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Continuing Professional Development with Cindy DeWease

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Brandon Burton (00:01.006)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s been my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a true icon in the Chamber world with over four decades of service and leadership in her community. Cindy DeWease has been with the Clear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce for an incredible 42 years.

serving as its president and CEO for the past 18. During her tenure, she has transformed the chamber through bold strategic planning, launching impactful initiatives like a Young Professionals Division, and leading a leadership development program, and a powerful buy-in to the Bay Area Think Local campaign. Cindy’s leadership also extends to founding a 501c3 Foundation, launching a women’s engagement program,

and guiding the chamber through major renovations, all while sharpening its mission by streamlining programs and events. Her civic leadership is just as impressive. She’s served on numerous regional boards, including the City of Nassau Bay’s Economic Development Corporation, the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, and the Bay Area Houston Transportation Partnership. She’s also active in the Rotary Club of Space City.

and the Bay Area Houston Ballet and Theater Advisory Board. At the state level, is a recognized leader in the Chamber of Professional Development. She chaired the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives during the pivotal year of 2020, served on their board for a decade, and is now chair of the 2026 Center for Chamber of Commerce Excellence in partnership with Texas A &M University, a program

training the next generation of chamber and nonprofit professionals. Among her many accolades, was named the 2024 Marvin Hurley Award winner, TCCE’s highest honor, and is a two-time recipient of the Arthur A. Roberts Award for Distinguished Service. Cindy is a trailblazer, mentor, and changemaker, and we’re honored to welcome her here on the show. Cindy, if you would, I’d love to…

Cindy DeWease (01:58.078)
you

Brandon Burton (02:25.528)
give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you little better.

Cindy DeWease (02:35.57)
Well, hello there. How are you? Thank you for that wonderful introduction that I helped you write. Well, I appreciate that too. And thank you for taking the time to interview me.

Brandon Burton (02:41.282)
Yeah. I appreciate it.

Cindy DeWease (02:53.534)
I’ve lived in the Clear Lake area, which is between Galveston and Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center, which is the home of our nation’s astronauts. So where our astronauts are trained, which is exciting for our community. And that’s why our community’s here, actually, because the Johnson Space Center was coming. And I live in a house that was built in 1963. And probably the first owner of that house bought the house because they were going to work at NASA.

So we appreciate our history and our community so much. And I have been at this chamber since

since the early 80s and never expected to be in this position. I just didn’t want to drive downtown Houston. So you never know what’s going to come your way. And so I appreciate you mentioning all the accolades that you you all feel kind of like we have that imposter syndrome. How did I get here? You know, we look at the folks that have come before us and that list of people that have received some of those awards and you

Brandon Burton (03:41.455)
Really?

Brandon Burton (03:56.487)
See you.

Cindy DeWease (04:04.724)
think, that’s so great, but I’ll never, you know, I’ll never do that. But somehow, I guess you outlive everyone and here you are.

Brandon Burton (04:08.526)
Yeah. One way or another, you get to that opportunity, Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (04:19.996)
Well, yeah. Yeah, right. huh. You just are the last one standing or, I know, well, she’s been here long enough.

Brandon Burton (04:27.478)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (04:30.33)
only worked for one chamber so I’ve had a lot of experience getting to know my colleagues around the state and and have such a great connection. I don’t know if if anyone any other industry has a connection like chamber folks do and so

Brandon Burton (04:47.712)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (04:48.274)
You know, I went to a funeral last weekend of the wife of one of our chamber execs that’s retired and just saw some old friends there that, you we were just so happy to see each other. Sad occasion that that’s the way we do that. But just such a great, just a great, great community. You know, building that network is so much more important than than you ever dream. You know, we know we can’t.

Brandon Burton (05:02.99)
Right.

Brandon Burton (05:10.135)
It is.

Brandon Burton (05:15.63)
Yeah, the network, the camaraderie, the knowledge sharing that happens is so valuable and so unique to the chamber industry. It’s a wonderful thing.

Cindy DeWease (05:21.714)
Yeah, it really, really, really, really is unique. so if we’re jealous of one another or not championing each other or helping each other, that’s a breakdown. We got to, I truly believe that’s a continued, needs to continue through the generations because that’s where you get your best friends, the people that have your back. And I wouldn’t have done any of those.

Brandon Burton (05:26.53)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:34.798)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (05:50.43)
if I didn’t have that, know, statewide. Those people that pushed me and said, you can do this. Really?

Brandon Burton (05:50.446)
Right, exactly.

Brandon Burton (05:57.773)
Yeah, yep. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the Clear Lake Area Chamber just to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to set the stage for our discussion.

Cindy DeWease (06:05.883)
Okay.

Cindy DeWease (06:10.494)
Sure, sure. We have a little over 700 members of our chamber, our community, and we are a unique chamber in that we represent nine different cities around a lake named Clear Lake. so there’s a population of about 350,000, probably a little bit more than that now, but that’s, you know, that’s about the population.

and where I then uniquely set between Houston and Galveston, like I said, and home of our nation’s astronauts. We have five full-time employees and we have a great team. And so one part-time employee that is our accountant, comptroller. so she’s retired and she was a comptroller for San Jacinto College, was to community college in our area and just was bored. And so I said, well.

Come on over, we’ll give you a couple of days. So it’s kind of her retirement job. But, and our budget is just under a million. So, you know, that’s, we’re.

Brandon Burton (07:09.102)
Let’s do a playlist of numbers.

Brandon Burton (07:19.809)
Okay.

Cindy DeWease (07:22.27)
getting over that edge there. So I think the most unique thing is when we were named a chamber, it was already a regional chamber in 1962 when we started. Two cities got together and formed a chamber because the Johnson Space Center was coming. And then another city joined and as the community grew, all the other cities joined in and changed our name to the Clear Lake Area Chamber.

Brandon Burton (07:43.854)
All right.

Cindy DeWease (07:50.014)
which has always been that since I’ve been here. But it was like the late 70s, I think, when it started. that was unique in trying to get people to understand there is a, we were not a one city, one chamber. We were nine cities and two counties.

Brandon Burton (08:06.764)
Yeah, that was pretty innovative at that time.

Cindy DeWease (08:11.656)
It was very innovative at that time. But they also recognized individual city chambers were not going to flourish, not going to make an impact as the whole area. But also, we’re an area where you drive out of one city into another and you don’t even know. If you miss the little sign that says now entering the city limits of Webster or whatever it is, you’re not going to.

Brandon Burton (08:23.535)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:30.008)
We don’t notice it, yeah.

Cindy DeWease (08:38.57)
No, when you’re driving out of one into another because of the way the city looks or the way the area is set up. So we appreciate that. it is a little more accepted now. And people want to join those chambers that have a bigger influence. And so we don’t actively seek out other if there is a chamber in another area. But we also as chambers of commerce don’t turn down a member.

Brandon Burton (08:45.72)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (09:08.382)
legally we can’t but also if they’re doing business in our community they should join and that’s that we if they call us and say well I’m located in another city well first of all are you a member of that city’s chamber of commerce because you’re located there but if you’re doing business in our community we want you to be a member of our community so that’s just kind of yep yep

Brandon Burton (09:08.536)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (09:28.57)
Yeah, seems like a fair way to play. Yeah. That’s right. Now that we’ve established the rules, right? Right. Well, I’m looking forward to our discussion today. We’ve settled on the topic of discussing

Cindy DeWease (09:33.886)
We do our best. We do our best to set an example.

Yep. Now we can continue.

Cindy DeWease (09:49.448)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (09:53.295)
Continuing professional development which is so important for for those in the chamber industry and making a career out of this and we’ll dive into this topic and the The insights that Cindy has on this as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Cindy, we’re back as I mentioned before the break today. We’re talking about continuing professional development and I have to say just as as some background one of the reasons I started the this podcast it was

Working with Chambers of Commerce, my background being in chamber publishing is I was all over the state of Texas and spending a lot of time in the car and working with a lot of rural chambers and, and some not so rural chambers. And really what I found is it didn’t matter if you were rural or not, but what came down to is that professional development and whoever’s leading the chamber, being able to have access to that.

And some of these smaller chambers that were underfunded, maybe their board just didn’t approve for them to be a part of the state association or things of that nature, were definitely underserved. And I could tell the difference between these chambers that were plugged in. They had that network. They had that support system versus those who were trying to figure it out on their own as they went. And there’s a huge difference. So the podcast started to try to lend some support.

to those underserved chambers. But since then, it’s evolved and there’s been more conversation about the importance of continuing development, professional development. So I’d love to get your take on it. I know you’ve got a strategic role in this this time as well, but talk to us about the importance of continuing professional development as a chamber professional.

Cindy DeWease (11:46.512)
Sure, well, I have to say for 25 years I worked at the chamber as an employee. did the 15 years of building sponsorships and programs for the chamber, non-news revenue programs. And I did that just out of, okay, let’s see what’s gonna work. Let’s throw this out there because I didn’t have the luxury of being participating in our regional or statewide

Brandon Burton (11:57.327)
Thank

Brandon Burton (12:04.248)
Thank

Cindy DeWease (12:16.574)
continuing education programs. I did go to Institute a long time ago when it was six years and you had to take a test and all those things and it was at SMU. So that just tells you how long ago I was there. So you kind of build your tribe at those, with those experiences. So I had a few, I had some training with Institute, and I also had a few friends in the business that I could lean on to say, I’m working on this, can you help me?

Brandon Burton (12:37.07)
Thank

Cindy DeWease (12:45.598)
being disconnected from it for a long time, you kind of lose that. And after I became the president of the chamber, Tracy Wheeler, I’m sure you’ve heard of Tracy Wheeler from Baytown Chamber, she’s been there over 50 years. She picked up the phone one day and said, listen, it’s time for you to give back. Oh, I’m busy. And she said, we’re all busy. There’s not one person, if they’re busy, if they’re not busy, we don’t want them anyway. And so,

Brandon Burton (12:55.0)
Yeah, yeah, I know Tracy. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (13:10.094)
Right?

Cindy DeWease (13:13.234)
And she said, you need to serve on our board. I thought, well, really? And it really was the best, let me just say, kick in the pants that I received because building that network, and I was going to those GCC meetings, which is Gulf Coast Chamber Executive, was a regional group. And if you have a regional group you can connect with, that is, that,

is so important to your career, your connection, your sounding board. Those people know what you’re going through, or they can sympathize or empathize with what you’re going through, and can truly help you when, if you have an issue in your own community and you take it to someone within your own community, that may red flag you. That may say, why don’t they know how to handle this? And so, but if you can…

Brandon Burton (14:03.704)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (14:06.302)
develop those relationships with folks. And the first thing to do is develop it within a North Texas group, or I think there’s a West Texas group, our Gulf Coast group. And we’re not, and we don’t, can join any of those groups as long as you want to come to the meetings. And there’s educational pieces to it. But I think the biggest part is building your tribe. And how do I be that best person for my community? Well, nobody can do it alone.

you’re a sole person at a chamber, need, everybody needs support every once in a while. And so I think that that was my first step into becoming a part of a group, which was the local group. I went to the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives conferences. My 25th anniversary with the chamber was my first Texas.

Brandon Burton (14:45.634)
Thank

Brandon Burton (14:51.726)
and we’re going able to do some practical science.

Brandon Burton (14:59.15)
Cindy DeWease (15:00.254)
Chamber of Commerce executives conference that I went to and Art Roberts, don’t know if you all, did you know Art Roberts? He was the executive director for TCCE at the time and he’d worked at many chambers around the state and I’d met him, you know, probably at one point and, but he said he introduced me as, you know, one of the newcomers or whatever and he goes, but she’s a really slow learner because she’s been around for 20 years.

Brandon Burton (15:07.296)
I didn’t know art, so…

Brandon Burton (15:28.642)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (15:29.84)
I thought, thanks, but clearly I never forgot that.

But don’t do that. My suggestion is, as a staff person, I didn’t really have a choice whether I went to those or not. as the president and CEO, I make sure my staff goes and they have a connection with a membership person or they have a connection with the…

communications folks or the special events, non dues revenue folks. And so it’s important to us to have that, those relationships. But so I think.

As important as knowing what you’re supposed to be doing, because set yourself up for success. You know, go to those sessions that are hard for you to, okay, it’s hard for me to listen to this financial piece of this, or it’s hard for me to listen to the legislative advisory, you know, or legislative agenda pieces of it. Just get a little bit of knowledge. Come back.

Brandon Burton (16:13.08)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (16:32.734)
and then build on it and build on it. And so it took a long time for me to be interested in some of the things that I didn’t feel like I was interested in. But I was like, I’m never gonna need that. Right, right, exactly. And so I never thought I would be in this, I truly never thought I would be in the position to be the CEO. And it…

Brandon Burton (16:41.454)
I think it takes time to see where, I think takes time to see the relevance where it all connects, right? Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (16:57.938)
you know, 40 years ago, of course. And like I said, I just didn’t want to drive downtown, Houston. so, but that clearly had changed.

Brandon Burton (17:00.61)
Right.

Brandon Burton (17:05.368)
you

Cindy DeWease (17:10.098)
And now I can’t, I’ve had a great career, I’ve had a great life, I’ve made wonderful friends and it’s not something I take lightly. It’s something I can, I still go to those development, professional development seminars. take, have, TCCE has a, what they call Chairman’s Conference and they encourage you to bring your chairman of the board every year to this conference. I learn something new every year.

Brandon Burton (17:33.71)
Thank you.

Cindy DeWease (17:38.94)
you know, and every year I take my entire executive committee because one day they may be the chairman of the board. So if I’m learning something new every year, they’re definitely learning something new every year and need to bring that back. I not only want my staff trained, I want my board trained. I want them to know why they have me instead of running it just by themselves or, you know, as a volunteer.

Brandon Burton (17:46.669)
Right?

Cindy DeWease (18:06.29)
driven organization and there’s no doubt why they need to have me. They know I am their employee, the rest of the group are under my direction and just getting them to understand is important as well. So it’s not just for the staff, it’s not just for me, it’s training our board and they appreciate. Our board really appreciates that. Pardon me?

Brandon Burton (18:20.398)
It’s like, we have to do something about that. It’s like, we have to do something that. That chairman’s conference is so, yeah, that chairman’s conference is so unique, I think. I am not aware in other states, I’m sure there’s some states that do that, where they offer training for board members and board chairs. But in Texas, it’s a unique opportunity. It’s valuable.

You get to see a lot of, as you called your tribe of people that you connect with, but they’re able to connect and learn from other board members too, and how things are done and just a ton of value there. And it’s not, it’s not just you as the executive saying, this is the way chambers work, you know, to your board, your, your, your board chair, but they get to see, this is how, this is how successful chambers work. So, so valuable.

Cindy DeWease (18:52.22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cindy DeWease (19:00.434)
Yes.

Cindy DeWease (19:08.06)
Right. Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (19:14.31)
Right. And it’s not me telling them. It’s somebody else telling them. know, so and what we try, what it our fiscal year is October 1 to September 30th. And so which is unusual in the chamber world these days. I like it because I’m not spending December, you know, paddling when everybody else is taking off and

Brandon Burton (19:19.148)
Right. Yes.

Brandon Burton (19:24.887)
Thanks

Brandon Burton (19:32.01)
Right?

Cindy DeWease (19:36.496)
So, but when September comes, how did this happen? So, and that conference is normally in October. So, our executive committee, even though we always add one or two people, we kind of bring people up through the ranks, but it’s always one or two people that are new.

So when they join that executive committee and then we go to that conference, it gives them a time to bond. We take them to dinner and they sit together and they, you know, so, and then if there’s a group activity, they do that together. So to me, it’s really an important piece to get them to bond as well as a group. And I take them, you know, they…

And a lot of us are already very friendly and people say don’t be friends with your board members. Well, I fail completely at that.

Brandon Burton (20:24.194)
Bill.

Cindy DeWease (20:28.114)
people and some people say you know I like people I like the people I like but I try to I try to get in there and you know just really find what attracts us all and you know where where we can have some you know there’s always some kind of you know secret code that happens this time when somebody was telling a story that the night of our dinner and

Brandon Burton (20:46.925)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (20:51.492)
her son-in-law is Ronnie and her grandson, something happened at their house, and her grandson said, I’m gonna call Ronnie. And, well, that’s his dad. So now our joke, our private joke is, I’m calling Ronnie.

Brandon Burton (21:00.75)
Nope.

Brandon Burton (21:06.638)
Yeah. That’s great. Well, and you talked about having your tribe and, and I know a lot of chamber executives have their, their tribe, their peers that they can lean upon when you’re having difficulties or successes even to cheer about, because they understand, you know, it doesn’t just happen overnight. And there’s been a lot of frustration that leads up to those, those successes and to be able to commiserate and celebrate together is so important. And

Cindy DeWease (21:29.736)
Brandon Burton (21:35.566)
I’ve heard of some chamber executives talking about it even being their kind of their board or their cabinet, their kitchen cabinet is what they call it. While they sit in their kitchen, they’ve got their cabinet of people they can talk to and work through some of these issues. So much value with that.

Cindy DeWease (21:43.846)
Yeah, there you go.

Cindy DeWease (21:55.302)
Right, but you know some of my best friends are chamber execs and we travel together and you know we just, we’ve just got off an Alaskan cruise with you three other chamber execs and our husbands and you know we just have a great time together and you never know who’s gonna become a great friend. That’s important.

Brandon Burton (21:59.769)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:11.438)
Thank

Yes.

Yeah, that’s true. So any other programming or anything that you want to highlight as far as professional level?

Cindy DeWease (22:24.508)
Well, we just finished a strategic plan. so that was that strategic plan included our women’s engagement committee we call we and said that we’re starting this year and a lot of chambers are doing that. We just decided this year is a perfect time to weave that into a strategic plan. And then we’re

working on that foundation, so finalizing that foundation. So part of our strategic plan, I will likely retire from this job in the midst of that strategic plan. don’t want to say I am definitely retiring on this day because I might not be done. But in that process, part of the strategic plan was succession planning. And how do you succession plan?

Brandon Burton (23:09.11)
That’s right.

Cindy DeWease (23:18.846)
been here 42 years. I mean, that’s a big change for an organization. I am very, very fortunate to have a vice president that we have worked together for over 30 years. And she is fabulous. And she’s, you know, I run everything by her. You know, everything is, you know, you’re in this with me. I’m not doing this alone. I’m not a Lone Ranger. I work collaboratively.

Brandon Burton (23:30.898)
wow.

