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Creating a Chamber Flywheel with Dave Moravec

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Brandon Burton (00:01.57)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a dynamic leader and author.

Since 2020, Dave Moravec has served as a president of the Colerain Chamber of Commerce, bringing with him over four decades of experience in business ownership and leadership across diverse industries.

From owning a printing company to leading chambers in both Illinois and Ohio, and even working in educational technology, Dave’s career is a testament to versatility and vision. Under his leadership, the Colerain Chamber earned the prestigious title of Ohio’s Chamber of the Year for Small Chambers in 2021, reflecting his commitment to foster business growth, connection, and collaboration.

Dave is all about meaningful work and creating strategic opportunities for local businesses to thrive. Outside of his professional achievements, Dave is a published author and avid traveler and still hits the field for competitive baseball. His latest ventures include releasing Echoes Across the Tracks in 2024 and two more books in 2025.

Dave, 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 bit better.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (01:41.15)
appreciate that, Brandon. Again, after a long career in for-profit work, I landed myself in the Chamber of Commerce field, not really thinking that this was gonna be a late in life career shift, but it’s turned out really well, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that. Something somebody would not know about me would be that I was on the Jay Leno Tonight Show in 2011.

I have a bar trick where I can balance coins on my elbow and catch them in a snatch form. And they had a segment where they gave out a meal or no meal if you did your trick on stage, so on screen. So they flew me out to California, got to meet Jay, got lots of notoriety at that time, literally 15 seconds of fame.

Brandon Burton (02:23.212)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (02:37.542)
That’s awesome. So how many coins could you stack on your elbow to snatch in that action?

Dave Moravec – Colerain (02:44.362)
Well, not only did I stack them on my elbow, but I also was blindfolded while doing it. So I’ve logged to my LinkedIn page. If anybody is interested, there’s a blog post from back then blindfolded by Jay Leno. Ultimately, I caught 25 coins, 25 half dollars because the studio was so cold. My hand was freezing up. They have the hot lights on the stage.

Brandon Burton (02:51.093)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (03:13.517)
Yeah.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (03:13.822)
So they keep the foodie-o really cold. Well, your hand freezes up and so the producer said, we don’t care how many you catch, it’s just the fact that you’re getting blindfolded by Jay and you’re gonna catch some coins. It’s a silly thing. we just had some fun with it and I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.

Brandon Burton (03:35.215)
That’s awesome. I’m sure there’s a whole story on how you got onto the radar to get on the Tonight Show, but that’s a great fact and I love finding out these little tidbits about people. That’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Colerain Chamber. Give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work you guys are involved with, budget, to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (03:55.614)
Sure.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (03:59.624)
Yeah, our chamber’s only 11 years old and I came in five and a half years ago to take over as the first executive director, president, CEO. And we had a previous president that was part-time, had laid the foundation for the logo, the website, chamber master, all sorts of foundational pieces. And my role was to take it to the next level.

I started February 10th of 2020 just as COVID was about to happen. And we kind of threw out the 2020 plan and went a different direction. At the time we pared down our membership because people hadn’t come off of the roles that should have come off the roles. We determined there were about 150 active members at that time. We currently have about 275.

So we’ve not quite doubled in the five plus years that I’ve been here. We manage about a $250,000 budget and our community is 60,000 residents. So the second largest township in all of Ohio. myself, part-time marketing and events coordinator. She does some of the admin work. And then I have a part-time person who manages our green initiative.

We’ve got the largest waste facility in greater Cincinnati in our community and litter and recycling and composting is really important to us. So we’ve made an investment from a staff perspective to have a part-time person that does that. myself and two part-time people.

Brandon Burton (05:40.537)
Wow. Well, that definitely helps to get us that perspective. And it seems like there’s been a lot of chamber professionals who were hired in that first quarter of 2020, right before, you know, everything kind of fell apart. So you’re in good company with a lot of others who got thrown into the fire and had to learn, you know, with a lot of stress going on. we’ve…

Dave Moravec – Colerain (06:04.392)
Well, it worked. It worked actually in my favor because of my background in corporate work. You always have to be ready for a challenge. You have to be ready for a paradigm shift. And so when COVID was announced as, you know, closing down the state and it was March 17th, it actually was the day we moved physically to Ohio from Illinois as well. So I’m in a new community, a new situation.

And we just sat down and brainstormed what we could do, what would be allowable under the situation. And we just made it work. And it was just a natural fit. And I’ve told people for the last five years, it was the best decision I made.

Brandon Burton (06:48.064)
Yeah, you know, my family actually moved that same week too. And it gave us a lot of time to hang pictures and unpack boxes and all that with the, you know, being quarantined, but work goes on.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (06:57.33)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:02.444)
But so you have another interesting fact about you that was shared in the the bio, but you’re an author. So Echoes Across the Tracks. Before we get into our topic for today, I wanted to have you tell us a little bit about Echoes Across the Tracks and how it came to be, where the idea came from and what you tap into as you as you write the series. I mean, there’s there’s three books now.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (07:20.67)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:30.53)
But give us that high level synopsis of it and the idea for it.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (07:31.07)
rooms.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (07:34.825)
Yeah. Yeah. And Thanksgiving of 2023. So not quite two years ago. I just had an idea to sit down and tell a story. And the more I wrote, the more it turned into a book. I’ve done a lot of travel as most of us have. We’ve had crazy travel and I had a really crazy travel experience, planes, trains and automobiles type experience over the summer coming back from Colorado.

And so I started writing one, it was the Friday after Thanksgiving. And I just kept typing and typing and by the end of the weekend, I had 10 chapters done. And by the end of the week, the following week, I was done with the book with 17 chapters. Echoes Across the Tracks takes place on the Amtrak train from New Orleans to Chicago.

Main characters heading to the airport as much of us do, we get a flight cancellation notice and we have to react to it. I guess kind of like the chamber reaction in March of 2020. Something had to happen and my cab driver in the story suggests that the main character Charlie take the train instead. And that starts a 30 hour journey from New Orleans to Chicago on the Amtrak train.

The subtitle is Life Lessons Through Unexpected Connections, because you never know where you’re gonna meet somebody. And the train was a good vehicle to be able to talk about networking and meeting people in a professional way and looking others in the eye and shaking hands. The story is told from my perspective. Charlie is an aging business consultant who’s promoting a book in New Orleans. And the story…

takes place over that 30 hour period and it really is just that short a period that the story is told.

Brandon Burton (09:33.241)
So there’s even some chamber connection through the book. As I’ve started reading it, the main character, Charlie, had a profession as a chamber leader. So I love that connection and the tie-in and trying to make, I know if it was your intent, but I like the efforts in trying to make chambers of commerce more mainstream and more front of mind, if we can, to the average person in the community.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (10:01.256)
Yeah, absolutely. We become ambassadors and I’m sure we’ll talk about it as we go through the conversation here, Brandon, but I feel like we can all be ambassadors for Chamber of Commerce, just like we are for a restaurant or for a hotel or for a particular business. And so the last two pages of the book, I actually devote to describing what I call the Chamber of Commerce.

value proposition. And I spell it out really simple in four paragraphs. And somebody who picks up the book, who’s a business professional, may have not thought about Chamber of Commerce as a way to network or to provide marketing support for their business, to get involved in their community or look for ways to compete with larger businesses, you know, in their market space. And so there’s a purpose for, you know, for putting that

piece in at the end. I did so in the sequel that I just recently produced as well. I kept the exact same value proposition in the back of the book to keep it consistent. But Charlie, the main character, has to head back to New Orleans for reasons that I won’t share here because we don’t have enough time. yeah, I don’t want to do that. But the second story is

Brandon Burton (11:20.824)
Can’t spoil the story either, so.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (11:28.242)
think just as interesting and compelling, but doesn’t focus on networking, focuses on customer service. And customer service today in many industries has been taken down a notch because of a variety of different things that business owners aren’t really thinking about. And so I felt that it was important to do so and wrote that into the second book.

Brandon Burton (11:52.183)
Yeah, that’s great. I’ve been enjoying it and I would encourage anybody else listening to check it out. Great story and you’ve got a great creative mind to put it together.

So maybe as a little bit of a segue in the book that goes across the tracks, the main character Charlie, he’s learning and sharing business practices that he’s learned throughout his career and in a large way, that’s what the podcast is for, having different chamber leaders on and talking about business lessons and things that they’ve learned through their career. So today we have Dave on the show to talk about creating a

Dave Moravec – Colerain (12:05.544)
Thank you, Brenda.

Brandon Burton (12:35.472)
chamber flywheel. And it’s a term that I’ve heard before, but I haven’t heard in the term of chambers using a flywheel or creating a flywheel at their chamber. So we’ll dive into that and what all that means as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Dave, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about creating a chamber flywheel today.

What does that term mean to you? Where did this come from and how have you guys worked to implement this at the Colerain Chamber?

Dave Moravec – Colerain (13:09.032)
Sure, we actually have two flywheels. The concept is easy to find if you go to Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great. It’s got a red cover and it has a ring to it. Just like my wife, her name is Patty. So we go by Dave and Patty from Cincinnati. Well, you can find the flywheel in Good to Great in chapter eight. And if you find Jim Collins’ purpose behind it,

He talks about the four to six things that make a business go faster or grow faster or to become stronger But you have to sit down and think about those things and once you come up with those four to six unique Ideas processes Whatever that looks like for your organization and in our case the Chamber of Commerce Then you have to put them in order

and do them in the proper order. So as an example, we might invite people to the chamber and do that really well. And we might do marketing really well. But if we do them in backwards order, we may not get the same result. And so we as a Chamber of Commerce in 2020, I took the Board of Directors through this flywheel process because I didn’t know the community. I was new here.

certainly knew the process of creating a flywheel and using it, but I wasn’t sure what that meant for our Chamber of Commerce. So we did that, we created that flywheel, and then I incorporated a second flywheel. And that’s really what I’ve been teaching on for the last five years, Brandon, to other Chamber leaders. It really has three components. One at the top, where you’re attracting businesses to your Chamber of Commerce.

And if you’re attractive to those chambers of, to the businesses in your community, meaning if you’ve got an outward way about you, your marketing, et cetera, is strong, you’re gonna be attractive and attract others. Well, once you do, you bring them to an event or you show them the value proposition of being involved in a chamber of commerce, you have to engage them. So the second component is engagement.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (15:29.738)
That means coming out to an event, talking to other people, doing something besides sitting in your office and going, well, yeah, maybe I’ll send a check to the Chamber of Commerce. They got to get up and do something. So you have to find a way to engage them. And once you do, hopefully the enthusiasm of your Chamber of Commerce is going to be so compelling that they’re going to become a member or in our case, we use the word investor. So we’re investing in our community. We’re investing in our Chamber of Commerce. We’re investing

in our business community. And once they do and they see that that’s an investment, not a spend, at the end of the month when the monthly dues come around for your chamber, or if you’re on a quarterly or as we are in an annual basis, you’re not thinking that the business isn’t thinking about cutting a check to cover expenses. They’re doing it because they’re investing in the community. And if they are,

and they’re so enthusiastic. The third component is delight. They’re so delighted in what is being offered by the Chamber of Commerce and what you’re doing and what you’re giving back to the community. They’re so delighted, they’re gonna come full circle and attract others that you don’t know. These might be neighbors, these might be business associates, they could be outside of your geography, but see the value of being involved in your community because you have a series of

customers in the community that would be a fit or the business connections or even just the friendships that are developed might be attractive enough that, there you go. There’s the graphic. That’s the perfect graphic. So attract at the top, engage as you come around the lower right-hand corner of the flywheel to the point of delight. And once you’re delighted, you become an ambassador.

just like you would on your fine dining restaurant that you make a suggestion, hey, you got to go to such and such a restaurant when you’re in our community. You’re so delighted you become an ambassador. Many chambers of commerce have ambassador groups. They have a small group of eight or 10 individuals who are charged with wearing a badge on their shirt or their jacket that says ambassador.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (17:52.091)
I want our chamber members to all be ambassadors, because if they’re all working together, that flywheel spins faster and faster and faster than if we just have a handful. And that’s the concept that I’ve been teaching Brandon and that we’ve been promoting as a chamber of commerce for the last five years.

Brandon Burton (18:12.29)
But as you delight the people, it closes that wheel where the delight goes back to attract and just it starts that that whole cycle over again with those new people that are being introduced to what the chamber has to offer.

And when I think of a flywheel, think of it’s a way of applying leverage really. I mean, you have a goal and you’re trying to get there either quicker or more efficiently and the leverage that can be provided as you shared with the attract, engage and delight is going to kind of have that focus all around the growth and applies that leverage to the growth.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (18:50.256)
Absolutely. And there’s two significant additional components to this messaging. First off is that in traditional chambers of commerce, there’s a membership director, somebody who’s going out into the community and I’m just going to use air quotes, selling memberships to the chamber of commerce. And somebody can be sold on the idea of being involved in the chamber of commerce, but if they’re not engaged for the right reason, they’re not going to necessarily be delighted. And so when the

time for their reinvestment comes up, it’s a membership, just like a gym membership. I didn’t really use it, I didn’t really see any value to it, so no, I’m not gonna do that again. So we don’t do that. I don’t go door to door, nor does my team go door to door saying, hey, do wanna be a part of the Chamber of Commerce? We let the flywheel just naturally take place. And so the referrals that come in, or the people that are attracted around the

the side of the wheel by those that are delighted are far more interested in being involved, much like a fraternity or a sorority would be. You’re inviting them and they feel welcome. That’s different than selling them on a membership. Second thing is that it eliminates a sales funnel. A lot of businesses look at a sales funnel and they go, let’s get as many people in the top part of the funnel as we can. And then we’ll do something in the middle.

to try to get them out at the bottom as a new member or as a client. Well, once you get them, so to speak, you gotta go do something else with them. And getting them doesn’t sound like it’s very attractive. I see the look on your face. You don’t sound very sold on that idea, Brandon.

Brandon Burton (20:38.446)
Well, and I’ve heard different business owners, different from a wide array of different types of businesses. But if when they have that focus of the sales funnel, they always have to keep upping the ante of what’s that next level that we can sell? What’s that next? And then you get into the, especially with online business, you see a lot of this where they have their high ticket items. It’s a $20,000 mastermind membership or something.

And something ridiculous that only, you know, one or 2 % of anybody who enters that funnel is going to get there. But as long as they spend money, they keep finding what’s that next level that we can keep extracting money out of them is what it ends up being rather than providing that value and showing them that there’s a reason that you’re here and this is what we’re doing for you and keeping that going as a circle. So yes, that’s resonating with me very well.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (21:37.331)
Yeah, and what ultimately happens is, again, couple things that are hugely beneficial. Number one, your rate of retention is significantly higher because they see it as an investment and a continuation of a relationship. You also decrease the amount of chasing that you’re doing to phone calls. Hey, are you interested in joining the change? Hey, did you get my email?

Hey, you know, it sounds kind of cheesy, but it’s far more professional if you’re inviting a friend to a business networking event or to a women’s luncheon or to, you know, to a large fundraiser or awards dinner. If you’re inviting them as opposed to selling them on the idea of, you know, you hear the difference there, Brandon? Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:32.706)
Yeah, yeah, it’s selling versus inviting. Like, what do you want to be involved with, right?

Dave Moravec – Colerain (22:38.472)
Yeah, exactly. And again, it’s something that we’ve actually been tracking is the number one reason, and this goes back to the good to great flywheel. Among the first things we realized was that each chamber member has a different reason for being involved in a chamber of commerce. So somebody who comes for our ancillary benefits and insurance programs or workers comp may not be interested in networking. And somebody who’s interested in networking

may not be interested in giving their time back to the community and engaging with nonprofits or becoming a board member. Each has a different reason for being involved. So we actually track that in our CRM and in Chambermaster. And the second part of our flywheel is actually engaging them and making sure that that component is fulfilled. So if we’re not providing enough networking opportunities for those that are

interested in networking, they’re going to naturally go away. If we’re not providing enough marketing opportunities to sponsor and get people’s logos out in front of the community, they’re not going to see the Chamber of Commerce as having value. So we make sure that we’ve not just identified what it is, but fulfilled the promise that we’ve made to them and we’re going to create that value.

when we add value to it through innovation and through relationship building, all of a sudden there’s more value associated with that membership or that investment. And that value adds to the flywheel. And the last component of our flywheel is actually being able to tell that story through marketing. Because if we’re not attracting others by telling that story of, hey, you can be involved in this networking thing and

We had a chamber member not too long ago, sold her first million dollar account. Well, being able to tell that story to other people and that she could share that on our sales summit, all of a sudden people go, wow, hey, what can I learn from this person? And it just attracts more attention and more people to us.

Brandon Burton (24:58.862)
Yeah. So one thing that comes to mind is with the flywheel and trying to get people engaged. the attract and then engage. I’ve heard it said before that trying to find a quick win for somebody, you somebody comes into the organization, they’re testing out a business, whatever it is. What can you do to provide a quick win for that individual to where they immediately see that there’s value in them being there?

and participating. So as you guys have implemented this and practiced this flywheel concept, have you been able to identify ways to create a quick win? maybe within the first three to six months, maybe six months might even be too long, but maybe within the first three months to be able to provide a quick win for these investors that come in and join the chamber and are engaging or trying to engage.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (25:29.563)
Yeah.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (25:57.683)
Yeah, I’m gonna answer it two ways. First is the traditional way. People are looking for ROI, right? They’re looking for that quick win from a return on investment. They’ve spent $500 on their membership and they need to get $500 back in value, so to speak. And that’s what you’re speaking about from a traditional perspective. That depends on the type of business that you have. If you’re a roofer,

and you get introduced to 10 people in the community or 20 businesses and none of them need a roof, you’re not gonna see a quick return on investment. I just don’t need a roof right now. So we actually talk about three-year investment in the chamber. Our minimum level is $340, so times three, that’s $1,020, just rounded to $1,000.

Brandon Burton (26:36.385)
Right.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (26:52.926)
If you’re not willing to invest $1,000 in your business over a three-year period as a small business, when there are so many other more expensive options, then we actually take it off the table. We suggest that you not get involved and not invest your money at this point in time. And people have actually looked at me and said, what? Well, no, no, no, I want to join the chamber.

I didn’t mean that. And so we’re talking about it as an investment. The second thing is that many chambers of commerce miss an opportunity by welcoming people before they actually join. So we actually encourage people to take a test drive, invite them to multiple events, not turn them away when they come to a second or third event and go, hey,

You gotta pay up if you’re gonna attend our event. No, not that way at all. So our quick wins are engaging them with the right people at the right time and the right place. And if you do that, all of a sudden they feel, yeah, I’m wanted. Nobody wants an email directly to them after an event that they came to and says, thank you for coming to our event. We hope you’ll attend another event.

Brandon Burton (28:16.854)
Yeah

Dave Moravec – Colerain (28:18.814)
Nobody wants that. But if their film number is on their thing, a simple text that said, hey, this is Dave. Thanks for coming to our thing last night. Appreciate it if we can help in any way, give us a holler. That simple. And people go, that’s a person. That’s somebody who’s actually thinking about me. And lastly, this is a good friend of mine, Bob Berg. In fact, I talked to Bob this morning.

He’s written a book called The Go Giver. There are a series of 10 questions that he has that you can ask somebody during your engagement when you’re meeting somebody at a networking event. But the number one question he poses is what would be the ideal referral for your business? And all of a sudden people are now asking themselves,

He’s not telling me about his business. He’s asking me about mine. And so now they can feel engaged by saying, well, a commercial, we’re do 90 % of our work is commercial roofing. And we look for businesses that before they’re actually needing a roof because oftentimes if the roof isn’t repaired properly or taken care of, it leads to damage on the inside of the building. I’m just using an example here.

I go, I’ve got a chamber member who I can introduce you to now, who may be in that situation, maybe not, but all of a sudden they go, well, he’s interested in me because he made that introduction before it was even necessary. At our networking events, people don’t go around the room and tell themselves about, our members don’t stand around and tell about their business. We actually engage the new,

Brandon Burton (30:00.035)
Yeah.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (30:13.766)
attendees to have them tell their story and have them be more attractive before they leave the room. So somebody will come up and say, you got a dog sitting business or you’ve got a craft brewery. We’d love to know more about that. But if they don’t know it because they’re standing in the corner of the room by themselves, shame on us for not allowing that.

Brandon Burton (30:41.9)
Right. Yeah, I think a lot of times these quick wins, don’t need to be that, you know, complete ROI on that, you know, that return of the investment upfront, but being able to get them a feel and a kind of light the path of this is how you will get that return on your investment, you know, by making these connections, by getting to know these people, by getting involved, you know, in a committee of some sort or helping to further the chamber’s mission, you know, in this way.

So there’s, think there’s a variety of different ways that they can feel like there’s a quick win because going back to your, your comment about just being genuine and asking about their business and learning about them, they’re going to realize, okay, Dave’s working for me too. So that’s a, that’s great piece of advice.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (31:31.122)
We also use the individuals in the room to help make that happen. So if there’s somebody that’s new in the room, I might introduce them to somebody who’s just joined the chamber in the last three months and say, hey, Bob, meet Sue. Sue can tell you what her first experiences were better than I can. And then exit stage left.

Brandon Burton (31:53.209)
Yeah.

And I guess, you know, having your whole staff just being aware of anybody who might be new as well. think that would be the worst thing is somebody comes and nobody talks to them. No chamber staff, nobody even addresses them. Chances of them coming back and engaging and getting onto that flywheel is not going to happen. So, very good. Well, Dave, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for those listening who are trying

to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you suggest with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Dave Moravec – Colerain (32:34.106)
Well, as I mentioned earlier, a funnel of prospective members and chasing them down is for me the least attractive way to grow your Chamber of Commerce. My understanding, and this is a statistic that I was told and it’s to a certain degree proved to be true, is that if a Chamber member joins and in the first year then

drops their chamber membership, just like a gym membership on January 1st and February 1st, go, I’m not going to do that. My understanding in the chamber world is that it’s five years, five years before they’ll consider joining the chamber again. And if that’s the case, then I can call on them every day for the next five years and say, hey, you want to come back? And they would say, no, had a bad experience.

So we want to have that first experience to be strong so that year over year over year, you create a long-term value. And the value add that I will share and the bonus for me in the long-term value proposition of for-profit businesses is that if somebody is happy with membership initially, eventually they’ll sponsor an event. Eventually they’ll become a sustaining sponsor.

Eventually, they’ll become a board member. Eventually, they’ll become a legacy provider to your chamber of commerce. But if you haven’t done the legwork on the front side to build the relationship, none of those things will happen in the proper order. And again, I think the lessons I’ve learned in the SaaS world, selling software solutions, is that if somebody is really attracted to what you’re offering,

The other things that you offer will just naturally happen. You don’t have to upsell. You don’t have to tag them for the, it’ll just naturally happen. We had five sustaining members when I came in. At this point, we’re approaching 30 sustaining sponsors that invest a significantly higher amount than just dues. And that’s because of relationship building and them seeing value in their logo being

Dave Moravec – Colerain (34:59.696)
everywhere and anywhere through the chamber. So that’s my tip for the day, Brandon.

Brandon Burton (35:05.728)
I like that. But, and to your point where somebody drops their membership, it may take up to five years or more for them to consider rejoining. The other side of that coin is if somebody, if you can, you know, provide that ROI, show the value of the chamber, get them in the flywheel. And I think the stat is three years. If you get them in for three years, then the chance of them being life members, like for the life of their business, drastically

increases to like 80 or 90 percent if you can get past that third year hurdle. I think implementing a flywheel is a perfect way of being able to get past that point and be able to have them be ambassadors for you and be promoting the chamber everywhere they go.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (35:53.151)
I would agree with that. And one other point is that negative talk comes from people that you’re gonna tell a negative story 10 times more than you’re gonna tell a positive story. And if you’ve had a negative experience, you’re not attracting others that you know. And somebody says, hey, do you wanna join, or should I join the Chamber of Commerce? Nah, I didn’t really have a very good experience. Well, you wanna have those ambassadors that you were creating on the delight side.

that are telling your story over and over and over again. And what we’re seeing is that those that provide referrals provide multiple referrals. So they’re telling the story far more times than they would tell otherwise.

Brandon Burton (36:34.072)
Yeah, it’s great marketing. I love it. Right. Yeah.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (36:37.212)
And there’s no cost to it. We can talk about that for another day, but there’s no cost associated with it either. You just have to be genuine.

Brandon Burton (36:46.924)
That’s right. Well, Dave, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, I always like to ask, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Dave Moravec – Colerain (36:58.578)
Yeah, I think you’ve had Matt Appenzeller on your show and I’ve gotten to know Matt. Okay, you are great. Matt is awesome. And he and I subscribe to the same mindset from this perspective. And what I’ve seen in talking to and I don’t wanna say evaluating, because I’m not an evaluator. I don’t put one here and one there. But as I look at the future of Chambers of Commerce, I think the challenges if…

Brandon Burton (37:02.648)
Coming up, yeah, he’s coming up, yep.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (37:26.738)
you’re not running the Chamber of Commerce like a true business, you’re putting your Chamber of Commerce at risk. And by that I mean if your expenses are more than your revenue, you’re eventually gonna run out of reserve. If you aren’t planning for tomorrow the way a for-profit business does, when they know that the shelf life of their laptops is gonna be five years, five years from now they’ve gotta have the money available to replace those laptops.

And I think those kinds of concepts are missed oftentimes, number one, because the chamber leader doesn’t know any better. They haven’t been mentored or shown that those things are important. But secondarily, they have boards of directors that close their eyes and ears to the fact that their for-profit businesses have to survive that way and forget that their staff, the people that are running the Chamber of Commerce,

have to be that way. If you’re not increasing your dues, you know, over a period of time, eventually it’s going to come up and catch up with you. And I think that that’s the risk that all of us have is not treating the business, treating the Chamber of Commerce as a business and looking at it as a nonprofit.

Brandon Burton (38:47.608)
Yeah, I think that’s a great piece of advice as well. Not too different from running your household finances. You take those lessons of having healthy balance sheets. Well, Dave, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about your books or about the flywheel or anything we talked about today. Where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Dave Moravec – Colerain (38:56.734)
Absolutely.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (39:17.298)
Well, I have put in my resignation for the Colerain Chamber of Commerce. So you can reach me for a period of time at president@colerainchamber.org. But you can otherwise find me at DD, Dusty Dave is my nickname, moravec, M-O-R-A-V-E-C-5@gmail.com (ddmoravec5@gmail.com). My phone number 309-838-1947 will get me 24 seven. And I will pick up the phone 24 seven.

Brandon Burton (39:52.679)
There you go. And the books, Amazon, anywhere in particular you’d point them?

Dave Moravec – Colerain (39:57.82)
Yeah. Yeah. You can find them at salesmanagerforrent.com on our media site. Amazon will have them. Look up Echoes and Moravec and I’m the only guy that M-O-R-A-V-E-C with Echoes associated with it. If you like the books, recommend them to others. Write reviews. First time and new authors.

That’s their biggest challenge is having people to review them so that others see them and are attracted to it. So yes, I appreciate that. And yeah, thanks for the plug. I appreciate that.

Brandon Burton (40:37.842)
Absolutely, you bet. It’s my pleasure. But it’s been fun having you on the podcast today. I appreciate you spending your time with us and your experiences and lessons that you’ve learned at leading the Colerain Chamber and just from your business experiences through your career as well. So thank you.

Dave Moravec – Colerain (40:55.432)
Great to be here.

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Value of Business Advocacy Councils with Janet Tressler-Davis

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Brandon Burton (00:00.974)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Joining us today is a truly impactful leader and community champion, Janet Tressler Davis, President and CEO of the Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce.

With a sharp strategic mind and deep commitment to local business, Janet has guided the chamber to national recognition, making it a vital force for entrepreneurship and economic growth. Janet holds the distinction of being a certified chamber executive and is a graduate of the US Chambers IOM program at Notre Dame. Her leadership has earned the chamber multiple honors, including the Torch Award for Ethics, Chamber of the Year, and Business of the Year.

while she’s personally been recognized with awards like Chamber Executive Director of the Year and Otterbein Alumni Community Service Award. A lifetime resident, or a lifelong resident of Westerville, Janet’s commitment to civil service is rooted in a family legacy of public leadership. Beyond her role at the chamber, she spent over three decades as a group fitness instructor.

bringing the same energy and passion to the studio as she does to her professional life. Janet, 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.

