to prioritize my emails by the sender, and how important that that person is for me to get back to so then when I open up my laptop in the morning, I don’t go right to my Inbox folder, I go to my number one folder, and I work through all those emails first, then I go to number two, and then knowing that most of the E newsletters and advertisements Go to Folder number three, I will then actually after number two, go back to the Inbox folder. See if there’s anybody new that’s emailed me that needs to be assigned a folder. And then honestly, the rest of the emails that are in that initial Inbox folder, are just usually junk. And so I just go through a deleting spree, and then get back to the other folders to go through more emails, it has lessened the anxiety of having hundreds if not 1000s of emails sitting in my inbox, especially after you come back from a time off or a vacation or a conference. It’s just a really helpful tool to be able to manage your emails easily and, and, and even my board members and folks that I’ve put in the folder number one have mentioned Wow, it’s so great that you’re getting back to me in a in a better in a timely fashion. And, and that that made me very, very happy that I was that the process was working and and I’m able to to manage my emails better. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 23:10
So just maybe a personal question in that folder. Number three, yeah, those are ones maybe once a week, maybe twice a month you get to? What’s your thoughts on unsubscribing? From some lists?

Travis Toliver 23:27
Well, yeah, absolutely. If you’re if you if it’s information that you’re really not reading about or don’t need, certainly unsubscribe for sure. But I do enjoy sifting through just newsletters and updates from other organizations, other chambers that I’m on their email list for because we’re always looking to steal rip off or duplicate ideas, right? So but I tried to just, you know, kind of skim through those and get that information. And then and then delete. But yeah, I don’t unsubscribe too much, unless it’s something that I just absolutely will not use or will not read. And I don’t know how in the world I got on their email list. So just unsubscribe and tick them off. But, but honestly, you know, go through, and I really try to make it a point to have that folder empty by the end of the month. I’ll let it build up. But I do take off some certain times of the day or even at night. Just kind of sift through those emails, see if there’s any pertinent information, I need to gather some ideas or anything from other organizations. And then then let them go. Yeah, that’s good.

Brandon Burton 24:30
And I think we can have a whole nother discussion about how to get your chamber newsletter to end up in folder number one for people instead of folder number three, okay.

Travis Toliver 24:38
There’s a way to do that. That’s absolutely true. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 24:41
So are there any newsletters or things like that, that may be by default would be a folder number three type of folder, but you tend to put in a folder one or two because the value that’s provided? Yeah,

Travis Toliver 24:55
for sure. Are a lot of our state organization. As you mentioned earlier in my bio, the Iowa Association chambers of commerce, which I used to be a board member for, they have great information, great little tidbits or tips, kind of what we’re talking about right now tips of the trade. But also I need to know about, you know, different roundtables or conferences coming up that I should be aware of. So I think organizations that are a little bit closer to home, tend to fall into folder number two, certainly, that US Chamber of Congress, certainly, if you’re a member of that organization, a lot of great information, that’s a folder number two. And so and then certainly, if there’s any organizations that you’re you know, a board member for or related to in any way, you want to make sure that you’re staying up to date on those, those will get tossed in the folder number two, but I mean, really, it is a it is a small amount that gets sent to Folder number two, you really got to be diligent about that. Because, again, you want to value your time and make sure that it’s being used appropriately. And so I would say that if there’s an E newsletter out there from an organization that you find extremely helpful, and you love reading, and it’s just a must have in your inbox. Yeah, put that in folder number two, for sure. Or even maybe even folder number one, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t get on the kick of doing too many of them, or else all you’ll be doing is reading newsletters all day long. Right?

Brandon Burton 26:21
Right. So hypothetically, if you were to get an email Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review, which, which folder would that end up in for you,

Travis Toliver 26:33
that actually goes into folder number one, because I really enjoy reading those. And so yeah, that’s our next item on the list. If you’re a leader like me, that really enjoys learning more about just better management skills, HR skills, those kinds of things. Subscribe, please, please, please subscribe to the Harvard Business Review manager Tip of the day, it’s really easy, you get a you get a email, I think it’s like around five or six o’clock in the morning. And it’s like one of the first emails that I read. And it is just a fantastic little nugget each and every day of how to improve your management skills, your HR skills, just so many different scenarios that they put in front of you with great solutions, great ideas on how to combat different situations in our professional lives. And so as we continue to try to grow and foster good and better leaders, not only in our field, but in all areas of the business industry. I feel like if you’re not subscribed to the Harvard Business Review manager Tip of the day, then you’re really missing out on some really great free information. In fact, this is gonna sound like I’m a hoarder. But I really do keep all those emails, I drag them into another folder, just specifically for that, because if I get into a situation, and I’m looking for advice, or resources, that’s one of the first places I’ll go into, I’ll go into that folder. And I’ll type in maybe some keywords that will bring up emails that in the past that have addressed, maybe the issue that I’m confronting, and get some really great tip ideas. So it’s become kind of a little email storage of management and HR knowledge for me that I just keep right there in that folder.

Brandon Burton 28:13
Now, that’s a good exercise showing the value that you’re getting out of that, that email newsletter, right that absolutely. So being able to have that bank, that library to be able to go back to and topics arise. And like I know I read something about this and the Harvard Business Review email and you go search for it. And that’s great. Yeah, so great, great tip to share. What other kind of tips or tricks of the trade or we may be missing or, or didn’t touch on?

Travis Toliver 28:48
You know, I think one that I had on the list, I think it was the last one that we were going to talk about. This has nothing to do with our devices or anything like that. But during COVID I found I was looking for a way to gather some folks on zoom that could be kind of like an advisory council for me to bounce ideas off of you know how to better manage the crazy situation that we were all in. From a financial standpoint, marketing, from all different aspects. I didn’t want to bother my board because my board you know, we meet already once a month and they’re busy with their own their own lives. But I came up with the idea of reaching out to all my passport chairs that I could get in contact with and ask them if they would sit on an advisory council for me as the executive director and just meet so we can talk share ideas and and come up with some some some really great solutions. I found that these people are still highly invested in our organization even though they have not been directly so She had with it for a very long time, most of them are retired, most of them are, have a lot of free time on their hands. But at the same time, they still have a heart for our organization, you know, at one point they lead our organization. So they have to, obviously have an appreciation for for what we do. And so to reengage those, those individuals back into our organization, just by simply me asking them for their help, for their knowledge and their advice. And their experience has been extremely helpful. And so I would strongly suggest to any chamber director that if you are in need of a, of a little Council of people to just directly advise you, you know, reach out to your passport chairs and bring them together. And we have, you know, we don’t meet regularly, I’ve tossed this idea out to the other chamber directors who have then started meeting regularly with this group. But even if it’s as needed, just to reengage those folks and make sure that they’re involved in the organization that, obviously at one point they, they were a passionate leader for, I think is, is really special. And so I really covet my relation, in my relationships with with all those past board chairs. And then in turn, it gets them re involved again, and they get updated on what’s going on. And most of them have re signed up for our E newsletter to make sure that they’re getting into the to the organization, a lot of them are individual investors in our organization, they continue to be involved that way as well and supporting us. And so it’s been a really great tool to have, especially during that crazy time when we just were getting fed information like a fire hose and didn’t really know what to do or which way to turn. Those folks really helped me to stay grounded and push the the organization forward in uncertain times.

Brandon Burton 31:47
I love that idea. Because otherwise, what do you do with these past board chairs who have such a love for the community and the organization and everything else, they’ve been so involved, and then you’re just gonna let them go by the wayside? Like I mean, it makes a lot of sense to gather them together. And, and I like the way you approach it is having them be your advisory committee. So it doesn’t have to be a regular meeting. But when something comes up, you’re like, Oh, this is a tough situation. You can bounce it off them get some good sound advice. The one thing that comes to mind with this idea is, how would you I don’t know if it’s ever come up. But I can imagine maybe at some point, maybe the current Board Chair feels like, Hey, I’ve got a vision, I want to take this organization, you’re just listening to the voices of past board chairs. How would you address that? If that were to come up? Has that ever been a thought?

Travis Toliver 32:41
I’m actually it really hasn’t. But I do involve my current Board Chair in those meetings.

Brandon Burton 32:47
There you go. That’s a good way to overcome it. Yeah, absolutely.

Travis Toliver 32:51
And so you know, when it comes to the strategic planning, and those kinds of things, I think having that current board chair, you know, also talking with the past board chairs, not only get some, some gives some great information, but also gets some great feedback as well. And certainly an earful of what worked and didn’t work back in somebody else’s day. And it just, you know, I think tapping into those past experiences, really helps not only myself, but certainly our current board chair, in being able to shape their their thoughts about the future of our organization. And, again, I’ve been very blessed to have really great passionate leaders who have wanted nothing but great success, for the things that we do. And it’s been amazing. And I don’t know if I’d be interested to know if other board, other chamber directors feel this way. But I feel like with each board chair that I’ve had, over my tenure has brought their unique set of skills to the forefront, with whatever situation is going on with our organization, it just feels like the right timing, to have that person in that seat. On that year, when there has been an issue that has come up or some kind of obstacle in the way or project to be done. I’ve always had the right person in that chair to basically hone into one of their amazing skills to be able to see the organization through that. That situation, whatever it is. And so yeah, I just I think engaging past board chairs, along with our current board chair is a great thing. And then the current Board Chair knows they’re going to become a member of that group down the road not too far away. So it’s good for them to get involved as well. Oh, it’s

Brandon Burton 34:35
a great training ground and it’s a good way of being able to pass along culture to you better you’re not standing alone as that current Board Chair you’ve got to support as well. They’re in essence Advisory Council for the current board chair as well. So

Travis Toliver 34:49
absolutely. And I believe to that if we as directors move on to something else. The incumbent board, sorry chamber Director will find that very helpful and very useful. So I’m glad that we’re talking about this, because actually reminds me to reach out to those folks and maybe get another Zoom meeting set up and, and engage with those folks again, and again, you know, they can be, you know, anywhere we do it over zoom, you can have it in person, I guess, if they’re able to come. But, you know, we’ve found that a lot of our board chairs have have left the community or retired somewhere else. And so doing it over Zoom is just a fantastic way to just reengage those folks. So that’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 35:34
So I know, we’ve been talking about tips throughout the whole episode. But I always like to ask as we wrap up an episode for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, if you might have any tip or action items that they might consider implementing at their chamber to accomplish that goal of going up to the next level?

Travis Toliver 35:56
And that’s a that’s a great question and certainly falls in line with everything that we’ve talked about thus far. I would just say, from a personal standpoint, just be open to new ideas, be open to to constructive criticism of events of any programming that your chamber does solicit feedback, whether it’s good or bad, you know, we I think So oftentimes, we only want to hear the good stuff, or we don’t want to have people step on our toes or make our feelings feel bad. But I am just one of those folks that I really welcome change. And I want to make sure that we’re constantly improving on the things that we’re doing. And so if there’s other opinions out there about how we can do something better, I’m all for it. And I have a, I have a dear friend, who always reminds me to stay curious. And so I love to ask a lot of questions. And I tell upcoming leaders, whether it’s through mentoring or other things to, to listen louder than you speak. And so when I go into businesses, I say hi, or introduce myself, and just start asking questions, and I listen, and just really take note of what it is that our businesses or our members are saying, and so that we’re going back to the table with me and my staff, and we’re trying to figure out solutions or, or taking input on events or different things that we do and trying to make them better, so that we’re serving everybody the best way that we can. So listen louder than you speak, stay curious, ask questions, solicit feedback, all those things, I think really help us as as leaders, and certainly is a win win for our Chamber members as well. And that’s, that’s, that’s what it’s all about, right? It’s all about our members and growing our businesses and our communities. And that’s, I think one of the best ways we can do that. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 37:53
I love that listen louder than you speak. That’s a great leadership principle in general, because as a leader, once you start talking, everybody else kind of shuts down like he’s talking, what does he have to say, but if you can listen louder, let those ideas come in. It can help formulate your own thoughts and be able to help you know take the the ideas that other people are offering so they have more buy in to whatever it is that you end up deciding on because you have that extra buy in so great leadership tip there. I like asking everyone to have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Travis Toliver 38:33
I think with each passing year is it gets increasingly more difficult to show the value of our organizations because you know, we’re not selling really a tangible product, right? We’re, we’re selling, promoting and marketing and different events and those kinds of things, bridging people together. And so I think as long as it kind of bouncing off of what we were just talking about, if you can find ways to show more value in the things that we do as chambers for our businesses, for our communities, it can only help reinforce the necessity for for businesses and individuals to to be a part of this organization that is supposed to only really do good for our business community. Right. And so just showing the value, and then telling your story making sure you know, here in the Midwest, we get caught up a lot of times of really being humble and not wanting to toot our own horns. But in this day and age, you really have to tell your story or tell your organization’s story and make sure that your your your the name of your organization or your logo is right out there in front and saying hey, we are doing this for the community and we’re hoping that you find a value in it that you want to be a part of it as well through your investment. And so just continuing to find More and more ways to show value, I think is the the key for the future and the longevity of chambers of commerce.

Brandon Burton 40:08
I love that always, always been on the lookout of how to express and show that value. So absolutely key. Yeah. So Travis, this has been a fun conversation kind of a rapid fire these ideas and principles you’ve implemented and hopefully people are listening, taking notes, you know, hitting that back button a few times and re listening to some of these points. But I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn a little bit more about some of these approaches that you take, what would be your best way for them to reach out and

Travis Toliver 40:42
absolutely, well, everybody’s free to reach out to me via email is travis@waverlychamber.com. We really wa VRLY Like behind me here chamber.com You’re also welcome to call our office at 319-352-4526. Or if you happen to be in northeast Iowa drop in and say hi, we’re downtown Waverly 118 East Bremer Avenue. And we would love to chat with you for a few minutes and show your community. But yeah, I’m always open to people emailing me and asking questions. And in turn, hopefully I can learn something from them as well. That’s

Brandon Burton 41:21
right, that email might end up in folder number three, but he’ll get back to you in the next couple of weeks. So there’s full transparency here. Right? Exactly. I love it. I love it. You got to stay on top of things and be able to take control of your time so you can be as effective as possible. So absolutely, absolutely. Well, I will get all that in our show notes for this episode make it easy for people to connect with you. But Travis, I want to thank you for spending time with us today here on chamber chat, podcast and for sharing all these tricks of the trade and things that you’ve learned through your experience. So thank you for being with us today.

Travis Toliver 41:56
Well, thank you for having me, Brandon. Appreciate it. And thank you for what you do for our industry. We appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 42:02
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Engaging the Younger Generation with Sarah Sladek

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Sarah Sladek. Sarah has been referred to as a social equity expert and recognized as both a global leader in strategy and talent economy influencer, organizations worldwide have relied on her insights to plan their futures foster cultures of relevance and belonging and realize growth. Sarah studies belonging through the lens of social change and generational influence alongside trends and shifts in organizational cultures, workforce development, consumerism and economics. She refers to this comprehensive approach as next gen intelligence. Using this approach, Sarah has successfully turned organizations around bringing them to a place of increased relationship building and revenue generation. She is a founder and CEO of XYZ University, a training and consulting firm advising organizations worldwide. She is an author of six books as well. In addition, Sarah is a web show host podcaster, one of my own heart member of Forbes, Business Council, and contributing writer for boardroom magazine. She was recently named to the Global list of women who advanced associations, and she’s prominently featured in the jobs of tomorrow Docu series, currently streaming on Tubi. Her expertise has been prominently featured in international media, and she’s keynoted events throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. We’re excited to have Sarah 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.

Sarah Sladek 3:46
Oh, fantastic. It’s an honor to be here, Brandon, and hello, Chamber Champions. I like that little saying, because if you work for a chamber, you have to be a champion. I’m saying that because something about me. I started out my career, one of my first jobs was working for a chamber. It was a hot mess. And that kind of set me on the trajectory that I’m on now in terms of my career. And then one other interesting thing I will share about myself is just a few weeks ago, I was invited to the White House for an inaugural Business Leaders Summit. So that was kind of cool.

Brandon Burton 4:26
Nice. That is exciting. That is really cool. So I’m curious and I’m sure listeners are curious. What what kind of role did you have when you started in your career at at a chamber? What were you doing?

Sarah Sladek 4:38
Yes, I was the Director of Media and Communications. And, and this was in I’m gonna date myself just a little bit here. But this was in bridging late 1990s, early 2000s. So it was kind of a crazy time anyway, you know, we We’re seeing at that time, a lot of people were saying, Oh, are these Gen Xers, they are not joiners, they’re very difficult. We were seeing technology really start to take off, I went to a couple of ACCE conferences, and one of them they talked about, oh my gosh, we’re gonna have this fandangled new thing and a couple of years, you’re gonna have a computer in the palm of your hand. And everyone went, Oh, my gosh, what, you know, crazy like no way. That’s a joke, like people thought that’s not real.