Cindy DeWease (23:45.23)
so much better than sitting here and trying to think of, you know, what’s the next best thing. so we talked about how do we do this, you know, transitionally and very thoughtfully. Now, the board has to hire that person, that next, you know, the next CEO of the organization. But I want them to know this is the person and this is my strong

Brandon Burton (24:08.568)
Here’s your recommendation. Comes highly, highly better.

Cindy DeWease (24:11.294)
and so far no one’s pushed back. So what we are doing since we’ve got a strategic plan that has some pretty lofty goals, I am moving to a position of CEO to push the strategic plan and drive that for the next few years. She is moving into the president’s role to work as that.

making sure that the operations of the chamber moves on. And then we have another employee that we brought on that wanted a leadership opportunity. And so she will move into the vice president’s role. And so making sure that succession planning is at least there. There’s a footprint and a model that they can look at. In order to do that, though, we had to change our bylaws because the bylaws say the president’s CEO is the same person.

Brandon Burton (24:48.782)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (25:01.922)
Bye.

Cindy DeWease (25:07.898)
So it’s letting everyone know, you know, in a bylaws change, not saying, okay, I’m going to change this person’s title. Do you all agree? That’s my job. That’s not their job. And so how about how we’re doing that is saying, okay, this is the bylaws recommendations we have to change to move forward strategically. And so it’s

Brandon Burton (25:08.526)
and we’re glad that we were able do that.

Brandon Burton (25:14.318)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (25:21.216)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:32.225)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (25:34.582)
We’re excited about it. We’re very excited about it here. They are encouraged. You know, there’s a spring in their step and they’re very encouraged about it. And I am too. I love this organization. I love this community. This is my chamber. And we always say it’s their chamber. They’re going to end. And it’s their chamber. But I’ve been the steward of this organization for a lot of years. And so my

Brandon Burton (25:51.378)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:00.142)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (26:02.672)
chief responsibility for the next few years is to make sure it stays successful and stays a great organization.

Brandon Burton (26:08.886)
Yeah, and that succession planning, we don’t think of it often in terms of professional development, but really it is. It’s preparing for that next leader to come in and fill your shoes at some point and develop them professionally. So definitely fits in there.

Cindy DeWease (26:18.525)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (26:30.408)
And you never know, anything could happen. There could be an illness, there could be an accident, anything could happen at any time. If you leave an organization with hurry scurry, nobody knows what’s going on, then you’re just, yeah, and you’re set back. When I took this job, I’d been here 25 years, I thought I knew the job.

Brandon Burton (26:33.294)
Right.

Brandon Burton (26:44.514)
which we see a lot.

Cindy DeWease (26:52.702)
And I just, you know, I was named the interim until the board, you know, put me in the position. And I did not know this job. I knew the job I had. And I, we sat back probably a year, just me getting caught up. I would read an email and then I would respond to the email. Okay, can you tell me?

Brandon Burton (27:04.643)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (27:14.654)
what this role is, you know, or whatever. So having that preparation, I would have loved to have had a year or more of that preparation of taking the position. And even if it’s not, it’s no guarantee, right? Boards do what boards are gonna do, but they also see, okay, this is successful organization, why would we upset the Apple cart? Why would we put ourselves as volunteers through that? And that’s what we do. Right.

Brandon Burton (27:16.749)
Right.

Brandon Burton (27:24.398)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Brandon Burton (27:37.013)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:40.43)
They usually see the value of not rocking the boat too much. Yeah. Right. Right.

Cindy DeWease (27:43.44)
Right, right. They’re pretty level-headed board, thank goodness. And I’ve been fortunate not to have a board that, you know, that came in and wanted to upset the apple cart, you know, so, which is great.

Brandon Burton (27:55.567)
Yeah. Well, Cindy, I wanted to ask on behalf of the chambers that are listening who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Cindy DeWease (28:10.748)
Well, one of the things, ironically, we haven’t talked about Center for Chamber of Commerce Excellence, and I’m honored to be the chair of that. That is a three-year program in partnership with Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives and Texas A University. And it is professional development for chambers and nonprofit. we offer something different every single year. don’t know if you’re, I’m sure you’re familiar with Glenn Shepard.

Brandon Burton (28:37.699)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (28:38.018)
that goes around the country just being the best cheerleader for Chambers of Commerce that I know and he’s going to lead us in the first.

kick off breakfast motivation and then we’re going to end with a gentleman that’s called Mr. Thank you and it’s important of how important things are to say thank you and be grateful for things but it’s one two and three years we’ve got a session for the third year class on burnout to breakthrough it’s a professor from Rice University actually that’s doing a study on that and so we’re excited about that but we have it’s it’s just

preparation for a chamber career and it doesn’t have to be a chamber exec, it’s staff folks, it’s you all that and so that the deadline to register for that is on we just extended the date to the 23rd of January for the early bird and then it’s the end of March and so it’s a great opportunity and I would love to hear if anybody’s interested in.

and registering for that, but you can go on the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives website and see Center for Chamber Excellence or CCCE. always, yes, yes, we always have to have the Cs and the Es in there, whatever that looks like. But I…

Brandon Burton (29:43.918)
Extra C.

Brandon Burton (29:59.311)
That’s right.

Cindy DeWease (30:05.296)
I think I truly believe it is, like I said, building relationships and also preparing yourself knowing, you know, listening, making sure that you get that professional development, which I didn’t think was necessary. so I don’t have time for that. I just got to get through the day. yeah, but it’s challenging and it’s worth it. It helps me to.

Brandon Burton (30:23.726)
Yeah. That’s right.

Cindy DeWease (30:35.12)
It’s what inspires me when I have something new or something different to do. It inspires me.

Brandon Burton (30:42.582)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Cindy, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers. So as you look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Cindy DeWease (30:55.504)
You know, I think it’s exciting. think, folks, when you hear about the…

these online chambers or you hear about that sort of thing is scary and it’s okay they’re gonna take over. But everything’s gonna be okay, all you out there that are scared of that kind of thing because those are the sort of things that people go into thinking this is the new fresh thing but then they come back to I need to build relationships. So as long as you’re providing programs.

build relationships because that’s what people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. If I know owner or manager of a restaurant, I’m more likely to go there than another restaurant. I know the officials at the hospital, I’m going to go to that hospital. And so what better way to build those partnerships is through common goals for community.

That’s how I feel it’s going to be. It’s going to be different. It’s way different than it was 40 years ago, let me tell you. But it’s not worse, it’s better. And maybe 40 years ago someone would have said, I don’t know that there’s going to be a need for a Chamber of Commerce. And I believe we’ve lasted over 500 years. I think there’s always going to be a need for a chamber as long as we have those professionals that drive it and keep it.

Brandon Burton (31:57.262)
All right.

Brandon Burton (32:00.707)
Thank

Cindy DeWease (32:20.126)
keep them valid. You you want to be a valid organization. And we’ve had a couple instances within our community or our, you know, brighter region of chambers that didn’t fulfill some roles. And it looks poorly on all of us. And so we want those area chambers that didn’t succeed to succeed. We want them to have a better staff, a better direction, a better board. And so what better what better way to do that? And because if it

Brandon Burton (32:21.838)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (32:42.47)
Bye bye.

Cindy DeWease (32:49.982)
When somebody comes in and says, I really kind of want to see your books because I don’t really appreciate what happened at such and such chamber. Well, as long as you’re a member, can. And I can assure you we’re transparent. here’s our, you this is what. And not all the books always be good. You know, we all know that. We’ve had good months, we’ve got bad months. And so we want to see our 990. We want them to see what that were relevant organizations abiding by the law.

Brandon Burton (33:07.086)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (33:20.034)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (33:21.682)
tears down the organization, gives a black eye to all of us. Even if you’re running your organization perfectly, a neighbor doesn’t, it’s gonna give you a black eye, unfortunately. So, mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (33:27.47)
It’s true.

Brandon Burton (33:31.808)
It does. Well, Cindy, this has been great having you on the podcast. wanted to give you an opportunity. Yeah. 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 maybe learn more about the CCC program. Where would you point them? What would be the best way to connect?

Cindy DeWease (33:38.334)
Well, I hope so. I kind of ramble sometimes.

Cindy DeWease (33:52.894)
to work.

Cindy DeWease (33:57.042)
The best way to connect with me is through email and my email is Cindy, C-I-N-D-Y, at clearlakearea.com. There’s no chamber at it, it’s just clearlakearea.com. And I would love to hear from you. I’m a talker. So as soon as you email me, I’m gonna pick up the phone and call you. So leave your phone number or our phone number at the chamber is 281-

Brandon Burton (34:15.79)
Very good.

Brandon Burton (34:22.352)
There you go.

Cindy DeWease (34:29.617)
488-7676 and the 7-6 is when this building was built so Hence the reason I’ve done so many renovations at this building. I had no idea that part of the title was GC general contractor. That is not my best role Those are not my best day. Let me tell you

Brandon Burton (34:34.136)
Very cool.

Right?

Brandon Burton (34:43.039)
Right?

Yeah, that’s funny. Part of that professional development, you just keep learning new roles, right?

Cindy DeWease (34:52.46)
absolutely. Absolutely. I can tell you about roofs. I can tell you about paint. I can tell you about flooring.

Brandon Burton (34:56.748)
That’s That’s right. Well, Cindy, thank you for being with us today, for sharing your insights, your experience, your background. This has been valuable. And I can’t wait to push it out to everybody in Chamber World. So thank you.

Cindy DeWease (35:13.49)
Thank you so much. enjoyed it. Maybe we’ll talk again. Yeah, we’ll talk when I’m close.

Brandon Burton (35:17.037)
That’s right.

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Podcasting as a Storytelling Platform with Jason Ball

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Brandon Burton (00:01.292)
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 powerhouse in economic development and community leadership. Jason Ball is the President and CEO of the five-star accredited Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, Visit Lincoln, and the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development.

Three vital organizations that together serve as the unified voice of business in Lincoln, Nebraska, focusing on economic growth, tourism, and advocacy. A certified economic developer, Jason brings a wealth of experience and leadership experience to the table. He’s a graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organizational Management and the prestigious Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma.

Jason is also deeply involved at the national level. He is a member of the US Chambers Committee of 100 and serves on the board of the Midwest Institute for Organization Management. His leadership journey has taken him across the country from serving as CEO of the Round Rock, Sioux Falls, and Hutchinson Chamber of Commerce to directing business development right here in Lincoln now. In 2015, he was recognized as one of

Development Counselors International’s 40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Economic Development. Originally from Sydney, Nebraska, Jason holds an undergraduate degree from Nebraska Wesleyan University and an MBA from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. With a background that spans chemistry, technology transfer, and strategic planning, Jason is a dynamic leader dedicated to building stronger communities through collaboration and innovation.

Jason, 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. if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jason M Ball (02:08.391)
Yeah, well, hello friends and colleagues. It’s good to see you on this platform. Honored to get to be here to talk with you today, Brandon. Look, when I’m not doing work, which for me is really most of the time, I’m kind of a boring guy. But I love to spend any free time I have either with my two kids who are going to be 10 and 13 this year or

spending time out running on the trail system we have here. It’s a great community for running here.

Brandon Burton (02:42.53)
Nice. It’s always nice when you can kind of boomerang, come back to your community that you love and where you’ve got roots, right? Well, tell us a little bit about the Lincoln Chamber, just to give us an idea, set the stage for our discussion today of size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to get us prepared.

Jason M Ball (02:49.563)
Yeah, that’s right.

Jason M Ball (03:03.527)
Yeah, well, all in the enterprise here is 26 staff members at Full Tilt. And, you you mentioned before, but we’re a combined chamber economic development and tourism visitor industry program here. And so the chamber’s the main 501C6. That’s where we do all the stuff that everybody in this industry knows about and understands. But we have a very strong policy and advocacy program. That’s really where I’m

I try to make sure that we do not miss on that side. And then we are well recognized here in this area of the state for some of the highest quality events and can get into those deeper in the community. We are very fortunate we’ve got a contract with Lancaster County to fund and house the program for Visit Lincoln, which is our tourism industry group. have a deep set of experts there.

that markets this community to try to bring sports tourism. It’s actually a really big part of what we do. We are working on getting a much needed updated convention center built here in Lincoln and then filling our arena and other facilities with any number of entertainment type of events. And a big part of that program has really been spent on trying to organize how we can invest in high-end asset more as a community.

Lincoln’s had to be, I think, more intentional about that than some other cities in the U.S. And then we house an economic development program, the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development. a public-private partnership model with the City of Lincoln, who is our largest single funder. And then the private sector matches and actually exceeds that match for housing our economic development programs. That’s new business recruitment.

workforce development, local existing business assistance for growth. And then we have a very robust entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem building program here. All in, know, 26 people that come to work every day. We love the work we do. We run a very flat shop intentionally. Our culture is one where everybody’s expected to pitch in and help everybody else succeed. And we just are passionate about that work. It’s a fun job.

Brandon Burton (05:26.37)
Yeah, that’s great. Well, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t something you enjoyed. I appreciate that. That background on the chamber itself, the organization and what all you guys are involved with definitely sets the stage for our discussion today as we were going back and forth on different topics that we could cover. And there’s a few good ones, but Jason mentioned to me that you guys have a podcast, the Lincoln Chamber Business Link. So when I heard that…

Jason M Ball (05:47.793)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:56.205)
Like, well, we got to dive into that. I love hearing about Chambers podcasting and the approach that you take on it. So we’ll dive in to that topic and the depths of that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Jason, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re going to dive into the podcast that you guys have there at the Lincoln Chamber, Lincoln Chamber Business Link and Link LNK, which I think probably has some, is there other meaning to.

Jason M Ball (06:26.087)
LNK is the abbreviation for the Lincoln Airport. LNK. Yeah. We’ve adopted it for a lot of other purposes.

Brandon Burton (06:26.101)
LNK

Brandon Burton (06:30.03)
That’s what I was guessing. Yeah. I didn’t have a chance to verify that. So I wanted to make sure you could say it instead of me. But tell us about the podcast. How did the idea of it come about? What’s the format like? And we’ll get into some of the stories you’ve been able to extract as you guys have done this podcast.

Jason M Ball (06:38.257)
I hope.

Jason M Ball (06:53.733)
Yeah. And before we get into that, I’ll just share if people want to go check it out. You can find it at LCOC.com on our newsroom tab pull down from the top. So LCOC.com on the newsroom tab. can find BusinessLink video podcast. And you know, this is something I have to give credit to our vice president for marketing and program development, Brooke Zimmerman.

Four years ago, when I came back to this chamber, she and I had a discussion about, boy, we did not have a podcast at that time. We were doing various things on social media, but we did not have a podcast. what I envisioned was a tool to talk about things like economic growth projects or policies that we were working with and trying to lead on.

I thought of it more as a traditional audio format that we could push something out to the members in the community once a week or something like that. And Brooke started running the traps on what that would look like, how we would fully develop the programs and get that pulled together. And she came back to me and said, Jason, I think we’re missing the boat on this.

I think we need to move away from the audio and longer version type of tools for that. Let’s focus on quick hit 10, 15 minute things. Let’s do it more of an interview way rather than, you know, Jason or another staff member just talking about things that are going on. And let’s do it on video and let’s use it as a tool for businesses storytelling. And I give Brooke all the credit. I fought her on it. I was really worried about

technology, which was new to us. I was worried about how the heck are we going to fund putting a podcast studio together in the office? And then then we just started chipping away at it. It was a lot cheaper, I’m happy to say, than than I anticipated. It really did not require a whole lot of upfront investment from us. And we found a sponsor, AOI, which is one of our office

Brandon Burton (08:44.014)
Yeah. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton (09:04.418)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (09:09.455)
design and furniture businesses here in town. It’s AOI podcast studio. So they sponsored it and donated some furniture to go in. So we painted a wall and stuff up in the back and we were off and running. The first few episodes were really choppy, but then we found an outside provider. At one point we were thinking about staffing it up with someone who knew that space. And instead we found for a lower cost, a

Brandon Burton (09:19.054)
Perfect.

Jason M Ball (09:38.193)
really great outside provider that comes in and does the sound and video for it. So we just have to stack it up with the content and get people talking on it. And that’s really the fun part for us.

Brandon Burton (09:49.677)
Yeah. But I’m glad that Brooke had the vision. I see, as I see Chambers podcasting, you see several Chambers and there’s not, I’ll say there’s not a wrong way to podcast necessarily. It all depends on what your goals and objectives are, but going with like what your idea was, you know, talking about the advocacy and things that you’re doing, like who’s your target audience? Who are you trying to reach? Right.

Jason M Ball (09:53.243)
Yeah, me too.

Brandon Burton (10:18.094)
And that impact might be less just because a lot of people don’t want to tune into it. They want to see it work, but they don’t want to know the nitty gritty, right? Where the stories of business success. I mean, those are some of the top podcasts aside from like true crime are those of business entrepreneurial success stories and being able to learn what these people did to make this work, where the vision came from to make this happen. And people love hearing that. And then.

Jason M Ball (10:27.483)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (10:48.106)
Hopefully there’s some kind of tie-in to how the chamber might be helpful in their business being successful But whenever but a project can come in under budget that’s great. So You you mentioned the the studio so you guys are doing this like a in person. You’ve got the guests there Recording it. I assume you put it out Audio as well in addition to video. Is that correct?

Jason M Ball (11:14.651)
Yeah, it’s on Apple and Spotify and wherever people get podcasts so people can subscribe to it. But that’s really not where we’re pushing on it. It is more often than not used as a tool to provide additional content to put on social media. That’s where people are interacting with it. That’s where the views are happening. People love to forward those to friends and each other.

Brandon Burton (11:33.55)
social media here.

Jason M Ball (11:43.602)
Couple other localized places here like Podcast House Media, which is a local radio station that we do a lot of work with that also puts it on that website so people can find it that way. But it’s just another way to really push out the message of the breadth and depth of work that we’re doing and partners that we have. the best part about it is, Brandon, is it’s not

Brandon Burton (12:12.621)
Next time.

Jason M Ball (12:13.135)
It’s not just me. We started out with myself and another one or two staff members that were doing some things sort of regularly. But then we had some of our other team members really express a desire to talk about the people and programs that they’re working with on these. And so we’ve used it to talk about our young professionals group. There’s a more recent one that we started. Lincoln Visits has always been one of the founding

parts of this podcast where we talk about what’s going on in visitor industry development here in town. We’ve done workforce series, startup series we do every year with the Launch LNK Grant Award winners, six of them every year. So they’re talking about their entrepreneurial story. And then I think the one that I’m most excited about, because it’s got the most upside for us in terms of growth, is we launched last year a program called Latino Connect. It’s chamber stuff, but it’s delivered in Spanish.