Janet Tressler Davis (01:44.554)
Thank you, Brandon. Thank you for asking me to be part of the program too. Hello, chamber peers. It’s always good to interact with each other. So I hope you enjoy this, conversation today. Something interesting, Brandon already kind of mentioned it, but was a lifetime resident of the community that I serve in. So I know sometimes people make us as a profession and they move from community to community or state to state for chambers. And I’ve been blessed, I feel, to be able to be right in my home.

community to do this and watch the community grow as well as our chamber has grown. So I’ve loved every aspect of it.

Brandon Burton (02:20.556)
Yeah, so the question that I had is the group fitness instructor. You must have started when you were five doing the group fitness instructions, right? Trying to figure out how that math works. So that’s great.

Janet Tressler Davis (02:26.856)
hahaha

haha

Yeah, it’s been a long time. Even before I got married, I was teaching group fitness. So I danced all my life. then afterwards, I didn’t dance in college, but decided I wanted to stay active. And so I’ve worked for a couple of different locations and just evening classes or weekend classes is what I do.

Brandon Burton (02:52.502)
Yeah, very good. Well, tell us a little bit about the Westerville area chamber just to kind of set the stage for a conversation. I think it’d be helpful to know the size of the chamber, the staff, budget, the scope of work you guys are involved with just so we can all kind of relate where you’re coming from as we get into our discussion today.

Janet Tressler Davis (03:11.145)
Sure. So our Chamber of Commerce, when I started there 33 years ago, our chamber was about 250 members and we were in a small office of about 700 square feet and it was myself and one other person and she worked part-time. And then we moved different offices, in fact, three different times and finally found our destination and we built a building about 20 years ago and that is a 3,010 square foot building.

So we didn’t fill it at the time, but now today we do. So we’re very fortunate. We knew we’d grow into it eventually, so we just had tenants for probably a good 14 years. Currently our chamber’s about 817 members, and that represents a little over 17,000 employees. And our footprint is our school district. Our city of Westerville currently is a population of 40,000, but our school district’s about 100,000.

So that’s the foot pit recover. And so oftentimes, we do projects and work with the city, but they usually have a lens that stays within their city limits. So sometimes ours is a little bit broader than that. our Audubon University is in our community. That’s where I graduated from, but it’s a liberal arts university. And then we have a fantastic library, the third busiest library in state of Ohio. So lots of people use it. And their footprint is our school district as well.

And then of course our school district, have 23 schools and three of those are high schools. We have a city manager form of government, which is a little bit unique. Lots of times people will have a mayor type of government in their municipalities. And I think city manager form of government is nice because the leader of the city is not worrying about their next destination, like when they’re gonna have to run a campaign. So they’re elected by seven member city council.

which that is elected by the citizens of Westerville.

Brandon Burton (05:08.686)
Very good. Now as far as the work that you guys are involved with, are you guys strictly chambered? Do you have any of the tourism, economic development, any of that sort of responsibility?

Janet Tressler Davis (05:21.026)
No, we don’t. did start the Visitors Bureau before I started at the Chamber, but they spun that off and it’s its own C3. We were housed with the Visitors and Convention Bureau until we moved to our new office building about 20, it’s actually been 24 years ago that we actually built our building. We do have a Leadership Westerbill program that we started and then we spun it off on its own and hired an executive director and they have their own board.

And then we took that back about six years ago. And so still same kind of program, but we manage it within our office, but they still are their own 501C3 and they still have their own board.

Brandon Burton (06:01.932)
Okay, that’s very good. How many staff do you guys have? Okay, very good. How many staff do you guys have there in your chamber?

Janet Tressler Davis (06:04.079)
And then economic development is done by our city of Westerville. So, yeah. sorry. Yeah. I did miss that. Sorry. We have six staff members and that just grew this year. We just hired a membership growth person and spent, she does membership growth and special projects. And four of the positions are full-time positions. One is a 35 hour position and one’s a 25 hour position to make up the total of six.

Brandon Burton (06:33.72)
Very good. Well, that helps to have an understanding of the resources and the landscape that you’re coming from as we get into our topic today. So today we’ll be spending most of our time talking about business advocacy councils and we’ll dive into that in those details as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Janet, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, today we’re talking about business advocacy councils. So I understand that you guys have set up some business advocacy councils.

It might be good before we get too deep into the weeds. know listeners of the podcast, some are brand new to the industry. Some have been in it for 30 years or more. But just on a high level, tell us what a business advocacy council is and how you guys went about creating them and the value of them and so on and so forth.

Janet Tressler Davis (07:28.551)
Absolutely. My first thought about a business advocacy or we used to call it government relations when we first started it is that we represent businesses and if we’re not looking at the business voice and looking out for the businesses in our community, who is? So we believe we should be. So shortly after I started, we created a government relations committee and we never started taking position on candidates, but we did review and still do issues and we’ll take position on state.

and local issues. And I think important thing to do is if you get in that space is to make sure when you decide if you’re going to take positions is what’s the business reason for doing it. Because sometimes a school levy, know, people feel passionate about it because their children are in school and certainly we always have to pass those levies. While that may be important, but what is the real business reason? Because we’re a business organization. So again, if we are in support of anything, that’s the lens that we look at it from.

is how it’s going to impact business. Or whether it’s an income tax or a library levy or fire levy, whatever it might be.

Brandon Burton (08:34.444)
Yeah, so as you guys kind of dove into this realm of creating these business advocacy councils, what were some of those first maybe higher level items that you guys noticed that we need to kind of wrap our minds around this and get some other strong minds around this to create this advocacy council?

Janet Tressler Davis (08:54.81)
Yeah, we had our school at the time at Ohio school funding is a little bit unique. I’m not sure if every state’s that way, but a lot of it depends on property tax and we get some portion from the state of Ohio, but we also have to make up the difference at the property taxes. And you can have bond levies, which are for your buildings and then operating levies, which is for everything else to operate. And oftentimes our levies were for two or three years.

and then they’d be back on the ballot. And back then they were on the ballot like every other year. And it was just getting fatigued in our community. And so we really dove in to understand how they’re using their money, why it seems like we don’t want to keep throwing money at a problem if there is a problem, but how we really rank among other school districts of our size at that time. And it really helped that we had a committee of passionate people that wanted to do that.

When you say like, how do you recruit people to be part of the committee? When we have a new member orientation, you we list all of our committees, we have 11 committees, we have 42 events a year. So there’s lots of ways that people can engage. But as soon as you start talking about advocacy work and government relations, either people’s eyes glaze over and think, I am not interested in getting in that, or people are like really interested. So it’s pretty easy to find those people that are really passionate about it.

Brandon Burton (10:16.632)
Yeah.

Janet Tressler Davis (10:18.092)
And we’ve just been fortunate to have a committee of anywhere from about 10 to 20 people that will participate. this is one of our two committees of the whole chamber that meet every month. So we often bring speakers in nowadays and we might bring someone in about the unemployment compensation system, or we might bring someone in from the Ohio chamber. We always bring in a lobbyist from the Ohio chamber at least once a year to talk about state issues or if it was the state budget.

you know, what’s going to get traction from those issues that passed in the state budget. And then workers compensation while people speak about that. And then we also at the local level, we’ll look at like our planning department, our zoning department, because sometimes we get calls from members that they’re trying to open their unit next door. They’re open, but they’re trying to open the one next door that they bought. And they have to wait and wait for inspections. And then all of a sudden they have someone come.

and they miss their low voltage inspections. So now they go to the bottom of the list to come back and get inspected. Well, the whole time, this business is paying rent. They probably hired the additional staff. They might have inventory in there. And so we try to serve as like a go-between or a liaison just to call the department and find out, there anything we can do to push this through? Because we are certainly wanting to look out for our businesses and make sure that they can be as prosperous as they can as soon as they can. And I’m sure our city wants that too.

but they have policies and strict procedures, so we sometimes will intercede if we can. And that’s how we got involved with working directly with city issues, even though those are not ballot issues, it’s more just making it a business-friendly environment.

Brandon Burton (11:57.26)
Yeah, which is just as important. So my question was going to be around recruitment. So you address that where you see the eyes glazing over and you can kind of separate those from the ones that are engaging. But do you extend invitations? Do you just ask people to show up? Is there an application to it? What does the process look like to formalizing a council?

Janet Tressler Davis (12:20.729)
Yeah, we don’t have applications for our committees. We do find out if people are interested and if they either they could fill out a form at the new member orientation or not everybody attends member orientation. So we certainly send it out when they join. And if they indicate interest, we invite them to come to a meeting or any of our committees. They can just come and check it out and see if it’s something that they’d like to serve on. And then a lot of committees will have different roles and we have.

we break out into three different areas within our council. And those areas that we track, we determine those based on a survey that we send our members every year. And we always ask one question that is always the same is, what’s preventing your business from advancing? And what are those issues? Is it state or local? And if it’s state, we list some issues. If it’s local, we list some areas. And then people can tell us that. And from there, that’s what we track. So at the state level and local level, know

state level, it’s been healthcare, workforce, and taxation. At a local level this year, it’s business regulations, workforce, and taxation. And so the workforce, we dive deeper into that and find out it’s more about talent development rather than talent attraction. So we could talk about that. We have a big space in the workforce arena that we’ve been focusing on for the last four years.

Brandon Burton (13:44.278)
Yeah, no, that’s great. So at any given time, how many of these different advocacy committees would you have operating or being actively engaged at any given time?

Janet Tressler Davis (13:58.43)
Well, the Maine Advocacy Council, so everybody we meet the first Tuesday of every month and those smaller groups, they get together when there’s an issue. So if the state is having an issue come up about taxation, they would meet offline from another meeting and then they report at the main meeting. Or they go to city council and listen to city council. We have a few people that will do that to find out what issues are coming up at city council. So it’s all just they do it on the off weeks.

Brandon Burton (14:16.352)
Okay.

Janet Tressler Davis (14:27.723)
of when we’re not meeting.

Brandon Burton (14:29.206)
Okay, that makes lot of sense. So I know chambers are all about tracking data, tracking information. So you wouldn’t keep doing this if it wasn’t helpful, if it wasn’t providing value. So maybe we can kind of shift the focus to the value of these councils and these business advocacy councils and really look at where is the needle moved as you guys have had this intense focus on these different issues that have popped up.

Can you share some of those wins or where you’ve seen the environment shift in your direction?

Janet Tressler Davis (15:06.721)
Yeah, good or bad, when people do come to us, if there’s a ballot issue, when your community, if your school board or your city council, if they come to you, the people that are running the campaign and want your endorsement, I think that says something because they know it represents the business community. So we’re fortunate that people do ask for that. Sometimes right now we’re in the middle of a school levy issue right now and it’s a difficult one. And, you know, we really hate to not support it.

But you also, if you stay neutral most of the time, they think you’re not supporting it, know, so they really want you to support it for sure. we have to find those, again, those business reasons why to do that. So the win for that though, to me is that they find value in businesses. They wanna know what the businesses think and they want their support. The next area of value is that our Hope Bar members are feeling like they’re in the know, either because they can come to meetings.

or we do put the minutes out from the meeting on our website. And then we also have a legislative link that will put out, I guess, a section of our newsletter that goes out once a month if there’s a particular ballot issue or even a state issue that’s not even on the ballot, but it’s just something that legislators are talking about that we want our members to know or maybe write a letter campaign. And we try to encourage our members to write letters on supporting a certain aspect of a piece of legislation.

We also bring our state reps and our senators in once a year. And I just randomly, I probably have to invite 40 members and then we try to get 20 in a room. And we let that be the conversation. It’s not for the legislators to be telling us things, it’s letting them hear from their constituents. Like how is certain legislation impacting them at their work? Or have you ever thought about deadlines? This one lady brought up one time, you’ve got this deadline for me to fill out this form and

X and X date and you turn around and have to have, we have to have another report done two months later and it’s just duplicating information. We’ll hear about six months later, they came back and they consolidated them. So that was kind of a nice win for that lady. I know she felt really that they listened to her, which was good. So we call those, legislative forums and we just bring the legislators in. We also bring our legislators in at the federal level for all our members at a luncheon.

Brandon Burton (17:13.195)
Yeah.

Janet Tressler Davis (17:27.702)
So we do that once a year. So we do our congressional reps. But for the smaller level, you know, we bring in our state reps. And I think that’s a compliment when members can bring their state reps in and they come and they want to participate. So that’s been a good thing. We also invite our local, like city council chair and school board president when we bring the legislators in.

Brandon Burton (17:52.674)
That’s good. It’s good for them just to hear the discussions that are going on and what is important to business owners, business leaders. You know, how can we create a more business friendly environment in our communities? And that’s the end goal. And, and as a chamber being able to convene those leaders and those thought leaders to come together in the same room and drive that conversation that hopefully is looking and finding answers. So you’re not filling out redundant forms.

Janet Tressler Davis (18:04.832)
Right.

Brandon Burton (18:22.708)
over and over and some of the more serious things that really do affect and hinder business. So it sounds like there’s been some good wins for sure as you guys have convened these business and advocacy councils.

Janet Tressler Davis (18:34.795)
Yeah, and definitely open the lines of communication too, you know, because for the legislators, you know, they’re hearing from different businesses and they can follow up with them and or say, hey, you know, come down and have a tour with us, bring your whole staff or, you know, bring your management team or things. And on the reverse side, I think our businesses then feel that connection where they can call. They might not get the legislature, but at least they’ll get their aid. So having, keeping those lines of communication open is really great.

Brandon Burton (19:01.022)
Absolutely. Well, and you mentioned when they reach out to you and talk about, can you endorse this, you know, whether it’s a candidate or an initiative or something that’s on a ballot, it means that they see that you have some some influence in in the outcomes of these elections. So that does speak volumes to the work that you guys are doing. So that’s awesome.

Janet Tressler Davis (19:23.706)
It’s not something you put that in writing and say, we think, but it’s just that you earn that respect. And I think that’s a way to notice it, I think.

Brandon Burton (19:32.494)
And it’s place where chambers belong. So hopefully if a chamber listening is not there right now, that’s somewhere to work towards for sure.

Janet Tressler Davis (19:37.322)
Yes.

Janet Tressler Davis (19:41.919)
And I know some smaller chambers in our state of Ohio have said, you know, we have a small staff, haven’t had, I just don’t have time to do this. And it is hard because if you only have one or two staff member team, it’s tough because it is a whole nother aspect. But if you can lean on your members to help too. So if there’s interest, oftentimes they can drive the agenda. Maybe you don’t have to set that agenda the whole time, or maybe you meet every other month, but to pull together a group of people to be able to talk about business issues.

impacting their business right today that it’s just invaluable, I think.

Brandon Burton (20:15.51)
Yeah, and that’s a good point for chambers of different sizes who may feel like, can’t take this on right now. How would you suggest they get started?

Janet Tressler Davis (20:27.176)
If you can talk about either to your board, your executive committee and find just two or three members that are passionate about it, that’s all it needs. Because that it’ll breed others. They’ll grow it, they’ll help sell it, but you can’t force it. So if there aren’t members that really want to do it, then it might not work. But that’s the same thing how we started our Women in Business Network is there was a few ladies and we talked about it. I said, would you guys think this would be a value? And they did. And then we just did like an informational meeting and it just.

grew from there. Same thing with our Young Leader Network, same thing there. So it’s, think for anything, if you have some members that are engaged and you, it’s not mission creep, I mean, it stays on your mission, that that’s a great way to get any committee started.

Brandon Burton (21:11.458)
Yeah, I think that’s great advice. Is there anything that we’re missing in the realm of these business advocacy councils that needs to be considered or things that you’ve learned over your career in having these business advocacy councils that could be beneficial for others to learn about and to maybe just be aware as they try to implement these?

Janet Tressler Davis (21:29.769)
Yeah.

Janet Tressler Davis (21:37.279)
Having an agenda, we call it a policy agenda, documented is really important. So those three areas that I told you that we track, the three at the state, three at the local level, we define what those are and we have them in writing. And then we, as a committee, did that. And then we present it to our board. And I do that every other year. And then when the board approves it, we’re able to take position on any issues that impact those areas, unless it’s a ballot issue. If it’s a ballot issue.

then we take that position that we’ve formed and take it to the board for their approval. But it gives you some leeway and liberty to be writing letters, know, letter campaigns and things, because oftentimes if there’s an issue, you need to get on it quickly because the vote’s coming, you know, in two days or four days. So you don’t want to wait and have to go to get board approval for every single thing. So that’s helped us. So a policy agenda. And then the next phase of our policy agenda says, if you do endorse an issue, what’s the procedure?

How much time do you have to give an advance notice of your board to give them the information to review it? You vote. And then what do you do with it? So if we’re supporting it, what’s our role? Do we serve on campaigns like levy campaigns? Do we help hand out signs? Do we do literature drops? How engaged should we be? And then what’s the post evaluation after the levy’s over to review what our role was and then whether it passed or failed, what could we have done differently? So that’s all in our policy agenda.

And I think having it documented that way when a member might bring something with you like H1V visas, for example, I that’s really important for some businesses that have international employees, but that hasn’t, that isn’t one of our top areas. And I’m not a lobbyist, no one in my office is, and there is only one person really working on it. And so we just have to kind of put some roadblocks on it to say, this is the areas that we track. So again, having it documented helps that explanation.

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Brandon Burton (23:35.79)
Yeah, I think that’s so smart to have procedures in place when you decide to endorse some kind of policy. That way, nothing is just running ad hoc. You actually have a procedure that you’re following where there’s order to it and you don’t get anybody trying to override the will of the chamber.

Janet Tressler Davis (23:56.828)
Right.

Brandon Burton (23:57.838)
I was curious with the letter writing campaign. So you’ve mentioned that a couple of times. So as those opportunities arise, are you guys providing maybe like key bullet points or full on script or just an overall message? Is there any mention of the chamber in there that helps garner the support saying, you know, the greater business community here in Westerville is behind this?

What, how is that formulated as you push the letter writing campaigns?

Janet Tressler Davis (24:29.618)
Yeah, probably I’d say 20 years ago, we actually invested in software that will help you. If you plugged in where you lived, it would populate who your representatives are. And then it would actually have a letter. If you put in the topic and things, it would have a letter that would write it for you. And we did that for two years. Yeah, mean, that was up, but it was expensive. And so we didn’t keep it up after that. And so

Brandon Burton (24:47.79)
Pre-AI, that’s cool. Yeah.

Janet Tressler Davis (24:57.681)
And we didn’t actually use it a lot, but we did. So now when we have issues, it is bullet points, as you’ve originally said. we just, there is our Ohio Chamber on their website is a place that you can go, or you can even go to like your state legislature and you can plug in your address and find out your state reps very quickly. So we don’t need a software to do that anymore.

So we try to put that link in so people can find that to find the reps if they don’t know who their reps are. sometimes people will say, know, a letter writing, is that really good? I mean, do they just get a bunch of letters? Well, if they get a whole lot of letters, they have something to say, hey, you know, we got 69 or we got 500 letters on this particular issue. Maybe they didn’t read every single one of them, but they know that there’s some kind of interest or concern out there with their constituents. So there is some value in it. And then certainly phone calls.

We do, we’ll try to call, they won’t, oftentimes our legislators don’t take the calls, it’s their aides, which are fine too, to at least express our interest or concerns.

Brandon Burton (26:02.17)
Yeah. Yeah. But if you can become good friends with with the representatives aid, I mean, you’re you’re in, get them on your side. But to your point with the letter writing, you throw out the number 69, you know, if they received 69 letters, that’s a whole lot more than zero, shows that somebody cares about it. And as a if they were to dig in deeper and see where they’re coming from.

Janet Tressler Davis (26:09.467)
That’s right. Yep.

Brandon Burton (26:26.306)
then I think they could see, okay, this is a chamber that’s driving this, this is a business community, it’s affecting a lot more people than maybe just the 69 people that actually wrote the letter. So I think there’s still a lot of value.

Janet Tressler Davis (26:38.436)
Exactly. And then our Ohio Chamber now will send us information on state issues and ask, you know, if you will take support on it. And sometimes they’ll have all the talking points. So if it’s an area that we’ve already addressed, you know, we don’t just do it for issues because they ask because they might not be in the categories that we follow. So sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t do it.

Brandon Burton (27:01.698)
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s fair.

Janet Tressler Davis (27:03.973)
And you know, the other thing you mentioned is some things that do’s and don’ts. There are some chambers that will endorse candidates and we are not one of them, but people can. You can, as a chamber, you can give money to an issue, but as a chamber, you can’t give money to a candidate unless you have a pack. And we don’t have a pack either. But you know, there’s pros and cons, of course, if you get some meat behind your…

issues and you’re supporting individuals and they win, you know, then you’ve got them in your back pocket. My fear always is if you don’t get behind the winning candidate, it could be kind of difficult maybe to deal with that city council for a while if they knew that you didn’t support them. But certainly every chamber is different and I bet you people have great reasons why they would support candidates. We just don’t.

Brandon Burton (27:54.508)
Yeah, and ballots never go 100 % your way. So just be aware. Yeah. Well, Dan, I think you’ve shared some very valuable tips. I like asking for listeners who are out there and trying to elevate their chamber to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Janet Tressler Davis (27:58.85)
for sure. yeah, exactly.

Janet Tressler Davis (28:18.982)
More advocacy specifically or any goal.

Brandon Burton (28:21.359)
It could be advocacy or anywhere, yeah.

Janet Tressler Davis (28:24.54)
Okay. I think a tip, one tip is never have your board chair surprised. I always try to keep my board chair informed, whether it’s an email or a phone call. You know, we might have a one-on-one, but then two weeks after that one-on-one something’s come up and you still have to tell them, then you still want to inform them. I wouldn’t wait. And I always feel that if I never want them to be surprised, I guess, because if they didn’t hear it, why didn’t I hear that from you first? You know, I’d feel terrible if something like that happened.

Brandon Burton (28:54.744)
Yeah.

Janet Tressler Davis (28:54.939)
So that’s one tip. And then I’d say the other tip is that I try to keep my door open as much as I can. So if a member comes in and wants to meet or wants to schedule a meeting, I try to always do it because it’s their organization, right? If it wasn’t for our members, I wouldn’t have a job. So that’s how I view the value of listening to our members.

Brandon Burton (29:21.708)
Yeah, I think those are two great tips. I’ve heard the tip about not surprising your board chair before. And there’s a ton of wisdom in that because I’m sure there’s more than a handful of people that have listened that are listening that maybe have fallen into that trap or their board chair was surprised by something and they’ve learned that lesson the harder way. So if we can save people that pain, we’ll, we’ll try to encourage that.

Janet Tressler Davis (29:46.223)
Yeah. For sure.

Brandon Burton (29:49.634)
Well, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future. So as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Janet Tressler Davis (30:01.933)
One I think is collaboration, partnerships. There’s so many organizations out there. Might not all represent businesses, but even if you look at Rotaries, really not as equal as us. I mean, not the same, right? They are C3s, we’re C6, but they take people’s time in your community. And for example, we have two Rotaries, we have a Sertoma Club, we have a JCs Club, and then we have our Chamber, and then you have other organizations.

it within your library, like there’s friends of organizations. And so people are always asking you for you to volunteer. And so I think that ways of events that we do or programs that we do, or can we partner with some of those where you might align? You have your uptown organizations. A lot of us have uptown or downtown business organizations. You have your visitors bureau. Where is there some alignment there? And then when you look at the bigger picture of chambers, you know, some smaller chambers, is it a value to partner?

with other chambers. I don’t know, I merge, sometimes you could merge, but we do that as a expo. We come together with three other chambers in our area. And I think it’s great to do that because it gives your members an opportunity to expand their network. I mean, they come to business after hours and luncheons. Yeah, but it just gives them another couple miles down the road of other people they can network with. So we do that once a year with three other chambers, there’s a of four.

Brandon Burton (31:16.866)
Yeah, cross-pollinate. Yeah.

Janet Tressler Davis (31:30.69)
And we have a hundred exhibitors and we try to rotate it around so it’s closer to one community than another each year, right? So sometimes you have to drive farther to get to it. And then for our young leaders and our women in business, we’ll try to partner with like neighboring chambers to get together with their young leader or women in business group just to, again, expand their network.

Brandon Burton (31:52.812)
Yeah. And I can imagine as you do those, those more informal kind of partnerships with chambers, like the women in business and the expos, it’s also shining a little bit of light on your community or whatever community is, you know, it’s at, at that time where these businesses that show up. Yeah. These businesses show up and they’re like, you know, I never considered joining multiple chambers, but maybe there’s value in being a member here too. So, I think there’s value on multiple levels in collaborating.

Janet Tressler Davis (32:08.099)
Getting to host it, yeah. Sure.

Janet Tressler Davis (32:26.297)
Absolutely, just learning best practices from each other is so good. sometimes I’ll have board members say, have you talked to other chambers around, we have an I-270, a freeway roundabout. And I say, yeah, we do, because we get together every month and talk. So it’s just kind of good to compare notes.

Brandon Burton (32:44.61)
Yeah, that’s great. Janet, this has been great. This has been a lot of fun. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about your approach. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to connect with you?

Janet Tressler Davis (33:02.81)
My email address is jdavis@westervillechamber.com and my phone number is 614-882-8917. I’d welcome a call or email. I will be retiring on October 30th, but I do invite people if they still think I can provide them any value or questions. My personal email is jtdavis4943@gmail.

Brandon Burton (33:28.046)
Very good. Well, we’ll get that in our show notes and I’m glad we were able to get you on the show before you were officially retired and be able to document some of your experience and knowledge. But this has been very valuable and I appreciate you setting aside some time to be with us today on the podcast. Thank you.

Janet Tressler Davis (33:46.521)
Thank you so much. It’s been great and I really appreciate it. And I’m sure everybody will agree with me, but Chamber World, Chamber of Profession is wonderful.

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Fostering Strong Engagement with Jessica Walden

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Brandon Burton (00:00.737)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a dynamic leader and proud Macon native whose career has been defined by a passion for community vitality and economic growth.

In 2022, Jessica Walden was named president and CEO of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, where she leads the organization to strengthen businesses, attract new industries, and enhance the quality of life for citizens across the region. Jessica brings more than two decades of experience in community and economic development, leadership training, and small business support.

Before taking the helm of the chamber, she served as a business and leadership advisor for the University of Georgia Small Business Development Center and the J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, connecting entrepreneurs and organizations with programs that foster growth and innovation. She has also helped launch leadership programs statewide addressing workforce development, entrepreneurship, DEI, and sustainable community transformation.

Her professional expertise is matched by her academic accomplishments. is the first person in Georgia to earn the entrepreneur led economic development certification from the International Economic Development Council.

She is a graduate of Leadership Georgia, Leadership Macon, and Georgia’s Academy for Economic Development. And she’s been an active contributor to numerous community boards, including Montessori & Macon, and the Bragg Jam Festival, and the Otis Reading Foundation. A graduate of Georgia State University with a degree in journalism and a minor in English, Jessica is known for her infectious enthusiasm, her deep commitment to Macon, and her vision for inclusive, sustainable growth.

Brandon Burton (02:00.359)
Jessica, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening. And if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jessica Walden (02:15.704)
Thank you so much, Brandon, and thank you for hosting a podcast like this. We were just speaking before the show began about how all of us chamber executives are big fans of R &D, a chance to really learn from each other. And I’m just, I’m thrilled to be here today and talk about what I love so much, which is my community of Macon, Georgia, and how it really brought me into the chamber world. What my bio didn’t mention, a lot of this came from a business that I owned

for over a decade, my husband and I operated a music history tour company called Rock Candy Tours. And we actually sold our tour company just two years ago to Visit Macon where it continues operating today under that very same name. But what I discovered with my tour company was just how much storytelling can benefit our community, how much storytelling gets us attention and relevancy and a chance to share so much more.