Brandon Burton 5:33
shapers are saying take it back. Take it

Sarah Sladek 5:37
back. Exactly, exactly. So it’s just a time of transition, there was less staff turnover, and it was just, it was just a time of change. Really,

Brandon Burton 5:46
that is a lot of change going on at that time. So I’m trying to put myself in your shoes, that timeframe. And in that role director, media communications, that’s a lot crossing your plate at that time that’s new, and trying to digest and understand, which probably set you up well, for the career path you’re in now with being able to see things through that lens. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you do with XYZ University? And just kind of a little bit of your background? Maybe we didn’t touch in the bio, just to help set the stage for our conversation today.

Sarah Sladek 6:20
Sure, absolutely. So yes, I can really harken back to that experience at a chamber. Because I had a light bulb moment while I was working for the chamber where I kind of thought to myself, Okay, wait a second, where are all the young professionals? Why are we struggling to get younger members involved? Everyone on our board is over the age of 50. And I just had this moment where it was like, Wait a second, if we are really intentional about succession planning, what’s that mean for the future of our organization. And where we were also at that time, there was a lot of buzz around our member companies saying, Gosh, we’re having a hard time engaging in talent. And so that seemed like a big problem that the chamber at that time should be helping to solve. But in any case, I kind of had the proverbial pat on the head that Oh, sir, it’s very interesting thinking about succession planning and the next generation, but we don’t really have to worry about those things. And I was convinced we didn’t need to worry. So fast forward, I started my own business called XYZ University XYZ standing for generations, X, Y, and Z University, meaning we do a lot of research training on this topic of what organizations and communities need to do to engage the next generation. And that, of course, has burgeoned into a real challenge for a lot of organizations. And so that’s what I do.

Brandon Burton 8:02
Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome. So one thing that you really touched on that kind of struck a chord with me is when you talk about that, as a chamber, say we’re really struggling to engage the younger generation or even as a board wipe, you were noticing they’re all over 50. And I think chambers, for the most part, I think, have taken a hard look at the board and trying to especially through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, they’re trying to make sure that the board represents the greater business community. I think I’ve seen a lot of chambers making adjustments to have younger board members on there. But as far as the overall membership, that still tends to be a little bit of a struggle in trying to resonate, what’s your the value proposition is that their chamber to this younger generation, who, maybe they’re starting off without a lot of funds, maybe they’re trying that they’re an entrepreneur trying to do it all on their own? Maybe they don’t realize that they need a team yet. Maybe it’s the language that’s being communicated to them it could be a whole slew of different things that are missing the mark with this younger generation. This I’m excited to dive in deeper on this topic with you today as we dig in on engaging the younger generation going forward. So we will dive into this as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Sarah. So I I teased it before the before the break there that we’re talking today about engaging the younger generation. So from the chamber lens, from the experience, you’ve seen from the things that you’ve gathered throughout your career with with XYZ University? What are some of those ways that a chamber can really focus in on that younger generation? And? And is it the language they’re using is the way they’re communicating? Is it the value proposition? What what are those things that they need to be mindful of when trying to attract and speak to the younger generations?

Sarah Sladek 12:18
So it’s all of the above. And we could spend probably hours talking about this, but I’m going to try to boil it down to just a couple of things. One is, I think chambers, membership organizations overall, just need to be very intentional about making room for young people. So I’ll give you an example. Um, well, we have one person under 30 that sits on our board. It’s, but that’s not enough, right? It’s like, we think we can just check a box and be done. But no, what we have realized over time, is that radical change is needed in order to create room for younger generations and actually succeed at engaging them. So what I find in a lot of organizations, is it number one, there’s a lot of guessing, and a lot of stereotyping. Well, we have a young person in our firm, so I think all young people want this, I have a kid this age, and they’re so into this. And so this is what we should do. And so they you know, rather than put the time in to organize a focus group, I think tank, do interviews, do surveys, do the actual research, to find out what young people want. There’s just like guessing, and often when we’re just guessing or not making the right choices. So that’s one thing, you know, knowing for sure what young people want, being intentional about outreach should be the second thing, and actually creating room for them. And that means making sure that young people actually have a voice and the seat at the table. And that, you know, it’s not limited to one or two people who are younger, but actually being intentional about what’s our outreach, what’s our strategy, to begin to engage new people, new voices. So

Brandon Burton 14:18
I think that’s important. And one thing, a question that came to mind, because you talked about a lot of guessing and stereotyping that goes into addressing the younger generations. And instantly, I thought, you know, what I observed with some younger generations, I thought Hold on a second. What is the difference between observing the younger generation and stereotyping the younger generation? I think there’s a difference there. But I think it’s a fine line for sure, where you take the one experience or a couple experiences of observation and apply it across the board. One of the things that I have observed is it seems that the younger generations There’s a lot more things for them to be interested in, there’s a lot more things vying for their attention and their time. And to be able to try to grasp a little bit of that attention when there’s so much going on, I think is some of the struggle. Is that something that you’ve observed? Or am I am I applying a stereotype? I don’t know. No,

Sarah Sladek 15:24
no, no, no, it’s so true. We’ve moved into an era where time Our time is our greatest commodity, it’s one of the only things we can actually control, who we spend our time with how we spend our time, whether it’s a valuable use of our time, according to our opinions and experiences. And that, you know, we we started to covet our time and really try to manage it. When things when more technology took hold, and no society started to feel like it was spinning out of control, we had more awareness of what was going on in the world because of access to more information and technology than ever before. And so we started to see, and especially during COVID, as well, this, you know, I’m going to covet my time and hold it dear and precious. And absolutely, there is more competition than ever before, it is easier than ever, for someone to start their own networking group or their own, you know, business support group, or what what have you community building group? And so chambers are experiencing more competition, which is why it’s more important than ever to be really in touch with your members and constantly asking, what is it that you need want and expect? Something I remind organizations all the time that I think they sometimes forget, is that really the primary reason people join and get involved with an organization, research has repeatedly shown, the primary reason is because they believe you can help them solve a problem. So and problems shift and change according to Career Stage, according to whatever is happening in society, you know. So it’s on the chamber leaders, it’s it’s their responsibility to know, what challenges are our members currently facing? And are we doing a good job at responding to those and attempting to solve those challenges? All

Brandon Burton 17:31
right, well, that sets the stage for the next questions. How do we, how do we engage with them, and in a way where we can gain some of that feedback, to be able to speak to them in the right language and to address what their problems are? And help craft solutions to those problems? Yeah.

Sarah Sladek 17:49
You know, it’s interesting to think about, but we are really not in the practice of asking for feedback. Yes, we serve a but I’ve I often hear from organizational leaders, whether it’s chambers or other membership types of organizations, well, we can’t do too many surveys, we can’t ask for too much feedback. You know, there’s like, there’s a fear of what will people say? What will they think if we’re asking their opinions? Is it too much? You know, so on and so forth. And I think, you know, we’re living through this era of tremendous and very rapid change, which means, again, the needs and interests of our members are changing, and business is changing. And so if we aren’t really attentive, and really in conversation and dialogue all the time, with our, you know, consumers, members, leaders, volunteers, whatever you want to call them, our audience. If we’re not in communication, things change, and then our organization’s already behind. So we have to be anticipating change. So your question was, what are some of the ways we can do that? Well, there are so many ways, it can be quick polls, it can be longer surveys, it can be a monthly sit down with the Chamber CEO and bringing in 10 new members each time 10 People get chosen to come in have coffee with the CEO, and share their feedback or ideas. It can be you know, focus groups think tanks, there’s just so so many opportunities to actually engage in dialogue. It’s just simply we’re not in the habit of doing it. But we need to get in the habit.

Brandon Burton 19:38
Yeah, I guess. And I liked that idea of bringing in 10 new members with the Chamber CEO and have that cup of coffee and just have a conversation. Just listen. I guess when I’m thinking of the membership at general, if we’re noticing that there’s not a lot of that younger generation in the membership How do we reach them? How do we how do we engage with those ones that are not part of the organization already? And I guess part of it is you’re getting feedback from hopefully their peers in that our members to be able to see what we can apply, you know, to the greater business community, that younger generation, but I think that seems to be the trick of how do we reach those people that we’re not currently reaching? And being able to attract them to the all these great offerings that our chamber has to provide? Yeah.

Sarah Sladek 20:32
So I think a lot of times organizations make the mistake of thinking it’s all about social media. And it is certainly not, um, we find in our research with younger generations, they’re actually craving those relationships with individuals, not just social media, yes, a check social media, but that’s not really what’s forging those emotional connections and those engagement practices. So reaching young people really is most effective when you’re involving them directly, as I just mentioned, you know, doing those feedback circles and outreach efforts. But also when peers are reaching out to one another, and it’s grassroots. And then third, I would say it’s being intentional about mixing people up, at least for a time being here until we get really used to having inclusive cultures. So an example I shared earlier, well, we have one young person on the board, which isn’t enough, you know, and yes, we’re making strides in these areas. But it needs to be really, really intentional and strategic, and really a commitment. So a best practice I often share is an organization that changed their bylaws, and said, from here on out, at least 30% of any decision making group, whether that’s a council, a committee, a board, whatever the case may be 30% need to be comprised of individuals that fit into that young, professional category for this organization. It was we want people within their first five years of a career. But it could be a little longer than that. It just depends on your chamber, and what is the right fit. But by changing those bylaws, you’re putting a stake in the ground, and you’re saying, this is important, this is a priority. Community Building is important. And then you’re bringing people together in there, you know, you have experienced leaders, learning from very new leaders, you’re getting that diversity of thought going, you’re learning and teaching from one another, you’re creating empathy for one another, building relationships with one another. But also, we find that the more diverse cognitively, which includes age diversity, and more diverse groups in leadership roles are considerably more innovative. And when you have all these voices represented, you’re able to really truly represent the best interests of the chamber going forward and innovate, to some of the challenges that face the organization together. So good stuff, good stuff, and we but we just need to make the effort to say no, this is important. And we’re actually going to take the extra step of revamping some of our methodologies and practices to make room for young people.

Brandon Burton 23:44
I like the example of changing the bylaws and having a clear definition of what this these younger leaders, the younger generation are, because the question coming to my mind was, okay, if you’re 65 As a board member, and you’re like, we need some more young blood, and you get the 45 year old, because that’s younger than 65, right? It’s missing the mark on the 25 year old who’s there that’s got great ideas. So having these different segments, but I like the idea of saying somebody within the first five years of their career, I think is a great way of framing that. Instead of saying we need so many under 30 That may not be the right marker, and depending on the community, depending on who the person is. So there’s different ways you can frame that. I think I always, always give that little disclaimer with when it comes to changing bylaws, make sure it’s something that’s sustainable, right? Because this is the way that your organization runs. So think through that clearly that if you say a certain age demographic to make up your board or these decision making groups, make sure it’s sustainable going forward.

Sarah Sladek 24:54
And I don’t think it’s a bad idea to also Bringing outside perspectives. Not everyone on the board has to be a quote unquote member, it’s also good to get some new ideas or if you’re uncomfortable with having them on the board, then bring in some guests occasionally, whether they’re guest presenters or guest observers, or having a ancillary focus group that meets with report whatever, they, you know, get creative. But whenever we’re literally in an echo chamber, just continually hearing the same ideas tossed around, we can get in these ruts, you know, and we get overly comfortable doing more of this thing. So anything that and young people will push you out of that comfort zone, hopefully, but also outside perspectives. You know, and I, obviously, in chamber world, it’s a great practice when boards go to other cities, and they’re learning from other but you know, and some of those inner city leadership visits, so cool. But you can do something similar within your own community, too. And then you’re also fostering those relationships outside of your network and getting insights about why people haven’t joined and forging those relationships. And now all of a sudden, people are rethinking that decision not to be involved.

Brandon Burton 26:23
Yeah, I like the idea of bringing in guests to a board meeting. And the thought that I had is maybe it’s a committee of young professionals, that you bring in on a maybe it’s a quarterly basis, maybe it’s twice a year, once a month, whatever the interval is, make it a regular thing to bring them in and say, what are some of the things that you’re saying now, what are the things we need to be aware of try to draw on that experience, and let them feel valued that they’re bringing, you’re bringing them in, they’ve got a seat at the table, hopefully, there’s other people in their same age demographic that are on the board as well. But to be able to bring in that combat committee of sort, to be able to have those different perspectives, I think, is invaluable. That’s a great idea.

Sarah Sladek 27:10
And you know, as long as we’re talking about it, I think it’s also key to actually, this might sound really basic, to actually ask your board members for feedback. I have recently joined a board of directors, and I’m just kind of, it’s it’s intriguing, because every board, every organization has their own culture, right. And it’s just been intriguing to me to kind of watch this unfold, especially given my background, um, that every board meetings really present information, present information. It’s almost like a lecture or a teaching, you know, you’re in a classroom. And the board’s asked to vote on certain things, but actual conversation, and dialog is really limited. It’s kinda like we come there for for a class. And then do you agree with this content? Yeah, you know, sure. Okay. Great. See you next meeting. There’s never these, you know, and I feel like, Man, this is a missed opportunity. You just brought all these people together with their various experiences and

Brandon Burton 28:27
schedules. Yeah, yes. And

Sarah Sladek 28:29
tap into that. And not only, you know, because some people might not be comfortable giving actual information, you know, blurting out I hate what you’re doing here. But also, you know, ask for feedback, but also, I think, occasionally, anonymously survey the people on your board. What do you aligned with? What do you not because people will speak up in those private formats as well. And, man, it’s a missed opportunity not to be asking for feedback.

Brandon Burton 29:00
I think if you’re well organized, going into a board meeting, you can do a lot of that presenting ahead of time. Now this goes back to take a step back into your board selection and and how you’re, you’re comprising your board, you want to make sure that they’re engaged members. But if you can do some of that informing before the meeting happens, whether it’s sending the report the financials, or whatever, it may be ahead of time, getting the time to look it over, they might send you an email back, but the feedback or look at this and let me know what you think about this. And then the time and the meeting can really be used to drive something forward to have some conversation that goes forward.

Sarah Sladek 29:42
I and I Okay, one more thing. I will just, I needed a soapbox for this. One more thing I will say is that at that board meeting, in my initial board meeting, I received a board binder that was no joke like eight inches thick like just It’s

Brandon Burton 30:00
huge and wait to read it right? Oh, man, Paper,

Sarah Sladek 30:03
paper Paper, right? Everything printed out. And I nearly had a heart attack partly because it’s so huge. And there’s the expectation or tradition of disseminating this, but every board member got one. And it’s like, okay, that’s the first thing a young person’s going to say is why are you printing all this paper? It is not environmentally friendly. It is not technology friendly. It is not how we do things. Now. It’s a sign that they have really become disconnected from a younger audience as so. Great

Brandon Burton 30:45
point. Yeah. I think if that could be on a web platform where you’ve got topics that could expand, you could do a search for what you’re looking for. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Sladek 30:55
Ellie’s something, yeah. Not Oh, my gosh, all the trees, all the trees.