I don’t speak Spanish. We hired someone who’s bilingual to do that. And she’s begun doing some of those podcasts for Latino connect in Spanish for a speaking market. So it’s, it’s turned into something I think even bigger than, maybe broken vision when she said, let’s, let’s move in this direction. And we’re so, so proud and honored that we were awarded the, for cities our size best communication award from ACC last year.

Brandon Burton (13:16.013)
to see.

Brandon Burton (13:20.11)
Very cool.

Jason M Ball (13:41.234)
for it. And then we also won a Best in Show for ACCE for the communications category, I believe. And so it’s something that’s worked really, really well for us. just encourage people, if you’re not doing any podcasting, and it’s like you said, there’s no right way to do it. We don’t have it figured out. We’re still guessing a lot of the time. But jump into that space because I’m a big believer that businesses and communities really need to know.

what chambers are doing and sometimes that messaging is the hardest part.

Brandon Burton (14:14.018)
Yeah. And there’s not a wrong way and you can always iterate. So, I mean, when I started Chamber Chat, it was strictly audio. And in the last few months, I’ve added the video portion. And with that, it allows for short form content for social media. And it’s all about getting more people exposed to what it is that you’re talking about.

Jason M Ball (14:20.987)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (14:37.992)
and bringing them in and letting them hear of these stories. And that’s the idea is these stories hopefully are lifting other people, seeing how things are done. And that’s what I wanted to touch on next is some of these stories that you guys have been able to highlight. You talked about some of these different series that you’ve done, but, and I know, mean, having a podcast, it’s like, you can’t have a favorite episode. It’s like having a favorite kid. You know, can’t do that. But what are some…

Jason M Ball (14:57.094)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (15:03.717)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (15:06.678)
some things that maybe have stood out to you as far as the storytelling aspect goes that you think, you know, if we didn’t have the podcast as a platform, this story would not have gotten out there. People in the community would not have known about this.

Jason M Ball (15:20.295)
Yeah, yeah. You know, the the one the angle that I take with all the ones that I’ve done are really pushing our business guests to talk about their why or their motivations or how they get started in business. Those are some of my favorite stories that I come across in this work. It’s it’s really easy to get excited about the new building.

Brandon Burton (15:28.546)
Thank

Jason M Ball (15:48.302)
or the policy program. like, I think of, you know, what we’re learning with, you know, Ava Thomas and our local newspaper and the media company that she runs for the Lincoln Journal Star, talking about the evolution of the news industry. That’s an industry that’s undergone a lot of change. And people in the community, interestingly enough, I think, don’t know that there’s a much larger

Brandon Burton (16:07.863)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (16:17.063)
you know, news and media organization behind it that does a lot more than news reporting. It’s full media and PR type of activities. You know, I think of our launch L &K companies, we had a local upholstery business that was going through a rapid growth process. And they were in a moment in their business where they had just bought out a previous owner and really had

tried to change what they were doing came in and and were able to talk about really what motivated them to take that leap and how scary it was but at same time how they found success in that and the last time I talked to them they had a book of business a year out and so I think that’s that’s pretty successful. I’m trying to think of another another good so like we did an episode

Brandon Burton (17:03.502)
and we’ll you next

Jason M Ball (17:12.495)
with what’s called the Echo Collective. Echo Collective is a coaching, mentoring and business support program started out of one of our local incubators and really by one woman, Kelly Ross. And it predominantly works with women and immigrant women in Lincoln and helping them start businesses. Those businesses have grown into chamber members, right? They’re people that we work with.

Brandon Burton (17:35.119)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (17:39.656)
a lot and it’s such an inspirational story to hear. Kelly talk about why that space she felt was so important and how she, I think, found some real ways to serve that community better. I could go on and on, Brandon. This is one part of what we do is celebrating the successes of other people and making sure that we’re…

Brandon Burton (17:40.558)
you

Brandon Burton (17:46.199)
Thanks.

Brandon Burton (17:55.224)
Yes.

Jason M Ball (18:05.371)
Our other goal with everything we do here, Brandon, is try to surprise people. think of Nebraska as cornfields and football in the 90s and volleyball and maybe even basketball now. Those associations are great. We’re proud of those things here in Nebraska, but there’s a whole business community and startup and manufacturing and banking and finance ecosystem here.

Brandon Burton (18:10.69)
OK.

Jason M Ball (18:31.355)
that I think most people are blissfully unaware of until they’ve had the opportunity to experience it. So we really try to focus in on those angles that will surprise people.

Brandon Burton (18:40.782)
Yeah, I love that. Surprise and delight. So you had mentioned with some of these stories that you shared and highlighted that like the upholstery business, their book of business being a year out. So in terms of measuring success of a podcast, like a lot of people are like, well, how many downloads do you get? And I don’t know that downloads matter so much as…

Jason M Ball (18:43.643)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (19:08.044)
when you see that upholstery business have, you know, that uptick in business or being able to get their story out there and surprises people in the community that they had no idea that this business was even here or I can see even as you do the highlights on tourism stuff, even giving a boost from locals who are checking out these tourist things that they didn’t know existed and they’re right in their backyard. So when you think of terms of measuring success from

project like this, what things are you looking for to see, yeah, this has been successful and worth continuing and worth doing?

Jason M Ball (19:46.28)
Well, I think one marker of that success is we get contacted now by new business leaders to the community or businesses that are celebrating some kind of a milestone or a business that’s really impacted by a policy. We’re having a lot of that inbound to us now. And so people are at least perceiving this platform as a good way to get their story and messaging out and get in front of a larger audience in Lincoln.

I think that’s been a great indication of success. You’re exactly right. The metrics do matter. We do track those. But this is never intended and we’re never going to try to position it as something that, you know, folks seven states over are going to be listening to. This is very much local content for local audiences. And but for a few exceptions, like when we’re talking about specific tourism assets or

Brandon Burton (20:35.927)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (20:44.591)
Lincoln visitation programs that are beneficial outside of that regional context. Mostly what we’re using this for is to make people aware of more deeply what’s going on in their community. We have a great business community, but I think everybody in this industry, to one extent or another, struggles with our businesses are engaged, but they’re so deep in their areas of expertise and spheres of influence.

It’s sometimes a little bit hard for them to break out of that and pay the kind of attention to a more broad set of topics that are going on in the community. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they’re running large enterprises themselves. And so this has really, I think, been proven based on some of the feedback. I love the folks that tell me, oh yeah, I’m a subscriber to this, which has never been a goal of ours. They say, oh yeah, I get these…

Brandon Burton (21:28.088)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:38.624)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (21:41.927)
and I listen to them whenever they come up in my queue while I’m working out on the treadmill in the morning. It’s been real fun to have those pop up and I really appreciate those people signing up for it.

Brandon Burton (21:48.259)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:53.955)
Yeah, that’s really cool. So you’d mentioned some of these different series that you guys have done different focuses. you’ve got businesses that are now reaching out to you. Is there a methodology of, cause that, that has been some pushback that I’ve had from some chambers about doing a podcast is, we can’t favorite, you know, XYZ business over this business or whatever. But if there’s a method to it, at least you can go back to that as saying this is why,

Maybe it’s different tier memberships or different industry segments or, or, or, you know, for some, it may be a revenue generator to highlight your business on the podcast. So what’s the methodology that you guys use as far as, you know, highlighting different businesses and what it is that you’re covering on the podcast.

Jason M Ball (22:44.583)
So first of all, I’d say we really try to diversify the programming. We don’t want to lump it all into public policy or all into CEOs or all in the large business. We try to make sure we’re hitting a broad swath. I’m happy to say we really haven’t run into big challenges with, you’re choosing one business over another to highlight. It’s not a sale thing. We really don’t, and we discourage it actively.

You know, we don’t want people coming in here saying, know, Jason’s redheaded retail store has 50 % off this week. Like we really stay away from that. We’re deeply interested in why did Jason start the redheaded retail store? And so that’s worked really well. It’s kept us out of hot water. It’s kept us from, you know, any sort of inkling of, you know, talking about competition in a way.

And I think because of that, it’s allowed us to open wide the doors for businesses that are interested. You know, I mentioned at the beginning, we thought, you know, producing one of these, one or two of these a month was a good goal. And I think in our first year of full operations with this, we produced more than 30 episodes, which is more than I anticipated. Last year, I’m sure we were in excess of 50 episodes. And so

We’re just trying to make it available to everyone. There’s not a lot of picking and choosing that happens. It doesn’t cost anything for our interviewees to come on. And so we’ve really used it as a tool for celebration. And it’s hard for people to get into trouble for continuing to celebrate good things, right?

Brandon Burton (24:15.501)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:26.946)
That’s right. That’s right. So you had mentioned with the studio, you guys did get a partner with the AOI. that the?

Jason M Ball (24:35.471)
Aoi podcast studios what it is. Yeah

Brandon Burton (24:37.644)
Yeah. So you got a local company to help, you know, furnish and set up the studio and kind of be that it sounds like maybe the sponsor of the podcast. that how that works? Do you have other sponsors or how does…

Jason M Ball (24:50.213)
Yeah. There are studio sponsor and that’s the gosh unless I’m mistaken I think that is the only one we’ve ever had. And A.O.I. has been just a great great partner on it and quite frankly I don’t it’s it’s compared to the overall size of any businesses marketing budget. That’s it’s still a really nice deal for them too. So it’s it look it’s again I want to encourage other folks in our industry

Brandon Burton (24:59.522)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (25:13.837)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (25:19.715)
If this is something that maybe you’ve been thinking about that you haven’t quite pulled the trigger on, I or my staff love to talk to you and just tell you how we found our way to figuring this out. I was really concerned about it. But if our team can figure it out, I know everybody’s team really can.

Brandon Burton (25:35.214)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (25:43.979)
And especially doing the work we do, chamber folks usually don’t struggle to get excited about helping businesses celebrate progress in their community.

Brandon Burton (25:53.807)
Right. And there’s, there’s so many different ways to be able to produce a podcast now. And even as we’re recording this, we’re on a platform called Riverside, which is what I use to produce a podcast. And it’s not what I used when I first started and I had a, you know, bought a fancy microphone and all that. And if you’re watching the video version of this, you can see the microphone in the background. I don’t even use it anymore because the software makes the audio so great. I don’t need the fancy microphone.

Jason M Ball (25:56.379)
you

Jason M Ball (26:01.607)
you

Brandon Burton (26:21.638)
And, you know, the software is like, I don’t know, like 20 bucks a month or something. Like it’s, very inexpensive. but, there, it’s easy to plan a podcast and come in under budget and make it be profitable, make it be something that celebrates, you know, the members in your community and highlights your community. But it sounds like you guys are, doing things right. not that there’s a wrong way again, but you guys are doing a lot of right things.

I wanted to put it out there for anyone listening who’s wanting to take their chamber, their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Jason M Ball (27:05.227)
boy. You know, I continue to be such an engaged supporter of what the US Chamber is doing. And I remember working with other chambers or other colleagues in this industry who maybe haven’t plugged into as much of what they’re doing there. I just I really encourage people check it out. That membership, that partnership for

for us and especially in a state like Nebraska. Because I’ve been in Texas that has a huge federal delegation. Texas has a state when it rallies around something is pretty indomitable when they really want to get stuff done. Here in Texas, our federal delegation is five, right? We’re definitely on the smaller end of the spectrum. And so having a partner like the US Chamber for us has been invaluable.

Brandon Burton (27:41.122)
Right.

Jason M Ball (28:01.157)
when it comes to having a real effective voice and really getting some big things done in Washington DC. And so if I just suggest, and I know this isn’t revelatory, a lot of chambers are doing a lot of great stuff with them, but if you’re newer to this industry, definitely jump in on the Chamber Institute for Organization Management. That is the reason why I’m able to do the work I love every day.

And if you’ve been around that for a while, but maybe your chamber hasn’t been as plugged into the US chamber, check that out. They’ve got some great options and great package sizes for chambers of every size to benefit from. It’s worth every single penny in my opinion.

Brandon Burton (28:44.953)
Yeah, I love that. You know, just when I started this podcast, it was really to serve the underserved chambers who maybe they’re part time or one staff and their, their board didn’t, you know, have, have the budget for them to go to even their state conferences and be involved that way. And, over, I guess, about six years now, seven years of doing the podcast, um, having the plug.

Jason M Ball (29:02.012)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:10.124)
like that with being involved in the US Chamber and ACCE. And these things are so important that now even Chamber Chat has grown beyond just those underserved chambers to being able to serve a lot more. So great, great tip, great advice. Jason, I’d to get your perspective as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce. How do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jason M Ball (29:37.042)
Yeah, you know, I think the chambers of commerce actually are in an environment where we have more opportunity than maybe we have ever had in the past. Mostly because of the political fragmentation that’s happened. And I want to be as polite as I can to our elected officials. They’re doing hard jobs. They’re getting a ton of criticism for it. And especially at the local level, you

Brandon Burton (29:48.588)
Love that.

Jason M Ball (30:05.585)
they’re often not getting paid enough and everybody’s angry at them all the time. Like it’s, it’s rough. but at the same time, our, our politics have evolved over the past 20 years in ways that I think should, should be concerning to everybody. but aside from that, the business community, still has a great brand is still seen as a, a important partner to get big community things.

Brandon Burton (30:10.466)
it

Jason M Ball (30:35.207)
done or fund a big community projects and programs or you know back on the policy side get get real legislation passed that’s going to be durable and built on coalitions rather than getting just a 50 plus one type of votes scenarios right and so chambers really have that role to play and I think I think communities I think people I think businesses are hungrier for that than they have ever been.

And so as challenging as things can be on membership or funding programs or, you know, goodness knows, going out and making those visits to businesses right now with all the uncertainty in the market can be a really uncomfortable experience. But do that and find those ways to provide real value because people are hungry for what chambers are. Coalition builders are too few and far between now and our politics.

And I think every chamber, this one definitely really tries to step into that space as much as possible. And we’ve seen a great response.

Brandon Burton (31:45.323)
Yeah, think that’s a great perspective and outlook and You know, we all want to roll up our sleeves and get to work, right? Well Jason this has been great It’s been a lot of fun having you on the podcast to talk about podcasting and how you guys are doing it there in Lincoln For anyone who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about

the approach you guys are taking or any of the other things you’ve touched on today, where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect?

Jason M Ball (32:14.639)
Easiest way to find me is all my contact information is on our staff page at lcoc.com. I am the easiest person to find in town. So check it out at lcoc.com on the staff page.

Brandon Burton (32:26.892)
That’s perfect. We’ll get that linked in our show notes and make it easy. Jason, this has been great. I appreciate you spending the time with us today on Chamber Chat podcast. And keep making waves in the Lincoln area with your own podcasts there as well. I love it. And I’d love to see more Chambers get on board with podcasting. Thanks a lot.

Jason M Ball (32:46.321)
Brandon, thank you so much.

Chamber Tech Innovations with Christopher Patton

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

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Brandon Burton (00:00.876)
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 tech industry veteran turned chamber innovator, Chris Patton. With over a decade of executive experience in the tech world, Chris has scaled companies through major growth and multiple mergers and acquisitions.

But it was opening a kid strong franchise and joining his local chamber that sparked a whole new passion, which is transforming the way chambers connect with their members. saw firsthand how chambers were lacking modern user friendly tech that delivered real value to their members. That insight led him to found Chaymber, that’s C-H-A-Y-M-B-E-R, a company dedicated to building an elegant, intuitive app that helps chambers

It helps chamber members do what they came to do, network, build relationships and grow their businesses without the clunky watered down CRM experience. Now laser focused on innovation in the chamber space. Chris is on a mission to make member engagement seamless, effective, and actually enjoyable. Chris, 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 little better.

Christopher Patton (01:30.394)
Yeah, I’m grateful for the opportunity. I was glad we got to connect recently and learn more about each other. You know, being somebody newer to the chamber industry, right? It’s always nice to have new connections. That’s what it’s all about. As far as something interesting, you know, it’s always subjective, right? I’d say the most exciting thing in my life right now is that I have what will soon be an eight month old daughter, Juniper.

So as you can imagine, she is really the focus and highlight of everything I’ve got going on.

Brandon Burton (02:03.693)
What a fun stage too. Just starting to wake up and experience the world. So that’s very cool.

Christopher Patton (02:09.572)
waking up, waking up at all hours, for sure. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:12.353)
That’s right. Just waking up in general. Very good. Well, usually at this point, I have the guest tell about their chamber or their organization just to kind of give a little background and kind of set the stage for a conversation today. So maybe just take us through high level what chamber is all about, what it is, and then we’ll dive into the details a little bit later.

Christopher Patton (02:36.484)
Yeah, yeah. So we do two main things. We provide Chambers of Commerce, a new medium to be able to interact and engage with their members through this mobile branded experience with push notifications and more. And then we provide their members a tool to actually be able to engage and network with each other. So those are the two main things. We certainly have a whole bunch more features within the application and system and a whole lot more in our roadmap coming.

But you know, I always like to say that, you know, this is a platform that’s built by a chamber member for chamber members, right? So really trying to take that member experience that I know so well and my technology background and connecting the two.

Brandon Burton (03:21.291)
Yeah, now that’s great. I love it when somebody comes into it from the perspective of seeing the issue themself and then creating the solution to the problem that they’ve seen. So it tends to add a lot more value and insight to the product as it comes out. Well, today we’re gonna dive in on a topic of how chambers tend to facilitate through using their CRM to connect with members to.

just manage the organization at large, the reasons why people join Chambers to begin with, and seeing how Chamber, your app, can be a solution to some of these issues and struggles that we see on a regular basis. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Chris, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about how Chambers tend to rely maybe a little too heavily on their CRM to manage the organization. And don’t get me wrong, CRMs are great. I don’t know how chambers would function without them. But share with us from your perspective, what do you mean when you see chambers relying too heavily on CRMs?

Christopher Patton (04:28.476)
So.

Christopher Patton (04:36.006)
Sure, I think what I’ve learned, well, maybe I’ll share this tidbit. Every single sales demo call I do, feels like it turns into this therapy session about their CRM, right? And I appreciate that we’ve established that good of a relationship, kind of from the get go with lot of these folks, but it’s…

It’s a necessary evil for lack of a choice. I use a CRM for my business. It’s part of how we do business nowadays. sometimes they kind of get sold the bill of goods as far as like it’s the panacea that will do everything for them. And what I’ve come to learn being in the tech industry for a while is if you have a tech product that’s trying to do everything for everyone, they’re delivering to no one.