And for me, was just, was a natural opportunity. Even though I come from this community development, economic development background, my family history in Macon runs really deep. And it starts with the music business where my uncle and my father were the original managers of Otis Redding, the late great soul singer. And then later my uncle would go on to discover the Allman Brothers and my father would discover Lynyrd Skynyrd. And they operated right here in Macon where we became

became a capital of Southern rock and put making on the map through music. And so ironically enough, my chamber headquarters is located on that very same block where my uncle once had Capricorn Studios and where my dad did all of his work with his bands, including Lynyrd Skynyrd. And so it’s just so full circle to be here today and still sharing, making story using music as a continued platform. But I often get the

question, how does a kid who grew up in the rock and roll business end up a chamber president? Because that does seem like a big leap. But I tell everybody it’s a natural fit because at the end of the day, this is all talent, recruitment and retention. And it’s about being able to export our greatest good, which is often the story that we can share about our communities. so I find it to be natural, even though I don’t think my long hair

Brandon Burton (04:23.413)
Right?

Jessica Walden (04:45.484)
hippie parents and all that were at too many chamber meetings growing up.

Brandon Burton (04:50.167)
That is really cool though. So as far as interesting facts go that that’s high up on the rankings for me. You know over 350 episodes. That’s a pretty cool fact. yeah, awesome. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the making chamber, just give us an idea of the size staff, the type of work you guys are involved with budget just to kind of set the stage for our conversation today.

Jessica Walden (04:57.002)
you

Jessica Walden (05:01.837)
Okay.

Jessica Walden (05:10.988)
Yeah.

Jessica Walden (05:16.929)
Yeah, absolutely. The Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce is one of the oldest chambers in the state of Georgia. So we are over 150 years old and we’re located Macon for anyone who doesn’t know we’re right in the heart of Georgia. So in order to get to the world’s largest airport or seaport, which is Atlanta and Savannah, you often have to come right through Macon. Our chamber has, today our chamber’s operating on roughly a $2 million budget.

The majority of that budget is in our special initiatives such as workforce development and that talent recruitment and retention. We have nearly 800 investors and we have a staff of an incredible staff of 10 here at our chamber. We just added on a new staff member just a couple weeks ago. We’re located in the heart of downtown Macon so we’re in our commercial business district. If anybody has any prior history of our chamber then they

remember our old building that was just off the interstate and that was still standing when I came on board almost three years ago but it is no longer there. We’ve actually bulldozed that building in anticipation of great community progress and we’ve moved our chamber headquarters across the river to the vibrant area of an incredible downtown renaissance that we’re experiencing here in Macon and this is where we operate.

much the traditional chamber initiatives and programming in the sense of we had a very packed house our last business after hours of the year last night but we also are into innovative community driven programming and in a big focus of ours now we really turned towards the the lighthouse of that talent retention piece so in addition to our greater together message for the business community is making bibs most significant organized business community

We also have launched and really along the drumbeat of Choose Makin, which is both a website and an initiative and a call to action. So we have a lot of that going on all at one time as many of us Chambers do. But it is, it’s a really…

Jessica Walden (07:36.974)
I like to say our chamber has really continued to progress with the times and right now the times in Macon are amazing. It’s excellent here. We have installed a new 12,000 seat amphitheater. We’ve got now home of the world’s largest pickleball arena of all things. Our downtown has been recognized by Main Street America as the great American Main Street. And we’re all working really hard together and collaboratively on

trying to make Macon’s Old Mulgee Mounds America’s next national park, which means big things for us. So while we’ve got this urban vibrancy piece, like we’re in the middle of a renaissance here, we’re also looking towards conservation and nature and creating this giant green space that will be a huge tourism boom for this region and this state.

Brandon Burton (08:31.947)
You know, 10 years ago, I don’t think any chambers were talking about pickleball. And now it’s such a part of our society, know, social outings, right?

Jessica Walden (08:36.768)
I know.

Jessica Walden (08:41.623)
vernacular now. Well, fun fact, fun fact about our pickleball, not only is it the world’s largest indoor pickleball arena,

But the whole story behind it is so incredible because it was, it was the, so I’m born and raised here in Macon and shopped at the Macon Mall, sat in Santa’s lap at the Macon Mall, was a total child of the late nineties, or I’m sorry, late eighties, early nineties mall scene. But like many malls in our nation, it went through an economic downturn and it just sat pretty much, you know, abandoned for all, except for a few anchors and

completely underutilized and we have some really visionary leadership here including our own mayor who saw more than it could be and so the world’s largest indoor pickleball arena is has been repurposed and is located in what was the make-a-mall or what is the make-a-mall I should still say and so now we affectionately call it the pickle mall.

Brandon Burton (09:42.86)
pickle mall. I love it. I also I really like when chambers are located in their downtown. I think it’s just it’s a good signaling of being right there in the heart of business and where things are happening. But it doesn’t have to be you know, for anyone listening who’s still on the interstate or you know, different type of location, but I do like it when the chambers in the downtown so

Jessica Walden (09:57.87)
Absolutely.

Jessica Walden (10:08.301)
Yeah, you know, it’s important to meet businesses where they are. And right now, such density of business is in our downtown. And the other piece of that is like right across the street from me is the Tubman African-American Museum. Our visit-making, our CBBR Tourism Bureau is right here. Our terminal stations, I like to think we’re very neatly positioned along the welcome corridor into our community, which I also think is so important for a chamber to be.

Brandon Burton (10:35.187)
It is. That’s great. Great alignment. So today we’re going to focus most of our conversation around fostering strong engagement. And that can be such a topic that chambers across the country are always thinking about. How can we better engage our members? How can we create a stronger community feeling? So we’ll dive into some of the approaches you guys have taken and really what strong engagement looks like, especially there in Macon. We’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Jessica, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about what it looks like to foster strong engagement at your chamber. So maybe start by telling us what does strong engagement look like in Macon? What have you guys done to foster that and create that?

Jessica Walden (11:24.683)
Well, you there’s there’s always the numbers to back it up. And one thing we noticed was a trend. Now, again, I came on board three years ago, very new to the chamber world, but I wasn’t new to make in. And for me, it was signaling a whole new chapter for us. Like I said, we we moved buildings. We we completely we’d switched to a tier system. All these things happened at once within this three year change. But one of the things we noticed

at the end of that year as we began to see an increase in engagement in our post 2020 world. And it really did ask, you know, make us really ask like, what is this uptick from? And I think what a lot of that what strong engagement really looks like, it is good attendance. I mean, none of us want to do this to an empty room. So it is strong attendance. But it’s also creating a welcoming environment, setting the stage

for that natural connection to take place. And in order to have great connection, great engagement with one another, you definitely have to have a variety of people in the room. So, you know, just like many of our chambers, we’ve got the mom and pops to the largest industries in our chamber.

And what I am seeing, and it’s really exciting to see this, when I look around the room now, I’m seeing a lot of people I don’t know. And again, have you been born and raised here? And you think you know everybody, especially when you’re in the chamber world. But I’m starting to see a lot more younger faces. I’m starting to see a lot of these boomerangs, the people who return to their hometown, and they may be returning for a variety of reasons. Part of that reason may be that they’re taking over the family business, businesses are

transitioning, they realize that you can come home again, all those things, but I’m seeing this, this burgeoning new crew, like this burgeoning new leadership. And I’m like, that’s what you want. Like, that’s what we want to see is we don’t want to continue to, to grow, you know, stale and just talk to ourselves, we want to see new people entering. And so what positions our chamber is that that point of entry, and a lot of that is the relevancy, making sure that your chamber

Jessica Walden (13:46.272)
is relevant, but a lot of it is being really focused on what is the best use of people’s time. So, I mean, our chamber, again do staff of 10, team of 10, we do nearly 100 programs a year. So, I mean, and again, in the chamber industry, that’s no big deal. But when you actually do communicate that to your investors, they’re like, wow.

No wonder it looks like you do a lot. You do. I that’s almost something every single that that usually is something every week, if not five things every week. But.

Brandon Burton (14:15.319)
You

Brandon Burton (14:21.643)
Right.

Jessica Walden (14:23.197)
Our job isn’t to do more. mean, we look at our calendar every year and think, what can we cut, combine, and do better in order to keep that attendance at an all time high, in order to keep people talking and connecting with one another. And so I really think good engagement looks like a good use of people’s time. And the communication and again, tour guide on the side here, the storytelling piece of it is making sure

that our programming aligns with the community in the sense that you’re coming here and connecting for a purpose even greater than you. It’s for the greater good. It’s for our greater community. It’s because Macon’s on the move. It’s because Macon is experiencing a resurgence, a renaissance. It’s an exciting time to be here. You want to be in the room where it happens. so, you know, I think to me that’s what good engagement looks like. And it is. It is a variety of demographics. It is your small business owner.

being able to connect with your larger industries. It is diversity in all kinds of demographics and it very much is the new audience that we don’t know yet who it’s our job to nurture, help them create leadership opportunities and hopefully keep them here at the end of the day.

Brandon Burton (15:41.942)
Yeah, I love what you said about with all the events and everything you do to be able to cut, combine and do things together. as a as different, you know, chamber members look at engaging and business owners look at trying to get involved as their local chamber. There can be some overwhelm when there’s so much that is going on. And we talked about a little bit before we started recording, but my background is in chamber publishing. And over the years, I meet with

members about advertising and different publications. And I often hear from them almost a sense of guilt. Like, I, you know, we joined the chamber three years ago and I haven’t been to an event yet. You know, I just, I’m too busy. I can’t make it to the luncheons or the mixers, the after hours, the ribbon cut, whatever it is. And so being able to cut, combine, do things together, show where there’s value in these different events that you’re doing. So they want to be

there, so they make it a priority. Do you have some examples where you’ve been able to do that, look at some different programs, cut, combine, do them together and how that resulted in more engagement?

Jessica Walden (16:55.189)
Right, yeah.

Well, and you know, I’ll say where that comes from is, and I joke all the time that I’m a recovering entrepreneur having owned a small, I’ve owned several small businesses, but in particular, the tour company being one of them. And I understand what it’s like. I worked independently, every commitment that I made was taking away billable hours. Like, you you don’t want to have people stack away from the register necessarily. At the same time, community engagement is everything for your business.

Brandon Burton (17:18.646)
Right.

Jessica Walden (17:26.177)
and being visible and I mean to me it’s cause related awareness, it’s cause related marketing. One of the best ways that you can market your business is to be seen and be visible and be out there and connecting. So coming from that place of understanding like really being able to meet businesses where they are.

and realize that they just, one, they can’t do everything. So can you offer like just really intentional programming that again is worth their time to step away from or fits more along there, knowing your audience and knowing who your target audience is and what their schedule may be. So for example, I mean, I would just say restaurants, that’s one of the hardest things chambers have, they come and go in our membership, right?

they join for the ribbon cutting, it’s hard to always retain them. And then of course during 2020 our chamber saw drastic drop in the restaurant hospitality industry. Now we’ve started seeing them all come back in. Well they’re not going to be able to go to some of the traditional, they can’t come to a lunch and learn for example, I mean that’s a peak time for them. So can we create relevant opportunities specifically for our restaurants? They give them a reason to

invest in the chamber. And so what that can look like is our breakfast programming if they are not a lunch spot. Or what that could look like is our taste of making committee, which is an online virtual session that’s offered once a month that is during like an afternoon. Like I think it’s around like a post lunch rush time where we offer all the opportunity for industry specific businesses in

restaurant industry to gather to share best practices to have some type of featured speaker from the community side of things so they can be aware of things going on and then also inform them on the calendar and what’s coming up and where are opportunities to plug in that they may want to consider and so for them many of these it’s just that pause that they can they can do such a thing. you know this is this is I don’t know if is I don’t know if cut was quite the right word in this

Jessica Walden (19:48.448)
this one example, but we all do golf tournaments, right? Like every chamber does one. We have a successful one once a year called the Legacy Golf Classic. I inherited it as I came on board. In fact, my first day on the job was our golf tournament. And immediately I began thinking about this program, knowing that it’s a great revenue source, knowing that we’ve always done it this way, you know, that sort of thing.

also noticing that it really doesn’t include everyone and there’s not an opportunity to participate in it. And unfortunately, I’m not a golfer. I can drive a mean golf cart, but I’m not a golfer. And one of the things I started talking about on day one, and it did take us two years to implement, but we introduced the bingo component during the lunch. And this provided an opportunity for our sponsors, our general membership,

our ambassadors. If you didn’t play golf, you wanted to be there during lunch because you could play bingo. when I say bingo, we’re not talking about, you know, like nursing home level bingo. We’re talking about legal gambling with beverages, you know, and the chance to really have fun together. And bingo is making quite the comeback. In one of our favorite bars up the street does it. And that’s where our team went to go learn how to

to run a masterful bingo game. But we introduced that component. And what that does is it has created a whole other sponsorship avenue for us in many ways, because from the card to the hose to the collar, mean, there’s all that. But it also engaged the non-golfers. And so now we don’t have a legacy golf classic. We have a legacy classic. And so it’s this classic part of our chamber on the golf course. And now with this fun inter…

way to have lunch together and play bingo. And some of the golfers even last year were like handing me money and being like, can you proxy for me? Because I wish I was in there too.

Jessica Walden (22:00.949)
You know, and I took it and I did it, but, you know, that’s enough. That’s one way of it. business after hours, this is, all, so many of us do business after hours and I have heard pros and cons. I’ve heard that some do, you know, for us, it is a very easy lift. We offer it as a sponsor. The host sponsor pays their sponsorship. They provide the food and beverage. We, we handle registration. That’s our primary goal with it. But,

And you know, it is it’s a significant revenue generator for us in addition to that. But it’d be easy to do 12 business after hours a year. But would that be easy on our team? Does that get in the way of being able to market some of our other programming? So do we end up with like a marketing backlog where every all of our programs are competing for the same calendar and the same messaging time? And do we have can we

do less business after hours, but get more people there. And that’s what we decided to do. So now going from 12 to last night was our last one of the season, our ninth business after hours. We’ve had consistent high attendance to each of these. We’ve had consistent sponsorship ease for each of these. We’ve easily crested 150 people at these after our programs.

And now we’re done for the year. Now we can focus on the legacy classic coming up in October, our annual awards coming up, our making in eggs, which by the way, we have making in eggs instead of eggs and issues. That’s a great part about living and making Georgia. know, and so we’re able to focus on our signatures towards the end of the year, make sure that our marketing can hit those marks. And at the same time, we created strong series of business after hours.

Brandon Burton (23:42.639)
That’s great, yeah.

Jessica Walden (23:59.612)
We did have to take that revenue cut at the end on the sponsorship side, but what we increased was the attendance, Adam, by doing that. So it works. It worked for us on that. And then just one more example of something that we learned to do better. Annual awards. Again, so many of us have these programs. Ours was evening. It was long.

and it was tired. It was one those that you know, you know that it’s right. And you know, I’m like many of us if once I go home, I’m not going to necessarily get back out there. So it was one of those where I was like, you know, is this the right time?

Brandon Burton (24:29.655)
That sounds familiar. I feel like I’ve heard that before from other teamers. Yeah.

Jessica Walden (24:48.359)
Is this the right format? And so we switched that up recently. And so in the last two years, this will be our third year this year, we’ve switched our annual awards to a three o’clock start time. And we’re doing it at a brewery, but it has a very large event space at the brewery. And so now it is our annual awards and it has the tradition and the sense of giving out awards. But the happy hour component indeed helps. It has created

incredible where the doors open, people gather, we have a happy hour period, then we move to the awards portion, and then we open it back up to happy hour. And we laugh, like we do it earlier and now people don’t want to leave. Like they’re not leaving the program when it’s over because they’re still gathering and celebrating and that sort of thing. And, you know, again, I think we met people where they are with that by doing that, changing that

time, altering that format, being willing to do it differently, just create. And now our annual awards is uniquely ours. It complements well with our neighbor chambers. One has an incredible morning annual awards, one has an evening one. Those all work for their communities really well. And for investors who are in multiple regional chambers, ours works again really well because they could fit ours in during that happy hour time period in the late afternoon.

Brandon Burton (26:17.823)
Yeah, that’s great. So I love the examples you shared as well. And while you were talking, you saw me turn around and grab a book off my bookshelf. I’ve plugged this before on the podcast, but it’s a book called You’re Invited, the Art and Science of Cultivating Influence.

Jessica Walden (26:34.765)
just gotta write that down.

Brandon Burton (26:34.955)
And as you’re talking about knowing your audience, it’s so important to be able to understand who it is that you’re trying to gather together and being able to extend those invitations so they know that there’s purpose in you reaching out to them to be at that event because there’s something there for them.

Jessica Walden (26:45.069)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (26:55.439)
and whether that’s having more industry specific type of events or even looking at if every event the chamber does has to do with, has a happy hour component to it. I mean, it works very well, but I can bet there’s probably a segment of the membership that doesn’t come because family responsibilities or, and maybe if there was something that was family friendly.

that there was something for that. it’s just, goes back to knowing your audience and extending those invitations.

Jessica Walden (27:27.137)
is. You know, and that even is a happy argument by moving it up to that three, that also freed up that family time too. I mean, you know, and I’m a mom.

Brandon Burton (27:35.697)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Jessica Walden (27:39.884)
I just, know the value of all that, especially as a chamber president, as many of us can relate. Like, you know, our time is just everything that we get outside of all of this for that. having that level of consciousness of like, if we’re going to create, you use the word purpose and that’s what it is. Just having that, we’re going to do it, it has to be worth people’s time. Otherwise we shouldn’t be doing it. And I know when I started this job, I was given that sticker that said,

it.

This is how we’ve always done it. And then I had a big X over it, you know, and being able to have that. I’m okay with us being able to do our traditional things, but how do we evolve it just enough for our newer audience and the audience we want to be and an audience that is truly invested and engaged in what we’re doing and time. mean, money is one thing, but we know time is what is attached to that. And we just have to be conscious of every ounce of people’s time that we’re using.

Brandon Burton (28:14.069)
Yeah.

Jessica Walden (28:41.483)
and knowing that what we do, they leave saying that was worth my time to be there.

Brandon Burton (28:47.537)
Absolutely. I think that sticker, if I remember right, is a YGM sticker. So there you go. All right. So I feel like I have to ask you about this before we move on, but you had shared with me ahead of time that you do an event with singles, trying to mix singles. Yeah. Can you tell us just what that is about? yeah, just tell us what that event is.

Jessica Walden (28:52.149)
Yes it is, yep.

Jessica Walden (29:04.915)
So glad you asked.

Jessica Walden (29:11.469)
Yeah, I was wondering how we’re gonna get to that, you know, it is definitely, um, all right, so another example of, you know, of cut combined or

and do it differently. And our young professionals network was at one time strong and going well. And then of course, 2020 happened and it really had a hard time getting traction again. then around this time is when I’m coming back on board and again, looking at everything closer.

It started out more as a joke because I was mildly offended that I was no longer considered a young professional and I didn’t like the age cutoff and I’m like if we’re gonna be an inclusive chamber that includes age too. that was one piece of it. But what we heard by listening to our investors, listening to our community and listening along the needs of workforce and again,

Brandon Burton (29:54.33)
Ha

Brandon Burton (29:58.168)
you

Jessica Walden (30:12.025)
attraction and retention. It was the fact that

that love’s not easy, connection’s not always easy, but when you have a really good employee and let’s say they are doing so great at their job that they don’t have the greatest love life or they’re single and they don’t have anything, well then they may look online and start swiping left and right and next thing you know, they’ve met somebody and maybe that somebody’s out of town and now they’re moving out of town.

for companionship and you’ve lost an incredible employee and No matter you know in different ages, especially This gets harder and harder. So we heard what people were saying and I said well You know, let’s think about this. What if we took this idea of like young professionals, but made it more aimed towards singles and Really the intention on this being for those who are looking to make connections

connection, relationships, love, whatever you want to call it, that we create an in real life opportunity that’s not necessarily speed dating and is, I keep saying, not creepy. Like we wanted to make sure that it maintained some integrity here to bring people together, to convene people. And we had our

Brandon Burton (31:33.52)
Yeah

Jessica Walden (31:43.522)
young team who are who a lot of them chose Macon who graduated college chose to stay here they came forward with an incredible plan for these these mixers so we call them the Mac mingles with singles and Mac stands for Macon area connections and it is a low entry low cost program to attend where you come in you register you self-select while you’re there so you can pick up a cup

And that cup may mean that you are seeking women, seeking men, or maybe you’re a wingman and you’re just there to support someone who is doing all of that. And you’re able to mix and mingle. We have some actual icebreaker programming put into it. Of course, it is a very business after hour style event, but it is a young audience. It is a unique location and it is heavily programmed. you are, um,

you know, it’s curated enough where you actually intentionally meet people. And it was one that like, I have to say it’s not scary, but you are worried like how is this gonna come off? It has been so well received. I have many of my industry say, I am putting that flyer in our break room. I’ve had industry say like, I have.

Brandon Burton (32:51.435)
Yeah.

Jessica Walden (33:01.151)
of really strong, like all male staff. I need these guys to meet some people like they are in a lot of them, you know, if they’re working all the time. And so the industries have been supportive in that sense. The attendance has been, we’re really pleased with it. It has been a growing attendance, but like the first one, we were worried if any guys were gonna register. had quite a few women register, but we’re like, is there gonna be anyone else?

Well, they showed up. They just didn’t pre-register. There was a lot of people who were just trying to ease on in there, see what it’s about. Now it has really picked up steam in that sense. And they just had one a couple of weeks ago and we made it a game night theme. So they actually had a chance to go from table to table and they were doing card games and fun stuff. we had about, it was like, we were almost 70 people show up to that one. And so we’re starting to hear about some matches being made.

Brandon Burton (33:34.391)
Yeah.

Jessica Walden (34:00.992)
hopefully can share those stories soon too. But it’s a fun way. mean to me this is now our YPN group. This is our way to look at it. We just look at it through different lens.

Brandon Burton (34:10.613)
Yeah, it’s a great retention strategy as you alluded to. And I love how it engages other staff of the different chamber members. But you may need to be thinking of a 2.0 for this as they matriculate, and they’re no longer singles because this is so effective. So yeah.

Jessica Walden (34:14.07)
Yes.

Jessica Walden (34:21.537)
Yeah.

Jessica Walden (34:28.525)
I I don’t know. They’re starting to come to, you know, lot of these folks had never been to a chamber event or they don’t even know it was a chamber program when they signed up.

And now we’re starting to see like second dates at business after hours. So that works too. They graduate, they graduate to full. But this also feeds into our membership, I mean our leadership program. You know, we operate leadership, leadership make in and if you think about how we create this programming that really does create a pipeline, that’s what it’s about.

Brandon Burton (34:42.039)
That’s great.

Brandon Burton (35:00.873)
Yeah, I love that. Well, Jessica, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for the listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or strategy might you be able to share with them to help in encouraging them with that goal?

Jessica Walden (35:19.021)
I don’t know if it’s a strategy, but I’m gonna quote Dolly Parton here. Find out who you are and do it on purpose, which is sort of my favorite thing she says. And of course we can apply that personally, but how do you apply that to your chamber? And I think it is, find out who you are as a chamber and not just about doing it on purpose, is about doing it with purpose. And again, everything that we’ve talked about on that, who is your audience? What is it you’re trying?

to provide your audience and does this fit and does this fit into your community right now and where it really doesn’t meet your business is where you are but what your community needs and

and create that community out of it. So I would just say that, you know, really being able to evaluate, like, evaluate that strategy, but is there a purpose? Is it purpose driven in what you’re trying to achieve? And I think when you have that, that is as a strategy, that it ends up working out in a way to really be able to curate those programs for your year that make it worth everybody’s time.

Brandon Burton (36:34.795)
think that’s great advice. I’d like to ask everyone that 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?

Jessica Walden (36:46.303)
Yeah, well, and you know, I’m like, I’m new to this world, but what I really realized very quickly.

is the past was about recruiting industry. And it’s not to say we all don’t do that as community or work with our with our economic development team to do that. And we’re very blessed here. We’re a collaborative community right now. And so I work with our development authority every day. In fact, he’s texting me right now about something else that I but I appreciate that relationship. But I very much understand that in that he may be recruiting industry. But my job as a chamber president is to recruit people.

So we are now in the business of recruiting people. And I think that’s where we’re going for us. Our choose making strategy is really our North Star. Like that is our chance to continue to bring people into our community, to keep them here and to be really bold and innovative of what that looks like and how we do it. so, you everybody talks about location, location, location, and I can talk about making all day is an awesome location.

But I would say it’s about people, people, people, and that’s where our chambers are heading.

Brandon Burton (37:57.922)
Yeah, and if you’re single, they’ve got a place for you to meet somebody. I love it. Well, Jessica, for those listening who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you’re doing things there in Macon, where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Jessica Walden (38:01.809)
I mean, we are, it is wraparound services around here, that’s for sure.

Jessica Walden (38:16.087)
Yeah!

Obviously you can find me on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn Jessica Walden, but I would say go through MaconChamber.com our new websites rolling out next week So I’m really proud to show that off and easily way to connect with us You know our communication is something that we’re all really proud of as a team. So One of the things I love sharing is our newsletter format that we put out weekly I actually do a weekly video component to it and so if you want to see that that, just shoot me an email, we’ll get you signed up for that and we’ll stay in touch that way. Thank you, Brandon.

Brandon Burton (38:51.627)
Very good. And of course, we’ll have that all linked in our show notes to make it nice and easy. But Jessica, this has been a fun conversation. I appreciate you setting aside some time to join us here on Chamber Chat podcast and to share your experiences and the things that are working for you guys there in Macon. It’s always great to talk about engagement and what’s working for chambers in that realm. So thank you.

Jessica Walden (38:56.894)
Awesome.

Jessica Walden (39:16.077)
Thank you Brandon for providing the platform to do so and thanks to my counterpart in Cobb County, Sharon Mason for recommending this opportunity.

Brandon Burton (39:27.032)
Absolutely.

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Chamber Promotional Videos with Eric Hortness

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Brandon Burton (00:00.738)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Eric Hortness. Eric is the Executive Director of the Madison Chamber of Commerce in Madison, South Dakota, a role that he’s proudly held since 2017.

Before stepping into the chamber world, Eric built a career around athletics as a college baseball coach and fundraiser for Dakota State University. His passion for community and teamwork continues to shape his leadership today. Outside of his chamber work, Eric stays deeply connected to the game of baseball, coaching Madison’s spring high school baseball team and cheering on his son who plays college ball at Mount Marty University.

He and his wife Desiree are raising two sports loving kids, including a daughter in sixth grade who’s always ready to compete. Whether it’s family activities, chamber initiatives, or coaching from the dugout, Eric brings energy and commitment to everything he does. But Eric, 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.

Eric Hortness (01:24.293)
Yeah, I appreciate it, Brandon, for excited to be here and thank you for the invite. Something exciting, you know, I started with the Greater Madison Area Chamber of Commerce in 2017 and that was really my first, I guess, delve into the chamber world. I really…

didn’t have a whole lot of knowledge with a chamber of commerce before that. But it did help that I was fundraising for our university’s athletic department before that. So I knew a lot of the business owners already. Madison, South Dakota, for those that are not familiar, we’re about 45 minutes Northwest of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which Sioux Falls is the largest city in South Dakota.

Madison’s about 6,500 people. We do have two lakes on the outside of Madison. So when you factor in the two lakes, we’re about a 10,000 population area. And then with the university, we always joke that in the summer, we trade out our college students for lake people.

Brandon Burton (02:48.814)
Yeah, as I say, tourism. So that makes sense. For other college towns, the college students leave in the summer and the population just gets cut in half or something dramatic like that. So it’s nice that you’ve got that balance to be able to keep things moving in the economy. That’s awesome.

Eric Hortness (03:00.825)
Right. Yep.

Eric Hortness (03:08.399)
Yeah, and that’s, you know, we try to, you know, we try to do some things in the summer to draw those, what we call Lakers into our community and hopefully spend some money.

Brandon Burton (03:22.19)
Very good. Well, tell us a little bit more about the, tell us a little bit about Madison. Tell us about the Madison Chamber. Size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to kind of set the stage for, as we dive into our topic today, just to know what kind of resources you’re coming from.