Brandon Burton 31:05
So, with with you being the expert on generations, I’m curious what things are standing out to you that are important to the younger generations right now. You mentioned the trees, all the paper. So yeah, are there other things like that, that might strike a nerve that, that you’re seeing and being careful not to stereotype, but from data and feedback that you’re getting? What are some of those things that are important to the younger generations right

Sarah Sladek 31:30
now. So what we’re seeing is a strong, strong, I’m gonna say among Gen Z, especially strong desire, they’re holding as their organizations accountable. And they want the organizations to stand for something. So, you know, when you think about like, Gen Z, I’ll give you just a little perspective here. But Gen Z is the first generation be raised with social media. So when you literally think about brain development, social development, they’ve always been able to use their voice for change. Through social media, they’re more likely to protest. And we’re seeing that Gen Z’s are really they’re coming into membership organizations. And they’re asking, What are your values? What do you stand for? What are you doing to make this a better place, but they and they really will see through any BS, they are like demanding, you know, things like dashboards. And again, this harkens back to how Gen Z was raised. They were raised when you have social media, yes. But they were also raised with technology in the classroom, like they could go into a little app and see their grades, you know, 24 hours a day. So they learn to kind of dashboard progress. And we’re seeing them bring this into workplaces and membership organizations, and they’re saying, Well, wait a second, how are you performing? Are you successful? How do you know you’re successful? If I come in, and I’m part of your organization? How do I know? You know, all the various ways to get involved and how I will be successful? So who, right? That’s gonna change things, but this, this desire to see and know how well you’re doing kind of thing, and holding organizations accountable is really, really big. Speaking of environmental, I’ve also heard from several now several membership organization executives, who’ve had young people come in to interview for jobs, and ask, what is your stance on climate change? And what are you doing to save the planet? And each of these executives said they were completely caught off guard by that question. And you know, said, Well, that’s not really what we do here. Like, we were a chamber or, you know, we were a healthcare organization, we’re about membership. And literally, in each of these situations, the young person said, then this isn’t the job for me and got up and walked out. So where’s we’re going to see that accountability factor, really, really raised. And being able to not just say we were successful this year through an annual report, that’s not going to be enough anymore. Yeah. So that’s something important

Brandon Burton 34:36
and I don’t know that they need to be huge changes, but as a company as an organization, just to be mindful of what are the things that are important to them? And then like you mentioned, the dashboard, call it the wanting to be able to track progress well to be able to do that you need to collect data along the way. So why not start trying to collect some data on things that are kind of those key into caters. And then you have something to build something from as you need to or as as things evolve. But without without something to begin with, you’re left with your your hands up in the air not knowing what to do. Oh,

Sarah Sladek 35:12
gosh, yeah. So things like value, you know. And along those lines, we’ve seen increasing intolerance to intolerance, right? So obviously, equity, inclusion, diversity, all those things are absolutes for younger people, and they will leave. But also we’re seeing more and more age diversity come to the forefront. So once again, when you look at their upbringing, shifts in parenting shifts in technology, education, all of that, you know, Gen Z was raised having a voice and a seat at the table, they were there, we it started with the millennials, but really in the 1990s, late 90s, we shifted to become a child centric society. So like it or not, we raised children to have opinions and express those opinions and to ask a lot of questions. So when they join, and what’s interesting is we’ve seen the cycle to engagement actually shift. So it used to be you join an organization, or you go to your chamber event or whatever. And if he were below a certain age, you were kind of expected to sit and observe, like, just learn about the organization, you can actually lead anything. Yeah, you watch any observe. And now we’ve seen that flipped on its head, and young people are saying, If I’m choosing to show up, if I want to get involved, I’m making a real, I’ve already thought about it, I’ve already researched it, and I’m making like this. It’s like an extension of my personal brand. Like, I believe in this and I’m so I’m affiliating my name with it. And I expect to immediately have the opportunity to get involved and to do something of substance. So they, they want a voice, they want a seat at the table, they want the opportunity to do things like produce content. That’s something a lot of people don’t know about Gen Z, Gen Z creates and consumes more content than any other generation. So they like the idea of being able to come in and help with content generation, you know, and they want to learn, they want to lead, they want to make a difference, and they do not see age as a barrier. So if your chamber still has kind of those hierarchical systems in place, that you have to wait your turn, you need to be rethinking that. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 37:53
that’s interesting. I was enjoying just sitting back and hearing you, yeah. You all these, uh, good insights that you’ve learned about these younger generations. As we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask, for chambers that are listening, what tip or action item might you share with them as they look to take their chamber up to the next level?

Sarah Sladek 38:18
Oh, man. Remember, remember two things, I’ll leave you two things. Number one, you your organization was founded, to represent a community, right. And I think in recent years, we, you know, chambers, membership organizations, as a whole began to lose sight of that. And began to just introduce, you know, really kind of hold steadfast to things like tradition. And we’ve always done it this way. And we need to let some of those things go to be able to evolve, stay relevant, and literally be by the members for the members. And that doesn’t mean just a few select members. That means everyone in your membership community, including younger generations, which would be the second thing I will note, I think it’s really, really important. If you want to create something sustainable and relevant for the future, you got to live in the future. So that means, you know, being mindful of trends that are on the horizon. I’m talking to business leaders about What trends are you seeing what what changes? are you observing what what’s likely to come down the pike and impact your business? Not just in the next year, but in the next five years? What are you worried about what’s keeping you awake at night, but also talking to those young linger individuals about some of the same things, and really bringing in and paying attention to not just why college students are doing. But high school students, middle school students. And the reason I say that is because everything in society has a trickle up effect. So we most of the trends that we have today, they didn’t just blindside us and pop out of nowhere. We saw younger generations, because those are usually the ones that introduce and influence trends, using certain things like let’s just say tick tock, for example. And then eventually it trickles up and influences all of us. So if we can be ahead of the curve, in anticipating trends, we’re not at risk of falling behind. And, and I think those two things are really, really intertwined. If you’re holding steadfast to tradition, if you’re not really, really talking to members, not only your current members, but your future members, you’re at risk of falling behind. And one of my favorite quotes that I’ll just leave you with is from Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs used to always tell his employees at Apple, you know, he used to challenge them. And he’s, he’d say, is the decision we’re making right now? Is this going to position our company, a generation ahead, or a generation behind? Because I want to be a generation ahead. But that’s a very, very different mindset. And it requires totally different, you know, processes and practices, it’s entirely doable. But you’re gonna have to rethink how you’re spending your time and who you’re spending your time with.

Brandon Burton 41:46
Yeah, I love the idea of living in the future. So you can anticipate those trends, see what those things are that are coming and doing that will attract those younger people? It’ll they’ll see, okay, you you’re with the times you understand what’s going on. I love that. So sir, I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sarah Sladek 42:12
Well, I think that I see the future of Chambers as being incubators. And I’ll explain what I mean by that. There. There’s a in New York, there is a incubator company, that they’re a design company. And basically, they they evolved out of the needs, they started to recognize that people within this fashion design world had no place to like go and grow their businesses get guidance, also hands on training, share best practices. And so basically, they created this big warehouse space, which you can be a member of, and you go there, and you literally get to roll up your sleeves and work in community, with other people who are trying to grow their business, but at the same time, swap ideas, swap leads. And I just think, Man, that’s a great idea. Like, I think I love what chambers do, obviously, and I worked for a chamber. And I think there’s some unmet needs within chambers and some opportunities for real creativity and innovation. And chambers are one of the most powerful organizations our country has, because they’re really uniquely suited to bring together business leaders, community leaders, government leaders, education leaders. And I don’t think I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say, I think chambers have become completely mired in detail. I think I can get away with saying that because I work for a chamber mired in detail with, you know, when are we having our annual conference or annual golf outing and things like that. And we’ve lost sight of some of the really amazing opportunities to bring all these leaders to gather, to collectively problem solve, and to be a literal space where businesses can come together and actually innovate and CO create. So that’s what I’d like to see for the future of chambers to get, you know, rediscover their roots and adapt for what the current marketplace needs.

Brandon Burton 44:34
I love it. It’s a trend live in the future. Right. VA incubator. Yeah, I love it. Well, Sara, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for those who are listening that might want to reach out and connect to learn more about you your offerings, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect Yeah, you

Sarah Sladek 44:54
can find me at XYZUniversity.com. You can also reach out to me directly by sending an email to Hello@SarahSladek.com. That’s Sarah with an H S L A dk.com.

Brandon Burton 45:12
That’s perfect. And we’ll get it in our show notes as well so people can look it up there and and say hello. Thank you for being with us today setting aside some time to be with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast and sharing your insights and the things that you’ve learned about younger generations and to help the chambers listening to live in the future and attract those, those younger members, employees, board members, everything across the board. It’s been a great conversation and glad to have you on the show. Thank you.

Sarah Sladek 45:45
Thank you, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 45:47
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Our guest for this episode is John Chen. John is the author of the number one Amazon hot new book release “Engaging Virtual Meetings”. He’s been meeting virtually for over 38 years isn’t could say he’s a pioneer. He has produced over 4000 virtual meetings, including an eight language meeting and the only 100% live virtual conference in the training industry. He’s a certified speaking professional by the National Speakers Association. Let’s welcome John Chen to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

John Chen 2:39
Thank you so much, Brandon, this is John Chen reporting live from Seattle, Washington. And well maybe we’ll have to incorporate this fact later into the show that I once walked across 40 feet of fire back to you, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 2:52
All right. That sounds intriguing. It sounds like maybe a Tony Robbins type of experience. Awesome. Well tell us a little bit about what you do in the speaker realm just to kind of set the stage for our conversation today and how it’s applicable to chambers who are listening to the show today.

John Chen 3:13
Yeah, thank you, Brandon. And I have been a member of Seattle’s Chamber of Commerce in the past. So I think I know the audience. This is my 38th year of being in business after spending 10 years Brandon at that little software company up here near Seattle for a while and I shipped him products and got two US patents and then I really decided I wanted to do something with that I had my three passions in it which is technology adventure to help create human change. So I created a company that did team building using geocaching. Now Brandon, do you know what geocaching is?

Brandon Burton 3:48
I have kids. So yes, I’m familiar with geocaching. Geocaching

John Chen 3:53
was invented in Seattle, it is a high tech scavenger hunt that uses billions of dollars of satellite known as our global positioning system. And to help you find containers hidden all around the world. And I converted it into a team and leadership event where I was actually able to do 160 events a year brand and teaching team and leadership skills using high tech scavenger hunts all around the world. And by the way, for those who are in chambers in cities, it’s actually a great promotional activity to get people to all the different locations and businesses in your city. So I did that, you know, for a good portion of time, Brandon,

Brandon Burton 4:31
I love it. That’s a great idea, especially localized within a city to really get to know the community and get out there and engage with people in the community as well as you’re doing the scavenger hunts. That’s awesome. Well, as we focused in on our our topic for conversation today, we wanted to focus on the idea of engaging especially as we, I guess if we’re a chamber there’s different levels of engagement. So there’s oftentimes engaging from the stage maybe it’s at a chamber luncheon or annual banquet, maybe it’s at a training of some sort maybe there’s new business law in your state and you’re trying to educate your your Chamber members about this new business law or maybe the engagement is in trying to express the value your your value proposition of membership. So all these different ways we hope to address and talk to today’s we have John on the show to talk about engaging on all these different levels so I’m excited to dive into this much deeper as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Alright, John, we’re back. Let’s dive into engagement. So I don’t know if before the break I talked about a couple different examples of how a chamber may be interested in in in leveling up their engagement with their membership and different events and things. Did any of those stand out that you would like to address first? Do you want to go from the stage scene?

John Chen 7:48
Yeah, let’s go for the person. Alright, so Brandon, let me know that a good majority of you chambers have back to the in person. And while I wrote a book called Engaging virtual meetings, here’s one of the secrets. The challenges of engaging on virtual are also the same challenges that you have in person. So one of the cool parts here is that I did earn this, just two weeks ago, I earned this certified speaking professional. And so then then the National Speakers Association gives away this designation. And it’s only given it away to 17% of their members. So that the CSP is supposed to designate you as one of the top speakers, I’d really like to share some onstage speaker tips. And I want to share two for chambers. The first one is so key, it’s the first five minutes of your chamber meeting are the most important. Let me say that again. The first five minutes of your chamber meeting are the most important. Now I’m gonna let Brandon guests a little bit like Brandon, why is this so important? Why do you think this is so important? You’re

Brandon Burton 8:55
setting the stage for what’s going to happen the rest of the event? Hopefully it’s a if there’s enough intentionality with it, maybe you can get people there in the room for the first five minutes. I think that’s huge to be able to have people there at the beginning. But I think overall, it sets the tone for what they’re going to expect. And

John Chen 9:17
now you have to think yourself, put yourself back in the seat as a new member. And I’m sitting in the chamber audience, and I don’t know anybody. Right? And in those first five minutes, I’m probably going to make a decision that will tell me and especially if I’m a guest, right, I haven’t even made the decision yet to join the chamber. Most of us in the first five minutes of the meeting will make the choice going, right. These are my people. Yeah, I belong here. Or they’re gonna make the other determination going. I’m out which ways I’ll give up my 45 bucks I registered with I got it. I’m out of the door now. All right, and so so that’s why those first five minutes are so important. So think about All the different ways so a lot of people in like some of the past chamber meetings that I’m imagining I’ve been to a lot of other different ones that kind of stat start out kind of lackluster. It’s like, you know, hey, we’re gonna start in three minutes, right? So just mergency exits are located here in here, right? He’s like you got on an airplane or something, as opposed to, right, you are going to love this meeting, right, coming up next is this speaker, he hosts the chamber chat podcast, and he’s got hundreds of people’s experience, and he’s gonna share at least three of them with you today. Let’s, we’re gonna welcome Brandon Burton, right. So something like that, how you open your meetings should really look for it. And I see this in virtual meetings. But I also see this in in person meetings. And in that first five minutes, you should really think about what are all the different ways that I can bring the meeting to order to bring to attention and saying, There’s something here for me today, like I need to pay attention, and, you know, get the return on the investment on my time and money for being in this chamber meeting. And doing that. So that’s the first one. Brandon, do you have any examples that you’ve seen of like, great ways that somebody opened a chamber meeting?

Brandon Burton 11:06
Um, I, I don’t know about great way. Like, I’m not the expert on it by any means. But what I have noticed at some, like chamber luncheons that I’ve been at is at the beginning, they will give a couple minutes for everyone at the table to introduce themselves to each other and get to know each other. Yeah,

John Chen 11:24
see, now that’s great, because you’re immediately actively talking to somebody else. You’re not listening to somebody talk and not talking. And you’re engaged because you’re meeting somebody else. And you most likely came to the Cambridge chamber to network. So I love that idea. I think that’s right on. I mean, another one, Brandon is invite one of your local musicians, who’s really good, and I have them open the first part for five minutes. And let me tell you, one, if they’re great musicians, people will pay attention to number two, it like changes the whole, you know, the whole mood of the meeting, especially if somebody’s inspiring, or uplifting, or fun, or something like that. So we’ve seen that happen. One of our conferences had the theme of the phoenix rising from the ashes. Okay, right. And so. So we actually had a singer come in, and she’s saying, Rise up from Andrea day. Yeah. And the whole place like everybody, like started, like looking at, like, you could hear a murmur in the back of the room going, This is so amazing, this is the best way to start a meeting. You know, this was like, right after the pandemic ended. And we’re like the first in person meeting. And so it added something to the meeting. Okay, so that’s the first tip, which is, is that the first five minutes are the most important. And the second one is that if you want engagement, Brendon engage, and so have a plan to engage every single attendee of your meeting before the end of the meeting. So one of them is Brandon, I think geniusly said, Let’s do a networking piece. So for the first time, welcome. I’m Brandon Wright, and I’m the host today, for the first five minutes, we want to immediately give you value. So take a moment and introduce yourself, make sure there’s enough time for everyone at the table, right? Take a minute or less, but introduce who you are, right, what you do, and what value do you bring to our community? Okay, go right. So, so now everyone’s talking. I mean, the other one is just walk out into the audience, Brandon, yeah. Or highlight your members might have two member highlights, ready to go and have them talk about their business, but also talk and have them talk about why they like coming, why they are a member of the chamber. Because if Brandon is like the executive director for the chamber, he’s always going to be saying, oh, you should join blah, blah. But when your members say it, it is so much stronger. So one of the things that I do Brown, and maybe this is not for all chamber meetings, but when I present, Brandon, I allocate up to 50% of the time for the audience to talk. Okay, and here’s the reason why. It is impossible for Brandon as an attendee to be checked out, right? checking his cell phone and checking his email. If I have a mic in his hand, and he’s talking in front of the group. Brandon has to be with me otherwise, he’s gonna like look like like, like the business chamber person. You don’t want to know who’s multitasking in the middle of a meeting, but

Brandon Burton 14:19
and you said, you know, walking out into the audience, and I know not to throw my wife under the bus at all. But if we’re at at an event and the speaker, somebody that performer comes out into the audience, her immediate reaction is Don’t come near me. Don’t come near me. Don’t don’t engage me. Don’t talk to me. Say and she will be petrified of the person but it keeps her engaged, right? She’s not looking at her phone. She’s watching the speaker, whatever to make sure

John Chen 14:45
she is she’s going like No, no, no, no, no. And so you know, even the negative engagement is engagement. It’s kind of like bad commercials, right? We would just watch the Superbowl right. Even the bad commercials will talk about going did you feel bad that was that was horrible. So I do believe That’s right. And then the second part as a speaker, there’s actually a good follow up to Brandon, right is that the psychological safety is the other thing you’re trying to build in your chamber meeting, which is that you feel safe. Taking a risk in front of your business peers. And so what you do is come up to as like, Brandon, What’s your wife’s name again? Brandon.