Brandon Burton (05:07.063)
Sure.

Christopher Patton (05:28.636)
because there’s really a lack of product vision. And I feel like that’s what we have, Is really focused product vision. So when I talk to these shamers about their CRM doing everything, right? Whether it’s the events, the billing, the emails, right? A lot of the times they’ve got all these things in the systems, but they are just super clunky. They’re not intuitive for them to use.

It scares them off more than anything, to where it’s possible that their CRM does some things that maybe we do, but it is so tough for them to navigate that they start looking elsewhere. With that being said, I know we’ve got features that their CRM does not do for sure, but I think that’s how I’d explain it is they’re under the impression the CRM will do everything for them, but it’s almost like information overload and

It’s really tough to navigate. It makes it hard.

Brandon Burton (06:30.894)
And I think, you know, bottom line is that a CRM can be great when, when it does do what you want it to do, when you can plug in with the calendar and you can, you know, have everything recorded in a CRM. There’s a ton of value to be able to go back to that and see what are all the touch points with their customers, with our chamber members. But the reality is when it becomes too difficult to use and they don’t use it and they start looking for other solutions that maybe don’t communicate with their CRM, that

end up being its own clunky system in its own by trying to kind of patchwork different things together. So having somebody like you who’s bringing something from the perspective, as we’ve talked about, where you’ve seen where these struggles, where these disconnects are, and with their tech background, to be able to find a solution that actually works. I think there’s so much value to that. Yeah.

Christopher Patton (07:27.554)
Ditto.

Brandon Burton (07:29.814)
I love the therapy session too, about CRMs. Because there’s so much good in them, but it’s like some of these things get added in almost as an afterthought of, yeah, we can do that too, but it’s not being done really well. It’s just in there because they can. But being able to maximize how these different tools work together is where you really get the key impact.

Christopher Patton (07:51.686)
Yeah. Hey, could I share another anecdote about the therapy session real quick? So I use AI note taker for all my calls so long as the person’s okay with me using it, which is pretty normal to have on our calls nowadays. And I always take my transcripts and I think you and I talked a little bit about this where I’ve got my AI business advisor, right? And I upload my transcripts for what I did for the day as well as everything else.

Brandon Burton (07:56.077)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:14.062)
Yep.

Christopher Patton (08:18.344)
A tool I’d recommend for everyone is create your own AI board of directors or some version of that. My business advisor at this point, man, they get it. like, this CRM is really causing these people, it’s happened again. Even my AI business advisor knows and they get it now.

Brandon Burton (08:35.073)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:39.426)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did talk about that. Having that, that AI board of directors and, and we’re not talking about, you know, the board of directors of the chamber, but people that you value their input, their insights where you can take issues and, and really just have their, virtual essence, you know, give you some positive feedback and help guide you. So great, great advice. so Chris, I know you’ve looked into the reasons why people join a chamber, why businesses join the chamber.

Christopher Patton (08:49.222)
Correct.

Brandon Burton (09:09.27)
to begin with. mean, you’re a business owner with Kid Strong. What did you join the chamber for with Kid Strong?

Christopher Patton (09:17.572)
Yeah, the real first reason was ribbon cutting, right? That was such a special moment for me to open the doors to my business, right, in my community. So, you know, naturally I was like, okay, this is how we do like the formal ribbon cutting, right, is with my local chamber. And it’s that day one high of when you’re with your Chamber of Commerce. And I love my local chamber here in my community. They do such amazing things.

But it was impossible for me as a business owner and being somebody on the tech side to not start connecting the dots after that. But then I’d say the other two main reasons is the same reasons, the data shows the top two reasons are because people want to network with fellow business leaders and they want to get more exposure for their business. And that was really my thesis behind Chamber and the direction I went in when we started building it out.

That was my motivating factor for joining and eventually building our product too.

Brandon Burton (10:15.475)
Yeah, so talk to us more about chamber. How does it help solve some of these issues of why, I mean it’s not doing ribbon cuttings for chambers, but how is it addressing some of these other things that people are joining the chamber for?

Christopher Patton (10:31.868)
Yeah, I need to go talk to my AI advisor to figure out how can we do ribbon cutting for Chambers. Now, yeah, so it serves, again, there’s two main purposes, which is giving Chambers of Commerce the new medium to be able to communicate with their members. And then, and I’ll jump into some more detail, and then there’s the member-to-member interaction side of things. So, what I will say is, there are even some CRMs that have an app that you can get. And…

Brandon Burton (10:35.638)
Right?

Brandon Burton (10:54.67)
Thank

Christopher Patton (10:58.972)
You know, I’d ask those chambers when they think of when they bring that up is how’s the adoption in those apps? And is it because the concept of an app is not good or is it because the app is not good? Right? There’s plenty of apps that are really successful. So, you know, that’s again another one of my core beliefs is that just giving your members a portal to like update their billing information, you know, and things like that is not going to be this

this really motivating factor for them, right? So when we come back to the first item with the ability for chambers to be able to communicate to their members, right? You’ve got the events, you’ve got the news where they can do the push notifications to their members and even transactional emails to folks that haven’t downloaded the app yet.

Brandon Burton (11:39.992)
the facts we want to

Brandon Burton (11:50.03)
Thank

Christopher Patton (11:54.938)
And then we’ve got things like exclusive offers and business spotlights so they can highlight more of their businesses in a new way to their community. And then we also digitize their directory. So it’s pretty standard that most chambers of commerce have a list of all their businesses. And we’ve actually got an integration with Google Maps. So that way, we take all of their businesses and give them their own localized Google Maps within the app as well.

Brandon Burton (12:18.606)
Thanks

you.

Christopher Patton (12:22.596)
as well as like group chat functions. So can take your committees and give them their own group chats within the app. Plenty of other things. And then when it comes to the member to member interaction side of things, the real kind of real world use case I like to give is Brandon, let’s say we go to a networking event together. What typically happens is like we meet each other and the relationship probably ends there until we see each other at another event. And

What we’ve done is tried to change that, right? So if we meet at the event, we can connect in the app. And once we connect in the app, our system sends out a branded email for whatever Chamber of Commerce. So we own all the automations. So the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t have to worry about it. It actually connects us both through email. So then the next day when we get back to our office, wherever the eager beaver there is, can pick up the communication from there. And we can set up a business meeting. can…

just be connected for whenever we wanna connect again in the future. So it really takes those in-person connections and brings more value to them overall.

Brandon Burton (13:29.454)
Yeah. So the networking piece of it really is what captures my attention. That’s the big differentiator that I see is being able to take those in-person interactions that we’ll admit can be a little awkward sometimes, especially the follow-up can be a little awkward, bit salesy maybe, you know, depending on what it is. But when you can make a connection and really, you know, see that there’s something there, you know, mutually beneficial.

to connect on the app and then let that drive, you know, continued interaction down the road is so valuable.

Christopher Patton (14:04.028)
Yeah, because what happens, the real example I always give, and I always get smiles, and so it validates my thought here is, you give me a business card, I give you a business card, if we’re lucky, we remember to take it out of our pants before we do laundry. And know, best case scenario, it ends up in a pile in the corner of our desk, and you know, we like never get around to sending it. Yeah, don’t show whoever that is. But yeah, that pile.

Brandon Burton (14:25.48)
This pile. Right? Yeah.

Christopher Patton (14:31.836)
But that’s what I love, because now I go to my chamber events and I’m like, no, no, no, I’m not taking your business card. I’m going to connect with you in the app. then boom, we get an email into each other’s inboxes right there. And even if they haven’t downloaded the app yet, they get a notification through email saying, hey, Chris is trying to connect with you. And it prompts them to download the app. So we’ve tried to set up a lot of automations as well. When we think about why are other systems not being successful?

other apps not being successful. That’s a lot of it is you can’t just send an email at once telling your members to download something and assuming it’ll be successful. You got to really integrate it into your daily operations, but also you got to give them a tool that they actually want to use. That’s what it really comes down to.

Brandon Burton (15:17.398)
Yeah. Yeah. For me, seeing an unread email or an unread alert, you know, in an app is going to get my attention and bug me a lot more than seeing a stack of business cards on my desk that get buried by other papers. So I see where that, that really can propel, you know, those connections. so when you talked about the adoption of apps, just in general, like the CRM has an app. so it made me think I’ve been working with chamber since before iPhones came out.

Christopher Patton (15:27.836)
Yeah. That’s it.

Brandon Burton (15:47.457)
So not trying to date myself too much, it’s a, that where the iPhones, the androids came out and it was probably within two to three years, you start seeing the CRMs, the chamber CRM starting to launch apps because that was the new sexy thing is to have an app for your, iPhone or the Android. And it really was just super, super basic. And I really haven’t seen a whole lot of innovation going forward with those.

And I don’t know that the adoption was ever great in the beginning because it was essentially what you’d find on their website, just in an app. And if you don’t have to download an app to access the information, why would you? So anyway, I see where, where the adoption can be a challenge. Um, and for those who are, who are listening, who say, yeah, we have an app and nobody downloads it and nobody uses it or whatever. I think it all goes back to the value. Yeah. I believe it all goes back to the value. What’s the purpose of the app?

Christopher Patton (16:23.932)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Patton (16:39.782)
Yeah, I believe you. I believe you.

Brandon Burton (16:46.798)
How’s that bettering to, working to better enhance the business environment, the interactions with individuals. So having something of value is very helpful and we’ll get that adoption going.

Christopher Patton (17:02.342)
Yeah, and if I could say real quick, whether it’s about CRMs or something else that the chambers use, a lot of technology they adopt is understandably so to help with their operations, right? So they can run their chamber more effectively. I totally understand that. And that’s where we are different. It’s like, we’re trying to cut through the noise and bring value in a different way, and we’re giving you a tool for your members. So no, we’re not your CRM. We’re another CRM.

And in some cases, are, yes, we are an added cost compared to what you’ve been paying. And that’s usually why they’re reaching out to me is they’re trying to see if they can find a cheaper CRM that still does a lot of the things, right? So, that budget conversations are real, but luckily I know we’re priced really competitively. But that’s where sometimes I think chambers get a little focused on

just having tools and tech for them and not the people they’re supposed to be servicing, the people that are paying the bills.

Brandon Burton (18:07.456)
Exactly. So talk to us about your app and how it works as far as like a chamber being onboarded. Is there data that’s provided to them as far as the user experience and feedback that maybe they can record some things in their CRM so they don’t totally lose, you know, that information? Because I do see a lot of value in that and who’s engaging and at what level.

Christopher Patton (18:32.026)
Yeah, great question. So, you know, all the members get pushed to download at the Chamber app. But as soon as they’re in the app, everything is white labeled and branded as whatever Chamber of Commerce. So they’re getting that experience, both in the logos and the coloring they’re seeing, as well as the push notifications that they’re seeing. And then, you know, as far as using this, the information they already have available. So the good thing is they’ve got this information in their CRM.

Truth be told, I talked to plenty of, I talked to.

they rely on spreadsheets as well. They don’t even have a CRM. so nonetheless, they just can simply upload their member information and that’s what provides access to the members. Same thing with the directories. When I talked about that Google Maps, right? They just download the list of their member businesses from their CRM or their source of truth spreadsheet. They just upload it into the backend admin system that they have access to. And that’s what…

dictates what businesses are listed in there, what businesses can get spotlighted. So we can pull all that industry data and descriptions from Google itself.

Brandon Burton (19:46.733)
Yeah. So I think it’s important for Chambers to be tech forward thinking. I mean, that’s the way everything is going, right? When you just said spreadsheet, it made me cringe because I know there’s a handful of Chambers out there that are still trying to do things by a spreadsheet. So I know you have some thoughts as far as the tech forward thinking and especially as it relates to Chambers.

Christopher Patton (20:14.458)
Yeah, yeah. You know, I’m lucky in that I’ve had the chance to work for some pretty great organizations in the tech side for a while. So being an outsider to the Chamber of Commerce niche has been a learning experience for me. But at the same time, it’s helping me kind of show some folks some opportunities. I met with somebody recently who is new to their sales job, and I was showing them some of the tech tools I use.

for my outreach and just the automations and they were like, this is really cool. I need to get this set up. And so always happy to talk to people about that. yeah, Chambers of Commerce, right? They serve such a pivotal role in all of our local communities and they’re representing all these businesses in their community. And then sometimes they’re probably, sometimes they’re the least.

tech savvy organizations, not the people. And sometimes it’s budget limitations, It’s not for lack of care or effort. I see that in my conversations. There’s definitely that desire to adopt new technology because as you mentioned earlier, some of the bigger players in the market, they’ve been around for a while in the chamber industry as far as technology products and there’s just a lack of innovation.

Is the most blunt way to put it and and they’re raising prices at the same time. I mean I hear that constantly And you know, that’s what happens when you have somebody that has a massive market share right or there or there’s fewer players in a marketplace But I view that as exciting because that means there’s an opportunity for disruption both with what we’re offering and and this is really like V1 of our product I’m I am so stoked about all the things we have in our roadmap and I

telling you guys like we’re building a CRM. Like it’s happening. And you know, with all the feedback that I’ve gotten, I’ve done a number of discovery sessions with different chambers of commerce. So naturally I want to make sure we build something that people love. I mean, there is nothing scarier. I’ve done it. When you migrate CRMs, right, you’re just like, you know, please don’t let me lose all my data.

Christopher Patton (22:32.773)
So I get that and there will be that trust building process for sure as we start rolling that out later. Right now we’re hyper focused on just this end user experience for the members. But there’s no doubt that that’s in our roadmap and I’m excited about that because I mean the chambers are just to say they’re asking for it would be an understatement.

Brandon Burton (22:53.122)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, you know, with some of these bigger companies have been around a long time with the CRMs and whatnot. When it comes to like you mentioned, lack of innovation, I think the ideas are there. They get the feedback, obviously, but it’s like turning a huge ship versus a speedboat. Right. And when you got that much more people and to weigh in on decisions and what direction to go, it just takes longer. It’s a little slower.

lot slower. So to be able to pounce on that opportunity, you’re in a great spot.

Christopher Patton (23:29.967)
Yeah, it’s something referred to as tech debt. A lot of these older tech companies, not necessarily a chamber of commerce related, but just in general, they have tech debt where they have these really old tech stacks and old code in their code base. And to roll out net new features requires a lot more work than maybe a company like mine, because we don’t have to go back and fix this popsicle stick house of

of craziness that’s been built over the years in addition to just being able to roll out a new feature. So a lot of that exists right now.

Brandon Burton (24:05.036)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You talked about right now really focusing on that end user experience and for the chamber members, that’s what it’s all about, is giving them a good experience that’s going to keep them around, that’s going to help support their business and help them grow and thrive. So I think that’s obviously where the focus needs to be, but along the way it’s supporting chambers. I see where that continual growth and evolution will be. But yeah, I’m excited to see what comes out with the

the CRM as you guys work on that coming up in the future.

Christopher Patton (24:38.319)
Yeah, I guess I’ve kind of put it out there now. So it has to happen.

Brandon Burton (24:41.346)
That’s right now it’s real. That’s right. What other features do you want to highlight or or aspects of the app and the platform that maybe we haven’t covered yet?

Christopher Patton (24:55.896)
You know, I’d say one of the things that I like them or yeah, one of the things that comes to mind is again, like I’m trying to take that member experience, like what are the real problems they deal with and they face? And sometimes it’s basic things, right? So an example I give is like, I meet somebody at an event and then I go home right to my eight month old daughter and I completely forget that person’s name.

I cannot remember what company they work for, right? Like we’re all so busy. And you went there to network and you’re like, I can’t even remember who I networked with, right? Maybe I remember their face. So within the app, that’s where you actually do have the ability to, you see all the people you’ve connected with, very, very short term we’re gonna have you where you can see what events you met them at. So you can be like hyper focused on remembering.

Brandon Burton (25:51.147)
Christopher Patton (25:53.849)
So things like that, again, those are the problems that I feel like we’re trying to solve in that what are the problems that are audible amongst chamber members, right? In like the pain points that they have, but then also there’s that Henry Ford put, which I’ve heard he may or may not have said, which is if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse, right? So part of this too is trying to also be innovative on my side.

Brandon Burton (26:17.208)
Try it.

Christopher Patton (26:22.573)
and come up with features that maybe members aren’t even thinking about because they don’t even know that it’s an option, right? So, you know, whether it’s in the near term checking in at events so they can see who’s at the events, right? So they know who they want to focus on talking to, you know, being able to just more intuitively search for specific industries. So like, I’m not necessarily just seeing like a business that does accounting on a directory, but I like

Brandon Burton (26:38.53)
Like that.

Christopher Patton (26:51.418)
I specifically who are the members and I can talk to them directly in the app and connect with them and try to meet with them. So again, just thinking about what is that member experience now and what could it be and really trying to digitize and improve that as much as possible without it feeling like a social network or like an online forum, right? That’s where companies go to die nowadays. So we’re not trying to do that.

Brandon Burton (27:14.04)
Yeah.

Christopher Patton (27:19.093)
Those things exist and it’s crickets. I’ve seen those with chambers of commerce. So we’re trying to do something that’s a bit more innovative.

Brandon Burton (27:27.276)
Yeah. I can see for the user to be able to see, you know, what events they connected with somebody at and over time to be able to see where are the events that are most worth my time to be at? Where do I make the best connections? And then, you know, as you continue rolling out features, if it becomes an option where I don’t know if you guys would do geo-fencing or anything at an event location, but then people show up and they get an alert of, you know, people that they’ve connected with in the past that are there and maybe, you know,

Christopher Patton (27:40.081)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:57.475)
rekindle those connections. So lots of exciting ways to go about it. it’s very cool.

Christopher Patton (28:02.801)
That may or may not be very short term in the road map.

Brandon Burton (28:06.604)
Yeah, right. Well, Chris, I wanted to give you an opportunity for for those listening who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you leave for them as a suggestion to help them in that in that goal?