Eric Hortness (03:38.309)
Sure, we’ve got roughly 275 members. We call them investors. We have a staff, including me, two and a half, two full-time and then one part-time staff member. So we rely very heavily on volunteers. Our board is very engaged and I don’t want to call them hands-on, but they are always willing to help.

when we need them to. But like I said, the volunteers for a lot of our different events are huge for us. We wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the things that we do do without a wide range of volunteers. Budget wise, we’re in the $400,000 to $450,000 range for our annual budget. And that comes from

several different buckets from investor dues to some funding that we get from our city because technically we are chamber tourism, downtown, all rolled into one. So we do get about a quarter of our budget from our city. We have some referral programs with some of the companies that we work with that

that generates some revenue as well. And then some of our events and programs help round out our budget.

Brandon Burton (05:15.286)
Yeah, it’s always good to have some good sources of non dues revenues. So you’re not just relying on those investor dues or membership fees and whatnot. Well, I’m excited to dive into our topic of discussion today. We’re going to be covering chamber promotional videos and Eric shared with me a few videos that they’ve done to promote some different events there at the Madison chamber. So we’ll dive in deep on this topic and how they’re doing things there in Madison as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Eric, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about chamber promotional videos. Tell us what you guys do. You call them cool dad videos. How did this come to be? What was the idea that generated this and how do you utilize them?

Eric Hortness (06:09.317)
Sure. So this started a couple of years ago, really by accident. And it’s one of those things that can kind of be chalked up to some of your best ideas kind of happened by accident. So we now, since 2018, we do a downtown concert series on our main street. And it has grown from the first year we had a half a block of our main street closed.

And now it’s gone up to three blocks that we close off for six Tuesday nights in the summer. We have sponsors, headlining sponsors, food trucks, inflatables for kids, all kinds of different activities. With a band and we have a little beer tent area. And now we get about 2,500 people down to our downtown on a

on a Tuesday night in the summer. So a couple of years ago, one of our main sponsors wanted to do a little promo video. And so we came up with this idea of let’s just do a kind of two cool dads at a car show. Because with our concerts, we also have a theme. And that particular night was going to be classic.

So anybody that had a classic car that they wanted to show off, they could come and park on one of the blocks that we close off and just show it off. So that was kind of the start of the idea. Just a couple of quote unquote, cool dads walking around at a fake car show is how the video started.

Brandon Burton (07:57.94)
Alright, well, let’s paint the picture. What are these cool dads? I mean, what makes them so cool?

Eric Hortness (08:05.029)
Well, we have fanny packs that we wear for all the videos. We have hats that really probably don’t fit all that well. We have high white socks that we wear and Birkenstocks. So that was our first outfit as a cool dad.

Brandon Burton (08:25.432)
That’s pretty cool.

Eric Hortness (08:34.341)
You know, that’s, I guess, what we envision of dads walking around at a car show.

Brandon Burton (08:41.866)
All right, so yeah, continue with the, didn’t mean to throw you off of the story of promoting the Tuesday night concert series and everything, but we had to get this visual. So these cool dads, they’re doing this video to promote this, but go ahead and continue with the story.

Eric Hortness (08:58.147)
Yeah, part of the, I guess, the outfit also is of course, this is happening in the summer. And so we’ve got shorts and our t-shirts are tucked into our shorts. you know, those, that type of look is what we went with. Gaudy sunglasses. So that paints the picture for everybody on what this first video was centered around.

And we were just doing a promo video more for our sponsor to help get the word out that they’re sponsoring the evening. And, you know, maybe draw a little bit more classic cars downtown. And the first one that we did, it was kind of a one-off deal. Our sponsor is a Heartland Energy for this first video.

energy provider in town. And the other person, that’s the other cool dad, works for Heartland Energy, but also happens to be a state senator. And so he’s, him and I are the two cool dads in all of these videos. And as you can imagine, the dad jokes were not difficult to

Brandon Burton (10:21.134)
I love it. So this first one happens almost by accident. You’re asked, hey, what can we do to promote this, of shine a little more light on our name as a sponsor, that sort of thing. So you guys come up with this idea. How do you, I mean, was it just shot like with somebody’s iPhone? How did you do the first one and how has it evolved to the different videos you do now?

Eric Hortness (10:50.789)
Sure, all filmed with our marketing coordinators cell phone. We have wireless mics that we wear as we did in the first video. We really haven’t changed how we produce these or how we make them. It’s all filmed with a cell phone and a couple of wireless mics.

And, you know, once that first one was released, it really got people talking not only about the event that we were promoting, but just people enjoyed it so much. We still really can’t go anywhere without somebody mentioning when’s the next Cool Dad video coming.

Brandon Burton (11:45.166)
Yeah, that’s cool. So about how many videos have you guys done up to this point? I don’t know if you know a number of it’s just a ballpark guess.

Eric Hortness (11:55.025)
I think we’re, you know, as far as Cool Dad videos, I think we’re in the 12 to 15 range right now with, you know, it’s really gotten to the point now where people, after that first one was released, other entities that had events coming up reached out to us, hey, can you do a Cool Dad video promoting our event? And that’s really what we,

have centered around now is just promoting some of our other investor events that we have coming up. A little, I guess, info on Madison, Miracle Treat Day is ran, it’s a national event with Dairy Queens, and it’s in July every year, and every…

Blizzard that is purchased, a portion of that goes to help cancer research for children. And our little old Dairy Queen in Madison, South Dakota sells the most blizzards in the nation every year on Miracle Treat Day. So our second video that we did for the Cool Dad was promoting Miracle Treat Day. And it kind of ended with

started where the car show ended. we just kind of played off the car show a little bit. And, if you followed the videos, you can see the connection between our, promoting our downtown Madtown concert series and then miracle treat day. they kind of tied into each other, but now, you know, since then we’ve done several other videos with some of our other investors that have helped.

increase attendance at the events.

Brandon Burton (13:55.064)
So that was gonna be my next question. It’s nice that people around town are seeing it and they’re asking you, hey, when’s the next cool dad video coming out? But in the end, what’s it doing to promote those sponsors or drive attendance to the events? can you share with us what things maybe looked like before starting to do these promotional videos versus after, or what’s that increase been like for these different events?

Eric Hortness (14:20.879)
Sure. You know, some of the videos that we’ve done to help promote other events, our local Kiwanis chapter does a pancake feed every year as a fundraiser for their organization. We did a, I call them stupid video. We did a stupid Cool Dad video with the head of the Kiwanis chapter.

where they needed some cool dad help in, in, making all the pancakes. that was the most after leading up to that event, that was after the video was released that year, they, sold the most tickets for their pancake feed, that they’ve ever sold. And this has been, this is something that’s been going on for years and years.

We did another video for our Trojan Athletic Club, is our, basically our booster club for our university athletic department. Funny story about that. We, we did it with the football coach as we were trying out for the football team, two cool dads trying out for the football team. And unbeknownst to us, we walked into the football coach’s office as we were filming.

And the coach had sunglasses, Birkenstocks on, a fanny pack. Right. And, you know, we’re such a small community that, you know, we, everybody knows everybody, good or bad. Everybody knows everybody. So he had seen the videos. He knew what was, what was coming up. He’s a character himself. But we had no clue that he was going to be, I guess, dressed in.

Brandon Burton (15:53.422)
You got the memo.

Eric Hortness (16:17.797)
Cool Dad costume. But that was the highest that year that we did that video for the Trojan Athletic Club was the highest membership that they’ve ever had. It was kind of a kickoff to their membership drive for the Trojan Athletic Club is what we did for the video. So just different things. I mean, we’ve done one for, we had a…

a brand new city hall that just opened up a handful of months ago. So we did a cool dad video just walking around city hall. As you can imagine, school drop off at the elementary school, it could be a reality show in itself. And last year, at the start of the school year, we did a cool dad video of

Brandon Burton (17:06.776)
Right?

Eric Hortness (17:15.109)
the do’s and don’ts of school drop off. So it’s really taken off with all kinds of different aspects of our Cool Dad videos.

Brandon Burton (17:30.71)
So what made you guys land on the Cool Dad brand, we’ll call it? mean, did it, again, just by accident or did you kick around some other ideas? How did it land on this?

Eric Hortness (17:36.229)
Ha ha ha.

Eric Hortness (17:43.299)
No, think just, you know, when that first video, when we were preparing to start it, really didn’t have a title. We didn’t have a title. We just said, hey, let’s act like we’re two cool dads walking around at a car show. And the cool dad kind of just stuck.

Brandon Burton (18:03.734)
Yeah. So is there any kind of scripting that goes into it? Like, do you talk ahead of time about, let’s do this, this, and this, or do you just ad-lib the whole thing with the common goal of what you’re trying to accomplish?

Eric Hortness (18:15.223)
Yeah, most of it is ad-libbed. We just kind of play off of each other. There typically is some text messages the day before of, let’s get a couple of these one-liners fit in somewhere. It seems like when we have a script, we have way more takes that we have to do than if we don’t have a script.

Brandon Burton (18:44.408)
Yeah, you’re trying to make it perfect, right? Yeah.

Eric Hortness (18:45.445)
It just flows so much better when we don’t have a script and we can just kind of play off of each other.

Brandon Burton (18:53.71)
So you’ve tried it both ways. You’ve tried it with more scripting and more ad lib. And then what’s the post production look like as far as the editing and who’s doing that?

Eric Hortness (18:57.411)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Hortness (19:07.069)
Again, that’s our marketing Danielle with our office. She cuts it and pieces it all together and we’ve done enough of them now. It doesn’t take her very, very long to put these videos together. The program that she uses, she’s able to add in different sounds and we did a 4th of July video.

and she added in some sounds of fireworks going off and different things like that. So she’s great at what she does. I stay out of her way and every once in a while she’ll start chuckling and I know it’s gonna be a good video.

Brandon Burton (19:54.126)
I love it. That’s awesome. So I’m thinking for the chambers that are listening, you know, we don’t, I guess in the chamber world, we’re all about ripoff and duplicate, but I can see, I’m just envisioning, you know, a bunch of different, you know, cool dads, you know, going on at Chambers now, but I don’t know where I’m going with the question exactly, but in the brainstorming of creating a character,

Eric Hortness (20:06.959)
the

Brandon Burton (20:23.744)
rather than just creating another cool dad at another chamber. Were there any other ideas as you guys brainstormed it that could be, hey, if we were another chamber, I don’t know, or even if there’s no men working at the chamber, it’s hard to do cool dads. So I don’t know, what are some other kind of quirky, fun, engaging type of characters that might come to mind? Totally throwing you on the spot.

Eric Hortness (20:50.757)
No, yeah. You know, I guess my opinion is the chamber position, the chamber office should be a fun, enjoyable, have fun with the position. I’m not saying that I’m not serious ever, but I don’t take it too serious.

where it’s going to cause a lot of extra stress that, I mean, yeah, chamber work is stressful, but I’m, I’m one that wants to have fun and have civil conversations and, and make people laugh and different things like that. so I, I guess my number one thing would be just have fun with it. Don’t take it too serious.

I’m okay with embarrassing myself from time to time on these videos. It gets people talking, it gets people aware of the events rather than just a suit and tie video where it’s boring and stuffy and things like that. Just have fun with it. In a lot of our videos, we try to…

make a mention of our wives, know, whether it’s they let us out of the house for a day to go to the car show or, you know, different things like that. So we have talked to them that they don’t like the videos. I’ll be honest with you, are embarrassed by the videos. So we’ve told them that as soon as they’re

two cool moms in a video, then we’ll stop doing the videos. So I guess a long way to answer your question is, you could certainly have two cool mom videos out there promoting events. I think just a little bit of brainstorming and with the idea of just have fun with it, I think people will come up with their own characters.

Eric Hortness (23:19.819)
A segue to that, we do a burger brawl in our community. And some of our promo videos one year, I was dressed as Guy not Fieri. And I had the goatee and the wig and all that type of stuff, Flavortown shirt promoting our burger brawl. And then at the end of the event,

Brandon Burton (23:35.914)
Okay.

Eric Hortness (23:50.085)
We have a chamber investor in town that has a mystery machine, Scooby-Doo van that they drive in parades and they have all the Scooby-Doo costumes. And so that was the premise behind all of those videos is that it was solving a mystery on who had the best burger. And so we finished giving the award and some of my board members were dressed as Daphne and Shaggy and…

Brandon Burton (23:57.461)
yeah.

Eric Hortness (24:20.537)
so I think, you know, if you just have fun with your videos, think outside the box a little bit, use your, your investor resources. they’re, you know, find ones that are willing to, to be in these videos. I think it’ll be, it’ll be an easy thing for somebody to incorporate once they get the ball rolling.

Brandon Burton (24:46.616)
What I really like about the approach you guys take is like I’ve seen other chambers, they’ll have the chamber chicks, you know, that go out in the community, but it’s very chamber oriented. And if you’re not already engaged, involved with the chamber in some level, it’s not going to resonate with you where you get a couple of cool dads that are going out. Everybody’s going to kind of tune in and be like, what, what’s going on here? These guys are ridiculous, you know, but it, it gets the attention. It ties it back to the chamber draws awareness of what the chamber is to people who didn’t know.

about it before. So I think it’s a kind of a stroke of genius of the approach that you guys are taking with this on purpose or not. I mean, I think now it’s more intentional.

Eric Hortness (25:25.605)
Well, yeah, yeah, it’s definitely gotten to be more intentional now. The first few were just kind of, yeah, we’ll do one and see how it goes. But yeah, it’s more intentional now. you know, some of the other chamber directors in our state and in our region know about them. They’ve watched them. Whenever they see me, they mention them. And then,

Senator Crabtree, the other cool dad in the video, you know, he’s at our state Capitol for three months out of the year. And so a lot of his fellow seat mates have seen these videos and, and, and the ones that I know, you know, they’ll make comments to me and different things like that. So it really has kind of, I guess, blown up.

locally and regionally a little bit.

Brandon Burton (26:24.662)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, I like asking the question for chambers out there listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, whether it’s something related to our discussion today or something totally different altogether. What kind of tip or action item might you leave with them and trying to help them accomplish that goal?

Eric Hortness (26:49.221)
in terms of these videos or in terms of really anything?

Brandon Burton (26:54.232)
Just anything, yeah, anything to help elevate their chamber.

Eric Hortness (26:59.173)
Number one, don’t take yourself too serious. Make sure you have impactful conversations with your investors. They’ll tell you what they’re wanting and what they’re looking for. And don’t be afraid to make changes. I think it’s something, it’s an industry that is always gonna be evolving. And so…

The ones that I think are struggling are the ones that are probably set in their ways. And well, we got to keep doing it because it’s what we’ve always done. It’s okay to say no sometimes to events and things like that. And then the pushback when you say no is a lot of times it’s, well, if the chamber’s not going to do it, who’s going to do it? Well, if that’s the case, then it’s probably not an event worth doing.

So it’s definitely okay to say no from time to time to things.

Brandon Burton (28:01.612)
Yeah, absolutely. 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?

Eric Hortness (28:15.449)
You know, I think it’s going to get, I don’t want to scare the listeners off, but in my opinion, it’s going to be tougher and tougher to get the messaging out, to get the word out about what you’re doing. Everybody’s budgets are getting tighter and tighter. So if you’re not out,

being a champion for your business community, it’s pretty easy for them to write you off when they need to make budget cuts. So I think it’s, you know, goes back to your previous question, always evolving. What’s the, I don’t wanna say the newest trend because you certainly don’t wanna jump on a new trend that in a month goes away. But you gotta be conscious of,

where everything else is going with your investors and trying to mirror what they’re going to be looking for.

Brandon Burton (29:23.66)
Yeah, I think that’s good insight and again, good advice again. Eric, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about your process. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Eric Hortness (29:45.317)
Sure, a couple of things. My email is eric, eric@chamberofmadisonsd.com. Make sure you put the SD in there for South Dakota. So it’s eric at chamberofmadisonSD.com. My cell number is 605-760-0621. And people can call or text me whenever they want.

You know, if they have questions about really anything that we’re doing here with some of our referral programs or anything like that, or more specifically, if they want to see some of the videos, they’re on our YouTube page, or they can email me and I can certainly send them a link to some of the cool dad videos that we’ve done or any of our other videos too.

Brandon Burton (30:41.516)
So these Chamber Chat episodes are going out on YouTube now as well. So anyone who’s just listening, be sure to check it out on YouTube. But specific for this episode, I’m going to try to link one of your Cool Dad videos after this episode plays so it can just roll into a Cool Dad video. I think that’d be a really neat transition and introduction to what it is that you guys are doing. But Eric, is, yeah, absolutely. This has been fun having you on the show and

Eric Hortness (31:06.287)
Sure, I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton (31:11.44)
talking about something not so serious, but that definitely is driving results. So I appreciate you sharing your example and what you guys are doing, what’s working for you. So other chambers out there can listen and try to replicate or make adjustments for their community, how they see fit. But this has been a fun discussion today.

Eric Hortness (31:30.681)
Yeah, you bet I appreciate the invite, Brandon and appreciate what you do for the Chamber world.

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Retention Strategies with Tonia Stephenson

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Brandon Burton (00:00.92)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a powerful, today’s guest is a powerhouse community leader and economic development, Tanya Stevenson. Since 2018, Tonia has been at the helm of the Burke County Chamber of Commerce as President and CEO where she’s dedicated herself to strengthening businesses and forging meaningful community connections. Her deep roots and chamber work span back to her early career at the High Point and Lorenburg, Scotland County chambers. But Tonia’s commitment to service doesn’t stop there. She’s spent six impactful years as executive director of the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club in High Point, revitalizing facilities and expanding youth programs and securing stronger financial future for the organization.

Tonia holds a double major in business administration and home furnishings marketing from High Point University. She’s a graduate from the US Chambers Leadership Institute and earned the prestigious CCE designation in 2014. Her leadership has earned accolades like businesswoman of the year and 40 leaders under 40 and multiple chamber honors.

She’s a dedicated board member and passionate community advocate. And when she’s not leading or serving, you may find her hiking a trail or cross stitching a new design or enjoying a weekend getaway with her husband, David. Tonia, 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.

Tonia Stephenson (01:50.776)
Oh, if I share too much about myself, people might think I’m crazy and shouldn’t keep listening. So, yeah, just take that out. You know, when I think about things that are interesting about myself, it really goes back to my personal life and people find this interesting and I found it interesting. Back a long time ago, we won’t tell how many years because I can’t tell anybody I’m 29 if I tell my years.

Brandon Burton (01:55.726)
We can edit, so no.

Tonia Stephenson (02:20.403)
My husband and I got married at the North Carolina Zoo Logical Park. It’s the largest zoo in the world at this point. and people say, you got married at the zoo? it’s like, I’m the only official wedding ever to be held at the zoo. There’s a lot of people have gone out to the zoo and they’ve taken some witnesses and a preacher and gotten married in front of the whatever animals they wanted to. And, but we actually rented the zoo and, got married, had our official.

Big win, 350 guests. We were followed by the national press. We had cameras in our face through the process because all of our local news followed us. And then by the time that we actually got married, it made the national press. So it was a big deal. And everybody, you know, we laugh and joke, and I say this in front of my husband. You people say, why’d you get married to the zoo? And the zoo was a very big part of our courting years.

And we wanted to get married outside and wanted to find a beautiful place. And back then wedding venues were not a dime a dozen like they are now. And I called the zoo and said, hey, I want to get married out here. And they said, you know what? We’d love to do that. That’d be a great marketing tool for us. So we tried it. And the marketing team said, we’ll never again do this. So all these years later, we are the only one that has ever done that. But we have great experiences and beautiful pictures.

Brandon Burton (03:35.084)
Yeah, you broke it.

Tonia Stephenson (03:45.208)
It’s just a great thing to look back on. so, oh, what I was gonna say is I got married there too because all my in-laws were already there. I didn’t have to invite them. So they were in the cages, you know, but they were all there. My husband and I joke about that. And he says that we have good time with it, but it was really a great experience. And I think that says a little bit about me is I love the outdoors. I love animals.

Brandon Burton (03:55.406)
Were they in the cages?

Tonia Stephenson (04:14.517)
I love doing things different. I don’t like to do things like everybody else does it. And so that’s little bit about me.

Brandon Burton (04:24.034)
There you go. That’s cool. I was going to ask why the zoo and all that, but you covered it pretty well. So I’m glad the in-laws were able to be there. That’s important. That’s great.

Tonia Stephenson (04:33.525)
They were all there. Yeah. It was great. And it turned out to be a beautiful day. It was a hot day in June, but it was great. The worst part was having the, poor little best man, the channel 12’s cameras was so close into his face. I was like, bless his heart. He can’t even move without the cameras being right there.

Brandon Burton (04:52.974)
Well, tell us a little bit about the the Burke County Chamber to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. Help give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget, things like that so we know what kind of chamber you’re coming from.

Tonia Stephenson (05:08.193)
Well, I consider us somewhat of a medium sized chamber. We have 640 members somewhere around there. People in the chamber world, know that changes on a daily basis. And we’ve grown it quite a bit. Since the seven years I’ve been here, we were at 450 seven years ago. So we’ve grown quite a bit through the years and very proud of that. We are located in the foothills of North Carolina.

Brandon Burton (05:18.839)
Right?

Tonia Stephenson (05:35.954)
A lot of people know Hickory and Asheville and we’re somewhat in the center of that and our northwest of Charlotte and our east of Asheville. So great location, big cities around us, but we’re still a small town and we’ve got some great amenities here. Just a great place to live and work. We do serve the full county and it is a big county. It’s amazing. It probably would take two hours to get from one end of the county to the other.

Part of our county is up high elevations and then part of it is east and lower elevations. So we’ve got some mountains here. We have four full-time employees on staff and one contract employee. Our budget’s about a half a million dollars. And it’s just, we continue to grow and we’re excited to be able to serve our community.

Brandon Burton (06:31.17)
Very good. And are you guys, are you strictly chamber? Are you tourism, economic development, strictly chamber? Okay.

Tonia Stephenson (06:35.275)
We are strictly chamber, which I like being that way. know a lot, exactly. I know a lot of chambers have to do with economic development or tourism, but I’m thankful that we can just focus on our members and not have to try to juggle all those balls. Although I admire the people that do.

Brandon Burton (06:40.59)
It allows you to focus on that mission, yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:00.716)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that definitely. Yeah, yeah, that definitely does help set the stage and the Carolinas are such a beautiful part of the country. So it’s no wonder you’re able to have a thriving chamber there because people want to be there so.

Tonia Stephenson (07:03.287)
but I have great partners.

Tonia Stephenson (07:18.985)
number one in business, three out of the last four years. So we’re very thankful for that.

Brandon Burton (07:27.118)
Well, our topic for conversation today, we’re going to focus most of our discussion around retention. And that’s a topic that every chamber out there should be paying attention to and monitoring, you know, as kind of one of those KPIs, you know, to see how your chambers performing, getting that feedback from your membership, your investors, you know, what is that retention looking like? So we’ll dive in deep on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Tonia, we’re back, as I mentioned. So before the break, we’re diving in today on the topic of retention. I’m sure you have a unique approach. Every chamber looks at different metrics a little differently. But as you look at retention, what is it that you guys really hone in on? And what’s your approach that makes you maybe stand out as a chamber, highlight your wins, and help members stick around for the long term?

Tonia Stephenson (08:25.793)
Yeah, you know, a lot of it, I don’t know if it’s unique. I think it’s, for me, it’s spending the time with our members and spending one-on-one time and making sure our members feel like they are as important as any other member. And that’s real important to me. I know in the chamber world, I’ve heard a lot of my colleagues talk about how they spend a lot of time with their big fish. And I’ve heard, I’ve sat through so many…

seminars, webinars, trainings on how important it is for us to spend time with the big fish. And I know a lot of people believe that. I do, I do make sure that they feel appreciated. But for me in this chamber and in any chamber that I’ve led, it’s always been about every member is important and every member needs to feel like they are a big fish to us. And so we spend a lot of one-on-one time and

And I sometimes it doesn’t make sense in the budget world, but at the same time in the world of what our members say about us and how they’re talking about us in the community makes a big difference. And so there’s a lot of things that we take time to do that some of you listening may say, she has lost her mind, but maybe I have. It has worked for us and it takes, it does. So here I am.

Brandon Burton (09:44.066)
That’s okay. It takes a special person to lead a chamber. yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (09:50.32)
And our retention rates have really shown it over the years and we’ve had extremely great retention. So some of the process that we go through is when a member joins, the day that they join or the day after they get a thank you, a handwritten thank you note sent from me and welcoming them to the chamber family and being a part of what we do and you you have a team of four now that you didn’t have before.

our membership person and our director of operations person, they personally meet with every new member and sit down with them and find out about their company and what they’re doing and where they need help and where they’re struggling. And we always ask the question, what keeps you up at night? Because we know that what keeps them up at night is what we can do for them and hopefully help them in those ways. Our membership person sends a welcome email and in that welcome email, it explains all the tools that

the digital tools that they have that they can sign on into our member portal and that they can put all the information in there if they have any problems. She sits down with them and like walks them through it. There’s a welcome post on all of our social media that goes up within the few days that they have joined and that member post tells about their company. It thanks them for being a part of the community.

It has their logo in there. It has a link to their website and of course, tagging them on that site as well. So then when it comes to three months that they’ve been a member, our membership person calls them and checks in on them, sees what’s going on, how are things going. At six months, our board member calls them and checks on them and see how they’re doing and what we can do for them. And then at nine months, they get another call.

and just checking in. When they renew, they always get posts out on our social media so that they can know that not just them joining means a lot, but them sticking with us means a lot as well, and that we want to continue to give them the promotions that they have. Promotions is really big for us. Most of our members are small businesses that need that promotion.

Tonia Stephenson (12:10.647)
A lot of them, can’t afford big ads and radio. They can’t afford big ads on TV. We don’t have local TV here, so that’s not even an option for our folks. So promotions is big. we do a lot of promotions through, one thing we’re doing today is Friday. And so T-shirt Friday is something we do and we promote our members. So today we’ll spend our entire, most of our entire day out going and talking to our members.

The t-shirt we have on is one of our members and that member gets constant promotions throughout the day So everywhere we go we’re taking that person with us and the member will get anywhere from usually about 20 20 posts today on that on that one member and then of course there that’ll be 20 members that will get Various shout outs throughout the day and promoting whatever’s going on. We always try to be

aware of events that are coming up. So, you know, it might be that we’ll go to somewhere and say, hey, don’t forget they’re having this big sale this weekend, come out and shop or the festival’s happening this weekend, come out and see them at the festival. So we’re hitting as many people as we can with that, which people love that. And now every time I go into the bank on Fridays, they want their picture taken because they know that that’s something we do. And I was like, you know, I can’t get y’all every Friday.

Brandon Burton (13:35.522)
and it’ll get shared. They’re working the system, they know.

Tonia Stephenson (13:38.454)
But the bankers love it. They’re working, yeah, that’s right. And so that’s something we have a lot of fun with. And it does take a lot of time, but our members love it and they know that they’re being cared for and that they’re being promoted. And a lot of them have said, hey, I’ve gotten business. I’ve gotten a lot of business from that little thing. We feel like it’s a little thing for them, it’s big.

In addition to that, quarterly we actually get all of our ambassadors together and we get on a trolley and we go out and visit about 16 members and one day we take them gifts. We call it Surprise Patrol. And so we get out and we go into a business and we say, surprise, we’re all here. we, you usually 10, 15 people showing up to your business on a trolley is sort of shocking. And all the ambassadors will bring a gift from their business to that member.

and it’s all about saying thank you for your membership and we appreciate you. And we’re not asking for any on any of these things. We’re not asking for money. We’re not asking to support anything. We’re not reminding them that they owe dues or anything. It’s all about, we appreciate your membership and appreciate you and wanna thank you. And then of course, on Surprise Patrol, they get gifts as well. So that’s always a lot of fun days and all of.

Brandon Burton (14:59.79)
So about how many members are you guys able to visit on one of those surprise patrol visits? Wow.

Tonia Stephenson (15:04.567)
We get about 16 in a day. So we hit quite a bit and we’re promoting our ambassador members as well. So we got the 16 members that we’re visiting, but then there’s 10, 15 members who are ambassadors, who their businesses are getting promoted as well. So 30, 35 businesses are getting promoted in that day. And it’s just a fun day and a great time to…

show appreciation and remind people that we’re here and we’re supporting them and helping them any way we can. It’s always interesting because after every Surprise Patrol, I have members say, hey, how do I get on that list? And I was like, well, we’ll put you on the list for the next time. So it’s a lot of fun. Once a year, our ambassadors and our board and the staff all spend a week delivering our new directories.