Brandon Burton 15:21
Sarah.

John Chen 15:22
Yeah. So Sarah said, Sarah, right? I see this terrified look in your face and said, Would you like to contribute something? Or would you like me to go to somebody else, and she’s gonna go to somebody else. But I’ll give her the choice. So because I don’t want her to be traumatized at my chamber meeting

Brandon Burton 15:37
right now.

John Chen 15:38
So you know, that’s the other part is to think about as like, I almost never call directly anybody in a chorus, but ox, I’m looking for volunteers. Yeah. But in a chamber meeting, too, especially if for the first time I’m doing this. I’m gonna work ahead, Brandon, and make sure there’s at least one or two people who are going to volunteer if nobody volunteers. There you go. And that way, we know it’s going to be a success.

Brandon Burton 16:01
Get your your plants out there, right. Yeah. So I’ve heard people that speak from stage talk about different levels of engagement. So maybe asking some questions at the beginning to get people to raise their hand or stand up or move to another table if you do this or that. So just getting them to do something as part of that engagement. Where Where would you see some value with having them actually do something rather than sitting there nodding, or? Yeah, so getting them to actually act. So

John Chen 16:38
Brandon, I come from the school of what’s known as experiential education, which is a big fancy way of saying, learning by doing Yeah. So if you were to hire me, as a speaker for your chamber, oh, my gosh, I have a great chamber story. Okay. So in one of the chamber stories, I have something and it’s so simple, right? It’s like a one foot of a screw rod. Right? And it has like, six wing nuts, or eight wing nuts on it. Okay. So the, the, it’s a, it’s a team building initiative, where every table is competing against other tables, okay. And I did this actually as a chamber speech. And so what we did with it is that you the rules are, you have to start with all of them off, then as a team, each person is responsible for putting their wingnut on, okay, and the wing that is like a task, right, and the screw, right is like a process. And then you it was a race to get all of them on and then off. And when you went off, that’s when the time expired for it. Okay? Okay. And I was trying to use it as a metaphor of like high performance business, like, if you can take a process in your business, and shorten the time to create that, then you can create more business, right? And so that you can produce more product or whatever. So anyways, this group does this. And, and the, the, so a bunch of people competed with this, and I think I was using it for customer service or something like that. And so what happened was is, so then I started talking about how to produce it. So one is that this team’s did it. And by the way, the high the energy gets really, really high when everyone is competing against each other, especially if you have like a fictitious or like even a low value prize, like a gift card. Okay. And then the funny part that came around is that when we started talking about customer service, and these groups are like, I kept talking about these, these tips about like great things that you can do for customer service, like try to protect your customers needs before they ask you. Okay, and there’s one group at this one table started laughing like a lot. And I finally had to go to the executive director going, what’s happening? Why are they laughing? Because it was kind of like weird and inappropriate. And she goes, finally, she leaned up to me and she goes, John, they’re morticians. Yeah. So I just told them this tip of like, like, you need to anticipate your client’s needs before they need them. And they’re dead. There’s like, use their first name, and they’re dead. And so it just became really, it was I was crying laughing from the stage, but everybody in the group was laughing and that was totally not planned. Brandon. Yeah. Yes, yeah, that was the stuff that people remembered. And then they actually did remember the tip. So anyways, I’m a big fan of, of if you are going to have speakers, yeah, make them do something, whether it’s a table exercise, talk to each other, you know, all these but there’s lots and lots of different ways that you can do that. And, and then use that, which is you debrief that activity and saying this is a metaphor for something in your business. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 19:42
So maybe we’ll shift gears just a little bit. So I know there’s a lot of carryover from speaking on stage to a virtual type of event. And I know chambers they all went digital during the pandemic. Most are back to in person so I’m still have a hybrid or maybe through the pandemic, they spin up a YouTube channel or regular webinar or things like that. So for those that are still engaged with the virtual type of meetings, is there anything that stands out on the virtual front? One thing in particular that I think of is kind of that waiting that awkward waiting room experience before the meeting starts? Like, they’re, they’re sitting there, they’re like, Am I really connected? When is the start? Like what? There’s an awkwardness? Right? So how do we overcome that and keep them engaged on that on the virtual front?

John Chen 20:40
Well, we created a new word for this right, Brandon, have you ever heard the word ZOC? Word?

Brandon Burton 20:46
No. Word. It’s,

John Chen 20:49
it’s a combination of zoom and awkward. It’s also like when you log into a meeting, and all the screens are black, and there’s no audio playing, and there’s no slide you’re like, Am I in the right room? Yeah. Did I just zoom bomb somebody by accident? But

Brandon Burton 21:04
and you get in a Zoom meeting now, never first thing anybody says? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah, the same technology on your telephone us to say hello, but a zoom. Can you hear me? Can you see me? Okay? So let

John Chen 21:17
me give two things. So you know that awkward pauses really something that we do work on? And there’s a cool piece of technology that almost nobody knows about? So Brandon, did you know that you can put a video in your waiting room on Zoom? I did not know that. Now, for a chamber. This is what I suggest you do. You could create like the the slideshow or a video of you, the executive director. And you can highlight right? This is the, let’s say, my hometown of Stockton, this is the Stockton, California Chamber of Commerce, right? This is what we represent. And do this is our mission statement. Here’s our upcoming meeting. And you can flash that or you can have audio. And so you’re building your brand, even before somebody comes into your virtual meeting.

Brandon Burton 22:02
I love that. That is a great idea. Yeah.

John Chen 22:05
Now in this other awkward parts that you have, I mean, you know, you’re talking about podcasts and all these other things. The good news is, is that there’s editing. So you can solve a lot of that. But if you don’t have editing, even kind of think about how you went back and been watching a lot of like old TV shows, and like an old live TV shows. They used to have people come out and warm up the audience. Yeah. Because they need them to laugh, right? When the jokes come up on stage. So you should be the same way. Even if you’re not recording, and you do have an audience, talk to them saying, hey, that’s so thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast, blah, blah, blah, you know, there will or will not be chances for you to ask question, you know, you can chat questions, and the moderator can decide to pick them up. So you just kind of talk to them about the you know, what do you have interest? Or why did you choose to log in today for this program. And so that person that ahead of time, can sometimes find some things out, I find that the great podcast hosts will then use some of that content, because now they know it’s going to solve a need for their clients, right? For the for the audience. And

Brandon Burton 23:10
I can see for a chamber maybe hosting a candidate form, you know, for an upcoming election or something to be able to do that virtually to be able to get those questions, but then to be able to have content to speak to and address and inform voters going forward. So great.

John Chen 23:24
You’re gonna do for me, right? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 23:28
Love it. So chambers inherently are their membership organizations, right? So they’re constantly trying to express their their value to potential members to retain current members. What kind of tips or thoughts would you have around engaging on the membership level, to express that value and to keep those members coming and staying with your organization? So Brandon,

John Chen 23:56
I’m a 15 year member of meetings professional International, one of the largest meeting organizations in the world. And I served all the way up to VP of education and VP of membership. And then I’m President Elect now of our national speakers Association’s Northwest chapter. And so I’m familiar with these challenges that we all have as as membership organizations about number one, the attraction. And then number two, the retention. You know, the fact that I’m a 15 year member now in MPI, makes me a bit of a unicorn so I as the VP of membership once charted the memberships based upon the number of people and how many years they’ve been in, and most organizations brand and I think you’ll probably agree with me, right? The like, over half of the members are one to three year members. Right? There’s a churn at the bottom of people who are like I’m in I’m out I’m in and mount. And so I would first start, you know, in terms of that engagement, one is take care of your, you know, five If you’re and plus members, they’re the easiest people you’re ever going to get. Although, if you piss them off, right, they will do a lot of negative damage to you that don’t ever join that chamber. Right? Right. And so I think that’s, that’s one of the key pieces around there is that if you take care of your longer term members, often, everything else will take care of itself. Now the second part, in drawing new members, which sometimes is easier, it’s more exciting, alright, to draw on the new member, because you take somebody who like knows nothing about your organization and talk about the value, you know, you sold them on the value. So number one is you got to sell them on the value. And so you need to go look at your chamber, and say, What’s at least one core piece of value that is worth this yearly membership and more, you’re gonna get a return on investment, right? Because there again, most of them are business owners, or very high in the business. And so they the time is actually probably what’s the most precious thing. So they need to know that there’s this great investment on time. And, and so they think that that’s the part they need to get a new member. So for instance, in our NSA membership, we have a multiple benefits, but one of the benefits is what we call an E speaker’s profile, which is how meeting professionals find other speakers. And the cost of that basic membership is $179. And our yearly membership is only $149. So basically, you’re getting more than the value of the membership immediately. And now every other benefit from us is gravy. So hopefully that’s a good example, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 26:34
Yeah, that’s good. I like that being able to have that one key element that no matter what else, however else, anything else shakes out there, just that one piece is going to be worth the value. I also heard a recent tip, and I don’t remember where I heard it from, but when talking to somebody that you’re trying to, I’m gonna say sell, I’m trying to sell a membership to ask them. What do you know about the chamber? Have you heard of our XYZ chamber instead of just going and, you know, just vomiting everything all over them? Start starting the conversation with what what have you heard about it? So have you? Because then if they’ve if they’ve heard anything negative, let them get that out? Otherwise, you’re going to tell them all the perks, and they’re going to have the Yeah, but I heard this or that. And so let them get that out first, and then you can add whatever the value is and overcome those objections they might have.

John Chen 27:28
So Brandon, I actually want to add my my next top tip. Have you ever read Chris Matthews book called hardball? I have not. So Chris Matthews is, of course one of those political experts. And in hardball, he detailed some of the top political tactics and techniques that politicians have been using for decades. And one of them is called the ask. And you reminded me of the story because somebody came up to me about NSA and and talked about like, they came to a meeting, like four years ago. And they were really turned off because one of the speakers started selling from the stage. Right, which is a is a big no, no, he shouldn’t have done it. But something happened. I wasn’t at that meeting. But something happened. And she goes, I was so turned off like I just didn’t ever joined. And I said, Oh my gosh, right. So I said, I understand. I think I heard about that meeting, I wasn’t at that meeting, I can tell you that we do have some things around that. So what I’d love to do is personally invite you Why don’t you come check it out again. Alright, May 11 is our next live meeting, you can either come virtual, or you can come in person because we run hybrid, right? And I’d love for you to be my guest. If you come I will introduce you around. Two hours later, she came around back to me and she goes, John, you know what, I just want to let you know that I’m going to come to the May 11 meeting and I want to let you know that your personal ASTs made a huge difference to me. So think about that for all your chamber board members. That one of the most powerful things they can do is personally invite somebody even despite they had a negative, you know, experience like acknowledge like, Okay, you’re right, maybe it was bad back then. I’m here now. When you come check it out. And you determine for yourself and my hope is that that’s how we grew membership over 63% last year, Brandon Yeah. 63%

Brandon Burton 29:16
That’s awesome. And I love the idea of having it be a board member or maybe a chamber Ambassador somebody who’s doing that talking positively about the chamber rather than a staff member trying to do is say no, I promise things of change. Let let a member let someone who’s actively engaged with your chamber extend that invitation in person I’d love that agree. This is going to be a heavy question but what else are we missing on engagement that we need to cover? The all encompassing right?

John Chen 29:50
Well, this is good I love that your answers Brandon because you know I teach another class and engagement is called the seeds of facilitation right so at I’ll do as a team builder. And in facilitation, quite often the thing that people don’t talk about or that we think we have too much of maybe here in America is controversy. Yeah, although, you know, people love a good fight. So

Brandon Burton 30:16
it drives engagement on social media for sure. Right. So

John Chen 30:20
why don’t you invite that? And so there’s two things I would say. Number one, though, is again, go back and think about, are you creating psychological safety? Meaning that can a business owner come and talk about a challenging issue that they are having, without people, you know, giving them negative harm for that saying, all right, you know, Brandon’s businesses, losing employees, but where are you know, something like that saying, because in earnest, they want to talk about these problems. So somehow or another, you need to make your meeting safe enough around that and that they can get, they can talk about it. And maybe ideally, then get another real idea from another chamber member saying I’m having I used to have the high turnover, and I got it down to like 15%. And let me share one other two or two of the tips how we did it. And so I think that’s really what you’ll find out. This is what I got a chance to interview Miranda de Santos. She is a certified Association Executive. And she has worked with over 20 associations prior to becoming an and working for National Speakers Association. And she says that the community at the National Speakers Association is one of the best she has seen. And because the community is so supportive, and even though we’re all speakers, and sometimes we’re battling it out for the same speaker dollars, but the way it’s set up, they had called it the one of the founders was a guy named Dick Cabot, and they call it the spirit of Cavett says, there’s enough for everybody. And we should share what we learned. Because we’re speakers, there’s very few of us speakers, that if we share what we learn, that we could all be better speakers. And I think business owners are the same way 10 business owners or less than 10% of the community. But they have a really unique position, again, as a member of EO Entrepreneurs Organization, as a business owner. And I think if business owners can collaborate together, they can do more. Tennessee’s EO did a stat and they said out of all their members of the total of all the employees that they have, they are the 10th largest employer for that state, as an organization, and I think that’s something that chamber should think about, too.

Brandon Burton 32:28
Wow. Yeah, that’s awesome. So as we start to kind of wrap things up here, I wanted to ask about any maybe tip or action item for chambers that are out there listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you encourage or advise him to do to try to meet that goal?

John Chen 32:50
Well, we talked about those senior members. And I can tell you one strategy, again, I’m president of, of NSA, is that one of my strategies is that I’m attempting to talk to every member but we’re not we have an organization that’s kind of the right size. And all the Copic is brand, and it’s not to sell them on another year. I just calling to say, introduce myself as the president and say, How’s your how’s your membership going? That’s it. And what you get from that? I’ll tell you, number one, is that 90 plus percent of the organizations that I’m a member of don’t do that. Yeah. And if you do, you’re gonna hear I think, two great things, right. One of them is people complaining, I was just thinking about ditching my membership, which is a gift by the way, you have a chance now to intervene you before you didn’t even know. Or you hear the other part going, I am loving my membership. What’s the part you love the most? And they’ll tell you X and you’re like, Great, let’s do more of that. Right. And sometimes you can even get them involved. Because I think the other part about membership. That works is when you like to going back to this ask not only asking them as a member like Brandon right now, right? We are President Elect had to step down because he couldn’t you know, he’s got a family emergency. Brandon, would you be our next president for our chamber? And you’re like, Wow, and so the asker when he said that, you know, Chris Matthew said this about the house. He goes, the Ask has value whether Brandon says yes or no, sure. Yeah. Because Because of Brandon says, No, at least he knows that out of all the membership I chose him to ask. And then if he says yes, I get a whole bunch of time out of them because he’s gonna run. So I can think that’s the best thing you can do is engage your membership. One of the other things I do is when I call these members, because I’ll find out do I have a role for them? Some of them immediately told me I don’t want to be on the board. Right? I don’t have the time. I’m like, okay, that’s fine. I said, What if I could find you a committee position that was like one to three hours right? Totally self contained, do something that but also showcases something that you do and your job. I’m in there. Yeah. So that’s what I would say is go through your membership and figure out, how can you engage them? Yeah. And if you do that, I think your membership will grow and thrive.

Brandon Burton 35:14
And I think you touched on a great point that for a lot of chambers, there’ll be a reminder, they can think back to when the pandemic first happened. Everybody’s businesses shut down. And pretty much every chamber I can think of, they were calling every business to check in on him. How are you guys doing? What do you need? What can we do to help? And the stories that came back the feedback, they got back the value that their members saw from their chamber by making that personal, you know, extension to see how they’re doing and how they’re, you know, weathering the storm was so instrumental that afterwards chamber saw a huge wave of businesses that wanted to get back because now they see what the chamber does. And to be able to remember that experience, and to incorporate that going forward. Because those members will have that memory to Oh, yeah, you call me when things were really hard. And now you’re calling just to see how things are going now, it’s gonna have a lot of good rapport going forward. So that’s a great reminder that you put out there. Yeah,

John Chen 36:17
you’ll love this to brand new, which is like, you’ll get a lot of a you don’t need a pandemic to have to do that. And one of my favorite quotes is goosebumps don’t lie. And so while Brandon was talking about that, like I had goosebumps on my side and saying that, that was such the right thing to do. And why don’t people do that, like all the time?