Christopher Patton (28:28.433)
Sure, and I appreciate the opportunity to have people even hear me out on my thought on this. Something that I find super valuable as somebody that’s like across multiple industries is dedicating time to like listen and learn both from your existing industry, right? That’s a value that you serve, right? Like if folks are CEOs or member services and they are not dedicating an hour a week,

just for learning to improve the business. You’re just in reactive mode all the time. And that’s not me chastising, that’s just something I’ve learned. I’ve got something on my calendar twice a week that’s just like education time for me, both for industry and then external industry, right? So an easy way Chambers can do this if they’re looking for outside industry time, because again, number one thing I’ll say is listen to the Chamber Chat podcast or…

Brandon Burton (29:27.054)
Great, great suggestion.

Christopher Patton (29:27.121)
You got to do that, right? Yes, yes. But as far as looking outside, right? That’s where you can learn some other technologies that, you know, chambers aren’t thinking about, or, you know, other tools that, you know, maybe could be adopted by their organization. You know, a great way to do that is just pick your AI source of choice and just like, create that business advisor, you know, get in there on an ongoing basis and dedicate that time.

So it understands who you are, what mission you’re trying to serve and what your pain points are. And keep prompting and asking more questions. Don’t give up on that. you’ll uncover things, right? Because sometimes we just, I always say like, I don’t know what I don’t know, right? So that’s why you just got to keep asking questions and keep digging. And I think that’s where sometimes all of us as business owners or business leaders, we can get a little blindsided by just what’s directly in front of us. So I think that’s probably my suggestion.

I recommend.

Brandon Burton (30:25.91)
Yeah. To your point about getting outside of the, where your blinders are kind of those other, other industries, other organizations. And I think chambers by nature do that. They kind of cross pollinate because they have to, but, my oldest kid, he’s getting ready to do course selections and stuff for his first year of college coming up. And, and he’s looking at the honors program. And I didn’t understand this, but at the school, the honors program is not just Harvard classes.

But it’s an environment where there is that cross-pollination. So you might have a certain direction with your major, but it’s like, how does that relate to mathematics or the sciences or whatever it is? you cross-pollinate from different perspectives and really work together more collaboratively too. And there’s just a lot of value in that. So I appreciate that tip.

Christopher Patton (31:14.885)
Yeah, teaching them to think and not just remember.

Brandon Burton (31:17.57)
That’s right. That’s right. Well, Chris, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Christopher Patton (31:28.475)
Yeah, I think the way just we’re heading as a business industry, right? Like it’s impossible to not, and I hate to do this, but it’s impossible to not bring up AI, right? It’s becoming integrated and everything. So with Chambers staying relevant in their local communities and looking to

Brandon Burton (31:41.367)
Yeah.

Christopher Patton (31:58.673)
you know, like meet the needs of the next generation of business leaders, right? You know, I kind of, I kind of think of myself, I’m, I’m, I’m on the cusp, but I’m not 40 yet. And so, you know, I’m on the, I’m on that generation of business owners, right? And, know, those are the folks that, that are using AI a lot that are looking for ways to, to, you know, interact with their local business community. And I think matching that with what is a really clear need in society right now for

for community, right? And that’s something that excites me about what we’re doing, right? People are joining lots of organizations. There’s a bump again in the data of people joining organizations. So I think as chambers look down the road and they think about, sure, they service the business community, but how can they be that organization that connects people, that provides community to the people in their area?

in that sense, while also looking at some of the technologies that are coming down the pike and how they can incorporate them. I think those are two really pivotal things, We got every business always has to be looking at how can they adapt. And people my age and younger, I think have this really strong sense and desire for community because we spent so much time online, right? And so giving us…

Brandon Burton (33:21.248)
Thank you.

Christopher Patton (33:25.083)
types of people, the opportunity to network and connect with people and feel that sense of belonging I think is really important. I think chambers are really positioned in an awesome way to do that.

Brandon Burton (33:36.736)
Yeah, I would agree. would agree. Well, Chris, why don’t you share some contact information for listeners who might want to learn more about Chamber. Where would you point them? How can they connect with you to set up a demo or anything else you have to offer?

Christopher Patton (33:52.805)
Yeah, sure. My home address is, no, I’m just kidding. You can email me at patent, P-A-T-T-O-N, like the general, at chaymber.com, so C-H-A-Y-M-B-E-R (patton@chaymber.com). You can find me on LinkedIn, Christopher George Patten on LinkedIn. You can also do support at chamber.com. If you go to our website, chaymber.com, you can just simply book a meeting or check our pricing on there if you want to. So, number of ways for you to do that with ease.

Brandon Burton (33:54.786)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (34:21.15)
Very good. And we’ll get all that linked in our show notes for this episode as well. So make it easy for people to connect with you. But this has been great. It’s a fun conversation whenever we can talk about the innovative things that are happening in the chamber space. And I’m curious to keep an eye and see the continued evolution and how you guys grow and continue to develop. But thank you for being with us today and sharing these insights and valuable resources with us.

Christopher Patton (34:48.783)
Awesome, thanks again for the opportunity.

Chamber Bitcoin Foundations with Brandon Burton

Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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Brandon Burton (00:00.824)
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 topic for this episode is going to be a little bit unique. It’s something that I haven’t really dove into on Chamber Chat yet. Typically, I have guests and

Given this time of year, we’re coming into the holiday season. I wanted to be able to give a little reprieve to the guests that I would normally have on and allow them to enjoy the holidays, but also to dive into what I see as an important topic for Chambers to be paying attention to right now so you can be better prepared for the future. So before I dive in,

In this episode, I am going to be sharing some ideas around Bitcoin and how Bitcoin can help strengthen the finance, the outlook, financial outlook for your chamber. But I do want to put out the disclaimer that I am not a financial advisor, that this is not financial advice. You know, all the disclaimers go along with that. What I want to do with this episode

is really just give you some exposure to Bitcoin, what it is, kind of a vision that I’ve had of seeing how Chambers can utilize Bitcoin in the long term and give you something to be able to talk over with your board, with your executive committee, with your accountant, see what makes sense for your organization and to look to some other models and

how they’re utilizing Bitcoin as well. without further ado, this episode, the thought came to me, chambers are always looking for long-term sustainable revenue streams and ways to strengthen their role as community stewards. that’s a long way of saying chambers are always looking to remain relevant, right? But as Matt Appenzeller,

Brandon Burton (02:22.881)
talked about as he was a guest on the podcast a few weeks ago, it’s not enough to be relevant anymore. You need to be forward thinking. You need to be looking at what’s coming next. And it’s part of my thesis, you can say, that Bitcoin can very much be part of that long-term sustainable revenue stream and way to strengthen your role as community leader. We’re seeing

around the country, around the world, major institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and even universities are adopting Bitcoin as a long-term strategic asset. And I’ll get a little bit more into that as we go along. But to kind of frame the thought process as we get into this, what would it mean for a chamber foundation to build a strategic reserve

designed for growth for decades, designed to grow for decades. Think about that, ponder on that. What would it mean for your chamber foundation to build a strategic reserve designed to grow for decades? This is big thinking, long-term thinking, and we’re gonna dive into it as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, so before the break, I kind of set the table for you. Explaining what this episode’s all about with introducing you to Bitcoin and more importantly with how Bitcoin can be a great asset for long-term growth for your chamber, specifically for Foundation. So I’ll get into the details of it. I do kind have an outline that I’m going to follow. So as I go through the outline, it may seem like I’m reading some things, but I wanted to make sure that I had…

as much of the detail and reference points available as possible so I’m not missing anything. Bitcoin can be a complex topic. So I’ve been in it and involved with Bitcoin for nearly a decade now. So as I’ve gotten into it, there’s some things that I take for granted that I realize other people don’t have that framework or that foundation for understanding Bitcoin.

Brandon Burton (04:44.844)
I’m hoping to be able to give some of that background about what Bitcoin is generally before I build on the bigger ideas. So what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a decentralized digital monetary network. So some people call it like a digital gold. So it’s a store of value. It’s an investment tool, but it’s a way to be able to send money digitally.

anywhere in the world for very low fees. In the past, as I use the term digital gold, in the past, people would look to gold as a store of value. But if you needed to send gold across the world, there’s a lot of effort required with that, including insuring it and transporting it and the whole nine yards. So Bitcoin is a way for you to digitally transfer large amounts of money without

or large amounts of value without all the extra friction. Bitcoin is not a company. There is no CEO of Bitcoin. There is no website for Bitcoin. It was created anonymously about 17 years ago at this point. So as I record this, we’re in December of 2025, which is important because I will reference some different

things that will be important for us to pin back to this date in mid-December 2025. So Bitcoin was created anonymously and the way that it works is it’s mined a lot like gold is. Where gold, you have to get the tools, you gotta go into the mountains, you gotta dig through the granite and put forth a lot of effort to reveal the gold. So with Bitcoin,

Bitcoin is mined in the digital landscape. And the easiest way to explain this is there’s very complex equations that are put out there that computers work on essentially nonstop. And as a computer solves this equation, they are rewarded with a block. So a block

Brandon Burton (07:07.598)
for the blockchain technology maybe. So a block is mined roughly every 10 minutes. So every 10 minutes a block reward is issued. And what that is is that block of transactions gets approved and there’s a consensus across the different nodes that are being run on the network to validate that the ledger is correct. And then that block of transactions can get cleared and

and move on into the history of the blockchain. So as Bitcoin is mined, so there’s miners who they have expensive mining rigs that are used to mine the Bitcoin and it uses an intense amount of power to be able to do the mining. So a lot like mining gold, there’s a lot of effort that goes into it, a lot of energy. Same thing with mining Bitcoin.

So there is a difficulty in achieving it. And if there’s a whole bunch of miners that come on at one time, there’s a difficulty adjustment that gets made within the software. So it makes it harder to solve those problems, to earn that block reward. And if there’s less miners on the network, then that difficulty adjustment comes down to where it becomes a little bit easier to solve the problem. So it can stay on track for every 10 minutes for a…

a block to be mined. And that’s important too because miners, they are not online unless they can be profitable. So if they’re in an area where you can’t get cheap energy, then they’re not going to mine. So they tend to go to places where energy can be as close to free as possible. So maybe by a waterfall or some kind of water source where they can get electricity or solar or nuclear plant or

Even in oil fields where they’ll use some of the flare at the oil rigs to be able to convert into energy. Even methane from junkyard, from landfills, they’ll use the methane and convert that into electricity to be able to run their mining rigs. So there’s very creative ways that miners are able to access power to be able to do the mining. And it’s kind of transforming the world with giving a

Brandon Burton (09:33.311)
Access to energy in places the world that haven’t had it before so back to the minor so minor Is online they they go through the process to Earn a block reward and I keep saying block reward because if they win the block saying they solve the problem and and get that block there is a reward to it so that reward is a certain number of Bitcoin, so

Let’s say at one point it was 10 Bitcoin and then every four years there’s a halving cycle. So every roughly every four years, what was 10 Bitcoin be cut down to five Bitcoin as a block reward. And then four years later, that five gets cut down to two and a half. And then four years later it gets cut down. So you understand what I’m saying. Every four years that block reward gets cut down, cut in half.

However, the price of Bitcoin continues to rise very dramatically. So with that having, it tends to help boost the price of Bitcoin as well. Some of this may seem technical and really I just want to give a basis so you can kind of have a concept, a better concept maybe of what Bitcoin is. But Bitcoin is built to be long-term inflation resistant store about

So in the end, that’s what it is. institutions are starting to pay attention to Bitcoin. And you might ask why, why are institutions paying attention? Well, there’s the number go up technology. So the price of Bitcoin is dramatically increasing. But over the last 15 years of operation, there’s been zero downtime with the Bitcoin network. So because there’s no company, it’s not centralized into one.

building or one locale, these nodes and miners are spread throughout the world. So if one node or miner, if there’s a power outage in a certain area, there’s redundancy throughout the world. So there’s been zero downtime with the Bitcoin network. Historically, there’s been a 200 % average annual compounded return over the past decade.

Brandon Burton (12:00.258)
That number is a little bit deceiving because on the front end of the decade, this is averages. So the front end of that decade, that return was much higher. And as time has gone on, it’s not quite as high, but it is still very attractive. Usually around 40 to 50 % return annually at this point in time. Bitcoin has outperformed stocks, real estate, bonds, gold, and nearly every major asset class.

which is mind boggling. A lot of people say Bitcoin is too volatile and it is, it’s volatile. has its ups, it has its downs, but once you zoom out and look at it long-term, it’s just up and to the right ever since its creation. it is an amazing asset. Bitcoin is increasingly recognized as digital property. rather than risk on speculative assets.

This is where I want to make the distinction. People talk about crypto, cryptocurrency, and then there’s Bitcoin. So technically Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrency is not Bitcoin. So I hope we can be clear on that. In fact, I don’t ever talk about crypto. I have zero interest in any crypto asset. I don’t even want to name them, but there’s a lot of speculative assets in the crypto world.

to me, Bitcoin is the only thing that matters. Because even with all those speculative cryptos, people will buy and sell them, but they’ll accumulate value just to buy more Bitcoin, because that’s Bitcoin’s key. So let’s talk about what Bitcoin is not. So Bitcoin is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s not as, in fact, when you buy it, I would say you need to buy it and hold it. Otherwise you’re going to get burned. It’s not something to trade.

So if you try to time the market, try to buy low, sell high, one, there’s going to be tax ramifications, two, you’re never going to beat the market. It’s always going to burn you in the end. So it’s not a get rich scheme and it’s not something you trade. It’s also not a traditional investment managed like equities. It’s best used as a long-term reserve asset. So just buy it and hold it and.

Brandon Burton (14:26.57)
As you buy and hold it, there’s other things you can do with it, which I’ll touch on in a little bit. So the background or the inspiration that I had into bringing Chambers into the Bitcoin world is there is a company, it was called MicroStrategy. Now it just goes by strategy and MicroStrategy was, I’m going to say more of a struggling

software company. They were doing, I believe, about a hundred million a year in software. But as a software company, that’s not a lot. As we hear in his chambers, that’s a lot of money. But software speaking, that’s not a whole lot. But MicroStrategy, it’s a publicly traded business, intelligence company, software company. Their CEO is Michael Saylor. And he pioneered what I’m going to call the Bitcoin Treasury Strategy.

So in 2020, Michael Saylor was looking for ways to save their company. And he learned about Bitcoin and he dove in about what all Bitcoin has to offer. And in 2020, Michael Saylor announced that they would be shifting excess cash into Bitcoin as a long-term reserve. As of early 2025,

Um, and this number is not even going to be accurate anymore because they keep buying and acquiring more and more Bitcoin. But as of the beginning of this year, um, they, they held about 1 % of the global Bitcoin supply. I believe they’re closer to 5 % at this point. Um, every few weeks they’re buying more, um, in massive loads. So they accumulated initially through.

excess cash reserves. So whatever cash was sitting on their balance sheet, they were buying Bitcoin because cash as we know is subject to inflation and over time devalues itself where Bitcoin, it inflates over time and it’s inflation proof as it continues to outpace every other asset out there. And once they exhausted their cash reserves,

Brandon Burton (16:52.472)
They started looking for other ways to accumulate more bitcoins. So they got into convertible notes. They got into issuing bonds. They got into regular, regular treasury allocations. So they are creating new treasury products that they’re putting out there in the market that you can purchase. And essentially by one of these different treasury notes that they

that they produce and it’ll return, depending on the price of Bitcoin, roughly a 10 % return. So when you look at people on fixed income, for example, looking at retirement and they want a steady return, you can purchase some of these shares, these fixed income equities, and they’ll return roughly a 10 % a year guaranteed return.

MicroStrategy has built out their balance sheet and issued these notes and bonds and so forth where they are over collateralized massively with Bitcoin. So the price of Bitcoin, when it was at its peak earlier this year, it could take a down ride. It could dip down to like 80 % of its top value.

and MicroStrategy would still have a strong balance sheet to be able to make all their debt payments. So super strong company, very creative with how they’re accumulating Bitcoin. But as a result, the market cap or the value of MicroStrategy went from about $1 billion to over $80 billion during peak cycles.

So within about a five year period, went from 1 billion to over 80 billion. Their operating business didn’t change, but their balance sheet strategy did, and that’s key. So as we think of Bitcoin for chambers, I don’t want you to think of changing your operating business. Your day to day, what you do shouldn’t change much, but the way you structure your balance sheet should to be able to adopt

Brandon Burton (19:15.454)
this kind of a strategy. So you don’t need to change your programs or events. You can strengthen your foundation by adopting a smarter treasury approach. So that was the initial inspiration that I had. And then as I’ve, I dove into Bitcoin education several years ago, just learning as much as I can about it. And there were ideas floated out there about

what’s called bit bonds. So what a bit bond is, if you think of a municipality issuing a bond, maybe they need to build a new fire station. They can allocate a percentage, even just a small percentage of the bond to purchase Bitcoin with, but then as the math plays out would vastly outperform the interest on the rest of the bond. So then in the end, the

the end of the term of this bond would be split between the bond purchaser and the issuer. So they both end up better off for it. So BitBonds are tokenized bonds issued on Bitcoin’s layer. They have been issued first in El Salvador.

to raise capital through what they called volcano bonds. So if you wanted to Google that and dive in more on what volcano bonds were with bit bonds. But they resent a government using Bitcoin, the Bitcoin rails to raise capital. It’s a hybrid model between traditional bonds and the Bitcoin upside. This matters kind of as a precedent because it shows that public institutions are now using Bitcoin.

as part of sovereign financial strategy. It demonstrates how Bitcoin-backed instruments can support infrastructure growth, tourism, national development projects. And as far as the relevance to chambers, if nation states, El Salvador, we’ve recently heard even the United States building a Bitcoin reserve, strategic Bitcoin reserve for the United States,

Brandon Burton (21:38.145)
I’m in Texas. Texas has started a strategic Bitcoin reserve. But if nation states are leveraging Bitcoin for a long-term capital formation, then why shouldn’t local business institutions consider smaller scale version of this? Why shouldn’t chambers consider having a long-term capital, strategic capital, strategic Bitcoin reserve rather? So as my thinking, it went from

MicroStrategy, the corporate Bitcoin reserve that they set up, it’s the idea of these BitBonds. And I’m thinking, man, how can Chambers take advantage of this? So as I started diving into that thought and exploring that and flushing it out, the idea came to me of Bitcoin being part of a strategic reserve for Chamber foundations. So a lot of you listening will already have…

a Chamber Foundation or 501C3. I know many Chambers out there are exploring starting a foundation or would like to start a foundation. And I would suggest having the 501C3 to hold the Bitcoin, just the structure for it is much better and how you can allocate it throughout its life. But foundations are already managed and restricted.

sorry, foundations already manage restricted or endowed funds. So it’s a right entity for that. They operate with long-term stewardship in mind. So it’s not just something that you get money in, turn around and use it, but it’s meant for long-term growth and development in your community. And they are ideal vehicles for building intergenerational financial resilience. So.

the proposed chamber Bitcoin reserve strategy that I would put out there. So this is where you get your pen and paper and start jotting down notes. But I would say to accumulate small amounts consistently. I mentioned before trying to buy low, high. if you buy, if you dollar cost average consistently, you’re able to take advantage of the upside. So whether you use fundraising,

Brandon Burton (24:03.646)
surplus of revenues or earmark economic development funds or maybe you do a capital campaign and you take a portion of the money raised with that capital campaign to fund your strategic Bitcoin Reserve. You could also accept direct Bitcoin donations from local tech forward businesses. If they knew that you’re building a Bitcoin Reserve,

there would be people in your community who would want to give you Bitcoin directly to participate in that. And you probably know who some of those tech forward businesses are who would be interested in that. So the accumulation is one way. So how do you accumulate it? And there’s different strategies of how to do that. But then the custody of the Bitcoin. So Bitcoin has keys.