We call that operation. Thank you. It’s it’s a program that’s been around for a long time in chambers, but it kind of went away. I’ve always had worked in operation. Thank you just because I think it’s so important. So we we have some type of gift that we give. It’s a small gift and it’s usually a got a corny saying on it. Something like this last year we gave payday payday candy bars out and it said every day is a payday with you as a member of the chamber so.

It’s cute and corny, but people love it. They love seeing us come because again, we’re not there asking for anything. We’re just there to say hello, say thank you. We take pictures throughout the day, post them on our website. mean, post them on all our social media sites. So they’re continually getting thanked and they’re continually getting promoted through these things. And so they’re all real important to us.

And then in addition, you know, we do all those calls that the staff does and then the board does at six months, but our ambassadors are making personal phone calls to our members as well. So the ambassadors are making five to 10 phone calls a month on our members just to say, hey, you know, is there anything we can do? Check in on you. What’s going on with you? What can we do? And so that’s really helpful because a lot of times our ambassadors learn things about our members that we don’t know and that

Tonia Stephenson (17:22.827)
gives us an opportunity to know and it’s that gives us 25 more people out there calling on members and checking in on them that we can’t, you people can’t get to all of them. And so they really helpful with that. And then there’s little things that we will remember and do that. I don’t think that is normal in the world of of anywhere. But for me, you know, I look at them, our members as customers, you know, we.

If I hear that there’s gonna be a ball game, I tell you make a note and I’ll call and say, hey, did little Johnny win his ball game? And that means a lot to them. Or I’ll shoot a note and say, hey, I was thinking about you. We do a lot of notes about testing, if we got some kind of medical issue, we have birthdays listed and we send personal birthday cards, handwritten notes, we send sympathy cards.

We spend a lot of time on these types of things and some people might say, well, that’s just a waste of time in the business world, but it is not waste of time. I’ve had people that, like I have one gentleman who said something about his, he had knee replacement recent, I mean, he had knee replacement a few years ago, but recently he said, you know, that was the sweetest card I got from y’all. And he’s like, it was the best one I got from, you know, it was from y’all.

Brandon Burton (18:41.474)
Wow.

Tonia Stephenson (18:42.057)
And he’s like, who would have thought that my chamber membership would have gotten me thoughts during my surgery? And so we really try to watch out for those little things. And we watch social media closely to see that they’re posting, that they’ve got issues or concerns. Then we reach out and let them know that we’re there to help them and support them through that, throughout whatever that they’re going through, or to celebrate with them when it’s good stuff.

and they remember that we remember those types of things.

Brandon Burton (19:12.686)
Yeah. So with these, uh, with the birthday cards and sympathy cards, I can see how that could get, you know, a little arduous, you know, to try to get all these, uh, cards out. So how do you, how do you manage that? Is it, are you focusing on the primary rep for each business or how deep do you go with, you know, if they’ve got three or four contacts as a, with their membership, I don’t, how do you kind of filter who or how you’re able to send, um,

those kind of cards too.

Tonia Stephenson (19:43.728)
We really don’t filter. Yeah, we really don’t filter. If we know it, we send it. And if they’re a member, we don’t really filter. yes, takes some time, but it’s not overwhelming amount of time. And it takes five minutes to fill out a card and stick it in the mail.

I usually fill it out first and sign it from your Burke County Chamber family and then write a little personal note for me. then everybody passes around, they sign a little note and off it goes. it brings return on investment of 10 minutes of time maybe and 60 cents stamp or however much they are now.

Brandon Burton (20:38.86)
Yeah, by the time this comes out, the stamps will be more.

Tonia Stephenson (20:39.447)
$4 car, mean, it’s really…

Well, that’s true. The stamps go up every day, it really has. you know, and it might seem like it’s arduous, but it hasn’t been. It hasn’t been. It could get that way. don’t know. But, you we just try to keep up with the best we can. And when we hear things that we miss, it’s like, whoa, we’re so sorry that we didn’t know that. And people, nobody’s ever fought at us for it or anything. So, so no, there’s not really any filter on it. If we know it and

we can do something to at least acknowledge and know that people will, for people to know that we care that we do that.

Brandon Burton (21:18.978)
Yeah. So there’s a couple things that you had touched on I wanted to circle back with and just maybe get a little bit more information. So one is with the onboarding of new members. You talked about different staff members meeting with the new members and kind of doing the orientation onboarding. Are these members coming to the chamber office? Are they going to visit these businesses at their location? Is it a mixture of both? How do you try to schedule that?

Tonia Stephenson (21:29.132)
Mm-hmm.

Tonia Stephenson (21:45.6)
It’s a mixture. A lot of people want to come to the office and see our office and meet the whole team and we’re a great location. So a lot of them happen at the chamber, but then a lot of the members say, come see my place and come take a tour or whatever. So it’s really a mixture. And for the member meetings, have where tier dues. So we have bronze, silver, gold, platinum and titanium.

Brandon Burton (22:05.934)
That’s good.

Tonia Stephenson (22:15.415)
Bronze members, our membership team takes care of it, but if it’s Silver and above, I’ll actually have that member meeting with them as well, just so that they know who I am and that we all care about. I we all care about them regardless, but I do take the time to spend time with the Silver and above members when they’re first joining.

Brandon Burton (22:34.124)
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. So I really liked what you mentioned about T-shirt Fridays and being able to wear a T-shirt of different businesses in your community, different members and going out and taking pictures and posting them. Do members enroll in that? Do you proactively reach out and say, hey, do you want to send us a T-shirt and be included in the next T-shirt Friday or how does that program work?

Tonia Stephenson (23:00.031)
The only thing we have to do is have a t-shirt Friday and we end up with more t-shirts. I don’t know how many. I have quite a collection. Well, we’re not quite there, but yeah, we have quite a collection. That’s for sure. So every time we go out, typically I will come back with four shirts. And so we don’t really, we don’t charge for that, which, you know, we kind of talked about, it’s like we might all.

Brandon Burton (23:04.389)
Right. I can imagine what your closet looks like, right?

600 different t-shirts with logos on it

Tonia Stephenson (23:28.607)
start charging for this program. But we have some great events and we do fine with other things. And so far we’ve not charged because that way all sides of our members can participate. Nobody feels like that they’re really left out. And so we say the only charge for this program for T-shirt Friday is the cost of four T-shirts and you just provide us your shirts and we’ll wear them on that Friday.

Brandon Burton (23:30.147)
Yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (23:56.002)
So we start out that morning, we take a group shot of all of us in our shirts and what’s really cute is sometimes there’s stuff on the back. So we have to turn around and have pictures of our backs so that we get the information on there. And our initial post out is the four of us in our shirts and we tell a little bit about the company and we give the company’s website address and how to get in touch with the people and what their specialties are. And then,

From there, it’s usually individual selfies with our members or the group of members. Because we really want to catch a lot of people and sometimes we can’t catch them open. So sometimes we might be out by a sign and say, you know, telling about some company. Or sometimes we’re on the side of the road taking pictures and people are looking at us like we’re crazy. Recently, we have a new bank who’s building a new location. And so recently I stopped at the corner.

Brandon Burton (24:38.998)
Yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (24:52.119)
where there’s like, you know, basically like rubbish, you know, in this big, big parking lot right now, but they’ve got a beautiful plan and design that they’re getting ready to build. So here I am by the construction fence, taking a selfie with the picture of the bank that’s coming. And people just looked at me like I was idiot or they blow their horns and I was like, hi, yeah, it’s just me taking a selfie with the pit, know. There really is a purpose here.

Brandon Burton (25:13.186)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:19.042)
Follow us on Facebook, right?

Tonia Stephenson (25:22.199)
It’s like, yes, I might be crazy and do things differently, but here we are taking a picture with the fence. But it’s really, it was a good promotion because a lot of people didn’t know that that’s what was going on that location or they hadn’t been driven by there to see what the beautiful rendition looks like. And so it’s just about…

just about promoting what’s going on in the membership and promoting the members and what they’re doing and what their services are, what their product is.

Brandon Burton (25:53.058)
Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to ask about is you mentioned staff and ambassadors going out to deliver your annual directories. You had a name for it. Operation Thank You. So with Operation Thank You, I mean, you get, I guess, roughly about 30 people going out in the community to make these personal interactions, these personal deliveries. that sound about right? About 25 ambassadors and staff?

Tonia Stephenson (26:00.504)
Operation thank you.

Tonia Stephenson (26:17.783)
about 50 people. We have between 20 and 25 ambassadors. I have 20 board members, four staff, and then sometimes we recruit spouses and other people. So usually 50 or 60 people will help us out throughout the week. We do it in half days, we do it in teams of two so that it’s easier if you drive up to a location, somebody jumps out and delivers and jumps back in.

Brandon Burton (26:25.174)
And the board, okay. Yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (26:45.495)
Of course, sometimes we end up sending out to salespeople and they’re parking in every parking lot and introducing themselves to every person and having long conversations. And I’m like, guys, you’re not getting the books delivered if you’re doing that, but they’re doing their jobs. So, you know, I’m just thankful that they might get four delivered in the morning time, typically you can get 30 to 50 delivered in the morning and again in the afternoon.

Brandon Burton (26:57.228)
Right? Like I’m multitasking, yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (27:14.845)
if you get in and get out and keep moving.

Brandon Burton (27:17.9)
Yeah, yeah. Now I really like that plan and it’s a great way to have a for sure like an annual touch point with each member as you as you get those delivered and hand delivered. It goes a long ways with the payday bar or whatever that gift is so that’s awesome.

Tonia Stephenson (27:34.284)
Yeah. Well, when I was in, back in my day, when I was doing membership and learning the role and learning about chambers and figuring things out and sometimes, and the high point chamber that I was at for many years, we were quite a large chamber and, and it was hard to get to all of our members and to, to, to touch them throughout the year. And so a lot of times they only heard from us, was when they got their renewal notice and,

And I don’t know how many times I’d hear, it’s like, all you want is my money and you don’t really care about it. And even as a membership person, it broke my heart and I’ve tried to do my best to not, for that not to be the way it was. And our whole team, we all had a great heart about it, but we had 1300 members and there were six of us and still again, you just can’t get to everybody.

As I’ve learned throughout the years, I really don’t ever want a member say that the only time I hear from you is my renewal notice. And, and if, if that’s the only time they’ve heard from us, then shame on us. And, and so that’s what, and you know, my marketing person can say, but look at the hits that they get on our website, regardless of they hear from us, you know, they got these hits on the website. They got, no, I want them to hear from us. I want them to know. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:57.134)
It’s got to be meaningful to them, right?

Tonia Stephenson (29:00.511)
I want it to be personal for them. Their business is very personal, know, especially our small business owners. Some of our small business owners has their entire life savings wrapped up in that business. And when I say that they are part of the chamber family, when I say that the four of us are part of their team, I want them to feel it and I want them to know it. And I want them to, when they’re losing sleep at night, I want them to pick up the phone and say, here’s my troubles. And

We go to work to try to figure out what those troubles are. If they don’t ever see us, they don’t ever hear from us and they don’t, and if we are nothing but the email that comes in that says, hey, here’s your dues, they’re not gonna do that. And then when they get that email from the dues, they say, why do I need to pay this? And I get that, because I mean, money’s tight a lot of times. And so I wanna give them a reason that they say, I can’t afford not to pay this. And that…

That’s our goal with every phone call, with every visit, with every post we put out. That’s our goal is for them to know that they need us.

Brandon Burton (30:06.434)
Yeah. Well, I love all these touch points. I love the recognition. I love being able to show the member value to the chamber. These are all, I’m going to call them tactics or strategies, but that kind of cheapens it. I mean, it really is showing that you genuinely care about these individuals, these businesses and their success. I don’t think we can have a discussion about retention without me asking, can you share what your retention rates look like?

Tonia Stephenson (30:36.513)
We’re typically between 92 to 94%. So we typically lose members because they’ve moved or they’ve closed. And sometimes with, I don’t know if other chambers are having this, but over the last five, seven years, banks, because corporate says they’re not gonna be a member. Makes me so mad.

Brandon Burton (30:41.526)
something to celebrate.

Brandon Burton (31:00.94)
Yep. Yep. Or Walmart, we’ve been seeing that. So, yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (31:05.892)
So far, Walmart’s a really good member for us, so I hope that I don’t see that from them.

Brandon Burton (31:08.78)
That’s good. Hopefully they hang on. Yeah. Well, as we begin to wrap up, but I’d like to see whether it’s based on our discussion or any other thoughts for the chambers listening who want to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or strategy would you share with them and trying to accomplish that goal?

Tonia Stephenson (31:30.611)
One thing that I have always done and is real important to me and I think your podcast fits right in with this and I think it’s great that we have this as a resource. I’ve always had a mentor or multiple mentors. I’ve always found my neighboring chambers and made friends with them and made sure that they’re some of my closest friends.

and colleagues and somebody I could call on. So when I moved here, that was the first thing I did was look up my neighboring chambers and introduce myself, except for I had two that was precious and they reached out to me before I could get to them. And I have a neighboring county to the west that she and I call each other our chamber sisters because we just know that we’re there for each other.

So I think having mentors is very important and talking to other chambers and not just chamber mentors, but I think just having mentors in general, especially if there’s something that you’re not good at and you see it in somebody else, it’s great to spend time with that person and say, hey, can we go to lunch and just learn from that person, watch them. And then I think being a mentor to others is real important. And I know for me,

I’ve taken on several younger chamber professionals and spent time with them and tried to help them. And every time I’ve done that with the intentions of me trying to help them and help them learn and grow, I’ve found that I’ve learned and grown just as much through the process of being a mentor as I have having mentors. So I think that that’s just so important. You can learn so much, and especially if you’ll learn it with the right attitude and then go back and try to apply things that.

Brandon Burton (33:07.008)
Right. Yeah, it’s helpful.

Tonia Stephenson (33:21.547)
that makes sense. Of course, we all hear things and learn things all the time and it’s like, well, that would be great, but there’s no way I can put that on my plate. No, there’s no way. But to be intentional with trying to really, especially in areas where you know that you need to grow, learn and try to grow as much as you can in those areas.

Brandon Burton (33:39.18)
Yeah, I think that’s a great piece of advice. 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?

Tonia Stephenson (33:51.416)
That’s a very interesting topic because I found that in during COVID times, we had to really think about chambers and what we were doing and how we did things. And we had to really pivot and change a lot of our ways of thinking to stay relevant. And I think that’s so important in the chamber world is that we stay relevant. And I think that there was a time at least for the chambers that I was working with that

it was maybe hard for us to be relevant, when some technology seems to have taken over a lot of what we traditionally did in the past. And so I think for us to update our what we’re doing and always look for new ways to do things and new ways to present ourselves and being relevant in the business community and being on top of what the business community needs and individuals need and taking care of those things are, there’s just.

So important. I think that it’s real important that chambers be chambers and work with businesses and know that we are here for business community. We are business association. We’re not a social group. We are not here to everybody socialize and have a good time, but we are here to grow business and help our businesses in whichever way that they need. Being a voice for the business. Our chambers very active in governmental affairs, so.

That’s one thing that sets us apart is we are, I always say if the business community was a body, stick figures all I can do, we would be the mouthpiece of that body. And we got to be the mouthpiece for our businesses because we are the group that is gonna be standing up for our businesses and making sure that our businesses are heard. And that’s what our role is.

But always being able to, always looking for ways to change and grow is just real important and staying relevant I think is so important.

Brandon Burton (35:51.98)
I’d be curious how you would label the rest of the body parts, but that’s okay. Well, that’s a discussion for another time. but this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate these tactics, these ideas, these ways of showing your care for your members to really nurture those relationships. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you maybe as a mentor.

Tonia Stephenson (35:58.488)
I’ve never really thought about the rest of the body, so I’d have to think about that.

Brandon Burton (36:21.954)
or just to get ideas of how you’re doing things, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Tonia Stephenson (36:28.161)
Sure, I appreciate the opportunity. First podcast I’ve done, so hey, this might be new thing for me. But yes, Burke County Chamber of Commerce, I’ll actually give my cell phone number because reaching me at the office is sometimes very hard. My cell phone number is 336-689-5438. And you can email me at T. Stevenson, it’s tstephenson@burkecounty.org.

So email me or call me or text me either way. I’m happy to always help out fellow chamber people when I can and talk to fellow chamber people. I love learning from them. So be happy to talk to anyone.

Brandon Burton (37:15.66)
That’s perfect. We will get that in our show notes to make it nice and easy. But again, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for setting aside some time to be with us and share these insights. I think it provided a ton of value for our listeners today. So thank you. Thank you a lot.

Tonia Stephenson (37:30.935)
Thank you, I appreciate you.

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Sane Center Media with Ed Sealover

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Brandon Burton (00:01.106)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is someone who brings both journalistic rigor and strategic insight to the world of business policy in Colorado.

Ed Sealover is the vice president of strategic initiatives for the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, and he’s the editor of the Sum and Substance, a news site he launched in 2023 to dive deep into the intersection of business and state government. Before stepping into his current role, Ed spent nearly three decades in journalism reporting for

represented outlets like the Denver Business Journal, Rocky Mountain News, and the Colorado Springs Gazette. His exceptional reporting earned him 140 state, regional, and national awards, including the prestigious title of Colorado Journalist of the Year in 2020. Now, Ed leads the impactful initiatives at the chamber, including workforce development and environmental sustainability through the chamber’s Climate Action Task Force.

Ed lives in Wheat Ridge with his wife and two children. He’s here with us today to share his insights on Colorado’s evolving business landscape and what’s ahead. Ed, welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m excited to have you with us today. Love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Ed Sealover (01:37.432)
Well, thank you, Brandon. I appreciate it. Hi again. I’m Ed Sealover, VP at Strategic Initiatives and editor for the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. I’ve been here since February, 2023. And in my prior life, it was not just a journalist for 28 years, but I’ve actually authored two books. One in 2011 called Mountain Brew, a guide to Colorado’s breweries. That was a look at all 101 breweries that were open in Colorado at the time. And then the 2016 book.

called Colorado Excursions with History Hikes and Hops, which is a 30-day guide to traveling Colorado, stopping each day at one historic site, one natural site, and one drinking site, what I like to think is the best of Colorado. So that’s what I do in my spare time. Travel, be a dad, and find great beers.

Brandon Burton (02:27.085)
That’s awesome. also drive tourism in the state of Colorado too with your book, right? That’s awesome. Right. That is awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the Colorado Chamber, obviously a state chamber, but help give us an idea of

Ed Sealover (02:31.597)
I hope so, and certainly with all the trips I take, I drive in as well.

Brandon Burton (02:46.094)
size involvement that you guys are involved with staff just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Ed Sealover (02:54.699)
Yes, thank you. The Colorado Chamber of Commerce, we have about 400 direct member businesses, but we also represent about 80 local chambers and trade associations. So we like to think we represent thousand plus businesses when we’re going out there and speaking on things. We have a staff of 15 people. So we keep it pretty tight and on budget.

and we, we do a lot in the state policy realm. That’s kind of where we play our part where we’re very active at the Capitol, in both, proposing and opposing and pushing, for certain pieces of legislation, and in regulations, we’ve gotten very involved in trying to make sure that state regulations are realistic in what businesses can do. So, we’re kind of a, a big policy wonk group here.

speaking for the businesses of state of Colorado.

Brandon Burton (03:52.316)
That’s great. you know, occasionally I’ll have somebody on from a state chamber here on the podcast. And I love to just have the reminder of what a great resource the state chamber, whatever state the listeners are in their state chambers, such a great resource.

for the individual communities, the regional chambers, just as that really the advocate to help understand what’s going on in the state level and keeping things aligned. So appreciate the work that you guys do.

Ed Sealover (04:22.317)
Absolutely. And again, we oversee the Colorado Chamber Alliance. So we hear directly all the time from our chamber members across the state. I’m often speaking to those groups as our other members here. And we understand that we can’t represent business without representing the small local businesses that are asking their local chambers for help.

Brandon Burton (04:42.236)
Yeah, absolutely.

Well, our topic for discussion today, we’ll spend most of our time talking about what I’ve termed this topic as a sane center media. So we’ve obviously got the left and the right focused media, you know, in the traditional media outlets. But when we talk chamber work, when we talk, you know, really moving the needle in communities and the things that affect business, really it’s aligning in the center and being able to see where the truth lies amongst

all the chaos that’s out there. So we’ll spend most of our time on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Ed, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about Sane Center Media. I know you’ve launched something pretty unique, pretty interesting there at the Colorado Chamber. You want to tell us what that is and kind of what the origins for this?

I’ll say it, this new site, what it came from and what the dream was and how it’s evolved. you

Ed Sealover (05:48.141)
Absolutely. And thanks for asking about it. The Summon Substance is a website, tsscolorado.com. It’s free for everyone to see. That came about kind of from my decision in 2022 that I was done with journalism after two and a half decades in the field. I needed to move on to something and I wanted to do something a little more proactive as well, but I didn’t want to stop writing. And so I had

I had talked with the Colorado Chamber CEO. She was one of my best sources in covering the state house. And just talked about, what could a guy like me do? And she thought it would be a good idea to bring me on and to actually launch this site. And one of the reasons was, and I told her, if I leave the publication that I was at right now, they’re going to give up on the Capitol. though they didn’t right away, they eventually did pull out of covering the Capitol.

And I said, because of that, nobody is going to be covering the business issues of the Capitol the same way. So I suggested, look, if I come onto the chamber, I need to write a pretty detailed newsletter for the members. And Lauren Furman, our CEO, was the one that had the vision. She said, no, no, no, the heck with the newsletter. She said, let’s put up a website, because the website not only will allow our members to see what’s going on, but will allow policymakers to see and understand the business issues as well, because too often, and think this happens in every city,

media outlets focus on kind of the hot button issues. There’s guns, there’s social issues, there’s things like that. But we need people to think more about business issues and how that affects everyone even more so than these hot button issues do. And so she had the idea, we’re gonna put up the website, we came to the name Summon Substance to try to really show that this…

This shows every angle of what we’re trying to do here. And the one, I don’t want to say demand, but the one thing I said is, look, but if we’re going to do this and people are going to pay attention to is this cannot be chamber communications. This can’t be just PR on our side. We need to show both sides. And she said, yes, go for it. And so what it is, it is a

Ed Sealover (08:00.589)
a business policy news site and I admit I work for an interest group but as I tell everyone I try to write down the middle because I want people talking about business issues and this is the way to do it.

Brandon Burton (08:12.141)
I love that. The fact that it, yes, it’s sponsored by the Chamber, it’s a Chamber site, but not necessarily with the angle or the perspective of.

this is chamber, but just being right down the middle covering both sides. So when you talk about what are some of these topics that are important for everybody, not those hot topic things that make the newsreels all the time, but what are those things that are important for everybody that you see maybe drawing a little bit more attention on the site?

Ed Sealover (08:41.74)
We focus a lot on our state legislature. State legislature runs four months out of the year and it’s extremely active and they’re doing a lot of things with business. So we’ll go in there, I’ll go in there. I should say it’s me. There’s not the staff of people at the sum and substance. And follow bills really closely. Get stories out as soon as they’re coming about or as soon as we even see bill drafts to start the conversation on it.

and explain what it means to businesses. you know, sometimes that’s going to overlap with what other media outlets are covering. We had a big issue on property taxes in 2024. And everyone wanted to talk about property taxes. The difference was I focused a lot on how that affected commercial property and business property taxes rather than some of the residential taxes that most others focused on. And in a lot of cases, I’ll write about things that others may not be writing about.

of business regulations come up. have a legislature that is often looking for good reasons to help out consumers, but is looking to do it by raising regulations that are going to be problematic for businesses. just this past session, I focused a lot on a law that would have made it easier for people to sue over Americans with Disabilities Act violations, sue businesses, and what that would mean to it. Laws about

wage laws about unionization and making it easier to unionize. And then issues like artificial intelligence regulation that directly affect one sector of our economy, but really in many ways affected everyone who uses an artificial intelligence program in state of Colorado. And so I dive pretty deep into these in ways that I don’t think others do. And I always say, you know, in my last publication,

my editors would say sometimes, hey, cut it down. People don’t want to read a thousand words on this topic. Well, now I write about business policy. And so I write pretty long articles thinking if you’re coming to the sum and substance, you want to hear about business policy in depth. So we go into that. The other thing, I’ll be quick here as I realize I’m talking a lot, that I tend to cover are regulatory hearings. The way our state legislature works, a lot of times they set up a framework for

Ed Sealover (11:04.992)
how we’re going to do things like reduce emissions and what that means. And then we have regulatory bodies that decide how to do it. So our air quality control commission, for example, is very active in putting new restrictions on businesses that have emissions coming from them. And so I’ve spent a lot of time explaining what are the rules that they’re looking at, how would this affect them.

And hopefully trying to get not just businesses to hear about this, but the policymakers to understand businesses concerns as well. So anything that comes out of the state government or that affects a wide swath of businesses in the state is what I try to dive into.

Brandon Burton (11:43.356)
Yeah, as you’re given that explanation, I’m thinking, you know, when you see a commercial on TV for a pharmaceutical drug, you know, there’s the level one, you know, effects that, you you take this pill for this outcome.

But then you get the 90 seconds at the end of the commercial where it’s talking about all the potential side effects. And I think same thing when it comes to regulations, when it comes to different regulation that affects businesses. Yes, there’s the top layer. There’s the things that you’re trying to address, but then there’s all the secondary effects, the long tail effects that happen. And I see that as what you’re really getting into. How is this really going to affect business aside from what’s getting the headlines in the news?

as far as what that legislation, that piece of legislation is supposed to address versus how is this really gonna shake out for the average business and who’s gonna win, who’s gonna lose on this? Is that kind of an accurate description?

Ed Sealover (12:41.804)
It really is. you know, for example, we just had a special legislative session and they needed to close a budget shortfall. so they went after they being legislators went after a couple of longstanding business tax breaks and decided to roll them back. And a lot of folks said, well, look, if we cut this tax break, we can save a hundred million dollars and put that back into closing the budget shortfall.

And I would try to go in and say, okay, I will get into the nitty gritty here, but one of them, for example, was a tax break for insurance companies who have a certain percentage of their national workforce in Colorado. It’s called a regional home office tax credit. And legislators looked at it like, okay, we need to get this money back. And my story is trying to point out, okay, I see why, but understand.

that this is how insurers are looking at this tax break and this is what it could mean to Colorado’s insurance workforce at a time when we’re already losing members of that workforce to neighboring states like Nebraska and Arizona because the cost of living and the regulations are so much lower there. So those are the kind of things I try to put in perspective. Like yes, you may think about this, but here’s what it would have to do.

At the same point, I’m trying to explain to businesses who may just come to this and say, this is awful. You’re stealing my tax break and say, okay, here’s why the state is doing this. They don’t see it working for the following reasons. So it’s almost like trying to facilitate a dialogue between the policymakers and businesses about why these things are important, but always being sure to bring up both sides of that and to bring up what business concerns are. I think I tend to write about some stories.

that are broader with the here’s how it affects business angle because I don’t see that being out there a lot and that’s something I like to do to let local businesses especially know, hey, you may not be paying attention to what’s going on, but this is the direct impact on your company.

Brandon Burton (14:43.922)
Yeah, I see it as showing the other side of the coin. However, a lot of these issues, there’s not just two sides of the coin. get into it and it gets a lot deeper and more complicated than that.

Ed Sealover (14:44.723)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (14:55.678)
So for the local chambers, the work that you’re doing out there in the state level, let’s tie it back to the local chambers. How can we draw attention to them to offer the support to them? How can they benefit from their state chamber doing something like what you’re doing with this approach? What’s your thoughts on that?

Ed Sealover (15:06.187)
Absolutely.

Ed Sealover (15:20.619)
There are a couple ways I think you could think about that one is and again if you go to TSS Colorado comm You will see that the stories are free and in local chambers just pick them off and put them in their newsletters I have a couple chambers that are just like what’s going on? Here’s what you need to know

So I like to think of it as a service that local chambers can pick up and say, look, local members, you want to know what’s happening, you know, especially, you know, we’ve got a wide state. If you want to know what’s happening six hours away in Denver, here is, here is something you need to know. So that’s, that’s a service to local chambers in that way. And the other way it’s, it’s a two way door. have really good relationships with a number of our local chambers, or at least I like to think I do, um, where they’ll call me up and say, Hey, you need to pay attention to this or.