Brandon Burton 36:38
So? Yes, yeah, that’s good. I love that saying to goosebumps don’t lie. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, about how you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

John Chen 36:55
Well, rounded, I told you at the beginning of this meeting, that I’m a team builder. And I can tell you this too, after 28 years in my career of team building, that the one thing I know is that America in general is getting worse at cross team collaboration worse. Like, it’s it hasn’t gotten better. It wasn’t, it didn’t stay the same, it actually got worse. And so what I mean by that chambers give the opportunity for two or more businesses to collaborate to create more business. And they should do more of that. And they don’t. And so that’s the one thing that chambers can do. And when they do it that I knew though some of them do it well, like a business fair like a you know, a hiring fair, like solving the members challenges. But doing it collectively as a group instead of one person doing it is where I think many businesses and many organizations like chambers can add the most value to their community.

Brandon Burton 37:59
I love that. So as we wrap things up, I wanted to give you an opportunity, John to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and engage with you like what they did there. Maybe maybe have you come in and speak at a state cup at a state conference or something like that, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

John Chen 38:23
I see what you did there, Brandon. Yeah, you can reach me on my website, engagingvirtualmeetings.com. Again, engagingvirtualmeetings.com. I do host a conference, Brandon, called The Engaging Conference on October 1, second, and third, it’s every October to every year if you’re listening to this later. And this year, it will be our first time that this conference will be running hybrid. And we’ll be showing the best engagement techniques, whether you’re in person or virtual or having it all at the same time. So if you run any kind of conference, Summit, masterclass, or meeting, you know, I invite you to come join us at the engaging conference and see the all the latest techniques around engagement. Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 39:10
You bet I could see somebody really nerding out at that conference and just taking notes of all the the tech and the approach to driving engagement on that virtual front. So I appreciate it. This has been a fun conversation, engaging conversation. I hope all the listeners found it to be valuable as well. And I appreciate you setting aside some time to join us today here on chamber chat podcast to share some of your experiences. I love the personal stories that you share. But most of all these tips and and action items that you shared for chambers to help take their organizations to the next level. So thank you for being with us today. John, I really appreciate it.

John Chen 39:48
Thank you, Brandon, and thank you to the chamber chat podcast.

Brandon Burton 39:52
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Policy & Advocacy with Brian Francis

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Brian Francis. Brian is founder and CEO of Lumin Strategies, a firm that helps Chambers of Commerce build eight plus advocacy programs through one on one consulting and a signature of advocacy framework online program. Brian’s experience covers nearly all facets of the policy and political world from political campaign leadership on successful bond referendum to successful advocacy as a registered lobbyists. He is past public affairs officer for Mecklenburg County and past vice president of public policy programs at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. He founded lumen strategies in 2016. This year, Brian joins the faculty for the US Chamber Institute of Organizational Management. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Davidson College, whose basketball program he’s supported since before Steph Curry. Brian, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Brian Francis 3:11
great. Thanks, Brandon. I’m really excited to be with you all today. And you hit on one interest, perhaps interesting thing about me I’m big, big college basketball fan. So the last couple months have obviously been a lot of fun for me, both for my alma mater, Davidson College, but also in the Big East. My son is a freshman at Butler this year. And so we’ve been following them. A more controversial thing about me perhaps one of my passions is that I think we should eliminate timezones. And we can certainly talk about that. But that’s probably a different podcast.

Brandon Burton 3:42
Yeah, you can get on your soapbox there for a moment right. Now, that’s great. So I’d like for you to take just a few minutes and tell us a little bit about lumens strategies, what the company is like, who you serve, and it’s about advocacy, but just maybe in a brief nutshell, to kind of set the stage for discussion. Yeah,

Brian Francis 4:04
probably like a lot of companies. You know, we’ve evolved over time. So we’ve been in business for about eight years, we started as a strategic communications consulting firm, that really dabbled in a lot of different areas. But over the last several years, we’ve really honed in on chambers of commerce and helping them build advocacy programs. And we we do that two ways. One, we work one on one with chambers in a consulting role many times serving essentially as the VP of public policy for their Chamber of Commerce. In fact, some of our clients put us on their staff page as their Director of Advocacy or VP of public policy. And we also work with chambers of commerce through our signature online program, the advocacy framework. This is oftentimes for chambers that maybe are a little bit smaller, aren’t looking for the kind of the investment required to have somebody working directly with them. But what to get involved with advocacy wants to learn how to do advocacy, and through our program, we basically teach them how to institute and run a public policy or advocacy program.

Brandon Burton 5:06
That’s very helpful. And as listener might guess, we’ve decided on a topic for our discussion today to be centered around advocacy since you guys are kind of the experts on that. So we look, we look forward to dive in deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Brian, we’re back. So before the break, when you were telling us a little bit about lumen strategies, it’s obviously a company that you built around helping chambers of commerce and build advocacy programs. Why do you think that advocacy programs are so important for chambers to be involved with?

Brian Francis 7:23
Well, if you think about chambers of commerce, historically, really, the whole reason we have Chambers of Commerce is to help businesses in a community grow. And chambers do a lot of great work around networking activities, helping their members meet potential customers. But I think a core part of helping the business community grows, ensuring that there is a public policy climate that allows for businesses to grow. And really, Chambers of Commerce were instituted to represent business interests in their community. And so from a foundational perspective, I think it’s really important. I think it’s also really important as you talk to maybe your higher investor members, you know, a lot of times if you have a manufacturer in your community, they’re not looking to sell to the community, their market is global. If they’re going to get involved in the chamber, they need a different value proposition. And really the value proposition for them is what are you doing to make the overall business climate better, so their business can succeed? Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 8:25
And I know chambers of all different sizes, you know, they’re in different areas of spectrum, right, as far as being involved with advocacy. So I’m hopeful that our conversation today will help shed some light on different ways to get involved on an advocacy front, whether that’s bringing in somebody like yourself to help with that effort, or just to expose them in ways to to better support those business members that they have. So kind of along those lines with advocacy. I think there’s a real argument to have ag advocacy as an investor hook. Right. So as you’re going after new members, you’re trying to bring in new businesses to join the chamber. How would you see using advocacy as an investor hook? Well,

Brian Francis 9:15
I really do think it is something and you have to think about your high level investors, it is a way to get them to participate more in your chamber and to put more money into your chamber. And you there’s some four boxes out there people will have probably seen when you think about your Chamber members, you have chambers who Chamber members who are looking to get something from your chamber, and you have Chamber members who are looking to get something done. And one of the things we talked about is you we often think about the return on investment for members and a lot of members are looking for that return on investment. And if you think about you know a lot of your smaller members, your local retailer or maybe a residential realtor or a copier salesman, they’re looking to find customers and they’re going to measure their return on how many customers? And how much revenue Did you directly produce for them? Like I mentioned for a manufacturer or maybe even a bank or a bigger member of your community, and oftentimes the longer member longer time members of your community, those who are the pillars of the community, as it were, they’re not really looking for that so much the return they’re looking for is, how much can they grow their business, because you have helped foster a climate that is positive to them. I would also say, you know, for those smaller members, there is a direct return as well in in North Carolina, a couple years ago, there was a tax issue related to PPP loans, that local Chambers of Commerce got behind and ultimately saved small business in North Carolina $640 million through their advocacy. Now that 640 million was 5000. Here, 5000. There, but that was it made a big difference to a lot of small chamber members. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 10:57
absolutely. And I think there’s a lot of examples through the pandemic, and the PPP loans and things of that nature, where you can really see the advocacy efforts of chambers really being recognized, especially by those businesses that maybe were more transactional, to begin with, and kind of moves them over to the transformational side of things and understanding the bigger picture of what chambers can do. You didn’t necessarily use those that phrase of transactional, the transformational, but are there other ways that you can see where you can take somebody from a transactional relationship to more than transformational in this kind of a advocacy conversation

Brian Francis 11:36
100%. And in fact, one of the things I would say is you need to talk about that value. I’ve seen this with a lot of chambers we work with they they’ll have a tiered do structure, which I 100% support, and I think it is the direction all the chambers need to go and if they don’t have one already, but when you get to those higher tiers, the value that the Chamber often puts on that piece of paper is we will give you a foursome at our golf tournament, or we will give you a table at our annual meeting. And a lot of times, that’s not necessarily what those larger investors are looking for. What they’re really looking for, is we saved your company money by helping navigate this regulation or changing this local zoning regulation, or, you know, we were at the forefront of this tax policy change that is making a difference of 10s or hundreds of 1000s of dollars for your business. So part of it is changing what you talk about and recognizing the and giving credit to those people because of your investment, we were able to do this advocacy. And because we were able to do this advocacy, you saw this return.

Brandon Burton 12:45
Absolutely, yeah. But just the examples he gave there, I can see where some members may say I’m, I’m really just not a golfer like that doesn’t appeal to me, or I really don’t need to go to another meeting, like as much as I appreciate the prime table at the annual meeting, I don’t really care to go, you know, whereas if they can look to the chamber and say, Man, you guys really helped us tackle this big issue of child care, or workforce or whatever it may be, then they can really see where the needle is moving with their business with the involvement with the chamber. So

Brian Francis 13:18
absolutely, I mean, we I think we forget, sometimes sometimes it can be a hassle to have to try to fill a table. And so you’re actually making your members life more difficult on by trying to give them something that they really aren’t looking for. Right?

Brandon Burton 13:32
So great arguments for being involved with advocacy, what from your experience, and just reasonings that you can see why. What holds the chamber back from getting involved with advocacy.

Brian Francis 13:44
I would say the first thing and I hear this all the time is chamber presidents executive directors and their boards say, we don’t want to get involved in politics. And oftentimes that comes from a bad experience that maybe they had years ago where somebody said the chamber is too political. And so we’re dropping our membership. And one of the things that we emphasize to people, we’re not talking about getting involved in politics, we’re talking about getting involved in policy. And here’s the distinction that I make politics is about people and power. Policy is about laws and regulations. And I will put the caveat out there. There are some chambers out there who get involved in politics, they have PACs, they endorse candidates. And I would say that’s kind of at the end, you talked before about a spectrum that’s at the end of the spectrum. If you’ve never done anything in the political realm or the policy realm before, that’s not where you start. Where you start is identifying the issues that matter to your members and working on those issues, regardless of who supports them. So this isn’t, hey, we’re going to support this ordinance because the mayor asked us to it’s we’re going to support this ordinance because we had a rigorous process to identify what is important to our members. And they’ve told us this is an important issue that needs to be corrected in order for their business to grow.

Brandon Burton 15:03
Absolutely. And I would even say even some of the pushback that they might have gotten in the past, I think getting involved with politics rather than policy is an obvious reason why they might hear some of that pushback, but there’s always going to be somebody who’s not happy with something, and they tend to be the loudest, right? So if you’ve got 1000 members, or 400 members, and you hear that one squeaky wheel, you know, that’s not indicative of what everybody else is thinking. So everybody else is cheering you on, even though they may not be coming to your front door to patch on the back.

Brian Francis 15:37
You know, that’s 100% Correct. And I imagine most of your audience are chamber staff, folks. And that’s one of the things that we talk about. When that squeaky wheel starts to squeak, we think it’s very important for your chamber to have a member driven policy process where you have a committee that’s developing the policies, it’s reviewed by your executive committee, it’s approved by your board. So when that squeaky wheel calls up the director and says, Why did you decide this? The director can say, Whoa, I didn’t decide this, this was decided by our members, by the people who participate, who learned about the issue and identified it as being something important for us to be involved

Brandon Burton 16:15
in. Right, right. And I think for all the staff to be able to understand this is how you respond when when there is opposition. I think that’s very important. So I can understand your chambers may not want to get involved with politics. But to think more on the policy side, I think would hopefully generate some interest for chambers to get involved. Are there other reasons that that you can see why chambers hesitate from getting involved with advocacy? Yeah, so

Brian Francis 16:45
I think once chambers make the decision, they want to get involved in policy. The next step is where do I start? And where do I find the time to do it. So a lot of chamber executives don’t have experience in the policy world. They, they literally don’t know where to start. And then also, you run into this all the time, especially with your smaller chambers. You know, there’s 1000, things that they have going on, you need to get your invoices out, you’ve got business after hours, you have to plan annual meetings coming up. The local school system wants to talk about workforce development, where do you find the time to put together a policy program and and I’ll say, that’s really where we step in. Both from our past experience, I’ve been involved in the political and policy arena for more than 25 years, we kind of have the expertise of how the process works. But then also, from the capacity standpoint, we try to make it easy for our clients in either our consulting or our online program by providing email templates, draft agendas, really all the work that needs to be done behind the scenes we do for them, so that they can just go out and execute on on running the policy program. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:00
no, I can see where where the expertise and capacity could be, you know, hurdles to overcome. Maybe starting with with expertise, if you don’t feel like you’re equipped to be able to handle this, what are some solutions or ways to overcome it? I think every chamber needs to be involved on some level on that spectrum with advocacy and policy. But how do you overcome that big hurdle of not having, you know, the not being fully equipped, or you may not feel like you’re equipped enough to handle these these topics? Well,

Brian Francis 18:32
I think the first thing is to accept and feel confident that it’s okay that you don’t understand every issue in the middlee. Elected officials don’t lobbyists don’t There are a lot of niche areas. And so the first thing I would do is say, look for your experts. So if there is an issue that a lot of members are talking about health insurance costs, and you have an insurance agent or representative who’s a member of your chamber, go to them to look for information, go to the local hospital system. If broadband is a a coming issue in your community and and investing there, look to the telecom providers that may be involved. So within your membership, you have a lot of expertise. And one thing you can do is look to your members to help educate you on their areas of of expertise. The second thing I would do and this varies a little bit from state to state, but oftentimes the State Chamber of Commerce can be a great resource. We work in South Carolina quite a bit and the South Carolina chamber does a great job every week of putting out a an email and a social media post that has just three things to know. And oftentimes, those are focused on policy issues that are moving through their legislature. And so you can often kind of repurpose that content and share it back out to your members and establish yourself as an expert just by finding the information for your members that they don’t have time to find.

Brandon Burton 19:57
Yeah, and that that helps with The Capacity stand front too, if you’re able to have a trusted source, like a State Chamber who’s doing a lot of the legwork, they have staff members who are facing, you know, the advocacy issues, and being able to put that out, be involved, like tap into that resource, but then repurpose it, then it shows Hey, we’re tapped into knowing what’s in the know, and what’s important to you. And, and all of that, are there other ways as far as tapping into the capacity issue, that time issue for chambers with getting involved? Or is that the the main thing you’d go to?

Brian Francis 20:34
So I think those are definitely helps. You know, I would say, if you have volunteers who have capacity, this is a great way to plug them in. One of my favorite tricks, so to speak, is to find a former chair of your board, who still wants to be involved. A lot of times, you know, these chairs kind of they they have their chairmanship year, they’ll have their immediate past chair year, and they still want to be involved with the chamber, they’re not sure what to do next. And so getting them involved in chairing a policy committee, you’re drawing on somebody who has a lot of experience and a lot of leadership within your your organization. And so you can rely on them. You know, and I’d say, your drawl from other Chambers of Commerce. You know, a lot of that one of the important things to get started is developing a legislative agenda. And Chambers of Commerce typically will put those on to their websites. So go around to other communities that are of like size to yours in the state are maybe even a little bit bigger, maybe more involved with it and see what they’re talking about. And use that as a jumping off point.

Brandon Burton 21:39
I love that. It’s it’s always good to collaborate good ideas from other chambers. And and the the idea of using a past chair, I think is is crucial, because they’re intimately involved with the the goings on with the chamber. They understand the mission and vision they’ve been highly involved. And to be able to keep them involved in a meaningful way, I think is a great way to utilize a past chair, that’s a great idea.

Brian Francis 22:03
Well, the other thing I would say to with working with other chambers in advocacy, coalition building is really important. And so sometimes people are like, Why do you still want to take what somebody else did, and I can make some arguments, you shouldn’t just do that, because you want your members invested in your policy positions. So I always say use them as ideas, rather than just taking something old cloth from somebody else. But once you say, hey, childcare, and ensuring that we have more childcare workers is an important issue to us, and we want to work on it, you can leverage the other chambers who have said the same thing to work together. And not everybody has to be the leader and carry all the water on each issue. Sometimes simply saying me to our chamber to supports this can really help move something forward. And the other people who have already identified that issue will be happy to have you working with them, and won’t really see it as you’re taking something from them, but rather, you’re adding something to their efforts.

Brandon Burton 23:02
Right. And I think as far as coalition’s go, especially with a regional focus, if you’ve got the chambers within your county or a Tri County area where you’re facing a lot of the similar issues together, it’s one thing from a chamber from another state, there’s still value that can be found there for sure. But you definitely wouldn’t want to copy paste, you know what they’re doing. And then South Carolina if you’re in Tennessee, for example. But if you’ve got other chambers in your county, that you can collaborate together and really build something that’s efficient and meaningful for your members. I agree.