There’s a key phrase that accesses the Bitcoin. I would strongly, strongly recommend that, again, this isn’t financial advice, but I would strongly recommend that you use a third party as a custodian for your Bitcoin. And that way you can do what’s called have a multi-signature vault, which means maybe you as a CEO

maybe your board chair and this third party all have a signature to access the Bitcoin. if you wanted to, let’s say one of the, you or your board chair, you know, were to lose the keys, you could still access it with two out of three of those individuals having those keys. The other thing is,

A lot of chambers have policies in place, so you can’t write a check or sign a check over a certain amount without a second signature. So multi-sig would kind of help with that as well to make sure that any transactions or spending of the Bitcoin is done with a lot of thought to it and not done casually or just on a whim. But there’s some good companies out there that can help with that.

Brandon Burton (26:26.702)
And it just, really reduces the exposure to losing the keys. So you want to make sure you have a third party multi-sig vault and there’s some that will even insure it. So if anything were to happen and you’ve lost the Bitcoin, you can purchase insurance on it as well, which is pretty cool. So the next point is

My thoughts on this is if you choose to go with the strategy of building a strategic Bitcoin reserve, don’t do it unless you can commit to at least five to 10 years of holding the Bitcoin. Don’t sell it. Whatever you do, don’t sell. Ideally, you would accumulate the Bitcoin within your foundation and you would never sell it because it’ll continue to increase in value over time.

And there’s ways that you can access it. So you could take a loan out against it. You can, can act as collateral to do some pretty interesting things. that marketplace for how to use Bitcoin as a collateral is just growing and becoming more innovative. But let’s say, well, if you have this reserve and

you have that commitment of five to 10 years to not sell it, hopefully never sell it, the reserve becomes a long-term economic development asset. So chambers could eventually use the appreciated value to acquire land for industrial recruitment. You could seed a revolving loan fund for small businesses. You can fund chamber-backed grants or workforce programs.

You could create interest-based scholarships or talent pipeline programs. It could serve as a rainy day fund for future crises that may come. Again, I would say, please don’t sell it, though. I would take a loan out against it. so for the example, if you’re acquiring land for industrial recruitment,

Brandon Burton (28:40.878)
You acquire the land, you get that recruitment, you turn the land over, and then you pay off the loan that you had from the Bitcoin. So you continue to grow in that appreciation of Bitcoin while you’re putting that capital to use. So hopefully that makes sense. So expected outcomes over time. So just to give you an idea, if a chamber accumulates $100,000 in Bitcoin and holds it for 10 years, just as an example.

Historical averages suggest the potential 10 year growth to be about 25 times that initial investment. So that’s huge. I always want to think more conservatively. So even if it was 10 times, that still, that turns a hundred thousand dollars into a million over 10 years. But even 10 % of the historical performance will, you know,

dramatically outpace a bond or CD yield. I would say start small, contribute steady and consistently, and in the future you’ll have meaningful economic power in the future. So there’s validation. This is already happening with other institutions like Harvard.

is Harvard’s endowment, the largest academic endowment globally. They began holding Bitcoin in private funds as early as 2019. Other institutions, Stanford, Yale, MIT, all have different levels of Bitcoin exposure. Black Rocks, Bitcoin ETF or iBit.

is now one of the fastest growing ETFs in history. And Fidelity has publicly positioned Bitcoin as a superior store of value. And why does this matter to Chambers? Well, foundations with the 100 years outlook are embracing Bitcoin. Chambers, which also should have a plan for generational impact, should consider doing the same. So thinking big, thinking well into the future, building your community.

Brandon Burton (31:05.902)
Having that resilience Bitcoin is that tool to get you there now as you present this idea to your board as you present this to your accountant as you present it as you start talking about it out loud, sometimes I’m a little hesitant because People have different ideas about Bitcoin and more and more they’re becoming positive but man about eight years ago when I got into it

I mentioned Bitcoin to people, they thought I was crazy. But now it’s obviously much more mainstream and it’s been proving itself. But people will say Bitcoin is too volatile. And yeah, that’s true. From day to day, it’s super volatile. But long term, it’s been extremely strong. And as a chamber, you shouldn’t be trading the day to day. You’re building reserves for long time into the future.

The volatility really can be a gift. And Michael Saylor has talked about that. The volatility of Bitcoin is really a gift for us long term. Somebody may say, well, we can’t risk member dollars on Bitcoin. So this strategy uses foundation funds with clear restrictions and long-term intentions. So it’s not for operating budgets or for event revenue.

It has a specific purpose for funding this foundation. Some might say our board won’t understand Bitcoin and this is why education matters. It’s important for you to learn about Bitcoin so you can help answer their questions. You can compare it to land. There’s a limited supply. There’s only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin ever produced. 21 million. That’s it. There’s not even enough Bitcoin.

for every millionaire in the country to have a Bitcoin. So there’s definitely an early mover advantage. And Bitcoin can be broken down into smaller units called Satoshis. And you can learn more about that as you dive into your education on Bitcoin. But it’s a hard asset, has long-term appreciation. It doesn’t require ongoing maintenance. So the idea of like real estate, there’s always, know, maintenance that goes on with that.

Brandon Burton (33:30.754)
Bitcoin doesn’t have any of that. Bitcoin is digital land, globally scarce and infinitely divisible. So another risk, I guess you could say, or objection to it is what if we lose the Bitcoin? And that’s a question that makes me sick to think about, to lose your Bitcoin. So I’d mentioned before the multi-sig vaults.

use a third party, a trusted third party multi-signature vault, and that removes that risk of a single person losing the Bitcoin keys. But keys can be distributed among board members and with rotating responsibility. All right. So if you are wanting to implement this into your organization, into your foundation,

So one would be set up a foundation or sub foundation specifically labeled as a strategic digital asset reserve to adopt a written policy that says we’re not going to sell the Bitcoin for five to 10 years or whatever you want that policy to read. But that would be my my guideline is for sure. If you sell it if you sell it less than five years, you may end up losing money.

But if you keep it five to 10 years, you’re going to be on the upside. If you keep it forever, you’re definitely going to be on the upside. Part of that written policy, have it spelled out what your annual allocation target is, what your specific custody standards are. So you know how to access it you don’t lose your keys. Educate your board and your membership about what you’re

doing and how you’re going to put this strategic fund to use in the future or ways that it could be utilized in the future. And then begin to dollar cost average, just monthly or quarterly or annually, whatever interval you want to set up, but have a way to dollar cost average. then track reserve performance annually as part of your foundation reporting, you know, see what that growth looks like here to here.

Brandon Burton (35:49.719)
start getting excited because this can really transform your community and your organization. So imagine your chamber foundation in the year 2035, 10 years from now, with a reserve worth two to $10 million because you simply committed to accumulating a small amount of Bitcoin each year. Imagine funding major workforce facility.

securing land for a business park or seeding your own microloan program, all because your chamber thought ahead. This position’s chamber’s not as followers, but as innovators in community economic resilience. So in closing, I this has kind of gone a little long just hearing me ramble on without another guest or somebody to have that ongoing dialogue, but.

Chambers have always been the boots on the ground leaders in economic development. The future will reward those who embrace asymmetric opportunities early.

Bitcoin is not a silver bullet, but it is an incredible tool for long-term local prosperity. And I would encourage you to explore, ask questions, and consider whether your foundation is structured to take advantage of generational opportunities. But I hope that you found this interesting, at the least, transformational at the most. I really hope that

Chambers listening right now will take this and really transform the organization. And I would love to hear of anybody who adopts this strategy, especially 10 years from now. And you are that chamber who’s sitting on a $10 million strategic fund because you implemented something today. I would love to hear about that. But if you have any questions, reach out to me.

Brandon Burton (37:54.201)
Brandon@ChamberChatPodcast.com and Anyways, I hope this episode helps and hope you hopefully you learned a few things and sparked some ideas of how you can Set up your community for long-term growth into the future

Strategic Initiatives in Action with Yvonne Myers

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Brandon Burton (00:01.038)
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 today is Yvonne Myers. Yvonne is the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, a role that she’s held since 2022 after a remarkable 31-year career with Columbine Health Systems.

Yvonne didn’t just pivot into this role. She brought her 14 years of board experience at the Chamber and a passion for building talent pipelines that meet real business needs. Under her leadership, the Chamber has secured over $2.1 million in grants to support work-based learning, sector partnerships, and workforce program development. She’s grown the talent team from a solo effort to a thriving team of three.

and currently chairs the NOCO works executive committee, a two county regional workforce initiative. Yvonne also serves on the boards of the arc of Larimer county and the early childhood council of Larimer county. When she’s not driving strategic change, you might catch her playing the string bass in the local band and orchestras. Yvonne, 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.

Yvonne Myers (01:34.82)
Well, Brandon, I’m excited to be here today and honored that you would ask me to participate in your podcast. So so hello, everyone. I’m excited to share the little bit of work we’re doing here. One thing I’ve learned about Chambers, it’s all about sharing and stealing and supporting each other for sure. So this is a great place to do it. So I really appreciate that. I think interesting fact is I was the first person in my family born in the United States. I don’t know why that’s cheering me up. But anyway,

first person to go to college. And so today is Fridays. We support Colorado State University. have a big basketball game this weekend. so having gone to university is very proud for my parents and it’s proud for me as well.

Brandon Burton (02:19.039)
Yeah, that is very cool. I love hearing stories like that. It’s awesome. America is a great place for that. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the Fort Collins area chamber just to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget you guys work with, just to kind of give some perspective before we dive into our topic today.

Yvonne Myers (02:26.522)
And it’s for sure.

Yvonne Myers (02:41.594)
Sure, yeah, the chamber, we’ve been here since 1904, so we’re not one of the oldest ones around for sure. We have 13 staff members, some are part-time, I think eight are full-time, the rest are part-time. We do have a couple of consultants that we have, subcontractors that we work with as well. We have a place-setting company that does some of our events, and we have a wonderful, cranky advocacy person that writes a lot of our things and supports that work for us. We have about a $2 million budget.

Brandon Burton (02:49.547)
Thank

Brandon Burton (03:06.829)
Good night.

Yvonne Myers (03:10.2)
that we work from, we also have, we’ve done a Northern Colorado Prosper’s event. We’re on the fifth year of our second NCP event where we raise about four and a half million dollars each one of those times to do work like work on transportation, advocacy, workforce, those sorts of things. We also do a total resource campaign every year. We just finished our 15th year of our total resource campaign called Moving Fort Collins Forward, exclamation point at the end of that.

Brandon Burton (03:16.013)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (03:22.317)
Thanks

Brandon Burton (03:33.901)
Yeah, it’s just like being on the top of a spot, just playing with nature.

Yvonne Myers (03:39.262)
and we raised $536,000 this year for our sponsorships and our new members and all that sort of thing. So we have, you know, a volunteer team of about 50 that help raise funds for that. So we’re busy in the Fort Collins area. We also play well with the Greeley and Loveland chambers in our area as well. But we’re also, I would say, a pretty strong, strong lead in our region as far as the chamber goes.

Brandon Burton (03:41.901)
from the way I understand it, I was thinking the same thing.

So you have to be able to concentrate on the details.

Brandon Burton (04:05.249)
Very good. That definitely helps to give us an idea of where you’re coming from as far as the chamber goes. Today we’ll focus a lot of our conversation around that work-based learning, some of sector partnerships you guys are involved with, and some of these workforce programs that you guys are sponsoring. And we will dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All Yvonne, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into some of these work-based learning and these sector partnerships you guys are involved with all around workforce development. I don’t know if there’s a certain area you want to dive into first. I think there’s a lot of branches to this, but maybe just tell us where you guys saw the need and how you guys are addressing the need. Maybe that’s a good place to start.

Yvonne Myers (04:49.645)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (04:56.154)
Yeah, so, you know, the governor in our state, Governor Hickenlooper back in the day in 2013 brought the sector partnership model to the state because he came from industry, right? I mean, he was a geologist and he also had a brewery and all those sorts of things. And our economy was not doing well and he felt like, well, industry is the one to bring that economy forward. So I was lucky to be on our local workforce board working at a long-term care company at Columbine Health Systems and

Brandon Burton (05:08.525)
Thanks

Yvonne Myers (05:24.438)
started the sector help start the health sector partnership and the chamber at the time said boy you know it’s industry-led we should be a part of that and actually became our fiscal agent for no fee we had somebody else doing it for eight percent and when i called the chamber and said can you help us out i hope to get only one or two percent and they actually said well we’ll do it for no cost it was like yay so all of our money was just great

Brandon Burton (05:47.905)
Wow.

Yvonne Myers (05:49.882)
And we are still that fiscal agent. 15, since 2013, we are now fiscal agent for five out of the six sector partnerships in our region. 2013, the House Sector Partnership and Manufacturing Sector Partnerships launched. We’re the two longest sector partnerships in the country that are still active. So that’s a pretty crazy thing we didn’t imagine. And then when I came to the chamber, we

Brandon Burton (05:59.404)
So.

Yvonne Myers (06:18.882)
I really felt like we needed to launch more industries around because I really believe in the sector partnership model of industry leading where things are going. They’re the one who purchased the product of education. They’re the ones that have the issue and opportunity. And I do think our workforce friends, our education friends, our government friends really do want to help us. But when we’re sitting in our businesses doing our work and they’re in their secret lab imagining what we need, it never works. It just doesn’t work.

Brandon Burton (06:36.611)
and turn it into a little bit a little bit.

Thanks

I love that. Just imagining, right?

Yvonne Myers (06:49.114)
So we have to get up out of our house and then speak to them and say this is what we need and they will magically help us, right? But we’re not there at that conversation. so, the vice versa also, which is they’re in their secret lab going, we know what industry needs. So we’re going to create this and they should be also including us in those conversations. So that really is a very basic tenet of the work that we do here is like industry needs to be there and you need to be speaking up. And so,

Brandon Burton (07:09.39)
So, we’re to have a great time.

Yvonne Myers (07:18.508)
When I started then, the nonprofit sector partnership, some of the nonprofits came to me who knew about sector partnerships said, we want to start one. And I was like, are you an industry? I know it’s a terrible question to ask, but I was like, are you? And so we pulled data around how many we have, how many employees, the economic impact, and went, holy buckets. And they don’t tend to show up in numbers because they’re tucked under government. They’re tucked under here. don’t really have to kind of pull them out of light cast in some of those places.

Brandon Burton (07:31.34)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:46.75)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (07:48.25)
We launched the nonprofit sector partnership. You hope to have 30 industry members at your launch meeting to get impact. We had 90 people there from nonprofit. You hope that they walk away with three things they want to work on. They want to work on five. know, nonprofits are used to roll up their sleeves and doing their work. And so we, our region had formed a TID attacks incremental district to

Brandon Burton (07:59.907)
Wow.

Yvonne Myers (08:16.826)
charge more, if you come here, you have to pay a little bit more to our hotels and motels and things. And then that money goes to marketing the region. And I said, well, you’re then already a sector partnership because you have to lay down your competition as industry and come together to work on issues you can collectively solve. So that was an easy lift of the hospitality sector partnership. So they’ve now been launched about four years ago. And construction launched during the

I mean, they launched like March 10th and then we all got shut down like the 20th, right? And so they did very little during COVID. They relaunched and they said, we’re gonna do a construction con. We’re gonna bring hundreds of kids in to learn how to, I mean, they bring in like big equipment and the kids actually get to sit on big equipment and do some things and all of that and do welding and that kind of stuff as well. so they…

Quickly, people want to write them checks, and they’re like, hurry to take the checks. And we’re like, we’ll be your fiscal agent. We’ll help you. So we provide directors and officers insurance. provide, we sign the contracts for the events they go to. We use our liability insurance. So all we do is create that frame for them to be successful and hold them up. And they go off and do the work, right, as well. So a year ago, we launched the Financial Sector Partnership. And I can tell you that.

Brandon Burton (09:21.102)
Thank

Brandon Burton (09:37.39)
Okay.

Yvonne Myers (09:41.221)
We kind of launch them all a bit the same with the leadership team and the committees of work you want to do. And then we let them be who they are. And they are completely all different. They have websites. And you can imagine it’s colorful and lots of stuff on the nonprofit. And the financial sector partnership is black and white. It’s very streamlined and much different. And so we get the opportunity to let them be who they are and do the work that they want to do.

Brandon Burton (10:05.806)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (10:10.508)
So with that, then received grant funds to the Health Sector Partnership came to us and said, we’d really like to do more work-based learning, but it isn’t working the way it’s going. Schools are calling us. We’re calling schools. It’s just like this disconnected mess. We don’t know which schools to call. Schools are reaching out to us multiple times. We were getting asked too much. So.

We collectively wrote a grant between the school districts in our region, the health sector partnership, and the chamber. And we were the fiscal agent and became the lead for the grant because we can more quickly write the grant and do the grant. You have to go through school boards. have to go through. And the health sector partnership is not an entity, so they can’t apply, as you know. So we received funding and hired a subcontractor to work directly with CTE teachers to bring industry to do work-based learning.

Brandon Burton (10:55.938)
Thank

Brandon Burton (11:07.822)
you

Yvonne Myers (11:07.834)
And we’ve gone, they have gone from 40 to over 400 with our help of activities where students are either getting paid and they’re in internships or they’re doing job shadows or informational interviews. And what we find is when we can really hook that industry member and write that plan well of what a student could do in an internship or even in a job shadow, they will take more, right? And they will say, I need two or three.