I will call them and say, this sounds like they would hit your part of the state more than others. Tell me about it. So I’m, I’m understanding what they need to be watching at the Capitol and getting their voice into it too, because too often, and this is true of everything in Colorado, it tends to be a Denver centric focus. and, and, and this is a way of at least getting into a publication. Look, here’s what the folks in.

grand junction need or here’s what the folks in Durango need, things like that. it’s a way for local chambers to bring their concerns to the state level as well. And thirdly, we tend to use what goes on TSS as a blueprint, both I and our our SVP of governmental relations.

tend to do a lot of talks in local chambers about, here’s what’s happening. And this is a great way to be able to summarize it and say, and by the way, follow it here. So I guess think of it like an Associated Press newswire for local chambers as well. I may not be able to follow what’s going on with your city government, but I will be able to help your folks understand what’s going on at the state level and what they need to pay attention to.

Brandon Burton (17:13.438)
Yeah, now that’s.

That’s great. So I know on your website, it very much looks like a news site, but curated for business. I noticed you also have a newsletter, although the idea was to start with the newsletter and you guys were like, no, let’s do a website. But it looks like there’s both, right? So is that pushing out the news stories or how does that work?

Ed Sealover (17:29.451)
Yeah, basically the newsletter. Yes, yeah, I mean, because I don’t expect people who are busy running businesses to be checking in every six hours to see if I have a new story up. So the newsletter is you sign up for the newsletter and every three stories that I put out, I’ll put out a new newsletter saying, here’s what’s going on during the legislative session that could come once a

Brandon Burton (17:42.334)
Yeah, and I love that you make it available.

Ed Sealover (17:53.312)
day that you’re getting a newsletter in the off season like it is now that may be every week to two weeks thankfully but yes that’s a way to make sure that people are informed too of what’s going on.

Brandon Burton (18:09.542)
local chambers can pick off certain stories or topics that you’re covering and bring it to their local awareness. Are there other ways that a local chamber can maybe piggyback on the efforts that their state chamber does like this? I know from an advocacy point, just to be able to lean on the state, just what are your thoughts around more of how the local chambers can.

can really piggyback and lean on the expertise of the state chamber.

Ed Sealover (18:40.349)
You know, it’s a great question because I don’t think in most cases, local chambers can expect to do something like this. We have deeper resources than most local chambers just because we have a statewide base. So yeah, I mean, just kind of picking it off is very helpful. But I would say for local chambers that are hearing this saying, boy, I wish I had that service.

Brandon Burton (18:48.635)
Right, if they’ve got one staff or a couple staff, yeah, yeah. So.

Ed Sealover (19:03.315)
it may be something they could as a group go to the state chamber and say, we are not the first state chamber to do this. This was an idea that the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce put into play a number of years ago. We do ours a slight bit differently, but it’s something that local chambers could work with state chambers to say, look, we need this lifeline to know what’s going on.

Now, maybe in other states, the state government isn’t quite as active. I know there are some states where they meet once every two years. And so it’s not quite that pipeline that’s necessary. But in some states, it’s a year-round proposition. I think local chambers teaming up with the state government to say, hey, how could we support you doing this kind of reporting back to us is something they could think about as well. And even in a sense,

Knowing that if you go and you cover these things in a fair way, people will talk to you. think local chambers could even think about establishing more of a partnership, if you will, or more of a relationship with local governments in that way. If you have a local government that is very active in setting forth regulations, just sending someone to attend their council meetings and writing things up.

and saying, look, we’re watching, is a good way for local chambers to kind of raise their voice in this too. And if you cover these things fairly, I think you actually grab the attention of local policymakers more and say, hey, I saw this story on it. I appreciate that. Let’s talk about this more often. So it’s not just the chamber reacting to what’s going on, but being proactive and saying, this is coming. How do we get people involved in the conversation?

Brandon Burton (20:44.853)
Yeah, and I’ve seen local chambers take a topic and then host a

podcast or webinar or town hall or something as a platform to be able to say, let’s talk about this further. Like obviously there’s feelings on both sides, there’s perspectives on both sides. Let’s hash this out and kind of get to the bottom of things. So I like that just, you know, as a, your perspective, you’re able to draw attention to these things. And then on the local chamber level, if they want to dive deeper or if they want to go in with their local government to be able to share their perspectives

or cover something on the fair and center, you know, the centric way. I think that’s a great model to follow. Given that you do the reporting on the what I call the sane center, you know, it down the middle. It is still news that is still reporting. Do you get feedback one way or the other? I don’t know the primary audience. Is it just chambers and your business members or is it the community at large?

Ed Sealover (21:48.907)
It’s interesting, the primary audience, I think started out as our members, but as I mentioned, if it’s just an internal echo chamber, you don’t really do anything with this. And so I’ve noticed more and more state groups or state representatives, senators, their offices are signing up to get this now. And then a lot of other policy groups, both those are in the business space and those that we sometimes clash with.

Brandon Burton (21:49.504)
What do you see? Right. Good.

Ed Sealover (22:18.926)
are actually signing up to get this now too. I’m hoping that is a way to open dialogue with them. We actually have cut a couple of media partnerships as well. We have one newspaper, The Gazette, which circulates in Bethanger and Colorado Springs, that will pick my stories up because it took them about a year watching it and said, you’re doing this journalistically.

And we don’t necessarily have the staffing to cover every business nuance like you do. So we’ll literally pick the story up and put it out there. And so that’s been a good audience growth too. I think it’s also helped some folks who normally would clash with the chamber, the Colorado chamber on issues to say, he actually is doing this fairly. This is not chamber publicity. He’s trying to educate people on it. And so to go back to your question about

Who’s the primary audience now? I guess primary audience is anyone who is a businesses Because as I mentioned we always focus on what is this going to do to business and be anyone who is concerned with business policy? The idea that you may be involved in policy. Maybe it’s tax. Maybe it’s regulation Maybe it’s it’s economic development incentives anything along those lines that may impact businesses We hope people are reading it to say even if they’re just saying

hey, what’s the other side saying right now? At least they’ll be able to understand that and see and incorporate that into our discussions going forward.

Brandon Burton (23:49.842)
That’s really cool that the Gazette and these other publications are picking up the stories and recognizing that you got some real street cred. they’re taking it and running with it. So that’s awesome. Yeah, I was curious with how polarized certain news topics can be. Now, I don’t know if you’re covering housing or child care, if it gets super polarized one way or the other, but covering it from the business

business first kind of lens. Do you get voices that come at you from their polarized point of view of how can you cover it this way? I’m just trying to get my mind wrapped around what’s a reception like from those that are on the complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

Ed Sealover (24:41.424)
It’s, it’s a good question. I think I have the luxury in that if you’re not a thoughtful person, you’re not going to tune into a website that’s writing 1200 words about a policy. so the reception is, it’s generally pretty good. I don’t have people that are writing in like corporate blah, blah, blah, blah. They’re, you know, they’re, tuning in to see, wait, why? And are you doing this? And then there were people who say things like, I don’t buy this, you know, you you, published a

Brandon Burton (24:50.856)
There you go. It’s a great point. Yeah.

Ed Sealover (25:11.262)
hole from somebody who we think is not a legitimate source or here are some of the faults with it. You’re quoting someone who we don’t like. There’s always going to be that. the general reception is, you know, here’s what business is thinking, but here’s what we need to highlight also. I have groups that I I refer to in general media as

Brandon Burton (25:23.706)
Sure.

Ed Sealover (25:39.886)
liberal think tanks who will call me sometimes like, hey, do you want our thoughts on this? I have one particular environmental group I have a good relationship with where the executive director who is often sitting on the opposite side of bills from the Chamber of Commerce government relations team calls and say, hey, do you want my thoughts on this regulation? So I think the reception has been that some groups have looked at this and said,

I want to make sure my voice is in here. want to make sure that if this is going out and it’s already talking about what businesses want, because I’ve got great access to businesses so I can get their voices in there all the time, we get our voices in there too. And so I’m thankful for that. I think it furthers the conversation. And it took time. I will say this, in 2023 when this launched,

I would put in calls to groups like that that went unreturned. And I think that’s fair. If you say, I’m with the Colorado Chamber of Commerce publication, they’ll be like, why on earth would I want to talk to you? But I think they’ve seen my commitment to trying to bring this out over time. And so I think that also furthers the conversation. And to be truthful, to kind of work in some of the other things I do with strategic initiatives, I oversee our environmental sustainability task force here.

Brandon Burton (26:32.124)
is new.

Ed Sealover (26:52.521)
We’ve been able to, one of the goals of the task force was to get business and environmentalists at the same table rather than shouting across the room at each other and talk about what sustainability policies are realistic and how we can work together to clean up the environment. And we’ve been able to bring in some of those groups to talk with us, to talk about how we move forward on this. And I’m not going to say that’s a direct link to the sum and substance. Those are kind of two different hats I wear there.

but I don’t think it hurts when they, when they can see, like, we actually want to hear your opinions. We may disagree with you, but we care about your voice and we’re looking for that way to find a compromise.

Brandon Burton (27:27.336)
We care about your voice.

Brandon Burton (27:34.232)
Yeah, I think your point is well taken when there’s not the hot button bits, you know, that can be shared out on Twitter X or, whatever platform people are on, but it has to be more of a thoughtful read to be able to go through and see the research and the effort that’s been put into whatever the topic is. But then to have, you know, those different organizations reach out and say, would you like to know our opinion? Of course. Yeah, let’s bring all voices to the table.

Ed Sealover (27:58.674)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:00.724)
and let’s find the best solutions, right? So that’s awesome. I love hearing that. Well, Ed, for those listening, those chambers listening who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal? Yeah.

Ed Sealover (28:18.941)
Well, I was thinking about this. I want to step back a little bit from just talking about the sum and substance. And I want to talk about how the sum and substance works into our greater vision. We put forward a statement. was, I should say, we being the chamber before I got here called Vision 2033. And this is something I would recommend for any chamber is lay out a vision statement for the next 10 years of what the chamber stands for. Because this is a comment I’ve heard repeatedly is that

We want to be a part of where you’re going because we see what you want to do. It’s not just the chamber is reacting based on members. It’s not just we are seeing things and saying no or yes. We’re saying this is what we’re going to do and this is how we’re proactively going to achieve it. And so for any chambers listening, I would say if you haven’t thought about and this goes beyond just the mission statement. Mission statements are great because they tell in the very short form.

why people should pay attention to you. But larger statements and Vision 23 for us is, it’s about a 50 page report about here are the four areas we are going to concentrate on over the next 10 years, including areas like housing and workforce development. And that’s actually allowed me, one of my other hats as an initiative is to be very proactive in workforce development. How do we work with the state to improve a system that frankly isn’t preparing

Colorado students for the jobs that are looking to hire them right now. So this is something we didn’t just react to. We worked with the state, with a number of other organizations to put forward a five-bill workforce development package not long ago in 2024 and pass it because we said this is the positive steps we need to take. So that’s a long way of saying for other teams who listening, think about

proactively what you want to do and what you want to stand for. Lay it out in kind of, even if you’re worried it’s too detailed, but very detailed form and then other organizations will see you and want to jump on based on that because they know you’re not just yes and no, you’re about the bigger picture and how we move toward it.

Brandon Burton (30:30.554)
I love it. The proactive versus reactive chamber is going to make all the difference. So being proactive is going to catch more of that vision and having your members and community recognize the visionary leaders that you are. So I always like asking people that 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?

Ed Sealover (30:57.265)
I think chambers need to be on the front line of what is an increasing battle over a question that bothers me, is business a good thing? I think we are seeing more and more of this trend toward business is bad and that comes from both ends of the political spectrum at this point. On one end, saying socialism is good and on another end, they’re saying we don’t trust business anymore.

and chambers need to be out front in showing what business is. Chambers need to be out front and showing business is that mom and pop restaurant you go to down the street when you want to sit with your friends and complain about business. you know, business, business is, is not a, a, you know, an amalgamation of things that, works itself into big business and business is awful. It is the individuals who

Brandon Burton (31:39.23)
You

Ed Sealover (31:56.719)
employee people. It is the individuals who work at those companies. And I think chambers have to stand up and always emphasize that. We try to do that when we are testifying for bills or going into things and saying, look, I know what you’re looking to do here, but if this costs people their jobs, that’s business. That’s business losing because people don’t have jobs anymore.

I think chambers need to be out front representing themselves, not just as a place where people can get together and talk and socialize and meet and network, but as a place where the community can see this is business, this is our community, and we need to safeguard business because they are ours.

Brandon Burton (32:40.412)
I that’s a great response. They need to have a place to sit and gather and complain about business. that’s great. Well, Ed, this has been great having you on the podcast. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or to follow The Summit Substance. What would be the best way to have them reach out and connect with you?

Ed Sealover (33:06.446)
Absolutely. Again, the Summon Substance is tsscolorado.com. If you’re interested in what’s going on in Colorado or just interested in how I’m doing this, sign up for the newsletter. Again, it goes out every three stories. So try to keep people involved there. And I’m happy to talk to people directly if you want to talk about business issues or if you want to talk about how to do something like this. My email is

eclover at cochamber.com. That’s E-S-E-A-L-O-V-E-R at cochamber.com. My phone number is 719-659-7907. And you can hit me on LinkedIn too, under Ed Sealover as well. But happy to talk about this project and happy to talk about business issues for anyone who may be interested.

Brandon Burton (33:59.838)
Perfect, I’ll make sure we get all that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find you and connect with you and for people to check out this platform that you’ve developed. This is really something pretty cool. I’d like to see more state chambers get on board with this because it is such an incredible resource for the local chambers and to really push good business advocacy. So thank you for sharing your experience and what you’ve developed and really just how it’s working for you guys there at the Colorado Chamber. I appreciate it.

Ed Sealover (34:28.048)
No, thanks for doing what you’re doing, Brandon. This is an important thing to let Chambers know how they can prosper as well. It’s an important thing that I realize. I love my relationships with local Chambers and anytime the state and local Chambers can work together, that’s when business is really succeeding.

Brandon Burton (34:48.824)
Absolutely. Well, thanks a lot Ed. This has been great.

Ed Sealover (34:52.389)
All right, thank you.

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Membership Value & ROI with Joe Venhuizen

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Brandon Burton (00:17)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Joe Venhuizen. Joe is the Vice President of Membership and Resource Development for Envision Greater Fond du Lac. Envision is a combined chamber EDO.

Serving the greater Fond du Lac County in Wisconsin, Joe has spent nine years in the industry working in membership sales, program coordination, government affairs, and executive leadership. Joe earned his IOM certificate to the U.S. Chamber in 2025. He is a husband and a father to three boys and an active member of his local church.

Joe, 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.

Joe Venhuizen (01:18)
Sure. Well,

it is a pleasure to be here. So thank you for having me on and look forward to a good discussion. I never shy away from the chance to discuss the industry. It’s one of my favorite things to do and especially with people who actually understand it. You know, I imagine you can be a bit of a bore at Thanksgiving. That’s what I come off. know, people just kind of go, well, you work for the government, don’t you? Or you know, there’s not an understanding of where we are and what we

we do. And so to talk to people who live this, it really energizes me. So yes, my name is Joe. been, I’ve lived in this area of East Central Wisconsin. That’s where I grew up. Aside from education and a couple things that brought me out of the area, I have always been here. So I grew up on a, tell me if you heard this before, I’m a dairy farm kid from Wisconsin. So family farm,

Brandon Burton (02:09)
Are

there many of those? No. Just kidding.

Joe Venhuizen (02:10)
Yeah, it’s fitting the mold here. I’m a Packer fan. I’m wearing the gear here. I’m excited for Sunday to take on the Lions. But

I do bleed green and gold in Wisconsin. I love where I’m from. But I’ve been in this industry nine years. And I have no plans of going anywhere. I see nothing but exciting challenges in my future doing what we do.

You wanted something interesting. something interesting. I’ll tell you this year, earlier this year, I became an official small business owner myself. And that sounds pretty cool. The reality is it’s not that cool. But I did get an LLC. And I formalized under an LLC some things that I’ve been doing for years, which is improv comedy.

Brandon Burton (02:44)
Okay.

Joe Venhuizen (02:59)
So I now have an official business for my improv troupe and we do short form sketch comedy for corporate parties and gatherings and fundraisers and things. So something that I’ve enjoyed doing for many years.

Brandon Burton (03:13)
That’s very cool. So I I love asking that question. I never would have known that about you if I didn’t ask for the interesting fact about yourself. So that’s cool. You’ll have to put up your tour schedule here at the end. yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s fantastic.

Joe Venhuizen (03:22)
Here you go.

Yeah, Private bookings only, you know, pay for travel costs. I’m happy to, you know, advertise it on your podcast here.

Brandon Burton (03:37)
I know what you mean about Thanksgiving dinner being the board. When people find out I have a podcast, they’re like, ⁓ that’s so cool. What’s it about? it’s chambers of commerce. Like, what? Yeah, so yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about your chamber. Just give us an idea what Envision Greater Fond du Lac has to offer, size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to set the stage for our discussion today.

Joe Venhuizen (03:44)
Yeah.

Yeah,

we’re all in about a $2 million organization. We are a combined Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development organization. That combination happened in 2017. So I joined the industry and the organization before the merger. So I was hired as a Chamber membership and program person. Within my first year, we had the merger that brought together the Chamber and the Economic Development.

We serve a county that’s roughly a hundred thousand population. We are in the county seat and ⁓ most of our membership base is in the county seat, which is the city of Fond du Lac. But Fond du Lac County has three cities and various villages and townships. It’s pretty rural. Our big industries here are agriculture and manufacturing. The congressional district in which we sit, the Wisconsin sixth

congressional district is the leading manufacturing district in the country. So we have, we are home to the world headquarters of Mercury Marine, which is the leading producer of marine outboard motors. And there’s a ⁓ hefty supply chain with that and neighboring in the region, we have quite a few manufacturing titans in that industry. So that’s a lot of who we service. And then of course, agriculture and

and your standard ground of the mill, all the different industries that Chambers serve. So we have experienced the pains and the joys of merging those two organizations and what it takes to create a new brand and to really have the inner working between servicing existing business needs through Chamber of Commerce services and advocacy and also still working.

under the same strategic plan intent on economic development and business attraction retention and entrepreneurship and workforce development. So it’s been, it’s been very, very good. I always advocate that more organizations look at these opportunities seriously and check egos and really consider what’s best for the business community that you serve. Because a lot of times there is duplicity and there’s

know, competition for resources that it took quite a while for our organizations at that time to make this leap of faith to do this together. But now standing and looking back eight years later, it’s definitely been a success.

Brandon Burton (06:21)
Yeah, that’s great. So how many staff do you guys have between the combined organization? Okay.

Joe Venhuizen (06:26)
We’re at about 14 total. And my role oversees our chamber

operations, and that’s ⁓ a team of about four of us. And then there’s operations. We have one CEO, obviously, my boss. And then our economic development and workforce development team forms the other pillar.

Brandon Burton (06:45)
Very good. Yeah, that’s super helpful for us to just understand where you’re coming from as we enter into our discussion today. So we’ll focus the majority of our conversation on the topic of membership value and ROI, which I know it can be a hot topic for pretty much any chamber out there. So I’m excited to dive into that topic and to get your feedback and your experience on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right Joe we’re back so as I mentioned before the break today we’re talking about membership value and ROI How do we express that to members potential members? I’ve shared before on the podcast my background is in chamber publishing so Oftentimes I’m interacting with chamber members as a third party and They feel like they can open up to me in that in those scenarios

and they’ll be honest, you know, I don’t feel like I get anything out of my chamber. don’t see, you know, I paid membership dues and I never heard from the chamber again, you those sort of things. So how do you approach expressing membership value and ROI as you interact with your members and potential members?

Joe Venhuizen (09:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, if any of your listeners have the right answer on this, you know, in 10 seconds, please chime in. But this is going to constantly be the measure that we use for ourselves is how well are we delivering value or communicating value. One of the things that’s been helpful for me in years of doing this, in annual renewal cycles and understanding the types of members who come and go and then those who stay and why they stay.

is really the way, the type of mindset that a member brings to the organization. The reason for joining is as important to understand at the time that you are interacting with a new member as the way you communicate ongoing. Because if you understand the type of member and the type of value they’re looking for, you can understand

whether they’re going to be long-term or whether this is going to be a, I’m in it for now for me. And then when the me part isn’t working, I’m out. We have done a decent amount of effort recently at Envision in changing some of our language and our materials to reflect more of a fundraising or investor mindset than a member mindset.

And where we are focusing a lot of effort is this getting into a mindset of a long-term relationship, not that there’s a sort of knee-jerk reaction that’s asked for on an annual basis. Did I feel like this year I did enough to get value that I can write one more check, but to really start the relationship off from the bat of this is a movement?

that you’re joining for the long term. And there will be peaks and valleys. There will be times when you need more attention from the business community and the services we offer. And there will be times when you’re off and running the business. But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to be stopping and starting and breaking off relationship. This is both of us working towards success in this region together for the long term.

Brandon Burton (12:11)
Yeah, so years ago I had a friend of mine, he’s a realtor, he reached out to me, he had moved to a new community.

He’s like, Brandon, should I join my local chamber? He’s like, I know you do this podcast about chambers. Should I join my local chamber? And of course, my, my, you know, knee jerk reactions, of course, you know, but I was a little more measured. My, depends, you know, what are you trying to do? What, like, what’s the mission of the chamber there in your community? What kind of committees do they have? How can you get involved? Like, what do you want this to do for your business? It’s not just that.

that magic bullet where you pay an annual membership due and all of a sudden your business is thriving, right? Right. So very much, going back to your, you know, your thought about figuring out the why, why are they joining and what are they trying to get out of it. That’ll help guide those conversations. My thought is going towards how about those members that need to justify their membership to somebody higher.

Joe Venhuizen (12:53)
Yeah, all your problems are solved.

Brandon Burton (13:15)
you know, a regional manager or somebody at corporate or, know, something like that. How do you have those kinds of conversations and help them to, to recognize what the chamber does for them so they can continue that conversation with those that they answer to? Right.

Joe Venhuizen (13:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s a tough one because my answer is almost always, well, who do I need to be in the room with? Because

let’s get to the naysayer, the person who is sort of just evaluating this on paper and not really in the context of a conversation or a true understanding. So those can be really difficult, getting through those local

folks on the ground who say, I got to run it up the chain of command and go, well, let me help you. Let me be part of that conversation. It’s often a good thing. But I think that there’s always mindset shift. And in those critical kind of crucial conversations of, are we valuable enough to use

expense on, right, to invest in. I think that that’s the opportunity to communicate differently. It’s not the time to rattle off the benefits menu, you know, that, well, we do this, we do this, we have all this. It’s really, when you’re in those conversations, it’s really opportunity to pause and to say, what are your goals? You know, what is it that you want to accomplish? And

really get the playbook because people will teach you how to sell them. And when you’re able to get them to communicate, well, here’s what I’m looking for. So your realtor friend, you know, looking for connections in a new area, I just want to meet new people, right? Well, that’s easy. You know, here’s the things, you know, but what your realtor friend may not care about is

all of the work we do with the local school districts in bridging the gap between local industry and future workforce. And, you know, that might be a huge part of what we do. It doesn’t matter to me. Right. So don’t spend any time talking about that because I’m lost. I don’t care. You can fundraise that from other sources. Here’s my problem that I’m looking to solve through your organization. So you need to get the keys to how to sell and you get that from the member who’s considering that value.

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

Brandon Burton (15:16)
Right.

Yeah, I guess I’m thinking of those members that they’ve they’ve joined maybe they’ve been a member for a year or two.

Joe Venhuizen (15:38)
.

Brandon Burton (15:41)
And because so many businesses now are operating off of data, which we preach to chambers too, Collect data, make data-informed decisions. they collect the data. They’re looking at their books. And they’re like, OK, justify this to me. How does this make sense? And like you said, who do I need to talk to to help relay the value? I think that’s key. ⁓

Joe Venhuizen (15:54)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

We’ve got to tell stories

really too, Brandon. We have to be able to communicate our wins and then how they apply. you know, I think we get very head down in the chamber industry on, you know, we have this annual schedule of events and monthly schedule of events and, you know, this long list of to-dos and there’s a lot of whirlwind there. But when we get significant wins for the community,

those you just can’t move on from those to the next event. You have to be constantly reminding, sometimes ad nauseam, like, here’s what we accomplished. And I’ve talked, you know, it’s eight years post-merger for our organization, but I don’t want anybody in our community to forget how significant that was. And for people who are maybe newer in the business community here, they might not know any better or any different.

But I like to remind them of what life was like before the merger and how significant just being here and being an efficient organization is. And that goes down to resources. Your resources invested in this organization are maximized much more than what they were previously because of this big win. You could have been getting much less value because you’d been writing two checks to two organizations that were both trying to do the same thing. Now we’re doing it all here.

So it’s one example, but eight years later, I can still communicate that to certain businesses who are legacy businesses who’ve been here a while that, know, yeah, you’re right, you’re right. This could be a lot. You the other thing is any time you have advocacy wins, any time that you’ve helped with a business expansion, relocation, an entrepreneur startup, any time the Chamber’s been involved, even, you know, advocating for an infrastructure change that’s small.

I it was Pat McGoy, who’s a long time, know, titan in the chamber industry, tells kind of an anecdote about if the chamber advocates for a stop sign, use that one project, right? Just one stop sign and then try to put numbers to it. So for the business that’s right there, what does this mean for you? So if that one, you know, stop sign,

leads to, and I can’t remember how in this example, but if it leads to more impressions or more traffic that is stopped at your business with visibility, by the numbers, is that 1 % more? that 10 % more? And then what does that mean for your bottom line? So for your million dollar industry, what’s 1 % of that? And then how do you quantify the results of advocacy wins?

I haven’t done a lot of that, but that was something that made me think a lot. Anytime that you have a, you know, a business park expansion or a win on your main street. For example, we advocated for highway expansion that tied our community to the county to the east. And by expanding that road from two lanes to four lanes, naturally it’s much safer. It’s much more efficient for.

Um, you know, for daily drivers, also for the, you know, businesses and freight over the road. Um, there’s a way that you can communicate that to businesses of, different industries that this is valuable and it wouldn’t have happened without our advocacy. So, you know, trying to get them out of this mindset of like, okay, the only thing that matters is customers that walk through my door and go, no, no, no,

It’s not the only thing that matters because that’s influenced by a lot of different factors. And here’s the way that we’re pulling levers on those factors.

Brandon Burton (19:32)
Yeah, I love that. And just the whole idea of the value of being able to tell the story, whether it’s talking about the merger or the recent advocacy wins.

Joe Venhuizen (19:35)
Thank

Brandon Burton (19:42)
I mean, I think every chamber out there is going to have at least a healthy handful of examples of just individual members who have been members, you know, the whole time that their business has been around and, you know, why they stick with it, why they, you know, wins that they’ve seen as the chambers been able to be influential in their business to, again, help increase that bottom line. So being able to kind of create a storybook of sorts that you can go back to and pull from and

Joe Venhuizen (19:57)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (20:11)
Depending on what the scenario is who the person is you’re talking to to pull from these stories these experiences and say well this is how it worked for ABC business and You know, it’s similar to yours So I actually I had an experience just yesterday with a business owner who was new to this community and She had been a business owner in a previous community for a long time

like 30 years, she had a retail shop and she just moved to this new community, opened a new business. And she said, you know, in my last community, I was a chamber member. And after so many years, I stopped because, know, whatever the reason is, as you come across somebody like that, obviously they had an experience, they gave it a try. It was a different chamber, different community, different state even.

How can you help build the trust for them to give your chamber a chance to be able to help their business? Is there a way of trying to save that or to help them recognize the value? I’m sure the storytelling comes back into that, but how would you approach a situation like that?

Joe Venhuizen (21:05)
Thank you.

Well,

you have to remind people that every chamber is a unique and different organization. And when you have folks that bring past experiences.