Brian Francis 23:36
And particularly because we’ve really tried to focus our clients on working at the state level, what we have said is at the federal level, it’s just so big. And the process, especially these days is so unwieldy. It’s hard to have influence. And at the local level, a lot of stuff just happens kind of ad hoc, you know, you run into the mayor, and you talk about an issue and it gets resolved. But the state process, it’s it is more of a process. There’s a timeline that needs to be involved. There’s, there’s a lot more work, that move happens to move something through. But chambers really can have a lot of influence. You’re seeing your state reps, hopefully, you’re seeing your state senators, they’re calling on you for advice, and it’s a place where you can really have an impact. Right?

Brandon Burton 24:18
Absolutely, you can make that impact. And I’d like to argue that maybe it does make an impact on the federal level if enough states are doing it and the broader level can see what’s important. But Brian, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask for the chamber listening who’s interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What tip or strategy might you offer to them to try to accomplish that goal?

Brian Francis 24:43
So the first thing I would say is have a conversation with your board. You know, this is really I’ve started by saying needs to be a member driven process and that starts with your leader members who are on your board of directors. Talk to them about why you You think advocacy is important, we have on our website or by contacting me, I can send to you a PowerPoint draft presentation that you can literally drop your Chamber’s name into. And it kind of walks through how to have that conversation, a lot of what we talked about today about how to talk to them about being involved in policy, not politics. What you need to do to get started with kind of the steps are that you’ll go through the process, but the very first thing you need to do is have buy in from your board, because this is not an easy thing to do. If it is staff driven, you really need to have that volunteer leadership on board.

Brandon Burton 25:34
Absolutely. So I like asking this question to everyone that I have on the podcast, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brian Francis 25:48
So the first thing I would say, obviously, we know we’re a much more global economy. So the the hometown member to member transactions become less and less prevalent, it’s easy to find a website provider who’s across the country across the world. And so I think there is a need for chambers to evolve, and to continue to provide that value. But I would also say, when you look at the political world these days, I would say that we are oftentimes dominated by extreme conversations or folks who are more at the the ideological fringe. And I think there is a need for a common sense, bro business policy advocate in just about every community. And it’s if the chamber is not doing it, we always say if the chamber is not the voice for business, then business has no voice in the community. And so I really think the futures of chambers, if they are going to continue to be relevant, they have to be involved in providing that voice to say, regardless of all the stuff that people are talking about, that elected officials are talking about, here are the things that we really need to do to invest in our community, to invest in our workforce and to promote our businesses so that our economy can continue to thrive.

Brandon Burton 27:07
Right. And I think you hit on the political fringes, I think so much of that we see on the national level, right? Watch news channels and things like that, where you get in the local levels, you get into local policy and and even state policy. And you don’t see quite as you know, dramatic ends of the you know, the those political fringes that the opposite ends of the spectrum, there’s a lot more in the middle. And there’s a lot more that chambers can can stand on as being that same center and being able to bring people together, that I think that that vision you have of chambers, the future, I think is spot on. So thank you for sharing that. I wanted to give you an opportunity, Brian to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or ask for the PowerPoint that you mentioned, to be able to have these conversations at their board, what would be the best way for listener to reach out and connect with you?

Brian Francis 28:04
Well, I’d say there’s two great ways. First of all, you can always email me is bfrancis@luminstrat.com, that’s L u m, I n s t r a t, or connect with me on LinkedIn on Brian Francis, from North Carolina, Davidson College, that should give you enough to find me, we try to put out a lot of content that is helpful for chambers of commerce through the LinkedIn. And so that would be a great place as well. That’s

Brandon Burton 28:32
perfect. And we’ll get that in the show notes as well make it easy to find and, and I would encourage everyone to reach out to Brian and ask for that PowerPoint to be able to start these conversations with your board. They will to get ideas of where on that spectrum you want to jump in at and getting involved with policy and advocacy at your chamber. And, and maybe you’re already involved. But let’s see, you know, how can you continue moving that needle. But, Brian, it’s been great having you with us today. I appreciate you taking some time to deal with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you’ve pulled back the curtain on a lot of important topics and around policy and chambers getting involved and overcoming you know some of the hurdles that they might see as hurdles, but to see that it is possible to move, move past and move through those obstacles to really get involved in a meaningful way. So I appreciate you being on here and sharing your expertise with us. Well,

Brian Francis 29:29
thank you for having me, Brandon. Maybe I can come back and talk about Thompson sometime.

Brandon Burton 29:33
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Civic Engagement with Candance Brake

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Candance Brake. Candance is the President and CEO of the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce in Kentucky. She has held the CEO position since 2015 and has a career dedicated to Community and Economic Development. She served as a three term city commissioner from 2004 to 2010, serving on conditions that led to the downtown placemaking strategy and the region shift to a knowledge based economic development strategy. Prior to holding public office, she served as executive vice president of the greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corporation and deputy judge slash slash executive for the Davies county fiscal court. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Government at Western Kentucky University. She served on numerous boards and Ken Ken Commission’s throughout her career. She’s also a member of ACC and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce executives and the Kentuckians for better transportation. That candidates I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Candance Brake 3:13
Well, thank you so much for having me branded and thanks to Carlos Phillips for passing my name on to you. He’s a rockstar around here. So and hello to all my fellow champ chamber executives. We you know we’re all right now grinding it out. And I’m think we’re all probably dealing with legislative sessions no matter where we live around the country. So it’s it’s such an energizing part of my life to be a part of a group of people who are really pushing our country forward as we push our communities forward sometimes against all the odds. So thanks for having me here today.

Brandon Burton 3:46
Yes, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about the Owensboro Chamber of Commerce. Just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to set the yeah for our discussion.

Candance Brake 3:59
So we actually are in the Evansville, MSA to put it in perspective of where we’re located. So we’re close to Illinois, Indiana and content. We’re in Kentucky. So we’re in a tri state area. And we have around 180,000 and RMSA. Ellen’s borough is a town of around 60 in a county of around 120. And our chamber we represent around 1000 members. Our membership goes all the way from health care to nonprofit to churches and mostly predominantly small businesses most chambers are our annual budget is a little over a million dollars. And so we operate small we have a small team of four that serves those 1000 members and we’re always trying to like every other chamber our size, we’re trying to offer more programs and and do more things for our communities because we know that that what we can do even from a programming perspective is going to translate into economic growth for our region. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:58
absolutely. Yeah. for staff to service 1000 members, you guys are hustling you guys are you’ve got really good efficiencies and programs in place. So

Candance Brake 5:08
I would say both I would say yes really lucky to have each other to great team.

Brandon Burton 5:14
Very good. Well, I’m excited for our topic today as we dive into that, around the the idea of civic engagement, and I think you have a unique perspective to bring to this topic. And I think across the country, there’s, you know, chamber chamber leaders from all different walks of life, some that are just starting day one today, and others that have had a whole career as a chamber executive. And you know, maybe some feel like they haven’t been given the keys or the permission to get involved civically, so I’m excited to dive into that with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Candance we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into the topic today of civic engagement. So I would like to hear from you. Just to start off, let’s let’s hear from your perspective. What should a chamber be thinking of when it comes to being involved civically in their community?

Candance Brake 7:55
So yeah, I think a lot of that Brandon depends on the size of the community or the chamber is our community. As I said earlier, we’re we’re considered a rural area. But we do have an urban center, we’ve got just a really interesting mix of what we do here economically, but also, you know, with with people who live here, we have a rising M Afghan refugee population, and then several other refugee populations that are coming to our community that we’re very excited about. And we actually have, I believe I’m bragging, but sometimes I can go just a little too far. But I believe we have the highest refugee certification rate in the country. And that’s due to the fact that we have people in our community that are that are working tirelessly to do this. So in that that person who’s in charge of that is actually our chamber executive committee. So we try to have had built a bench that really understands the community engagement piece. People who don’t see big pictures often have a hard time understanding why chambers would need to be involved in civic engagement. You know, but all the the national studies that you’ve seen, show that communities around the country that people are dealing with an ever growing sense of isolation. And isolation is not good for human beings for mental health, but it’s also not good for economies. You know, people need to feel like they’re part of things to be productive citizens. So that’s where we start started. A few years back deliberately, we engaged a data person to look at our civic engagement levels and where they were as compared to around 50 other peer communities around the country. And those peer communities would have been communities without interstates like our community and without for your public universities we have to private colleges in our community, but that public universities we know it was a giant game changer for our community. So we looked at peer communities to see how we stacked up to those with regard to civic engagement. And what we found was we were we were clearly lacking in some some very critical roles. And our board at that point said, Okay, it’s time for us to do something proactive and jumpstart where we are, as a region, or we’re going to fall behind. And that’s when we came together. And we developed a Leadership Institute. And that we started it at the chamber, and we nurtured it over a year long period. And now it is a standalone nonprofit, that it’s a nonpartisan, it’s a think tank, but it’s also a do tank, okay, we’re, we’re they’re really making things happen. But that that organization, which is in our building, but but separate, it’s really, it’s already making some great headway in civic engagement pieces.

Brandon Burton 10:55
That’s fantastic. So I would love to know a little bit more about the Leadership Institute, kind of the purpose and mission behind that kind of the work that’s driven there. But also, as I touched on in the the introduction, those who have been in chamber work long enough, have figured out how hopefully, they figured out how to get a seat at the table, how to be involved civically, but those who are brand new, maybe we can just, you know, work it into the conversation as to where they can feel the ownership and the responsibility to really take charge. You

Candance Brake 11:30
know, and I do think, and this is coming from a female perspective, but I do see, you know, a lot of chamber presidents around the country, this, this disposition is being occupied predominantly more and more by more females, I think. And that’s just anecdotal. But women have a harder time of getting sometimes just taking their seat at the table. That’s what we do. That’s what we need to do. So you know, it’s not a matter of asking for it. It’s just taking it. And, you know, stepping out of our comfort zone, we’re representing the business community, we’re representing nonprofits, and people who want to make things happen. And, you know, to me, anytime I would feel hesitant on getting that seat, I think about this isn’t about me, this is about all the people that I’m representing that write a check to my organization to fund our work. And I have to do this for them. Right.

Brandon Burton 12:22
Yeah. I think that’s a really good perspective to bring that it’s not about you, you gotta get over the uncomfortable kind of situation and just take charge and realize it’s for the people you represent.

Candance Brake 12:33
And that makes it a lot easier to be to push your way in the day when you realize it’s this isn’t about me. This is about, you know, it’s about all those other folks.

Brandon Burton 12:41
It is and as you push a certain agenda to it’s not about you or your political views at all. It’s about representing the business community. So yes, yeah. So tell us a little more about the Leadership Institute, then about what that involves. And kind of the the origins of that and how it’s how it’s become what it is now spun off into its own nonprofit. It

Candance Brake 13:00
was really an origins of, of business community and business leaders around our table and nonprofit execs and higher ed leaders and people that were seeing that we had. We don’t if you don’t know how to say this in a constructive way, but a lack of intergenerational leadership in our community. The majority of our elected officials at that time, it was actually a maybe all of them were white men, Catholic, over the average age, I think was 71. That’s

Brandon Burton 13:35
normal, right?

Candance Brake 13:38
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s city and county. Okay. That was all of our elected officials. Local. So, you know, it’s it was a matter of of the chamber going, Okay. This is not working for us, you know, we have to bring everyone to the table. Everyone has a unique perspective. And we have to create a city where people want to be if we’re going to compete, and we’re all saying this, and everybody that’s listening to it is shaking their head, because this is what we all deal with every day. But but the Leadership Institute was formed on that knowledge and the foundation that we have to do something we can’t be passive, and wait for someone else to do something. A cultural piece in our community has been really over the last 30 years, is to look to elected officials to lead and to kind of acquiesce, the role of citizen engagement to them. So our leadership institute is it’s more about Grassroots Leadership. It’s involving everyone and teaching people in their role as citizen teaching them how to get power for things that matter to them and that they feel like matters to the community. We have bases on the Kansas leadership Center’s adaptive leadership model And we do adaptive leadership training quarterly for people who have been in other leadership programs in the community that are interested. And that’s been really, really interesting and cool to watch. People, the light bulbs come on in people’s eyes, you know, like, oh, I don’t have to be an elected official, I don’t have to make this change. And we have some really great things happening now because of that.

Brandon Burton 15:23
Yeah. So personally, you took civic engagement to another level, right? You worked at the chamber, and then became an elected official for a time period. And all right back to the chamber. And I understand there in Owensboro, there’s a little bit of a history of, of a chamber staff becoming elected officials. So but I’d love to know what perspective that brings for you, as well, from having the chamber point of view. And then as the elected official, and then bringing it back to the chamber. Yeah.

Candance Brake 15:53
And also with the county, because I was on the county staff to was their administrator for a while. So yeah, I think the local government experience as an elected official, but also as a staff person, it gives it really gives you an inside an inside knowledge on the nuances of how they operate, first of all, you know, but also, you know, it’s kind of there’s no mystery in it kind of takes the veil off. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s representative government, and they’re here to represent us. And, you know, that’s all I don’t know. So that’s, you

Brandon Burton 16:27
know, that’s, that’s good. In that experience, was there talk about chambers of commerce that are trying to get the local chamber involved at different things are very siloed. No, the

Candance Brake 16:40
chamber, the chamber was always, what’s the chamber going to think about this? What’s the chamber gonna say? And then, when we did our we did that massive economic development placemaking strategy piece downtown, the Chamber support for that was critical, because we did write attacks to find it was $150 million in infrastructure improvements, and then 40 million from the federal government’s thanks to Senator McConnell. But but we had to raise those, we had to raise taxes. So the chamber coming to that meeting, when we raised it, and we had a, we had a City Commission chamber full of very angry, very loud, as anyone can imagine. And there was, it was one of the toughest meetings I’ve had, and I’ve had some tough ones. But having the chamber there to stand up and support us, was invaluable. It didn’t slow the den of the The cave people, the citizens against virtually everything. But it did, it did. It did give us the wind, I don’t know, in the courage, you know. So as a chamber president, now I know how important our role is, to those elected officials and to the staff, you know, because sometimes the staff are doing things that the elected officials don’t like, but the chamber wants them to do it. So it, you know, we have an important lobbying role within all the things that happen in the community,

Brandon Burton 18:04
right. And every community is so different on what their needs are and what those hot topics are at the moment. But for, for somebody who may be newer in the position, what would be a good first step to try to maybe level up there or get involved civically? And really? No, it’s about taking the seat, but really making the introductions trying to go to lunch with somebody like what what would you suggest, like tactic wise, to try to get involved?

Candance Brake 18:33
So I think I think the adaptive leadership model is the most important, you know, because your core constituents are going to depend on what issues you know, and if you were moving into a new community, I think that would be one of the more difficult chamber roles to take, because you have to find out, you know, who, where’s the power? And who are the players? Who can you trust that you have to do a lot more listening? than speaking for I would say here, you know, and that’s what I did you have to learn the rollback, but you do have to learn? who’s listening to whom, and, you know, who are the experts in what areas and and who are the, you know, we’re the hidden roadblocks or the hidden. I don’t say enemies, but the people that are going to try to kill projects in progress.

Brandon Burton 19:21
Yeah. So do you find that as a chamber, you’re taking issues to your local governments? Or are you seeing what the local governments do and trying to get behind those things that support local business? Or does it go both ways? How does how’s that relationship?

Candance Brake 19:35
It’s absolutely a mixture. You know, it’s there every day is a different, you know, piece of our partnership, but some days, it’s them coming to us and some days, it’s our going to them. But regardless, it’s that partnership is is very important to all of us here. And it’s the only thing that we can when people stopped talking, we stopped moving forward,

Brandon Burton 19:56
right, right. Now I think that’s so key. You So I always like asking this question. So for listeners who are out there who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item, might you suggest that they can maybe try implementing at their own chamber to see some positive results?

Candance Brake 20:17
Well, I think, for smaller chambers, one of the problems is that we don’t have, we don’t have the time to do things that we need to do. And I think one part of what what I did when I got into this position was we had all of these active committees. And I have a different philosophy on that of the committee meetings, because I worked on the echo chamber days where we had small business committee that had to meet once a month, we had to have the programming we had to do, and then staffed for other committees, and all I was doing was staff and committees, and not doing work, or not doing the important work for the community. So we have, we did an essential, basically an inventory on really where we are the chamber, we are a small business committee, I there’s there seems to be, so we eliminated things, and then we shifted to programming. And that has been, that’s been something I think that’s made us very successful. It has helped us engage a different group of people in the community through our programming. And it’s also given us an opportunity to develop some non dues revenue potential. And I mean, we all know that the non dues revenue is very important to our, to our existence.