Brandon Burton (11:34.978)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (11:37.755)
figure out this will be my pipeline for my employees. Some say well I went to Rocky Mountain High School I want to support Rocky Mountain High School I’m doing good work for these students to get exposures and we really push this notion you hear this across the country you know I can’t imagine a job I’ve never heard about right so we really and the we use the Zello platform which is what the school district started with so it’s XELLO

Brandon Burton (11:56.062)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (12:05.698)
And students also make requests. now the grant ended and it’s now a staff member and we found some more funding through our local nonprofits and our county who gave us funds to continue doing this. We find that our staff member has to cold call. Three kids wanted interior design, so she calls the interior designers and she’s got now two wonderful interior designers who regularly take students, them in a great way. These students are

Brandon Burton (12:08.504)
So.

Yvonne Myers (12:34.394)
amplified and say this is what I want to do and off they go into the wide world of you know learning how to be an interior designer. So that’s been highly successful. When the state of Colorado then put out more funds to incentivize business to do this workplace learning, they recognize the cost. I mean the staff member that’s off the floor or out of the position to do that work to develop the plan all those sorts of things. So

We applied and received a half a million dollar grant and we were able to give out 400,000 in incentives and did so in eight months. gave up to $10,000 if you did all the way to an internship. And so we had 150 businesses, we could only fund 48. We really found that this was really, and it didn’t.

Brandon Burton (13:12.194)
Nice, that’s cool.

Yvonne Myers (13:25.252)
There’s not a one-to-one match. Industry isn’t getting fully paid for the work they’re doing. That little donut shop is not, the 2,500 is not gonna cover their costs, even the 10,000. But it’s a recognition that there is a cost, that there is an effort that you have that we recognize that for you. And so we actually received $50,000 in funding this past year from Woodward, one of our larger industries in the area.

Brandon Burton (13:47.886)
you

Yvonne Myers (13:51.109)
who said, well, we want to continue doing that work. have a charitable trust, and they gave us funds. And we have a request in for more funds from them to do this incentive work as well. And that all came out of the sector partnerships wanting to do work-based learning with funding that we got. So it sort of just starts to build on itself as you go.

Brandon Burton (13:59.599)
And that’s awesome.

Brandon Burton (14:07.97)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s very cool. So these business sector partnerships, you know, I imagine for some listening, it may be a new concept. Maybe their chamber doesn’t, you know, take this approach. How do you go about starting a business sector partnership? And do you feel like you have to get all of the businesses in that sector in your region or whatever to be a part of it? Or are there going to be some that abstain from being a part of the partnership? How does that work?

Yvonne Myers (14:37.358)
That’s super. Those are super great questions, Brandon. So when Colorado started it, we used what’s called the Next Gen Sector Partnership model. And they’ve just changed their name to Foundation. So I think you could Google Next Gen Sector Partnership as well. And you do reach out to those who are most influential in that region that are going to bring that

Brandon Burton (14:50.538)
Okay. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (15:03.95)
Makes sense.

Yvonne Myers (15:05.88)
are going to bring others. If you get an invite from that restaurant owner, you’re like, I don’t know what it is, but I better go. So you kind of lean on those. they don’t have to be leaders after that. You kind of not use them, but you activate them for that moment. And so we traditionally always use the Purple Wall model. It’s a Canadian facilitation process. So if you Google Purple Wall facilitation, you will find it.

Brandon Burton (15:12.962)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (15:35.693)
And it’s really just a parachute piece of material that’s purple. And you spray sticky on it, and you put all the industry at a U-shaped table, and you say, what keeps you up at night? And it takes a minute. Someone has to be brave and write the first thing. And with our health care one, one of the hospital administrators wrote, I don’t know how to discharge mentally ill people out of my hospital, and I have no resources. And they’re just sitting there. And so I

Brandon Burton (16:01.046)
that’s huge.

Yvonne Myers (16:03.222)
I lifted that up and read it to all the other people at the U-shaped table and they said, that’s what we’re talking about. And then the cards start flying, right? And you place them together, you know, in cards that match. And pretty soon you have 42 cards that say behavioral health is an opportunity, Workforce is an opportunity. What the last purple wall for the health sector partnership is every couple of years you do it again to be sure you’re on track. For the now for hospitals, it’s safety and security of the staff.

Brandon Burton (16:14.635)
Thank you.

Yvonne Myers (16:33.05)
That is becoming a very big opportunity for a second party to work on. And there’s a bit of a model that says you need a leadership team, you need some bylaws, and you shouldn’t have quarterly meetings and committees, or so. I mean, after that, do what works for you, absolutely. And a lot of times, when we started, I didn’t worry about who came. I just thought, we need to make it.

Brandon Burton (16:34.807)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (16:47.502)
Or do what works for you, right?

Yvonne Myers (16:59.854)
We need to keep moving it forward so people will find out and say, well, I better become a part of that, right? And that we kept it valuable and important. So like the health sector one that I led for eight years as a healthcare employee, we always did a post-legislative recap of what happened. Nobody has time to follow what’s happening in the legislature and know what’s going on. And then sometimes, then they’ve moved to now they have a legislative committee because we have a lot of legislation around healthcare now. So now they’ve moved to a

not a listening after, but a proactive before, right? And that’s again, that evolution of these sector partnerships moving and they want. But for me, they are a confab of the willing, working on what they want to work on. So he who shows up, we work on the things you wanna do, right? And so if it’s not meeting your needs, then you’re not gonna come, or you get a group of people together who say, want to work on this sort of a thing. So yeah, and not everybody has to join.

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

Brandon Burton (17:53.603)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (17:57.755)
Keep it going, keep it moving forward, and people will come when they want to.

Brandon Burton (18:01.548)
Yeah. And I imagine in every community, those business sectors are going to look slightly different. I you may have some overlap where healthcare is something important or housing or manufacturing or whatnot, but others, maybe manufacturing is not as big of a factor and you go a different direction.

Yvonne Myers (18:10.595)
Right.

Yvonne Myers (18:18.616)
Very much so. We have one of the only nonprofit sector partnerships in the country because nonprofits, there’s a part where industry also contributes, right? They may pay for all partner meetings. They may, you know, for the construction con, they’re all buying the booths, they’re bringing their equipment. mean, they’re spending cash to do this and nonprofits don’t have as much money. But our nonprofit sector partnership is very active and has figured out how to…

Brandon Burton (18:36.994)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (18:45.156)
to do all of that without pulling money away from the nonprofits themselves. So they’re very active. So you’re right. It’s unique to each community in each region. We found the financial sector partnership when they launched, they’re one that kind of crosses over all the sector partnerships and fiscal literacy or financial literacy has become a topic with everyone because even though wages have gone up, people are still struggling with what things cost and housing and all that.

Brandon Burton (19:00.258)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (19:12.738)
So they’re looking at how they can bring trainings and education to the other sector partnerships. They also highlight the financial sector partnerships. Every all-profit meet and all-partner meeting hosts a nonprofit to share with what they’re doing so these banks and other financial folks can understand what’s happening in the nonprofit world. And so they’ve actually started to cross across each other to support each other as well, which has been fun to watch.

Brandon Burton (19:33.219)
Yeah.

So.

Very cool. Now, I know you guys have gotten into the work with focus with automotive and HVAC industries. You want to tell us about that and how that came to be?

Yvonne Myers (19:47.405)
Yes. Yeah, yeah. So our state did some financial training for those of us that are intermediaries. As the chamber has gotten into workforce, we’re now listed as a workforce intermediary. So we’re a connector between industry and workforce, economic development, all of that. And so, right?

Brandon Burton (20:05.42)
Yeah.

Convino, right?

Yvonne Myers (20:10.606)
And they recognized with all of the ARPA money that had flowed into all of us, post-COVID, that that was going to dry up. That’s once in a lifetime. We hope none of us want to live through another COVID situation. And that what was going to happen after this big infusion of cash, and then things were going to stop. And so they did financial training for us. And in that were folks from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation and their Talent Pipeline Management Program.

Brandon Burton (20:20.215)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (20:38.682)
And so I started to learn about that program. So I decided to take the course. And so glad that I did, because it really builds on sector partnerships, which is industry-led, but in really the workforce committee. The sector partnerships might work on legislation or labor laws or other things, labor laws, or liquor laws. We have a thing that went on in liquor laws with hospitality. And so.

Brandon Burton (20:57.186)
Good.

Yvonne Myers (21:03.49)
With the talent pipeline management, really is industry coming together and kind of owning what’s happening in that space. And what I mean by that, like with HVAC, when we met with them, we said, what is your greatest need that you have to solve in the next two years? That’s how TPM is. And they said, we need entry-level maintenance technicians. But guess what? With those 10 folks, they titled that title 10 different names.

And that’s a problem, right? So how can I as a CTE teacher, how can I as a parent, how can I as an applicant even figure out what role this is across all of these vendors and providers? Also, we went through an exercise of agreeing to what are all the skills they need to have to be hired and what skills are they going to be taught as they’re moving forward. So they come into alignment with that because then we take that to education and say,

Brandon Burton (21:30.432)
Really? Yeah it is.

Yvonne Myers (21:58.157)
If you can teach these things, we will hire them from you. And maybe there’s 15 things, and my business wants 18 things. Well, those three are mine to teach. These 15 will come from education. And then you survey your education and say, what programs do you have? How many students can you take? So in our region, our HVAC providers, and it’s from Brighton, Colorado, which is a little closer to Denver, up to Laramie, Wyoming, that’s the

Brandon Burton (22:02.52)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (22:26.616)
the geographic area our HVAC members provide, they said we need 250 over the next two years. Well, that number wakes up education, right? If I call as my own little HVAC company and I say I need three people in next two years, they go, well, isn’t that sweet? I’ll send some resumes or, you know, come see our students. You say 250, you move the nation, honestly. And so our local school district here, are

Brandon Burton (22:34.478)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (22:44.898)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (22:54.292)
aging as a state in Colorado and we’re not having as many babies and our schools are you know some places in Colorado are closing schools and our district would like to repurpose them and use them for education of other folks right in the evenings on the weekends adults that kind of thing I’m sure that’s happening across the country as well so the HVAC folks did surveys with educators and community colleges and you know do you need a two-year degree do you know

Brandon Burton (23:09.314)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (23:24.154)
what education do you need? Where can we hire folks and then train them and then put them back into education? How can we look at this differently? The automotive is in the same place. There are a few months behind them. in both cases, like yesterday’s meeting with our automotive, we had our school district here and they’re like, what would it take for you to hire somebody under 18? They’re like, well, we can’t. Well, right.

Brandon Burton (23:49.342)
Why not?

Yvonne Myers (23:53.131)
In healthcare, when I was asked that question, why can’t you hire him under 18? I said, well, it’s a nursing home regulation. Well, it’s not. And I said, it’s an OSHA rule. It’s not. It must be a labor law because we’ve always done it that way, right? It’s not a labor law. I asked our liability insurance provider. He said, yeah, you can’t. And I said, can you show me where that is? Because I needed to tell other people why we couldn’t do it. So give me the piece of paper. And then he came back two weeks later and he said, yeah, I got it.

Brandon Burton (24:03.48)
No.

Brandon Burton (24:16.11)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (24:22.042)
So we started taking students in high school when they finished the med prep program because you want to grab them when they’re ready and you want to get them going and you want to get them in your, you know, in jobs and, and then we’d scholarship them. Then we would pay for their nursing, right? And so same sort of thing in automotive and HVAC. And what I love about it is it, it holds industry accountable to stop stealing from each other and paying another dollar and taking that employee there collectively together.

Brandon Burton (24:47.512)
breath.

Yvonne Myers (24:49.848)
They also are helping develop curriculum. They also are helping to donate supplies. Like they can push on their suppliers and say, hey, so our high school automotive bay is one bay and I guess the lift is bad. I don’t know about lifts, know, but all the automotive people are like, this is terrible. We need to get to four bays and they can use their influence with their suppliers who want students to be hired so that they can supply the supplies. And so

Brandon Burton (25:06.007)
yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:19.182)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (25:19.896)
Here it works. And the magic of it is that industry has had their head down all these years saying, well, they just don’t provide me the right people. Those educators don’t know, get to play and understand the parameters of what education has to work under and the limitations they might have or the issues they might have. The educators who say, well, these industry people never hire the right people, they get to hear on the other side. And then we collectively come together and try to solve that problem.

Brandon Burton (25:46.742)
Right.

Yvonne Myers (25:47.567)
You know, it’s a long journey, right? We’re not going to get to 250 students. But three to five years, we should look back. And the idea is now we’ve done maintenance technician for both HVAC and automotive. Now what’s the next step? And what’s the next step? So the last part I’ll say is that for automotive, the greatest need they have are master mechanics. And that takes 10 years. You have to have enough pipeline coming in to get enough people to go that decade to get to be your master mechanic, right? And that’s what we’re doing.

Brandon Burton (26:01.518)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:16.686)
Yeah. And really with both of those industries, HVAC and automotive, I mean, with the rise of AI, those are going to be jobs that are around for a while still while a lot of white collar jobs are going by the wayside with AI.

Yvonne Myers (26:17.476)
create here.

Yvonne Myers (26:31.702)
are going away. And yesterday we had our Larimer County Workforce Center staff member with our automotive meeting and he said, and I had never heard this before, but that a lot of AI jobs are filled by women, jobs that AI may take away, and that this would be a new place, a new market to get, have women that can come into HVAC and automotive. And most of the people in our area anyway that are managing, owning, running these businesses

Brandon Burton (26:51.534)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (27:00.362)
all came out of like VOTEC programs. They had automotive in middle school, right? And those programs are gone and they’re coming back, but they need to come back with industry supporting them and getting the right equipment. can share an interesting story. One of our community colleges here had a tour with all the automotive folks and they said, and over here’s our showers, because we know you all have showers, so we wanna mimic that, we wanna teach them how it’s all gonna be. And…

Brandon Burton (27:05.454)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:16.942)
for the AI on the of this unit.

Brandon Burton (27:24.472)
Thanks.

Yvonne Myers (27:26.914)
I looked around and all the automotive people had such funny looks on their faces. And so when we got back to the main room, I said, I want to go back to that shower. You all had such funny looks on your faces. And they said, not a one of them has showers, not a one. And so there must have been some automotive person someplace that said we had a shower and then education thinks they need to provide that. And think of the cost of putting in the showers and having the showers and talking about the showers. That’s not what we need. We might have needed.

Brandon Burton (27:41.077)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (27:48.162)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (27:53.989)
three more car bays or an electric car bay or something different than that. And so I’m super excited and to watch the aha moments. So yesterday they said to the school district, well, if you have 18 students and they’ve gone through semester one and semester two and they have their ASE certification, how do we get those kids? You could just like, wow, 18 kids, you know? And she said, well, have this, do you do a career fair? And I said to them, when you’re in this talent pipeline management,

collaborative and you’re coming to meetings and you’re donating equipment and maybe even giving scholarship funds. You you pay or do what you want, but you have opportunities to play more because you know what the need is. You have first bid on those students right like you are helping to create the pipeline and it was like. What like crazy town and the other part is that industry, whether it’s HVAC or automotive, we’ve heard this a lot honestly feel like.

The students that come out of the schools are the ones who everyone said, well, Timmy and Sally, they’re not going to make it. So we’ll just stick them in automotive or HVAC. And that is right. And that really isn’t true. And with the advent of computers and the technology around automotive and even HVAC, I you have to plug in with your phone and understand the error messages and all the things. These are becoming highly technical positions.

Brandon Burton (29:02.798)
Right, yeah. Kind of a negative connotation, right?

Yvonne Myers (29:21.294)
They want all of the levels of students to come to them. And with HVAC, we’ve learned there’s 49,000 openings right now in the country for HVAC across the country. And these call centers and all these other places that have to be cooled and heated and all of that. And they say if you get HVAC trained, you can work anywhere in the world. And so kids are starting to hear that, parents.

Brandon Burton (29:45.858)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (29:50.359)
It’s very interesting, exciting stuff. And these were folks that sort of just popped up because the chamber hears and listens and sees what’s going on and has those industries with us. It wasn’t like we have this big data. We had all these automotive people saying we cannot find people we can’t get. And then HVAC, because it doesn’t have a union, which is maybe good or bad, I don’t really know. But because of that, they’re kind of.

Brandon Burton (30:02.638)
Makes those connections. Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (30:16.118)
out there a little bit and because it involves some electrical and some plumbing and a little bit of sheet metal they kind of fall in this no place and I’m super excited to help bring them together with a voice.

Brandon Burton (30:28.45)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. It’s exciting work that you guys are involved with with these partnerships. And yeah, it’s awesome. Well, as we begin to wrap things up, wanted to ask you, for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you leave for them as they try to work towards that?

Yvonne Myers (30:33.119)
well, thank you. Yeah, it’s fun every day. So.

Yvonne Myers (30:51.212)
Yeah, yeah, I do think that I feel very strongly, obviously, I’ve said a little bit earlier in this podcast, but that the chamber is a natural place to be leading this work, because it’s industry that needs to lead it. Education is mandated and is there and government and workforce and all those things are there. And, you know, we’re unabashed at saying industry would never do that. That’s not how you would meet with industry. This is how you would do it.

And our state is really flipping that script because many of our chambers are playing in that space. Our VATA chamber, Boulder, Grand Junction are really also, we’re all collectively in this space. And so I think you’re remiss if you’re not playing in that space, even being at the meetings. You may not have to be leading a TPM, but lifting up that voice and then bringing your chamber members to that.

Brandon Burton (31:35.95)
Thank

Brandon Burton (31:39.849)
Thank

Yvonne Myers (31:43.175)
Because the way the workforce system has worked for a long time isn’t going to continue working the right way if we’re not at that table. So I think that’s a really big deal. Don’t undersell yourself. you are vitally important in the workforce space if you’ve never stepped into it. You really, really are. And it doesn’t take much for you to get going. So don’t be afraid. Call me. I’ll help you.

Brandon Burton (31:48.44)
Right.

Brandon Burton (32:05.932)
Yeah, that’s great. I’d love that. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and how you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Yvonne Myers (32:17.21)
Yeah, know, next month I’ll celebrate five years here, but as you stated in my bio, you know, I was on the board for 14. And when I took over the marketing position at our company, not running an assisted living anymore, I thought, well, I don’t know if I can do this. The owner said, you have to go, you better go to the chamber. And I thought, well, what is that? So I went and it was Rolodex days way before the computers. And so I went from one Rolodex to two and I became someone at our company that, do you know somebody here?