It’s just hard to compare apples and oranges sometimes. But what I try to ⁓ remember is, and there are examples of this in my years in the industry, that a really good practice to get into is to invite your critics. Invite your critics to dinner. Some of the best volunteers or board members

that we’ve recruited have been those who have been trying to drop, right? They’re trying to leave. saying, you’re not valuable. I don’t get anything out of this relationship. And instead of writing them off and saying, you just don’t get it. You’re not worth it. You weren’t investing that much anyway. If you really take the time to swallow the pride, the ego, you go, know what? You’re probably right. Let’s talk about that. Why don’t you come in?

I had a volunteer, right, sorry, I had a ⁓ member of our young professionals organization who after one year hadn’t gotten outreach. We really did fail her. She hadn’t gotten outreach or hadn’t attended an event, didn’t feel like, you know, she belonged. At the time of renewal, she could have just not said anything, but she took the time to write me an email, a scathing email, right, a scathing critique on her way out the door.

Brandon Burton (22:40)
That says something. Yeah.

Joe Venhuizen (22:43)
You guys failed. This was horrible. And again, I could have pitched it in the trash and said, okay, or I could have done the halfway, which is, yeah, I guess we really did kind of screw up. Shoot, that’s too bad. But I went one step further and said, sounds like you’d be a great member of our membership outreach committee. You’ve identified a real need in this organization and we need leaders and it sounds like you could do it. And today,

Brandon Burton (23:04)
I love it.

Joe Venhuizen (23:10)
She’s the chairperson of the whole organization for the young professionals. And she’ll tell that story. It was on her way out the door, but somebody actually confronted her and said, yeah, you’re right. And we could use you to get better.

Brandon Burton (23:25)
I love that.

Great example. And tie in in that storytelling right there. That’s perfect. I encountered a similar situation with a guy that owns a bar and like a brewery. And he was very much against.

the chamber and you know the chamber tried for years trying to get this guy to join. He came from corporate world and he’s like don’t see where we need this and through the persistence they got him to you know come to I think it was a mixer or something to begin with just as a non-member just come you know try it out and now he’s the board chair at this chamber. He’s all in and so it’s I love hearing stories like that love it.

Joe Venhuizen (23:40)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (24:09)
Anything else come to mind as far as expressing the value and really that ROI to businesses as they either go through their experience with the chamber or contemplate joining or renewing membership with the chamber?

Joe Venhuizen (24:25)
Yeah, I think

it’s more philosophical for me. It’s real big picture stuff of you get yourself in no win scenarios when you really try to justify it on the terms that they present. Because a renewing member may, like we said earlier, may justify value only as, I’ll give you one example. We had a Main Street business who said, I’m dropping my membership because

I didn’t see enough chamber gift certificates that came in the door spending money at my bakery. Exactly. And it was, I would need to see at least, you know, a thousand dollars in chamber gift certificates for this to be worth it. Now, those are the terms that he’s defined for this discussion. That’s the value that he’s defined. You have to get out of that language, those terms and present it on a different battlefield.

Brandon Burton (24:58)
That one metric. Yeah.

Joe Venhuizen (25:17)
which isn’t always easy, but that’s really how you have to get the mindset shift to go, well, that’s one metric. You know what? We maybe weren’t honest with you, sir. We probably should have told you that you’re organization is going to help you. But here’s what we are doing. Are you aware of this? Did you know how, you know, did you know how this this proposal at City Council that almost passed would have impacted your your tax bill or your assessment? And the chamber fought that you probably didn’t even know. Good thing is you didn’t have to know because we’re on your side. We’re advocating on your behalf for things that you’re not even paying attention to. Right. So getting them out of this this way of evaluating value and then getting over here. And a lot of it is, yeah, it’s those advocacy wins. It’s the big initiatives that we’re doing and then not being ashamed to continue storytelling on those wins. And, you know, I said I’m a dairy farm kid. You got to milk them. You got to milk it for everything it’s got, right? Once you get an accomplishment, don’t let it sit on the shelf. Keep bringing it back and leverage it for ⁓ membership renewals as often as you can.

Brandon Burton (26:29)
I love that. Great analogy. Malcolm. Well, for the chambers that are listening,

Joe Venhuizen (26:30)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:34)
Most of them are going to be interested in taking their chamber the next level, growing, expanding. What kind of tip or action item might you share with that chamber who’s trying to take it to the next level to try to accomplish that goal?

Joe Venhuizen (26:48)
It’s a good question. I think that if you’re listening and your chamber is not involved in advocacy and government affairs, you need to figure out how you can carve out a slice of that game because you owe it to your business community. Our organization pre-merger between chamber and economic development, our chamber was very active in

Brandon Burton (26:58)
you

Joe Venhuizen (27:12)
in advocacy and government affairs. During the merger, there was a fear that because our economic development organization had some public investments coupled with private, that we would be in a bad situation if we were trying to do local advocacy while also relying on public funds. And I won’t say that that isn’t a real factor.

But the result was we shelved advocacy. We got out of the game completely. And it only took a couple of years before we lost influence and we had a big missed opportunity for local development because we didn’t have an established enough advocacy voice to be able to influence this issue. And so it woke us up and it got us back to the table.

We reestablished a legislative agenda, reformed an advocacy committee, and have thrown a bunch of time and energy into it. And we’re yielding the results. Because again, we’ve said it, when it comes to ROI, that’s the trump card. For a business that can never show up to an event, can never be bothered to read an email, there is always, when you have a good, strong advocacy arm, there is always the argument that we did this, you benefited.

You didn’t have to show up just by existing in this community. You’re a beneficiary of this advocacy work that we did. And we think it’s worth at least a small amount of your annual continued investment. So I think that, you know, for chambers that are scared of it, there’s a way to do this in a very easy, non-controversial way, just to become the location where conversations happen.

You can do legislative forums where you’re just inviting in officials with the business community. You’re not taking stances. You’re not advocating positions. It’s an easy way to just get started. But I think that if you’re not doing anything in this advocacy sphere, you’ve got to get at the table.

Brandon Burton (29:04)
Yeah, I love that tip and it plays in very well to our discussion today too.

I talk about it being that Trump card that you can always go back to and you know, if you can get into the micro things for each individual business, but when you’re missing on those accord or you’re not, you know, really hitting it home for that business, you always can lean back on that advocacy card. I love that. I like asking everyone to 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?

Joe Venhuizen (29:27)
I feel like.

That’s another good question.

I think that Chambers of Commerce will continue to remember who they are and

The core of why chambers were started was to be a functional tool on behalf of a business community to accomplish more together than what businesses can on their own. I think as, you know, time goes on and chambers take different avenues and some function more in a tourist or some are in, you know, other areas, it sometimes becomes a

Well, let’s think about this organization like a business and how do we maximize our profits and keep our, people. I think that sometimes gets into a myopia and you’re really just looking down and you’re not thinking and remembering, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. We’re a tool for the success of all of our businesses. The fear I have is the same thing that the internet did to Chambers when it became prevalent, which was now you have a platform outside of your local chamber where you can do a lot of the connections and the exposure and you don’t need to stop into the chamber office for a map anymore, right? These sorts of things that made chambers valuable. I fear that AI will do the same thing to a lot of the services or benefits that we now provide. And that can crush a chamber that’s not forward thinking or it can just challenge all of us. And so what I mean by waking up and remembering what we’re here for is the value that we provide in an increasingly automated AI culture is, and also in this fragmented political culture is we’re the sane people at the center of issues. And we are the people that know how to have conversations and to bring variety of opinions to the table and come out with results. We’re positioned for that. We’re here to represent businesses, but we’re also in touch with the public sector, nonprofit education, all different industries. We know how to get people to a table in the middle. And that’s something that you can’t automate. So remember how we’re uniquely positioned. And I think that that’s going to be the future of Chambers. just going to be continuing to be the trusted resource in the middle when you’ve got a lot of artificial things that can’t be trusted along the fringes.

Brandon Burton (32:04)
Yeah, totally agree and to be able to understand that core because technology is going to change everything around us. But if we’ve got that core and why we exist and then employ different tools around that core.

Joe Venhuizen (32:14)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (32:19)
I think that’ll keep chambers relevant in the center of trying to bring some sanity to both sides in long time in the future. Well, Joe, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more how you guys are doing things there at Envision. ⁓ Where would you point them? What would be the best way to connect?

Joe Venhuizen (32:26)
Definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah, we have an easy name, Envision with an E, Envision Greater Fond du Lac. So you’ll find us, if you Google us, we’re online, EnvisionGreaterFDL.com. I’m a phone call guy. So if you want to get a hold of me, just ring me up. My phone number is listed on the website, but it’s 920-921-9500. I’m the only Joe in the building, so you’ll get to me quick. But I would love the chance to talk with you on the phone. I welcome anybody to call me and discuss ideas or book your next improv comedy show.

Brandon Burton (33:11)
That’s right, get that plug in there.

Joe Venhuizen (33:13)
Thanks.

Brandon Burton (33:16)
We’ll get that in our show notes to make it nice and easy for people to find you. But Joe, I appreciate you spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast and sharing your perspective, your experiences when it comes to membership and expressing that value. I know it’s something that we constantly need to be thinking of and building that story bank that we can go back to whenever we need to to be relatable to those businesses that we interact with. So thank you for sharing your insights with us today.

Joe Venhuizen (33:18)
Thank you.

You bet. Thank you for the work you do. This is so important to people challenged in the industry and thinking ahead and thinking futuristically and also just for giving us some of the ideas for how to storytell. What you do is the same thing that we should be doing on the topic what we’ve been discussing. We’ve got to get better at getting the word out and not just in an annual renewal letter.

Brandon Burton (34:08)
Yeah, big fan of Chambers podcasting. I’ll just put that out there. So, all right. That’s right. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it.

Joe Venhuizen (34:13)
We’ve got a whole lot of time. Thank you.

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Lean into Your Unique Background with Michaela Horn & Brianne Bonnet

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

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

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Today we we have two guests with us. We have Michaela and Brandon from the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce in South Dakota. Michaela is the Director of the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce, bringing a diverse background to her role with a degree in Organismal Biology from Montana State University, Michaela has worked in various roles and is also the competitive cheer coach at Belle Fourche High School. She has been with the Chamber for one year and is an active member of our community. Brianne Bonnet serves as the Assistant Director of the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce, a role that she’s held for two years. She holds a degree in social work from Creighton University, and has a strong commitment to community involvement. Brandon has worked at the local newspaper Head Start and volunteered the Nash the Newell school board, demonstrating her dedication to supporting and connecting the bell food community. But Michaela and Brianne, welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. We’re excited to have you both with us today. I’d like to give you both the chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about each other, so or about yourselves, just so we can get to know you both a little better.

Michaela Horn 2:31
Yeah. Well, thank you for having us. My name is Michaela Horn. I’ve been in Belle Fourche for about seven years, and something interesting is I have floated 560 miles of the Yellowstone River. So that’s my interesting

Brandon Burton 2:45
fact. Wow, that’s cool. The great views too, I’m sure.

Michaela Horn 2:49
Oh, fantastic. Yeah, I spent 28 days straight on the river. And yeah, that’s my,

Speaker 1 2:55
my dream. That’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 2:58
Brianne, what about you? What? What do you find interesting about yourself? Um,

Brianne Bonnet 3:03
not near as cool as Michaela has done in her life, but I just really focus around volunteering. I’ve been here in Belle Fourche for 10 years. Um, just different volunteer opportunities that I take part of and just really strive for being involved with the community, being involved. And she

Michaela Horn 3:26
is cool. I mean, she’s a former rodeo queen, and, yeah, she forgets that she’s getting involved in the roundup

Brandon Burton 3:33
rodeo this year. Maybe I should have had you interview say something interesting about each other that would have been better off so well, tell us a little bit about the bell food chamber. Just to set the stage for our discussion, I like to get a good feel for size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work you guys are involved with, just to kind of prepare us for our discussion today. Okay,

Michaela Horn 3:56
well, the Belle Fourche Chamber, we’ve been around since 1911 so it’s our 100 and 14th birthday. This year we’re celebrating. We have changed quite a bit, just constantly adapting to what our businesses need. Belle Fourche is population about 5800, and Butte County. We serve Butte County, and it’s 10,000 roughly, our budget is about 100,000 with 245 members and growing

Brandon Burton 4:26
alright that definitely helps us prepare for our conversation today. Are you guys involved at all with tourism or your economic development, or anything like that in your area? Or is it strictly chamber

Michaela Horn 4:38
um so we do have an economic development office that is separate from us. We have Visit Belle Fourche, which is also separate from us, and then a visitor center. So we are mostly promoting the businesses, but we do kind of help each other out and do some small form of tourism.

Brandon Burton 4:55
Yeah, very good. I would say a chamber has to be involved in all those different assets. Aspects, no matter what your formal responsibilities are, right? So for our topic today, we decided to lean into the topic or the idea of leaning into your unique background. And I find this topic interesting because I hear so many diverse ways you know, how people find chamber work, how they get here. You know, very rarely do you see somebody that went to school to become a chamber director. You know, it just, it’s not, it’s it’s not something you see at a typical career day, either. So it’ll be a, it’ll be interesting to dive into this topic with both of you and learn about your unique backgrounds and how others can lean into theirs as well. As soon as we get back from this quick break,

Joe Duemig
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Rose Duemig
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Joe Duemig
App My Community helps the Evergreen Area Chamber of Commerce to create an app that keeps tourists informed, even when their office is closed, they provide 24/7 access to local business information, which helps support the local economy and community engagement.

Rose Duemig
In Rocky Mountain House, we helped Rocky Chamber create an app with dynamic itineraries and digital resources for tourists, increasing local business engagement. The app has become an essential tool for the community, promoting events and boosting visibility for local merchants.

Joe Duemig
Today, we empower more than 200 Chambers of Commerce campgrounds and RV resorts to streamline communication, informing members about events, sharing business updates and providing a digital hub for the community all in one convenient

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Joe Duemig
Schedule a demo today AppMyCommunity.com. We can’t wait to meet you.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

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Brandon Burton 12:40
All right, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to cover the two program synopsis that were included in your chamber of the year application. Lindsay, it’s my understanding you had a significant, pretty significant role in the application and pulling everything together. So I’d like to hand the microphone over to you and have you highlight, I know there’s two different programs, one about an airport, one about move to Jackson. Do you want to highlight move to Jackson for us first, and what that program, what the origins were, kind of the background and and how things have evolved to what it is today.

Brandon Burton 8:32
All right, we are back, as I mentioned before the break today, we’re talking about leaning into your unique background. So with this topic, I don’t know which one of you would like to dive into this first about your uniqueness, your own background and and how that fits into chamber work, and how you see those applications being brought to life.

Michaela Horn 8:57
Well, I guess I’ll start you know, it’s nice, and that’s why I wanted to do this interview together, because we we go into the community together so much because between the two of us, we say that we can have a conversation or relate to everybody in town. We’ve worked with people of all ages. I worked with preschool aged children in Head Start. We actually had met working at a senior living facility. I mean, high school aged kids. She has a background in ranch life, and so when we are working with our local livestock businesses, I mean, she can pick up a conversation about that. I have a science background. Can pick up conversation about that. So, I mean, we really are good at marketing ourselves as the package deal to make sure everybody is included and everybody is involved in the conversation. Yeah?

Brandon Burton 9:50
Brandon, you have any anything to add to that with your your own thoughts, with your uniqueness and background and or if you’ve got things about Michaela that you want to spill the beans on? Yeah? No,

Brianne Bonnet 10:01
um, kind of it is the same we we really do. You never know who’s going to walk in the door, whether it’s a business member, um, just a community lay person. They come in all the time and chat with us too. You know to know what’s going on, and it’s just she’s involved in different groups. Um, she’s a competitive cheer coach, but she’s also, like a little bit more in tune with the arts as well, just being involved in the high school and that kind of stuff. So the community people I always bring up, an example is one comes in and he chats, and he talks about history with her. She’s a history kind of buff, too. Me, not so much. But he loves to come in and chat with her, and then she got him actually talked into volunteering, and the guy was just adamant about not, not. He’s like, No, I can’t talk publicly, and all these kinds of things. And he just and he is, and now he’s volunteering in a couple different things. So it’s just nice to have those different backgrounds. And then, like she said, I have a ranching background, a little bit more agriculture kind of type thing. She’s not into horses. I’m into horses. And so just those other people who call on the phone and they’re like, Hi, we’re traveling through where can I board my horses? And I’m like, Oh, yay. Question for me. I can answer that. So you just get, usually, between the two of us, you get your question answered. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 11:24
that’s great. So I know, before we hit record, we talked about how in the community, when there’s a question that comes up, people say, go talk to the girls. I believe is the title that has been given to you too. But some other you know, say other names, sweet and spicy. I guess the talk about that, some with, with your unique personalities, how you support each other, how it comes to supporting the community. I guess, first of all, being being called the girls like, how did that come about and and that happens, I imagine, from building a reputation throughout the community. But how did you go about building that and lean into that to own it?

Michaela Horn 12:12
Well, honestly, I think Jenny started it. She’s so our neighbor is weather hats, and it’s his wife, Jenny, who owns, uh, deals and steals and spear fish, and she would come over, she’s like, Oh, I’m gonna go check on the girls. Well, then it just kind of stuck and took off. And, you know, it, it’s a small community, and so it kind of spread like wildfire, and that’s people just started calling in. They were referencing to us. It also didn’t help that we had T shirts made that said the girls on the back. So

Brianne Bonnet 12:42
when we’re when we’re at events, or when the chamber hosts events too, we try to wear magic. It’s only us two in the office. I don’t know if that was ever mentioned, so it’s, it’s only us too. So whenever we have events and people have questions, we’re like, Ooh, you need to find us. We try to wear matching shirts to color coordinate colors.

Michaela Horn 13:02
Yes, like people can find us when we’re at an event, you know, whether it’s something sparkly or something a little out of the ordinary. So we’re easy to spot and find and get questions answered. Yeah,

Brianne Bonnet 13:14
we’ve been going out in the community and doing videos a lot too. And of course, you can’t go anywhere by yourself, so we just have to go together, yeah? Because I have to help hold the phone to record her usually. That’s why we’re just the package deal. And it became the girls too. So yeah, and

Brandon Burton 13:31
then you got to be careful about who you might hire in the future, right, to be able to keep that, that brand, going,

Speaker 2 13:37
yeah,

Michaela Horn 13:40
no. I mean, we’re, I mean, we’re open to change too, but, and we always say, you know, we’re one and a half people, so we are, I’m full time, and she is part time. So we try to accomplish and be as many places as we possibly can being one and a half,

Brandon Burton 13:52
yeah, and that’s, that’s a unique challenge of chambers is being overworked and understaffed and getting creative and figuring out how to do it. So I believe one of the other titles you had mentioned, sweet and spicy, is that right? Did I get that right? So who plays which role? What does that look like?

Michaela Horn 14:11
So I’m nice. No, she’s nice too. It’s just, you know, it depends on what kind of answer you’re gonna get. Sometimes you’re gonna get people.

Brandon Burton 14:22
Going to get people like, spicy, you know, yeah,

Michaela Horn 14:25
direct. There are some people in town that are just very direct. And, you know, they like to poke fun with her, and they have that banter going on. And, you know, it’s nice to send her all, you know, they kind of want the spicy one go have a cup of coffee, see what’s up with their business. And you know, if, if someone is very colorful and needs to calm down, well, then you, you send in the sweet one, and I go and butter them up. And, you know, get them talking about, hey, what’s going on next week? And you know, how can we help promote this? And kind of, we like to level people out. So it just depends. Depends on what what they need. So

Brandon Burton 15:02
I feel like some people get into chamber work. They feel like it needs to be buttoned up and professional, because you’re talking business, you’re you’re dealing with businesses and whether or not they succeed, or looking at the hard challenges that they’re facing. And maybe some people are a little hesitant to lean into their personality or their background, depending on whatever it was, what, what gives you that the comfort to be able to own, you know, your personality, because there’s, I feel like there’s a lot of benefit in leaning into that personality, to leaning into what makes you authentically you as you present yourself to business, you know, to the business community. I guess what? I guess the question is, what gives you the confidence to do that and and to not fear, I don’t know backlash or judgment that may come from it.

Michaela Horn 15:56
Well, for me, coming into this role, you know, I think we both work jobs where we were just, you know, expect to be very professional. You know, we worn the more Blazers had to dress a certain way. So we’ve had roles like that. It is nice to have this role where we can kind of express ourselves freely a little bit more, but also that’s just how I feel. Belle food is, you know, like we are a very ag community, and so it doesn’t look very traditional. How do I say this? Because if you go 15 minutes one direction, or a half hour, next direction, when you go to their mixers, they are where, you know, blazers and it is very bright lights and professional. I feel like it turns off or scares some of the businesses that we work with, and so we really do try to be relatable, and everybody is welcome, because we’ve been there Right. Like, you don’t have to get off of work and put on a blazer in order to come to our mixers. You don’t have to. You can come with, you know, cattle dirt and get off, you know, from the ranch, and come hang out with us. Check in with your business neighbors, make those connections, and everybody is welcome. Bell food has been great for letting us just kind of redirect and be relatable. We haven’t really got any backlash. So, I mean, we still do it in a professional manner. We’re just not as buttoned up as a lot of places, because I feel like that’s what our community was eager for and they had a positive response to it,

Brianne Bonnet 17:26
right? No, it’s just, it’s the community culture too. And they just, they, they have seen us enough around town through just our like social media and all that kind of stuff too, that we’re just real people. We we make mistakes too, and so I think that kind of

Michaela Horn 17:49
lets us in or decreases their fear of us, or anything of that matter too. We’re in it with them, yeah, you know. And a lot of people, especially with our social media, they’re afraid to get on Facebook to promote their business. Well, it has to be perfect, okay. Well, now we’re on Facebook, and we do silly stuff all the time, and it doesn’t have to be perfect, and it’s getting a response. We’re modeling that it is okay to be relatable and to be real. But also, we’ve had some members join since we’ve started. And just say, you know, I never, I always felt out of place. I never felt welcome because of the type of business that I’m in. And I’m like, Okay, well, I’ve, you know, we’ve worked in bars. We’ve worked, you know, the Sturgis rally, we’ve been, you know, growers. I’ve, I’ve had janitor gigs like it, whatever the job is. We’ve been there. We’re in it with you. And a lot of the businesses see that we are showing up with them. I mean, it’s not unheard of. I mean, Valentine’s Day, one of our flower shops in town, you know, she called us. She was struggling. We showed up with ribbon, and we started tying ribbon on flowers for her to get them out the door. We’ve had businesses. Hey, we really need help with this. We’re overloaded, so we’ve shut down the office for two hours and went and volunteered. And we’re really there for them, to help them and promote them.

Brandon Burton 19:02
Yeah, I love that response. It reminds me this last week, Simon Texas and I was at the Texas chamber conference earlier this week, and it just so happens that the city it was held in this year was it’s called Denton so Denton, Texas, and as with the welcoming, you know, message was was being presented to welcome all the attendees there. The point was made that, you know, here in Denton, you’re welcome, just however you are like so even those in attendance, some are there wearing suits and blazers. Some are wearing jeans and T shirts. Some are wearing shorts. I mean, it really just you get the whole spectrum, not only in what you wear, but just how you present yourself, too, because that community thrives on welcoming everybody, no matter where you are professionally. What your business type is, how you show up, looking at work, you know your appearance, it really is open for everyone. So I love the comment that you made, Michaela, about especially with the social media aspect, when your members feel like it needs to be perfect before you put something out there, I would argue the perfect stuff, nobody cares about whatever’s perfect that goes out on social media. Nobody wants to look at that. It you’re not getting surprised by anything. You’re not It’s not exciting any of the dopamine receptors right when everything is exactly as you expect. So being able to set that example and and help your members recognize that too and lean into that, I think, is a huge strength that you guys have in helping to model that. Are there other examples that come to mind how leaning into your personalities has helped to benefit you at the Chamber,

Brianne Bonnet 20:56
just our personalities and just our overall backgrounds, like she had mentioned, we work different jobs, but I think a real focus is that we’ve worked at all age spectrums. We worked from tiny kids to very old adults. So we’re just very community aware, and so then when people need things or have questions, that’s, that’s what gives us the knowledge, and we don’t use that knowledge in a like, we know it all kind of way, or anything of that, of like, yes, we understand. We see that we’ve been there, we know, and this is what we’ve learned to help, or that you can use, or other places other we really like to connect members other, from members to members. So like, when this a nonprofit business, was doing their annual banquet, and they’re like, Do you know where we can get baskets, you know, wicker baskets for auction items. And we’re like, yes, we have some. And then also, you know, the Senior Center, the thrift store, they just had a huge donation go over there and other places, and just connecting everybody to each other. And,

Michaela Horn 22:23
yeah, where are the resources? And, you know, they said, You made a fun point, because when we were working with kids, we used to say to families all the time, oh, you know, it takes a village to raise a family. Well, it takes a village to make the town run. There are, you know, the common saying, there’s 20% of people doing 80% of the work. And I’ll be darned if that’s not true, but connecting them with those people, like, hey, we have everything in town, and we can make this happen. You need black linens, okay, well, Belle silver lining has black linens. You need this? Well, grossenberg has this. Or, you know, we’re, we’re connecting our members and putting it all together to make really cool stuff happen in Bell food. And one of the cool things is, I just traveled through Wisconsin, and I was looking up one of the visitor guides, I think I was near Appleton, and I was going through their visitor guide, and I was like, ah, they have music on Main Street. I was like, Bill fuchsia is doing that. Oh, they have this festival. I was like, Belle food is doing that. And I looked up the population, and I think it was close to 70,000 and I was like, you know, we’re a small town, but there are some amazing things, and people who are doing really good work in Bell food, and so makes it easy for us to just shine a light on it and connect it. Be like, this guy’s already doing really cool stuff. You need to go over here. Or, you know, she’s started this organization, this nonprofit, and here’s the work she’s doing, you know, if you want to volunteer, or here’s how she can help your business. And so people are already doing the work. We’re just helping connect the dots.

Brandon Burton 23:42
Yeah. So I think we need to make a t shirt summarizing a quote you just said, that it takes a village to run a village. That’s

Brandon Burton 23:57
I’m summarizing that as a village to run a village. And you guys are the connectors that make that make all the pieces work. So I love that. I mean that should be a chamber slogan everywhere takes a village to run a village. So I love it. But I always like asking for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you suggest for those chambers listening as they try to accomplish that goal?

Michaela Horn 24:30
Well, let me see, I wrote down a response because we really thought about it. You know, I just think taking time to build relationships like I said, we’re spending time going out into the trenches with our businesses, being there for sport, um, I know a lot of people are like, you, we don’t have time, right? Everybody has the same amount of time, and it’s how you spend it, but we don’t have time. We don’t have time to go do this. We don’t have time to shut down our office. We don’t, okay, well, we’re, we’re choosing. Prioritize and shut down our office to be there for support when we’re needed, and in return, we’ve gotten more members from it because they notice what we’re doing. And one of my favorite quotes was actually told to me when I was 14 years old by Scott Lang, and he said, the more you give, the more you get, the more you get, the more you have to give. And that really, I mean, I think we use that all the time, so we are giving out into the community, and in return, the community is responding, and they want to be on board. And so our membership is growing, and we’re very appreciative, but that just means that we have to buckle up and do more. So

Brandon Burton 25:35
yeah, I like that. I love that response as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, granted chambers all different sizes, and they’re all over. But how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Michaela Horn 25:56
It’s very different. Every chamber is different. Um, do you have to be adaptable and flexible. And I’ve listened to, I’ve been listening to your podcast so and, you know, there’s been some really good responses. The gentleman you had from Traverse City, Michigan, was really good, and his response, and, you know, I think you just need to be adaptable. We do a really cool thing out here. We just started with all the northern Hills chambers, all the directors get together for lunch. And so geographically, we’re not we’re not very spread out. We’re still the northern hills. There’s six of us, whether it’s spear fish, Lee Deadwood, Sturgis, spear fish is, I don’t know, 15 miles, 20 miles, away from us. And we are totally different. What we’re focused on is different. How we serve our communities is different, and you have to be adaptable to what your community needs. You know, some spend a lot of time in legislation and lobbying, and others are very heavily involved with Economic Development and Tourism, and it’s you have to serve your community based on what your community needs. So I think, just be adaptable. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 27:02
I love that idea, though, getting together and doing the lunches with the other regional say, like a regional coalition of chambers. And even though the communities look different, there’s strength and support you’re able to get from each other. There’s ideas you’re able to get from each other. And even though your communities may look and feel different, there’s still a lot of similarities, if for nothing else, that geography of where you are like that’s that would be one commonality that would, you know, kind of overlap all the chambers in a certain region. So when issues of advocacy come up, or, you know, things that need to be talked about. You know, legislatively, you can get a consensus of your membership and take it to that regional coalition and be able to have more power in numbers. So I love that you guys are doing that. And great.