Brandon Burton 21:32
Yes, no, I think that’s such a key point to touch on and, and really just taking that inventory of, you know, what is it that’s that’s sucking all your time out? Doing

Candance Brake 21:41
this? You know, why are we doing this? And is this really feeding our mission the way it needs to? Right? Yes.

Brandon Burton 21:46
So it’s not only the time, but it’s the energy that gets sucked into, like you were saying these different committees, right. So then when it comes back to that important work of really moving the ball forward, there’s nothing left in the tank. So I think being able to reassess, eliminate, shift those priorities and programming, I think you guys are, that’s, that’s great. A great tip. For listeners to really take inventory and see what they can do.

Candance Brake 22:12
You gotta be brave to do it, because it ruffles feathers. And you have old timers who have had been on the Small Business Committee for 35 years. And you know, that’s that was their thing. So, you know, but you got to find a way to get those people can onboard to. That’s

Brandon Burton 22:25
right. In fact, we just we did an episode a few weeks ago about overcoming the vocal minority. So if you miss sang, go back and listen to that, like

Candance Brake 22:34
we can do. I think we need to know a lot about that. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 22:38
Absolutely. So I like asking everybody, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Candance Brake 22:49
Well, I think as our local communities across the country become more nationalized in our politics, I think chambers are going to be more and more important than ever, we have, we have an existential piece, particularly in in areas like islands burrow, where we have lost corporate headquarters, and those corporate headquarters, when they move to other communities around the country, they lose that loyalty that they would have to their local chambers. You know, Walmart was thinking that they’re not members. But we do, you know, everything that we do helps Walmart, and but you look at so many different companies that have taken chambers off of their radar screens. And in essence, what they’re doing is making money in a community. And throughout, then they’ll give some money to a non charity, and then think that checks their block when the chamber is doing the heavy lifting for the charity as well. So we have to figure out how to articulate to those those corporations, why we are important, and get people to understand that and care about it. So I think that’s going to be a real challenge. But the scary part is there’s that big challenge there. But there’s also the vacuum that we have to fill with the leadership piece. And you look around the country, and I look at my colleagues and the great work they’re doing. And and I believe more than ever, you know, and I, I believe that chamber chambers of commerce, can can make our country better I really do. Because they don’t care what party you’re in. They don’t care what your private agendas are. We’re just trying to move the community forward. We’re to me with a great example of, of really how, how our country can work, you know better.

Brandon Burton 24:41
Yeah, no, and I think you hit on something there with really getting that that messaging down to these big corporations that are more national national chains because they do they look at the bottom line and what’s going to make the most profit and then they’ll give something back to the community but it’s not. It’s not hitting where it counts the most. Yeah, it’s for show. It is it is. It’s for show. And I’ve seen that and seen the messaging that these big corporations put out about, essentially just that it’s about the bottom line. Yeah, yeah. So if if anybody hits on something that works well, there, you know, please share it with us. I’ll have you on the podcast, and we’ll talk all about it. Yeah. Both candidates for for anyone listening who would like to reach out and connect with you or learn a little bit more about how you guys approach your civic engagement there in Owensboro, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Candance Brake 25:38
My email, which is cbrake@owensboro.com. That’s love to hear from from colleagues from around the country. Yeah, energizing and empowering because we are really all going through. And I will say one more thing that I would give to a younger or a new person in the chamber world is find another chamber executive, somewhere that’s leading that’s similar to your organization that you can call, and you might be calling to cuss about the the mayor, or you might be calling to cry because your board chair, you know, did something, you know, but But it’s having that person that you can trust. And that really understands, because, as we all know, nobody understands like how insane this world is, until they’ve been in it and the complexities and the balancing act and everything we do every day. There’s just there’s not a lot of folks that understand it. Yeah. So when we talk to chamber time, because chamber time here, you know, one week is actually about two years, it feels like right, I mean, yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:42
so now it’s true. And I think that’s such a great piece of advice. And I would even add to it that as you look to the other chamber executive, the other chamber professional to connect with and have your chamber time. Look at where you are professionally and look at someone who’s maybe a step or two ahead of you, however you determine that. But there’s some real icons in the chamber world. It may seem unattainable to get to where they’re at, if you try to connect with them right away, but look at somebody who’s a step or two ahead of you. That’s doable. You can you can get there and you can look to the adding more people to your chamber time,

Candance Brake 27:21
we all know and we all know Brandon and I know you feel the same way we all know that, that it’s feels makes us feel just as good to be that person that’s called the younger and the more aspiring and makes we could just as much as all of it, you know, as we do when we call the person that’s two years or two things at the wrong from us. It’s yeah, it takes all of us

Brandon Burton 27:40
you get all those reminders of when you were in that position a few years before and like, oh, yeah, that’s why we do this now. Right?

Candance Brake 27:47
And also, you know, it always works out.

Brandon Burton 27:49
That’s right. That’s right. Well, I will get your email in our show notes for this episode. So anyone can look you up there and connect with you. But I really appreciate you setting aside some time today amid your busy chamber schedule to view with us and offer your experience and insights especially on this important topic of civic engagement. So thank you for being with us today.

Candance Brake 28:12
Thank you so much for inviting me and thanks to everyone else for all the great work you’re doing.

Brandon Burton 28:17
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Mergers, Acquisitions, & Affiliations with Arthur Havlicek

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Arthur Havlicek. Arthur is the President and CEO of the Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber of Commerce and native of the region himself. Arthur grew up in Bridgman and graduated from Lake Michigan Catholic High School in St. Joseph. He earned his degree in political science and public administration from Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, during which time he also began managing and winning political campaigns. After college, Arthur served as staff in the Michigan House of Representatives where he was involved with numerous significant legislative achievements. With nearly a decade in public service experience by the age of 27. Arthur decided to return home. He assumed his current position as president and CEO of the chamber in January of 2020, and has quickly become a recognized leader in both his industry and his community. Arthur currently serves as board member at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan Association of chamber professionals, other local organizations and as executive director of a local community and economic development organization called the Bridgman area Chamber and growth Alliance. He’s also a 2023, graduate of the prestigious business leads fellowship program through the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. And Arthur, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to just give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little

Arthur Havlicek 3:31
better. Well, sure. Thanks, Brandon. Thank you, first of all, for having me. I’ve I’ve listened to many of your podcasts with chamber professionals over the last four or five years as I’ve tried to look for advice and counsel on how to take our chamber to the next level. So hopefully I can pass along. Some tidbits to the next generation of folks hear something interesting about me is always a tough question to answer, I think but a development in the last four months was the birth of my daughter Nora. So it’s my wife and I’s first child born on September 12, and you know what a what a paradigm shift in anyone’s life. Having that first first kid and the love that you experience and the smiles that you get that just melt you and you know, being her dad as has quickly become my absolute favorite thing about life. And watching my wife grow into a beautiful mother and it’s been in the last four months have been incredibly rewarding. So I’d say that is that’s what’s top of mind right now,

Brandon Burton 4:47
as it should be. That is awesome. Congratulations to you and your wife. That’s cute. That is something exciting and goes quick. My oldest just turned 18 So it goes In a blink of an eye, and before you know it just cherish her.

Arthur Havlicek 5:06
I can’t even imagine her with teeth. And so thinking about her at 18 is

Brandon Burton 5:11
let alone an attitude, right? Yeah, wait for it. Tell us a little bit about the Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber. Just give us some context, the size of the chamber scope of work, you’re involved with staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the table for our discussion.

Arthur Havlicek 5:30
Sure. So we are a lean and mean organization. We are a Tri County Regional Chamber of Commerce in southwest Michigan serving Burien, Cass and Van Buren counties. We are a 501 C six, which many chambers most chambers are, I believe, and we have about 700 members spread geographically throughout the region. And in multiple states, which is easier for us to say considering we are right on the border of Indiana and often have to compete with Indiana for for business development. We have three full time people on staff, we are on the precipice of hiring a fourth person with some restructuring that we’ve been able to do. And our budget is really only around I’d say 400,000. So you know, that is something that we have taken a look at. And it’s a byproduct, I think of what I would consider the old chamber membership model. And we are trying to shift to a new organizational structure that allows us to fundraise for more impact, hire more staff, have more capacity, do more programming and better serve our businesses so we can talk about what that looks like. I believe that is that direction is the future of chambers. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 6:53
sounds like you’re on the precipice of some really exciting things and some big changes there at the chamber. So the topic that we settled on today I know there’s been a lot of interest in chamber world around this so I’m excited to get your perspective on it but around mergers and acquisitions and and bringing in affiliations you know, with with other chambers possibly so we’ll we’ll dive in much deeper on this conversation and your experience on it as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Arthur, we’re back. I would love to know just from the time you joined or came on board at the Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber. January 2020. There’s some things happening around that time right now, yeah. You can say that the applecart was being kind of tipped over business wise, you know, for for local businesses, small businesses, big businesses just in general, but Chambers as well. So through the pandemic, we saw, you know, some reorganizations with within the chamber world. And I’d love to maybe just get the background and history there locally. like for you guys, what did that experience look like and how things evolved since you came on board in January 2020?

Arthur Havlicek 10:06
Sure, so I get asked this all the time, basically having enough time to find the bathrooms before our entire world changed. And, you know, everyone’s first reaction is, is what terrible timing. I mean, that couldn’t be worse timing. And I genuinely believe the opposite. Actually, I was able to step in, in my role, find the bathrooms made a lot of the key community leaders that I would have to interface with and work intimately with over the, you know, the coming months, and years. And what I always say is, I didn’t have time to get into the chamber box. So we had no problem thinking outside of it, frankly, we were able to act very quickly, very boldly, which were two, I guess, crisis management principles that we actually intentionally adopted during that time. And we tried to innovate and do new things. And while you know, a lot of a lot of organizations, a lot of businesses were rightfully saying, I just don’t know what to do next, we were viewed very much as a leader, and a Pace Setter, and, and we’re able to rally the community around various causes and, and really just energize them. And then my background, in in Lansing, allowed me to read the tea leaves a little better than most, I think, and be able to predict what restrictions were coming next, or make phone calls and clarify what those restrictions included in Michigan, as you may know, is one of the more stringent or someone even say draconian in their handling of the pandemic. So we had businesses shut down for well over a year, entire industries. And again, being on the border, we felt that more deeply, because all of our consumers just drove 20 minutes to Indiana where everything was open. So we were I think it was our level of activity and how vocal we were saying, being pro business and pro public health are not mutually exclusive. There’s a way that we can do this and keep customers safe employees safe, keep our community safe, and keep commerce moving. And I think that the community responded to that. I think they respected that. And frankly, I think that that’s our role as Chambers of Commerce. That’s part of what we were formed to do. And we shouldn’t shy away from those conversations.

Brandon Burton 12:51
Right. So when you were given a little bit of background about your chamber, you had mentioned you guys are a Tri County Chamber. How long have you guys been at Tri County Chamber? And how did that come to be? Great

Arthur Havlicek 13:06
question. So our chamber has gone through multiple evolutions, I guess, this 2024 is actually our 70th anniversary. We started as the Twin Cities area Chamber of Commerce, and that would be in 1954. If the math is correct, and then operated like that became one of the largest chambers in the state, actually, at the time around the 1970s. With something over 1200 Members, I think, very, very impressive. And then is community started to move towards more economic development organizations and economic development focus. We merged with a community development corporation to form another organization and economic development organization. And our chamber sort of went away for a couple of years until the community raised their hand and said, We’d like them back. So then it came back as the cornerstone Chamber of Commerce serving its historical footprint of Northern Burien County. And it wasn’t until we affiliated with a another local chamber in my hometown of Bridgman that that decision was made. You know, looking around the country at some trends for towards regionalism, why don’t we regionalize we’re the largest chamber in the region already. This affiliation with a community, you know, miles away from our historical footprint is is a perfect opportunity. And so we rebranded from the cornerstone Chamber of Commerce to the southwest Michigan Regional Chamber of Commerce, and that would have been, I believe, in late, it was about 2018 2019. So really right before I I got here and just because of the leadership transition. You know, I don’t think that a lot of a lot of that leaving that regional mission had been able to be completed yet just pure sake of timing. And so that was something that I immediately put my foot on the gas, and said, If we’re talking about serving a broader territory, we need to figure out the best way to do that with a small team, we can’t be everywhere. And, and I think that we’ve been able to do that authentically, since my hire, we have absorbed actually two chambers. And that would be the Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce in a town called Stevensville. And then, the Baroda area business association in a small town called Baroda. Neither of those were, you know, we didn’t want to see them go, which is a point that I want to make very clear. We went through a whole process, which I can talk about later, where we were like, What can we do to prop you up but with, you know, just less engagement, from a volunteer perspective in which we see in every community across the country, it’s getting harder to sustain these entities, these all volunteer entities. And so they’ll look to organizations like ours that have the resources and the staff and say, Hey, can we just hand you the keys and trust you to do a good job, and you have to build trust to do that, but that’s what we’ve done. So I think our organization has, in its entire history, absorbed three chambers outright, and has affiliated with one being the Bridgman chamber and growth Alliance, which we’re, we’re going through changes. They’re exciting changes. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 16:55
Now, so that’s it is fascinating. And I, I think that’s important, you had said that you didn’t want to see these chambers or business associations Go Go away. Which is, I think, part of the reason why you guys stepped in to help help make that continue, you know, helped create a bridge, I guess, to continue on with the work that they’ve been doing there. But why don’t you touch a little bit more on that, that the approach with how you didn’t want to see them go, but also supporting them during that transition period?

Arthur Havlicek 17:27
Sure. So. So again, I think both in both of those cases, I mean, they had membership anywhere between 50 to 100, maybe a few more members. And so, you know, in that regard, they were, they were doing well, but it changed over on those volunteer boards, and some of the loss of some of that institutional memory and the burden of having these, typically business leaders spend that amount of time trying to breathe life into an all volunteer organization, in both cases, just became too much. So from the very first conversations we had with them, you know, my my stance was shutting down, you know, these entities should be always the last resort, in my opinion. And I think I, because I genuinely believe identity is important in, in our work in our industry, identity is a crucial component to, you know, promoting your area, but also to businesses wanting to invest in a specific organization. Were a good example of this. The Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber sounds like a massive, somewhat nebulous, right organization that I’m sure there are other businesses that are feeding into that I’d rather feed into my hometown chamber. Well, you know, you lose that hometown identity. And you might lose that business from understanding why it’s important to invest in a chamber in the first place. So I tried to flip it the model on its head and say, How can we prop up and help these community chambers so that businesses, you know, want to invest? They have that community pride in it, and then we can be the backend for it. So what we did not try to keep the answer short was, we had multiple, multiple, multiple conversations with their board of directors, in some cases, taking over a year to talk everything through. I had crafted decision documents that basically were, you know, all the decisions that would have to be made if we, you know, if we affiliate if we merge if we dissolve and, and all the things that would have to be thought through. And simply we we just work through it. And then in both of these cases that I’m referencing, You know, they really came to the conclusion, look, we have faith in you. We really just want to know that that our businesses aren’t being, you know, left hanging, it’s our way to close the loop. But, you know, we think you’ll do a good job. And so they made the decision to bold entirely and then come into us. And what we’ve tried to do is absorb not just those members, but those. Those board, that board of directors, we’ve tried to take them and say, Okay, is there a place on our board for you? Is there a place on our ambassador committee for you? And so that way, we still have their participation and engagement, but without the level of, of, I guess, commitment that they had to before that was becoming untenable? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:48
So you touched on some big things there. And one of the things that I was going to circle back to this identity in that sense of community. I’ve seen this. So in my, my background working with chambers is it’s been chamber publishing that I do so well, oftentimes, we’re working with chambers who have that very defined identity right there, the ABC, City Chamber, right, whatever their their town is. And once you get into a regional or multi County, it, it can kind of lose that sense of that community feel, especially with, as I say, with publications, right? It’s like, you want to highlight the things that community offers, and what’s your scope if you’re covering such a large area. So I like that you guys are being intentional with especially bringing their board members and ambassadors and trying to create space for them within your organization to keep that tie to those communities. But how do you try to enforce that, that sense of identity, that sense of feel, on the local level, I think that’s a that that’s a hard area to navigate. And hopefully, you guys are doing it in more of a successful way than some other chambers might have approach? Well, so.

Arthur Havlicek 22:11
So it is extremely difficult, especially when you’re covering a large territory with very few staff. So but but to be intentional in the communications you’re putting out to be intentional on if you have an event, make sure that you’re inviting, you know, that communities, core people, the identity thing. Chambers of Commerce, in my opinion, are legacy institutions in most of the communities that they exist in. Much like the public school system is in any of those communities. And, you know, the bad C word. And all of this is going to be consolidation. And there’s always fear of that, because I don’t want to lose my mascot. I don’t want to be that mascot, right. So you don’t want your schools to merge, even though that’s probably what’s best for the kids. It’s really no different in the chamber world. So finding a way to keep that identity and you know, celebrate the history and the legacy because you know that that chamber has accomplished a lot over its tenure. It’s it’s no small task. With the Bridgman chamber and growth Alliance, the the one that we affiliated, the organization we affiliated with, back in 2018, that that sparked our name change. I want to walk through that because I think it’s a good case study for you know, maybe what, what not to do, and then maybe what to do, and, and so when it was originally constructed, and I’m oversimplifying, but essentially, the CGA and its board remained in place remained its own organization of 501 C, three, completely independent, and we came in and became the service provider for all of those members. So those members started paying dues directly to us. So I’m abridgement business, I’m cutting a check to the southwest Michigan Regional Chamber of Commerce. There’s a variety of reasons that I think my predecessors structured it that way, you know, probably, you know, for no other reason other than we had the the CRM and chambermaster to, to be able to handle all of that and the staff to do the dues and collections. But from what I’ve observed over the now, you know, four years of sitting in this role is that’s a community that is immensely proud of its name. And I believe, you know, we believe so strongly in that identity piece. Over the last several months, we have actually been working to restore the members to that local chamber and serve more as the back end for it and allow it to operate and thrive hopefully as the Bridgman CGA once again, which is, I would like to think a prayer The radical step once you, once you fight and grab these members, most people will do anything to hold on to them. And I’m saying I think what’s best is to, you know, allow them to invest in their community chamber directly have that money, stay there be governed locally, which is also important. And then we will have agreements with that chamber to be the back end to hire the staff person that I referenced, the fourth person that will be coming on shortly. And and just since we’ve announced these changes, it has opened up multiple possibilities with businesses, with the municipalities themselves, the city and the township down there. So, you know, with all chambers being different, or communities being different, there’s no one right answer, you just have to figure out what works for that community. And sometimes, it takes a year of negotiations, sometimes it takes four years of affiliation, before you figure out exactly how it’s going to work. But if you’re authentic and you build trust, you’ll be given that leeway and hopefully end up in the right place.

Brandon Burton 26:10
So with these more recent, you know, opportunities, we’ll say, or experiences of absorbing these other organizations, it sounds like most of them were volunteered led, is that what I understand? So if you can, do you mind talking a little bit about the negotiations with that? Do they approach you did the chamber your chamber, approach them and say, we can help? Or how did these conversations begin and evolve? Yeah,

Arthur Havlicek 26:42
so in, in every one of these situations, the local chamber, so to speak, approached us. And, you know, and I think that probably happened, because we do our best to be good neighbors in the chamber space, I don’t view I view competition as being outside of the region that we’re in, not within it, right. And if we can work together to compete, we’re all going to win. And plus, I think if you are a business that believes in the value of one chamber, you’re helping all chambers, because then you’re you’re one more business that believes in the work that we do. So. You know, I think that we had some trust built to begin with, and we tried to be very collaborative with these organizations. And they were very collaborative, you know, back. But in every scenario, they approached us saying, Look, we’re at a crossroads, we can either try to hire, which we may not have, you know, the dollars to do. We made dissolve, we could fold into you. And we’re basically just saying, hey, look, we need help. And we take I mean, we took each of those conversations as seriously as we could, because that’s, that’s no small thing to say, Hey, we are we may need to wind down this organization. And the other thing, I guess, for our area, specifically, and probably many areas, across the country is our region is has a declining population and an aging population and so demographically, we’re moving in a direction where there are going to be fewer people with the capacity to serve in these volunteer roles. And so the, I guess, we use the term sprawl when we’re talking about, you know, economic development, the organizational sprawl, so to speak, you know, peaked when our population peaked. And as our population has declined, fewer people have been tasked with propping up, you know, not only infrastructure, but in organizations. And so we’re going to see a natural attrition, I think, and our stance is, well, we want to be able to help those that want to stay in existence and, and even help those that don’t. And so that’s what we’ve been doing. There’s no secret sauce. It’s just like, I keep saying the word authenticity, because it’s the I think the number one thing and it’s the thing that you can’t fake definitional but that’s what ultimately allows you to come in and serve these other areas. And if you have you you lead with that authenticity and you try to keep that identity you’re you’re halfway there.

Brandon Burton 29:32
Yeah. So in what you’re sharing through this experience, it sounds maybe a little different than what it would be looked like maybe to acquire another business right? I mean, looking at the the p&l and the financial statements and saying how profitable I get the the negotiations are going to be a different thing because it’s not like you’re saying, hey, we want to bring on you know, more work for maybe a little right Turn. But at the same time you want to support that, like you said, there’s no competition within the region, right? As long as you can build up the region, then you all win. So imagine are there other points and then negotiation would look different than like, looking to acquire a business?

Arthur Havlicek 30:17
Well, so I’m actually glad you made that point. And forgive me for not mentioning it sooner, they’re much like any business acquisition, there was an extensive due diligence process on our end to make sure that we wouldn’t be inheriting any, you know, debt or liabilities, obligations. And, and it required a deep dive into Financials, not not necessarily to see how profitable being in the nonprofit space, it wasn’t about how profitable these institutions were, but just making sure that we weren’t absorbing something that was underwater or had, you know, back taxes, you name it. So, you know, I’ll stress that that due diligence does have to occur, and it has to be done, just like you would in the in the private sector. With that, that level of care, that duty of care. But, you know, being in the nonprofit space, where profit is less important, you need enough dollars to be able to serve your your members effectively. It, it was a I would say a softer, right? There’s the hard skills and the soft skills it was it was the softer of the two that we lead with, because it was really about the end product and the work more than, than the dollars and, and that’s also a byproduct of us not being the initiator, that’s them coming to us and us just saying, How can we? How can we figure out how to make this work in a way that’s not going to put my organization at risk, which I was upfront about with all of them. And they all understood and hopefully appreciated some of the professionalism that that demonstrated that we’re we weren’t just Yes, we’ll take your members it was, let’s go through a process. And think about this. You take a peek at our finances, we take a peek at yours, we make sure everything is actually going to work. So that’s really how we went about it. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I should have mentioned. Yeah, that are an important part a lot sooner.

Brandon Burton 32:25
Yeah. No, I appreciate you touching on that. And as these negotiations went about, was it with the staff or the volunteer staff or with the boards? How,

Arthur Havlicek 32:37
how did the communications go? It was it was typically the executive committee of the board. And, and whatever chairperson or and or president that they had the there were no staff in any of these scenarios, which I think was one of the catalytic reasons that they approached us in the first place. Because they saw us as having that capacity to serve their members better and true to chamber forum. We’re trying to do what’s right by your members, even if it means, you know, saying goodbye to your own brand. That’s, that’s a level of integrity that I don’t think we see often. So. Yeah, it was it was the executive committees and the chairs, specifically that much of the negotiations occurred with.

Brandon Burton 33:24
Yeah, so if we can, I know, we’re getting a little short on time. But I wanted to touch a little bit more on the affiliation part, the aspect, because I don’t know, I think there may be some chambers out there that might shy away from doing affiliations with other chambers, because they feel like they might lose out on some revenue. So you had mentioned that there’s not competition within the region. I love that that point of view. But how would you suggest a chamber approach affiliations with neighboring chambers or chambers that can be supportive of one community? The other? Yeah,

Arthur Havlicek 34:04
so again, scenarios are going to be very different. I mean, in this in our scenario, we were a much larger entity affiliating with a much smaller entity, that dynamic is going to be different than if two chambers of equal size were trying to figure out how they could merge. And we’ve seen We’ve seen that happen quite a bit and just you know, you take the two community names and put them together. But in in, in our case, that affiliation agreement that we struck, when we signed a legal document, basically stipulating you know, the members would come our way and exchange services would go that way. And it talked about some of the finances and put sunsets and there was there was a phase in for the businesses because our dues structures differed. We were slightly more expensive, but but enough to might be a sticker shock. Docker would have, you know, prevented folks from making that transition. So, you know, I what I want to focus on is, is I guess how we’re going to do it, as opposed to how it was initially done because I think where we’re headed is a much more sustainable model. And, and what we’re doing is we, we worked with the city of Bridgman, in this case and Lake charter Township, which is the township surrounding the city to invest in a in a paid staff person that we ended up actually hiring but those dollars go to the CGA. The CGA, then through a management service agreement compensates us for hiring that individual. We supervise that individual on a day to day basis, but the CGA board actually sets the vision and the duties and responsibilities. And then the CGA board has seats specifically dedicated to each of those municipalities. So there’s all these layers of local control, local governance, and local identity. And like I said, we’re restoring members back to that organization. So that’s our good faith effort saying you’re pitching in, you’re pitching in, we’re taking the business investment pitching in. And then you know, for us, we know that that money is, I guess, coming back to us to be able to pay for that staff. But we’re really a pass through. And really, it’s our benefits, these Bridgman businesses are getting to chamber memberships for the price of one. And they’re able to utilize all of our benefits all of our infrastructure. And and and you know that that reduction in duplication is huge, it allows the dollars to go a lot further. And we’re thrilled to have boots on the ground down there, again, just focus solely on that community, because it’s a community with a tremendous amount of potential. So, you know, it’s, there’s just a ton of, and I guess, you know, just like the private sector, we went about it really, professionally to figure out if the finances would work, what the management service agreements would look like. There’s agreements between each individual municipality and the CGA and then the CGA with our organization, and then between us and the person we hire in so it’s, it’s, it’s complicated, but completely doable. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 37:32
Now, I appreciate you touching on that, because I think and obviously, everyone needs to take their their unique approach to it with every chamber and every community looking a little different. But that helps to give some perspective for chambers and maybe kind of kicking around the idea of affiliations. As we start to wrap up, I wanted to ask for chambers that are listening who are looking to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tips or action item might you suggest for them to try to implement back at their organization?

Arthur Havlicek 38:05
Well, I’ve got a couple if you don’t mind. I use the word authenticity quite a bit. So I will lead again with that you, if you were being authentic, you’re paving a much easier path for everything that you try to undertake. The second thing I’ll say is that I know that all chambers are, are very different, they serve different purposes, different functions. And it might be my background speaking, but I do think that advocacy was a I mean, it’s it is a primary reason why chambers exist. And you know, I It’s an intimidating arena to get into, but there’s a way to do it again authentically, where, where you’re not going to rock the boat, necessarily, but you’re still taking a stand for your members. And the analogy I use here all the time is just about every community has like a humane society, right? Taking care of, of animals, and no one is going to them and asking them why they’re so pro pet. So why would I entertain anyone coming to me and saying, Gosh, why are you so pro business? Well, that’s what I engineered. That’s my job. And when I put it like that, I usually am able to, you know, calm down, whoever is getting a little fired up about the positions I’m taking and just saying it is my job to stand in the gap for these members. You are entitled to disagree with it. And I’m going to serve you anyway. It’s all about the ecosystem. But the larger point the third thing I want to mention is we need to be unafraid to take risks. We need to be bold. There’s the out with a Out with the old in with the bold saying, I think that we as an industry need to be bold. Old in identifying the gaps in our communities and moving unapologetically to fill them. We have tried to do that in multiple different scenarios. And it’s been successful, it’s been scary, but successful. And so like the businesses we serve, you have to take risks in order to advance. And I think part of that risk is also re envisioning what your structure looks like. So the second part to part three of what I’m saying here is, it goes back to something I said all the way at the beginning of the call, which is we’re looking at our structure, which was primarily dues and event revenue, non dues revenue based, you’re you’re very limited in the amount of dollars that you’re able to raise in that way. And, you know, every time you onboard a new member, that’s a new set of responsibilities. And by the time you get enough to hire someone at a at a living, livable wage, you’re behind the eight ball again. So like, most chambers, now, we are moving in the direction of forming a Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber Foundation, a 501 c three arm that will be a subsidiary of ours, and allow us to again, fundraise for impact, increase our capacity and improve the quality of services that we provide to our businesses. And and that’s going to be a paradigm shift for us. First time in 70 years, although being our 70th anniversary, I’ve been going back and looking at our, our, our old newsletters, and in 1968. Our organization’s leadership identified foundations as the future for chambers all the way back in 1968, which blew my mind. But for one reason or another, they never acted on it. Like I said, we the society went the route of economic development organizations instead. So we’re making good on that. This year will be by the time this airs will have announced our foundation and, and it’s going to be home to our leadership programming, some business development, programming and some community development work that we intend to do. And it’s just it’s an exciting change. And I think it’s going to be transformational, not only for our organization, but for it. And it is a bold change. And again, we won’t, we won’t thrive, I think unless we do that our area won’t Thrive unless we do that. And so while we’ve been operating the old way, for 70 years, we’re going to now operate the bold way, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

Brandon Burton 42:39
Yes, I love that. And I’m going to put a plug in here for anyone who hasn’t read or shoes versus chess by Dave Atkinson. Read it, it has a great section all about foundations and why that’s the future of chambers going forward. But that rolls right into the next question about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? I think you just touched on it.

Arthur Havlicek 43:05
I think that chambers have a unique opportunity with the, with the dynamics that all of our communities are facing guarantee just about anyone listening to this call is probably struggling with affordable housing or childcare or they want more trails, and better schools, and all of these things that are more difficult to solve more interconnected than ever. And there is no organization in any community, in my opinion, better situated to solve these problems than a chamber of commerce, because we’re the connective tissue between the public private and nonprofit sector. And it’s not necessarily the chamber that has to do it all we have to bring the folks together, you know, through our ability to convene, to solve and tackle these major problems. And the other thing I’ll say is, you know, our situation where we’re situated, being the largest business advocacy organization in each of our communities, presumably, that that connection to the private sector, I think that we don’t put enough stock or credit into it. Because if you think about it, and this is a major, I guess, soapbox that I like to get on. The private sector, generally either solves the problems in our community through innovation, or they generate the capital for the nonprofit sector or the government to solve those problems. Either way, it starts with the private sector, and us with our relationships, our inherent closeness to those businesses, makes us again, the best organization and each of our communities to take a leadership role and tackle these big issues simply by getting the right people around the table. And, again, that might be an intimidating thing for a lot of chambers, especially, you know, those that are again short staffed, or we have a lot of turnover in our industry. And they might not feel like they have that they’ve earned the street cred in their community, as an individual. If if you’re part of a chamber of commerce, you have that air cover, you have that responsibility. You can make big things happen. And you need to again, move unapologetically in the direction that solves the need for your members and your members. Those businesses who take risks all the time will see you do that will appreciate it and will invest in you to help you be successful. I

Brandon Burton 45:43
love that that really exemplifies the power that Chambers of Commerce hold that everything starts with the private sector. So thank you for for pounding on that a little bit. And getting on your soapbox is well worth it. My pleasure. Well, before I let you go, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys have gone about these mergers and acquisitions and and affiliations, what would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect? Sure, so

Arthur Havlicek 46:15
you can visit our website at www.SMRChamber.com and in fact, if you’re listening to this podcast, I’d Can I encourage you to visit our website because you will see a toggle in the lower right hand corner for our affiliate the Bridgman CGA, which was a way to even link the websites together in a in a very usable fashion. And again, keeping their identity front and center. So visit our website SMRchamber.com, you’ll find our contact information plastered all over there. You can feel free to email (ahavlicek@smrchamber.com) or call don’t hesitate to reach out we’d love to share what we know or or even brainstorm because there’s no right way to do any of this. It’s it’s kind of feeling your way through it. And we’re happy to be that sounding board at the very least. or explain you know, what we ran into and what issues could be avoided or successes could be achieved. That’s

Brandon Burton 47:16
awesome. I do appreciate that. We’ll we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode too. So listeners can look it up there and connect with you but really appreciate you spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast sharing your experiences and and perspective in what can be difficult conversations difficult transitions from one organization to another but also keeping a focus on that identity and that sense of community all along the way. So thank you for for being with us and sharing these things with us today.

Arthur Havlicek 47:50
Thank you, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 47:51
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