Michaela Horn 28:01
I mean, I’m very thankful that they are willing to do that, because it’s helped with cross promoting each other. I mean, we’re close enough, but far enough away that it’s very easy to cross promote, but it’s nice to have that support system. I mean, even our last meeting that we had this month of another chamber was starting a foundation. Okay, well, can we look at the bylaws of your guys’ foundations? Like, what did you have to do to get this off the ground, and just having somebody who’s been through it, you know, to help you, and that’s nice to have locally, yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:29
absolutely. And the topic of foundations is kind of a buzz right now amongst chambers. And I think there’s a lot of chambers out there that are like, Well, yeah, how do you get started, right? Like the idea? Yes, that’s great. How, where do you even start? Right? That’s not really a Google search that you’re going to find a lot of results for and and even AI might get too deep in the weeds, yeah, to learn from others is really the key. So, great example. Well, before I let you go, I wanted to give you both an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about your approach and how you guys are doing things. Where would you point listeners and what would be the best way for them to connect with you?

Michaela Horn 29:17
Okay, well, you can follow us on BelleFourcheChamber.org, and Fourche is F, o, u, R, C, H, E. And I think the easiest, most entertaining way to follow us is through our Facebook page or YouTube channel, which is just the Belle Fourche Chamber. We are, we are uploading all day, every day. There’s a lot going on in Belle Fourche. So we try to keep up, but they can also give us a call. I mean, our number is 605-892-2676, and if they have any questions, or I don’t know, want to come up with ideas, we are consistently the gears are turning. I mean, brainstorm, brainstorm. We have so many ideas that we have written down that we just don’t have enough time to get to. And we love. Collaborating with people, but also love just, oh, have you thought about this, this and this and this, and then connecting them with the resources so they can go out and do it

Brandon Burton 30:07
right? I love that we’ll, we’ll link in our show notes to your website and Facebook and YouTube and everything, so people can can look and follow and reach out and connect. But I appreciate you both spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast, sharing your your personalities, your experience, and leaning in to your unique backgrounds, I appreciate

Michaela Horn 30:31
it. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 30:33
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2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist-Greater Memphis Chamber with Ted Townsend

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Ted Townsend. Ted is the President and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, a position he’s held since 2022 he has a wealth of experience and leadership roles across private, public and non profit sectors. Prior to his current role, Ted served as the Chamber’s Chief Economic Development Officer, leading the chamber to its best year for economic development in 2021 he also served as the first ever Chief Economic Development and Government Relations Officer at the University of Memphis and as Deputy Commissioner and COO for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. Ted co founded and served as COO of our Genesis pharmaceuticals before his transition to the chamber. But Ted, I wanted to welcome you to Chamber Chat Podcast and give you a big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a Chamber of the Year Finalist. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening, and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can know you better.

Ted Townsend 2:17
Yeah, happy to and thank you for the invitation to be on the podcast. The Chamber community is one that’s close knit and very strong, and while there is an underlying competitive nature to the economic development aspect of chamber work, we are a community, and we all partner together and root each other on so I’m grateful to have an opportunity to provide some of what is going on in the greater Memphis area. I think for me, number one, I’m a recovering member of the the secret order of the cheering Elvi. And being in Memphis, you know, we’re home to Elvis Presley, and so I was a member of that group, and we would go to, like, the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital marathon and cheer on the runners. And yes, we were in our white polyester jumpsuits and our Elvis classes. I eventually had to retire from that because, you know, polyester is pretty hot and and so that’s something interesting, but I think it speaks to the spirit of Memphis and how we always cheer each other on. And the same spirit is brought to the chamber community, where I often have a chance to meet with peers and other members that are in chamber organizations. And we always love the collegial spirit that that is there. So, so that is something interesting. In terms of my background, I thought very carefully about that my team was telling me, you know, you may not want to talk about the cheering Elvi, but I think it’s fine.

Brandon Burton 3:53
Yeah, that’s great. I love getting those little tidbits. And yeah, and I will say that that’s, you know, a big reason why this podcast even exists is sharing that information and to really kind of be that incubator for that R and D research that’s happening, that ripping off and duplicating research. So, yeah, well, tell us a little bit about the Greater Memphis chamber to kind of give us a perspective of the size, the scope of work you guys are involved with. Obviously, there’s economic development staff budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Ted Townsend 4:27
Yeah. So our chamber is a Regional Chamber, given the geography of Memphis, we are right in the southwest corner of the state of Tennessee, but I look across the Mississippi River, literally from this office, and I can see Arkansas, and we’re just north of the state line with Mississippi, so we serve our metropolitan statistical area, which is nine counties and three states. So we have to work regionally and and we help champion all of our chamber partners. Within that footprint our organization, we’re actually one of the oldest chambers in the United States of America, still operating. We’re 187 years old now, formed in 1838 and we were actually one of the charter members that formed the US Chamber of Commerce. So a lot of people don’t realize how old our organization is, and a constant that it has been in driving the business agenda forward for Memphis and now the region, we have a team of 55 professional Chamber members who are dedicated and spirited and driving our economy and workforce and community development. It really spans the breadth of, you know, the Chamber disciplines, both traditional and those that are innovative, from entrepreneurship and government advocacy, you name it, we do it. You know, we focus on really supporting the businesses that are here and creating those conditions that are necessary for growth. But we don’t lose sight on the fact that we serve the broader citizenry of this region. Yes, the businesses, but those businesses only exist when they employ the great people of our area. So we want to make sure that we have everyone equipped with the skills that are necessary to participate and a very great, growing and vibrant economy. Now, we have a budget of about 14 and a half million per year. We are 100% privately funded from the business community. We have multiple levels of membership, and our highest level is what we call the chairman circle, which was formed about 12 years ago now and and that now encompasses 225 of the top business businesses and business leaders in our community. So we’re proud of the fact that we’re 100% funded by the the private sector, because that gives us freedom to operate and and fidelity to make sure that we are ensuring that the business agenda is is a priority. So we interface, obviously, at the local, state, federal levels, with all of our partners and and, you know, we we entrust the responsibility of being a go to to this team, and they take that role very seriously. We have a lot of fun in the work that we do, but we also understand that that the importance of this organization, given how long it’s been around, is a driving force to really challenging any status quo and making sure that we are always oriented to a a forward leaning, uh, posture of progress and prosperity. Yeah, that

Brandon Burton 7:56
having that freedom, you know, being funded by by members. And, you know, private capital is very freeing, like you said, especially when it comes to advocacy and to not absolutely think too carefully responses or approaches. So that’s right, that’s great. Well, that definitely helps to set the stage for our discussion today, and great on these chamber of the year finalist episodes. I like to spend the majority of our time really diving into the details of the two programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. So as soon as we get back from a quick break, we’ll dive into those details and learn about those

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Brandon Burton 12:40
All right, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to cover the two program synopsis that were included in your chamber of the year application. Lindsay, it’s my understanding you had a significant, pretty significant role in the application and pulling everything together. So I’d like to hand the microphone over to you and have you highlight, I know there’s two different programs, one about an airport, one about move to Jackson. Do you want to highlight move to Jackson for us first, and what that program, what the origins were, kind of the background and and how things have evolved to what it is today.

Brandon Burton 11:23
all right, Ted, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’ll dive into the two programs that were submitted on your application. I don’t know if you have a preference on which program you want to address first, if it makes any difference on the order, but I’ll let you choose which one you’d like to highlight first? Yeah, so I think

Ted Townsend 11:43
we’ll go in order of what we put in the application. And it happens also be alphabetic too, so it’s kind of nice, but America’s river crossing was the first program that we submitted for consideration to earn chamber of the year. And why we focused on that, because it really did speak to several elements of Horizon, 2035 and our strategic plan of prosper Memphis. 2030 it represented the Chamber’s efforts, really, over the last two decades, to focus on Memphis as America’s distribution center. Obviously, we are seen as a global logistics leader, home to FedEx Corporation headquarters and the largest hub in their network globally. But we also have a high concentration of all of the modalities of transportation. We call them the four Rs, with our Mississippi River, of course, our rail, we have the third highest concentration of rail in the country, and with all five class one railroads with major operations here the third R is the roadways. We have the third busiest trucking corridor in the United States of America, with interstates, 5540 69 and the future 22 really connecting coast to coast and north to south, with Memphis, pretty much in the epicenter of that. And then the last R is our runway. Obviously, I mentioned FedEx and the global hub that they have there, but the connectivity of that really brings in proximity the global market to Memphis within either, you know, 7072 hours or 96% of the world’s market can get into Memphis in just a few days time. So we’re really proud of that legacy, and our infrastructure is a critical component of that. A few years ago, when the interstate 40 bridge had a crack in it, it really shut down all commerce, both in the both along the the roadway itself, but also river barge traffic had to cease for a while, and it was down about six weeks, so the redundancy of our river crossings became of Paramount priority. However, the Chamber has a transportation committee, and we have for 20 years been advocating for additional crossings of the Mississippi River and the replacement of bridges. So we supported the state of Tennessee’s effort to pass legislation called the transportation Modernization Act, which then yielded a an allocation of state funds, $3 billion and out of all of the the needs of infrastructure across the state of Tennessee, and we’ve got 95 counties that all have amazing infrastructure needs, but the state prioritized the the Americas river crossing, as we coined it, and we were honored to to play that role as a chamber and helping the state pass this legislation and. And the enabling funding that we go into major projects along those same lines, the federal government had a bridge replacement program as part of the the infrastructure package of legislation that was passed, which was bipartisan and and with that program we applied with in partnership with the state of Tennessee and the state of Arkansas for the replacement of our interstate 55 bridge. So we did national advocacy in Washington, DC, in partnership with the state. They requested us to do that the first application, we did not play a role in in writing any of the narrative, and it did not score very well. So the state turned back to us and our long history of advocating for this, and asked us to help bolster the the application. So we built narrative. We had our Greater Memphis economic research group that’s embedded inside the Greater Memphis chamber provide some additional data and analysis, and we resubmitted that application, and we were thrilled to be awarded the largest infrastructure grant in the state of Tennessee’s history, $400 million from the Department of Transportation via the Federal Highway Administration, and that is matched with 250 million from the state of Tennessee and 250 million from the state of Arkansas. So it’s a nearly billion dollar bridge replacement, which will really be a signature bridge across the Mississippi River and redefine our skyline downtown in Memphis, so it represents every element of public policy and convening and driving and prioritizing and yet also providing the data and The support and and really humanizing the narrative of why this is important and why Memphis should be granted this, this major award, and for it to be the largest in the state’s history, is not lost on us. This is a 70 year old bridge, not seismically retrofitted. It is a challenge to get across that thing. Now, given the fact that we are the third busiest trucking corridor, so this allows for greater safety, it allows for greater capacity, and it solidifies our position as America’s distribution center, moving forward into the decades ahead of us, I

Brandon Burton 17:34
can see the huge need for it. With you guys being central hub and all the yes incomings and outgoings. It makes total sense. So you said this is a this is part of the stretch of I 55 is that correct?

Ted Townsend 17:47
Yes, it is interstate 55 which connects Chicago with New Orleans, pretty much Memphis being equidistant to each Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:54
So as I’m thinking about the bridge, when do you know when the original bridge was built. And I guess I’m asking the question, because I’m sure there’s technology advancements. You mentioned, the seismic retrofitting and stuff like that. But what, absolutely, you know technology? Yes, are there?

Ted Townsend 18:12
Yeah, well, it was over 70 years ago, so the lanes are much more narrow than what we typically would see in a new interstate or bridge build present day. So this new bridge will have added capacity, added lanes, and present a much safer environment for for for motorists and and trucks that are crossing. But also, you know, it adds to that, that volume and capacity, as well, the state just completed an interchange on the Tennessee side of the bridge. So coupled with that, it’s, it’s going to allow for much more traffic and logistics to flow through here. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:57
that’s, that’s amazing. I know, you know, Dunkin Donuts, as they’re saying, of America runs on Dunkin but you guys probably say America runs through Memphis, right?

Ted Townsend 19:08
We actually can say that. Yeah, we have the highest concentration of logistics companies in the country here in Memphis because of those modalities of transportation. And yes, it doesn’t hurt that FedEx, who employs 500,000 people around the globe, is headquartered here. They have over 30,000 employees here in Memphis, and they’ve been operating for the last five decades here as their base of operations and their headquarters. So yeah, we feel that is true, and that really became very evident during the pandemic when we saw the global supply chain challenges that were well documented. Memphis was actually a solution point for the movement and the continuance of movement of goods around the. Country and FedEx certainly played a pivotal role in the distribution of the vaccines. So we, you know, we like to imagine, you know, Memphis is placing, and, you know, being responsible for the world’s recovery from, you know, an unprecedented global pandemic.

Brandon Burton 20:17
Yeah, well, as far as it comes to chambers making a big impact in their communities and their region. This is, you know, one, obviously putting you on the national stage. So, yes, great, great work with that one. And great. What’s the timeline for when the bridge, when they start working on it, or complete? Yeah, we

Ted Townsend 20:35
we anticipate the beginning of construction in 2026 and the completion of the bridge in 2030 again, that’s a fluid timeline, you know, given materials and construction, but they’re going to be building it right beside the current bridge. And when that is completely finished, they will bring down the the original and and we’re off and running. But you know, it’s, it’s a cable suspension bridge. It’s going to be absolutely beautiful. There are renderings that I’ve seen, and assuming there are no changes in that, it’s going to be a stunning piece to our skyline. So we’re excited for that, and the fact that we get to see it in our lifetime, four years from now is really not that far for a major, billion dollar bridge to be built across a mighty Mississippi River. Yeah, it’s

Brandon Burton 21:28
great to get the background story too. So as any of us listening, you know, drive across the bridge, you know, in 2030 onward, we’ll answer the story of how that bridge came to be exactly the role your chamber had in that well, let’s, let’s shift gears to the second program that was submitted on your application. If you’d like to introduce that one to us.

Ted Townsend 21:49
Yeah, happy to do so, the digital delta. And you know, I love to talk about this program, because it is one of those things where a chamber can put together all of those strategic plans and hope for the outcomes, and you hope that you’re around to see those outcomes. But in our case, the digital delta is a component of prosper Memphis 2030 and we’re already seeing the manifest yield of these strategies that we’ve been working on for the last five years. So the digital Delta, I will say this much if I were to say Silicon Valley, pretty much in any audience. You know, geographically, where I’m talking about and what I’m talking about, and so coming out of the the 2008 recession, going into even 2018 2019 Memphis really took 10 years to recover from that and and we were looking at ways to catalyze exponential economic growth. So we were actually one of three cities selected by the Brookings Institution to go through their inclusive economic indicators lab, along with Indianapolis and Orlando. That took about 18 months, but what we came out of that was with basically a database and dashboard of economic indicators that measure the strength or the lack thereof, of the Memphis economy. We took that and we compared ourselves with nine other peer cities that were similar in population and and business diversity. And so you have a cohort of 10. And as you can imagine, Memphis didn’t fare very well. We were pretty much in the bottom quartile of those cities that we were measuring ourselves against. And there was one economic indicator where we were actually number one, and that was the percentage of Information Technology positions held by African Americans. Hey, mind you, Memphis has the largest African American population in the United States of America. That had been Detroit. We have overtaken Detroit and remain with the highest population. And that is a source of pride. We see diversity as as our superpower, and seeing that indicator was not necessarily a surprise to us as measured against our peer cities, but at the same time that we were coming into this analysis and measurement, the McKinsey report came out along with a Wall Street Journal article that told basically tech companies that if you want to diversify your workforces, you need to move to where that talent is, and predominantly that talent is located in the southeast section of the United States. But the job growth was really coastal, so we. Took that, that methodology, if you will, or that clarion call of action, and started marketing the fact that we have this high concentration of black tech talent to tech companies. I went to Microsoft and toured their headquarters and and they said, you know, Ted, this is amazing. We wish we had known this two years ago, before we committed to building in Atlanta, and I was able to show them that actually, you know, Atlanta is number two to Memphis. So that was a false victory. But nonetheless, we realized we had a lot of great momentum and justification for major tech operations to invest in our region. I met with Mr. Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, who just sadly, recently passed away, and I showed him these data. And you know, he he held up the page that showed the chart with Memphis leading in black tech talent over 53 other major markets in the US, I mean, every big city. And he said, You know, there’s not much that surprises me at this point in my career. He said that this is shocking, and I know that FedEx has played a role in this, because the world is still catching up to the fact that FedEx is a technology company that happens to move packages around the planet, and that was a moment that galvanized our approach. And in fact, he and his son, Richard Smith, who is is a an executive with FedEx, coined the phrase digital delta, so we trademarked it, and we began using that as a marketing platform with the basis of data to say you could move a location here, Google, Microsoft, you name it. Fast forward to last year, and we had the opportunity of marketing Memphis to x ai, the startup AI, company of Elon Musk, and we were able to win that project and and beat out 50 other markets that they had been considering because of the fact that we could move at the the speed they wanted. We had the power that they needed, and we had the people and and so that now represents the largest investment in the state of Tennessee’s history. So you can see, we love to live in the superlatives, largest Infrastructure Grant, largest private sector investment in the state’s history. And now Memphis suddenly is thrust into the lexicon of great global tech hubs, because we are home to the world’s largest and most powerful supercomputer, which is x ai that powers grok their interface. So so now we have shifted our focus to the supply chain of AI Artificial Intelligence, both upstream and downstream. What does it take to create AI, it creates tangible things. I mean, you have to have servers, you have to have graphics processing units or chips. You have to have cooling systems and and all of these, these things that that energy that go into the creation of artificial intelligence. So and given the fact that Memphis is such a great logistics hub, it makes sense to now have Memphis focus on becoming a high tech manufacturing hub where you have proximity of these AI products that go into the end users. So we not only announced x ai last year, they’ve they’ve doubled down. They invested $12 billion dollars, and their first phase, they have committed to expanding their footprint from 200,000 GPUs or Nvidia chips, to now a million Nvidia chips. So the supercomputer is just getting more powerful right here in Memphis. So when you think about the computational power that it will take to put humans on the surface of Mars that will be originated from Memphis, Tennessee, and it still gives me goosebumps, and it’s that validation of what is the digital Delta. When you launch something like that, you you know, obviously get a lot of questions, and it’s new, and it’s a moniker that many people weren’t familiar with. They would ask questions, well, does that mean electric vehicles or robotics or AI? And the answer is yes, all of it, tech is ubiquitous now with business. And yes, we’re home to Ford Motor Company’s largest electric vehicle assembly plant and and so yes, we have the, you know, FedEx is largest hub, which has a tremendous amount of automation and robotics. And yes, we’re home to the world’s largest supercomputer. So now you have this concentration of investment that that reflects what the digital delta is. And we’ve even got the governor. Of the state of Mississippi using digital Delta in a Politico

Ted Townsend 30:05
interview that he just had. And, and, and they, they’ve had major announcements that reflect how they are growing in the AI space and in Arkansas right across the river. And I point this way because I’m looking literally out my window at Arkansas across the river, they announced Google is coming in to West Memphis, Arkansas, and that’s a $10 billion investment in a large data center campus. So suddenly, there’s validation of the PROSPER Memphis 2030, vision that was embodied in the digital Delta marketing effort. And we’re going to continue to add to the constellation of these great tech companies like Nvidia and Dell and super micro, who have all committed to coming to Memphis and having significant operations. And that x ai investment garnered us deal of the year last year from business facilities magazine, and we were the only chamber to be recognized. Mostly it was state led organizations and the great projects that they were able to announce in the platinum, gold, silver level, we won the bronze, but it was a Greater Memphis chamber that was recognized. And coming from my background at the state, when we won the state of the year and economic development. A lot of the deals of the year that that culminated with that, I wanted to bring that to my hometown, and I’m incredibly proud of this team and the effort that they put forward to not only get America’s river crossing funded and and soon to be built, but then the digital Delta really taking taking hold and and becoming our our identity. It’s a transformational moment, and it’s not something that we hope will take hold decades from now. It’s it’s already been realized, and that’s incredibly rewarding. Brandon, yeah, that is

Brandon Burton 31:59
great. What a a great accomplishment with the win of x ai, but also the continued inflows. That’s right, you know, the thought hit me that there’s, there’s enough people out there that think AI is going to take all of our jobs. But curious with x ai about how many jobs are being created in the Memphis area with this

Ted Townsend 32:21
facility, that’s a great question, because that was what we got as well. Well, this is just another data center. No, actually, it’s not data centers store data, but this is a computational learning cluster. So they have about 300 full time employees right now. 82% of those are Memphians, and they pay at Palo Alto rates, so everyone in that facility is making six figures now, and they don’t require four year degrees necessarily. So we have seen that as a tremendous opportunity where we can specialize accelerated skills training, provide people with certifications and credentials that can go to work in the world’s largest supercomputer and earn these incredible wages that are family sustaining, and that’s what that’s what chambers do. That’s the essence of of why we were created, and the work that we do. And and it’s so incredibly rewarding to be able to see that Memphians are feeling the impact of this. And, yes, this is a an attractor for in migration of talent here. And given the fact that they’re going to be exponentially growing the supercomputer, you know, we anticipate even more jobs. I mean, this is, you know, they, they’ve suddenly become our second largest taxpayer in Memphis, only behind FedEx, who has been operating again for five decades, right? So that that is really what is driving our economy. And just last year, our GDP eclipsed 100 billion for the first time in our history. And that does not even include X AI’s investment. So when we have done the projections, right when we’ve done the projections, what we see is that we’re going to have the one of the highest growing economies in the nation’s history in a two year period, really placing us only second behind Austin Texas, and we know what, What a juggernaut Austin Texas is for for economic growth. So we’re so excited about what the future represents. And the digital Delta now becomes one of those calling cards for our region and and it’s it’s justified, and we have proven the efficacy of what Mr. Smith envisioned for the Memphis region and and it’s, it’s bittersweet, but it’s a tremendous legacy. And he has so many legacies. But you know, knowing that the Chamber did got to partner with him on the rollout of digital delta is an incredible honor. And. And one that we’re going to continue to honor him and his contributions to our economy.

Brandon Burton 35:04
Yeah, I love that. Tie in with with the Smiths. And isn’t it amazing? Yeah, it’s

Ted Townsend 35:09
providence. I think, you know, I love to think of it that way. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 35:14
I love it. Well, obviously, two huge, impactful programs that you guys are driving there, the greater Memphis chamber. As we begin to wrap up, I wanted to ask for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item would you suggest in their efforts to do that?

Ted Townsend 35:35
Yeah, for me, you know, I don’t want to over simplify this, because the work that we do is highly complex and it’s multifaceted, but I think the underlying current is you have to listen to the business community. You have to understand with multiple touch points and an intentional engagement, what is paramount to them? What does the business community expect and need? And in times of both distress and in times of major accomplishments, because each represent new challenges and opportunities for growth. And so I take pride in the fact that we are open and we are asking for engagement and opportunities to learn what the business community needs. I would say, get out there. You know, get get active and be present and be an active listener. And most importantly, you have to act on it, and you have to show that the feedback that they are giving you is not ending up in a loop of noise, but is being thoughtfully and appropriately enacted and and that’s what has really spelled success for us. When you think about just America’s river crossing, we would not have been in a position to help win that if we had not been listening and advocating for 20 years. Yeah, and you have all of this variability in political cycles and administrations change, and that’s at every level, local, state, federal, but the one constant is always a chamber, because they’re the go to. And in our case, we’ve been around for a long time, but I think that’s true for every chamber in the community that they represent. It is, you know, you are equipped to act because you’ve been listening to what they need and and that’s a special thing that it sounds very simple, but I, you know, I engage with as many of our members as I can, and an annual basis, I want to sit with them. I want to hear we have mid mornings with Ted and we have breakfasts with a lot of TED Talks.

Brandon Burton 38:14
I thought a plan on that with this episode. I had to do it. I had to

Ted Townsend 38:17
put it in there. I hope that doesn’t hurt our scoring. But But Ted also listens, and we have a team that listens. And so I would just recommend that have as many interfaces as you possibly can, can schedule and don’t get caught up in the pageantry of events, because those are wonderful. And we celebrate every ribbon cutting, because it represents a business stream realized here in our community. But we have to do even more, and we have to show up and continually offer that support.

Brandon Burton 38:52
Yeah, I love that response, and in fact, it kind of leads into the next question I was going to ask about, and you guys are very future looking, future leaning, I would say, so as you look to the future, how do you see chambers of commerce and their purpose going

Ted Townsend 39:08
forward? Yeah, well, you know, again, I go back to challenging that status quo. When I came in as Chief Economic Development Officer, you know, having the success at the state level. I wanted that here. So we wanted to implement similar structures and strategies to to garner that kind of success. And it’s creating that culture of winning and and creating that culture you wake up every day expecting to win, and that is not in a boastful way. That is just an orientation that that I expected myself and and that has, you know, it’s really, I think, inspired the team here to understand that we can dream as big as we dare, and if we don’t, who will for Memphis. So, so we. Want to always apply innovative approaches. We love to be first in space. We love to live in the superlatives, being the best, the most, the first. And it’s not for our recognition. It is not necessarily to win, you know, the trophies, or, in this case, chamber of the year. We want that badly, but it’s because it’s the work, it’s the body of work, and it’s the impact on our community that ultimately provides that outcome and result that we expect. We expect prosper Memphis, 2030 to to see the goals hit where we will be because of Brookings research, we will be in the top quartile of those cities that we measure ourselves against. And when that happens, prosperity is shared. And if we leave anyone behind in this moment, we have failed. We hate poverty, and Memphis has long suffered from having pockets of just devastating poverty in our communities, and I will not rest, and this team at the Greater Memphis chamber won’t rest until we normalize and equalize economic prosperity for our citizenry so that we don’t have census tracts that have suffered generationally, but now you know, South Memphis is home to x ai, and those neighborhoods are getting investment, direct investment from the tax revenues that are coming in. The mayor is passing an ordinance to directionally put 25% of the net new revenues into the 38109, zip code, which has been a zip code, has seen this investment and and so many barriers for so many generations, that to me, Brandon is what a chamber is to do and to be about. And we’re gonna we’re gonna find new goals, and we’re gonna crush those as well, because we don’t rest in complacency, because our community deserves so much more.

Brandon Burton 42:08
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, Ted, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Memphis and do their own R and D. Where would you turn them? Absolutely the best way for them to reach out.

Ted Townsend 42:24
Well, first I will say this because I’ve been the beneficiary of many of my colleagues in in the chamber work who have offered their best practices freely. And we’re an open book. This is not a time nor place to be proprietary. So we want to share everything that we have been through to help others. So the best way, I mean, my email is ttownsend@memphischamber.com you know, I always invite my mobile numbers on my business card. So that’s how open I want to be with, with our our peers and partners and community. Our website is Memphis chamber.com and we have a marketing website called MemphisMoves.com of course, we’re on all of the the platforms with social media, but MemphisChamber.com MemphisMoves.com, and then certainly my email are the best ways for us to get connected. And if there’s any research or examples of the industry reports that we put out there, or the economic impact studies that our Economic Research Group has done, most of those are on our website. And if anyone needs any assistance in that, we’re more than happy to to partner with them.

Brandon Burton 43:45
Yeah, that’s fantastic. We will get your contact information the websites or show notes to make it easy for people to find you and reach out and connect. But Ted, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you. Guys are making huge impact. It’s been fun to learn about these programs and to put a bigger spotlight on Memphis. So I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber of the year.

Ted Townsend 44:10
We’re crossing everything that we’ve got. Can’t wait for a few weeks from now, and it’s all announced.

Brandon Burton 44:17
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