Brandon Burton (32:36.685)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (32:46.626)
I do, and if not, know somebody who knows somebody here. so chambers are, to me, have to always be here. The collection of how industry comes together, has their voice, advocacy for business, that voice of business. But also, it’s a journey for a business. I come as a new, I just start, opened up my business. So this is how I learn how to market and how to, where SBDC is, where all the resources are to start my business. And then,

Brandon Burton (32:59.118)
Bye.

Yvonne Myers (33:13.752)
I get successful in my business and I start taking on internships or I start, you know, donating back to the community. And then I’m far enough along that I join your board and I’m making impact and decisions about all of that. And even past board members are still very connected to us and call us with ideas and suggestions and all those sorts of things. And I think the future of Chambers is even more important because of the importance of business and how we

Brandon Burton (33:25.432)
Thank you.

Yvonne Myers (33:42.735)
drive the economy, what a big say we have and what happens in our economy. But we also recognize the importance of government and nonprofits and all the other components. But without us, none of that works. And so I feel like chambers are going to maintain their importance and coming together to collectively work on things and not being in silos. And I’m not saying that chambers are, but sometimes in a region, we have 19 chambers in our region. And we do a couple of things.

Brandon Burton (33:53.1)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (34:12.334)
together every year. And that’s important to continue doing and lean on each other and work together. But I feel like chambers, the value of chambers will not go away. It hasn’t gone away since the 1800s and will still continue to be vitally important. And we need to be sure that we’re raising the funds and being in the front seat of convening, championing, and connecting people and continuing to do that work.

Brandon Burton (34:36.94)
Yeah. Yeah. That touches back on your original comment you made when we started this about the R &D within Chambers and just do that ripoff and duplicate and see what works in another community. And if it can work in your community, give it a shot. No shame.

Yvonne Myers (34:53.434)
Absolutely, absolutely. I have never not, I mean, I’ve reached out across the country and I have never not had anyone say, absolutely, here’s all my resources. Then two days later, I found some more videos for it. Here’s some more resources for you. And I just love the camaraderie. I just love the connection to how important industry is and entrepreneurism is and moving the economy forward. So it’s an honor to be here.

Brandon Burton (35:04.429)
Right?

Brandon Burton (35:17.876)
Absolutely. But in that vein, 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 all these exciting things you’ve covered today.

Yvonne Myers (35:27.982)
Sure, yeah, for sure. So I’m at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce. You can always Google that and we, you my picture’s there and all my contact information for sure. My email is the letter Y as in Yvonne Myers, M-Y-E-R-S at F-C as in Fort Collins Chamber dot org (ymyers@fcchamber.org). Our phone number is there as well. My cell phone number is on our website. So feel free to reach out at any point or at any time.

Brandon Burton (35:54.87)
That’s perfect. I’ll have all that linked in our show notes for this episode to make it easy. But Yvonne, this has been great having you on. And you guys are doing great work there in Fort Collins. And keep it up. And thank you for sharing some of that great work with us today.

Yvonne Myers (36:06.126)
Well, thank you.

Yvonne Myers (36:09.944)
Well, thank you for asking me to participate. I’m honored.

Foundation-Driven Disaster Relief with David Jackson

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Brandon Burton (00:00.465)
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 community leader and voice of the high country. David Jackson is the President and CEO of the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce. Since stepping into his role in 2016,

David has transformed the chamber into a powerhouse of regional engagement and innovation. Under his leadership, the chamber launched its own foundation, expanded to over 700 active members, and was recently honored as the 2025 Carolina’s Outstanding Chamber of the Year by CACCE.

David’s work has earned him multiple accolades, including being named Community Advocate of the Year by the North Carolina Rural Center and the North Carolina Main Street Champion. In 2025 alone, he was recognized with the Town of Boone 1872 Award and the Community Inspiration Award from the Watauga Community Foundation. Appalachian State alum and longtime resident of Boone, David has deep roots in the region.

He’s served on the boards ranging from Applecart, I hope I said that right, to the town of Boone Central Resource Development, and even teaches as adjunct professor in the Walker College of Business. David, 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.

David Jackson (01:40.578)
Yeah. Well, hello friends. I feel like this might be the most niche podcast I think I’ve ever been on. so that’s, that’s exciting. I know I’m talking to people that get it, as, a listener myself, this is, it’s going to be fun. my interesting fact, I was prior to chamber, life, for 16 years was the radio play-by-play announcer at Appalachian state university, for football, basketball, baseball.

I was around for the App State Michigan upset back in 2007. Occasionally you might still hear that play call get thrown out there and I’m the one that’s screaming the softest trying to make sense of what’s going on. My broadcast partner was saying something to the effect of yard sale in the big house during that moment, but I enjoyed long career as a sports broadcaster. I still do some of that work. I do ESPN plus broadcast for App State now as well as.

Brandon Burton (02:14.567)
That’s right.

David Jackson (02:34.956)
Some work with the Carolina Panthers on occasion, just, you know, it’s a hobby rather than a lifestyle. And I found that working in college athletics for as long as I did, there are so many parallels to that work and chamber work. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it took me about 20 minutes to get into this job and think, this is the same gig. It’s just new people and maybe a little bit less crazy hours.

Brandon Burton (03:00.507)
That would have been a really cool episode for us to go down that rabbit hole. Those comparisons. Yeah. I thought I recognized your voice. Yeah, you’ve got a voice perfect for being on a podcast. So this is fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit about the Boone County Chamber just to give us an idea of the size staff, the type of work you guys are involved with, budget, that sort of thing to set the stage.

David Jackson (03:04.287)
Yeah, there you go. It’s a fascinating comparison, it really is.

David Jackson (03:28.194)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so first off, the Boone area chambers in Boone, North Carolina, we are one of four that we can count chambers that have some reference to Daniel Boone in the name. We get a lot of calls and occasionally some mail for the Boone, Iowa chamber and have developed quite a relationship with them over the years. But Boone, North Carolina is in the Northwest corner of North Carolina, about an hour and 45 minutes, Northwest of Charlotte.

So if you’re looking at a map and you see where North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee all converge up there in the Northwest mountains, that’s where Boone is located. We’ve got a population here of right around 20,000 inside the town, about 60,000 inside the county. And as I mentioned, we’re home to Appalachian State University. They’ve got about 19,000 students here in the area locally, but an enrollment of a little over 22,000 now with a lot of online and graduate programs.

spread really throughout western North Carolina. They’ve got a campus in Hickory, which is about an hour south of here that has recently emerged as well. So this is a very tourism heavy area. It is one that in the wintertime as we record today, we’ve got something frozen falling from the sky and that coincides with really opening weekend for the ski industry here.

in North Carolina. Skiing brings in about $125 million a year to the state’s economy and all of that is really located within a two county area here. In the summertime, we run about 10 degrees to 15 degrees cooler than Raleigh and Charlotte. So we are a tourism Mecca from that perspective. And if it gets up to about 84, 85 degrees in July, people are melting in the streets up here. So.

Tourism heavy economy, about 3,500 feet in elevation for the most part in the county. This is a special place. A lot of folks that live here have the university as a magnet of some sort. It either brought them here, it brought them back here, or maybe was the reason why they wanted to stay around as a local because they’ve been able to get educated and find life here. it makes our…

David Jackson (05:38.934)
mix of businesses, very unique. Again, a lot of service industry, but then a lot of innovation tied to the university as well and the community college system here in North Carolina. So no dull moment, like for many of you that are listening, but certainly a part of the state that is unique and we try to play into that as much as we can.

Brandon Burton (05:57.18)
Yeah, I’m always fascinated with college and university towns where your population fluctuates depending on enrollment and the time of year and whatnot. But it’s its own unique circumstance to try to manage.

David Jackson (06:11.214)
Yeah. And, and, you know, football game days are a big part of the economic driver here. Uh, you know, app state in the good years, uh, they, will miss a bowl for the second time in as many years. And that’s kind of unheard of around here, but, but for a normal game day, they can push up a past 35, almost 40,000 attendees. Kid Brewer’s stadium is one of the highest ranked stadiums in the country for a percent capacity. They usually go well over a hundred percent. think last year they were at 107 % of their capacity.

So, you you pretty much triple the size of the town when they come in and bring all the ancillary fund to that. And those are the six dates that people block off and schedule life around and businesses do the same. know, so those, when the schedule’s released in March, everybody scribbles furiously and then we try to plan everything else around that. But it’s a very big part of the university’s influence here.

Brandon Burton (07:03.631)
Yeah, I can imagine. Man, I’m thinking we should have chosen a different topic, but what we did settle on was to talk about disaster relief and specifically how you guys were able to utilize your foundation to help with disaster relief after Hurricane Helene. So we’ll dive into the details of that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

David Jackson (07:23.661)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:26.983)
All right, David, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about disaster relief and how you guys were able to utilize your foundation as a tool to help in that effort. Why don’t you set the stage for us, give us the background and how the foundation came to be and then how you went to implement it.

David Jackson (07:43.238)
Yeah. So first I want to say thank you to a number of chamber colleagues that reached out to our community and communities throughout Western North Carolina during what was an incredibly difficult time for us in September and early October of 2024. As I mentioned at the top, this is a very tourism heavy economy throughout the Western side of the state. Basically from I-77 West, are

the Mecca of the state’s tourism attention for the fall. Because of the leaves and because of the scenic views that you get, you look out over a 45, 50 mile range view at fall color, you can’t beat this location. To have Hurricane Helene’s impact right at the front end of that part of the calendar was catastrophic for us economically. And that’s not just here. Obviously a lot of lenses were focused on the Asheville area. Asheville’s about an hour and 15 minutes to the southwest of here.

And our communities are incredibly interconnected. And one of the ribbons that ties us all together is the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is the most visited national park in the country, stretching from Southern Virginia all the way down past Asheville. That road was decimated by the storm. And in a normal October, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of visitors that are driving up and down that road and venturing into the small and large communities off the parkway.

on any given day. we saw what was our top month for economic performance get turned off before it ever got turned on and turned completely off. So we had a lot of colleagues reach out and help those that have been through disasters before. We talked to colleagues in Hawaii and Iowa, Florida, Louisiana, all over the country really, that helped us understand what was next in the FEMA process, the SBA process.

We learned very quickly never to schedule your natural disaster in the midst of a contentious presidential election. That was all kinds of bad for all of the reasons you would imagine. Yeah, and we are still going through some of that reorganization of FEMA dynamic and what that meant for trust in our community. This is an area of the state and really of the country that is deep rooted in Appalachia culture. So it takes a lot of time to trust people. And when you’ve got

Brandon Burton (09:42.715)
Make a note of that, yeah.

David Jackson (10:02.712)
people wearing federal jackets and badges running into your community after it’s been turned upside down. That’s not exactly the warm, friendly, hospitality-based response that we normally have. And it’s taken some time to get to that. So I set all that context to say that what we learned in our unique situation is just how much local partners and trusted partners matter. We, back at the beginning of 2022,

We signed a contract with Watauga County to provide economic development administrative assistance for the Watauga County EDC. So we are essentially the backbone of economic development for our county. The previous economic development director had retired from the county. We hired him here at the chamber for his kind of post-government life. And he maintains that same role now, just working for us instead of them.

So at that time, we decided that we needed to start a 501c3 foundation to do the economic development sidecar work. So if we’re going to go buy land or support a project, we need a place to raise those funds. Very similar to every other chamber in America, it seems like. We were one of the last to the party in that regard, but had a lot of help in setting that up. So when the storm hit, our director of communications and I were sitting at a coffee table inside

Appalachian State Student Union. We had no power or internet access at the office and Appalachian State happened to have both because of their robust system and a little bit of self-sustaining ability there. So we’re sitting outside the coffee shop and my director of communications looks at me and says, do you think our foundation might be helpful right now? And we’re less than 24 hours away from the impact of the storm. We’re trying to figure out where everybody on the staff is, let alone what our response is gonna be.

and said, you know, it’s not really what it’s designed for, but yeah, I mean, we know we’re gonna have to raise money for something. We don’t know what that something is yet, but yeah, let’s give it a shot and make it available. Just happened to have a Watauga County commissioner walking by who works at App State. And I said to him, said, Charlie, I think we’re gonna use our foundation as a landing space for funds. And he said, yeah, man, that could get money. I don’t know. Good luck with it. And that was that.

David Jackson (12:22.958)
So we put out on social media, because again, we had internet access, that if people wanted to donate to local causes to support the business community, here was a place to do it. And here was a mechanism for it, got a QR code and got Stripe working. And all of the sudden, before we knew what happened, in about seven days, we had $200,000, a little more than that, that had been raised in five and $10 increments for people all over the world. People that had a heartfelt connection.

to the mountains of North Carolina for whatever that reason happened to be. They may have learned to ski here, went to school here, whatever. They wanted to give back. So we, since then, in total, we’re knocking on the door of about $2 million that we’ve raised since September of 2024 in just hurricane-related disaster funding. We’ve used, and we can talk here in a minute about the variety of ways we’ve deployed that, but I think that…

The lesson learned here is that for all of us, people have a connection to our communities that maybe we feel like we understand, but we don’t necessarily understand it as deeply if we are in the community. What I mean by that is the people that would desire to live next door to you, they want to be back in the place they went to school or that place that’s special to them, they have connections and again, that heartstring pull that we can’t imagine living in that place every day.

It’s that yearning desire to be there and help. And that saved us because it took weeks to get any kind of major substantive funding out of the federal government, from the state government. Those dollars were slow to come. Once they did come, none of them were there for small business support. I think that’s something that we’ve heard echoed around the country. There are no small business grants that are coming from the government to help those businesses that again saw

significant turnoff of their revenues at the busiest month of the year, right? So there was hurting that was going on there and nobody else was coming to help. So that’s kind of one of the lanes that we moved into and we were just heartened and it gave us some pep in our step after some incredibly long days, some that are still going on as a matter of fact, that people care. And that was really the adrenaline that kept us going there for a while.

Brandon Burton (14:40.529)
Right.

Brandon Burton (14:45.019)
Yeah, so questions are coming to my mind. I’m sure they are to listeners as well. So a lot of those listening have gone through the process of establishing a foundation or maybe they’re considering it or maybe they came into their position and was already set up. But when you guys set up your foundation, as far as the documents and everything, your, the charter and whatnot, so what…

David Jackson (14:48.461)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (15:09.908)
How was it set up that allowed you to deploy the funds for disaster relief? Usually it’s very specific what the funds are for, right?

David Jackson (15:14.454)
Yeah, yeah, and that’s a great question. So we set the foundation up to be very vague in economic development support. The reason for that was that we didn’t exactly know at the time that we created it where those levers would ultimately be pulled. If that was going to be, say, in housing support, you know, like everybody, we have affordable housing issues here and we wanted flexibility to be able to maybe buy land.

or donate money to a specific project that we could fundraise. So we didn’t want to go, and some foundations are so incredibly specific, we did want to give some flexibility to work within five core buckets. So like many communities, would imagine housing is one, childcare is another one, workforce development. We have a bucket for our chamber capital needs here to support our business.

And then we’ve got another general fund that allows us to support community events, run our leadership program, things along those lines. So we tried to establish it like that first. The key that came around on the disaster side was that word disaster. And as we raised funds and put them in that general account for community support, we were able to then deploy those funds. Part of that went to childcare. We can talk about that in a minute, but.

the disaster grant program that we’ve run. We’ve run four rounds of a disaster grant program for small businesses over a three county area here, not just Watauga, but Ash and Avery counties as well that border us. And by using the word disaster, you get away from some of the IRS issues there. Those businesses that receive grant money still have to report that, you know, it’s income for them, but it’s cashflow as much as anything.

we were able to put about $1.4 million of the money that we raised into that specific program itself. And then had businesses apply to us over four rounds. Each round had a different flavor to it. And we were able to deploy those grants in the name of the disaster itself. As long as we were a disaster declared county.

David Jackson (17:31.15)
Our accountant said that was the way to handle the language and the flexibility of that community support mechanism was really what helped drive the vast majority of what we’ve done.

Brandon Burton (17:41.349)
Yeah. So that leads to my next question. I was going to ask about how the money has been deployed. so you touched on one aspect of it there. Is there other areas, other ways that those funds have been dispersed?

David Jackson (17:46.776)
Mm-hmm.

David Jackson (17:53.486)
Yeah, so one of the early conversations that we had with our foundation board, you we gathered them about 10 days after the storm. We had money coming in, you know, we had about, you know, $250,000 at the time. So it was, was a good bit of money, more money than we’d ever seen, but also in the totality of, you know, a couple billion dollar storm, not going to move the needle in any one direction very far. So we, we said to them, you know,

We’ve got this money, we need to get it out. What do you want to do? Here are some options. We talked about business grants then, and to give you an idea, the storm hits in late September. This is probably the second full week of October we had this conversation. And so we felt like business grants was going to come. were holding out hope that some conversations around the General Assembly in North Carolina, the governor’s office, Roy Cooper at the time, now Josh Stein, that there were going to be some…

mechanisms far greater than ours that were going to come into play, which never did. But we would hold tight there. And one of our board members said, you know, we ought to be about what we’re about. And we’re about childcare support. We believe very firmly and are one of the state’s leaders in this thought that childcare is an economic development issue. It’s our core economic development issue, access and affordability and the ability for

to support the workforce that supports the workforce. So we said, you know, we knew at that time we had 36 centers, licensed care centers here in Watauga County. All of them were dealing with enrollment issues related to the storm. School system was closed here for about three and a half, four weeks, just in Watauga County. It was longer in surrounding areas. And because of that, people weren’t working. There was fluctuation in need for childcare. There was certainly a lot of cost issues.

across everything that made the expensive childcare bill at the end of the month almost insurmountable. So we said, let’s take about $210,000 of this money and let’s invest it in those childcare centers and let’s make sure that they can be open in November. But we saw that investment as a twofold thing where one, we could stabilize the industry and North Carolina has got a litany of issues with its childcare support mechanisms statewide. That’s another whole episode we could get into.

David Jackson (20:16.237)
But we wanted to make sure those businesses could open again, know, full force when they needed to and that their workforce was supported. But we also thought if we could provide some tuition assistance here, we’re going to free up cash for people that are going through the process with insurance, going through the process with FEMA, and it’s going to take a while for them to get money and they need to make repairs. know, we’re talking bridges washed out, roadways washed out, a lot of those private and nestled into little nooks and crannies in the mountains.

It’s not easy to repair necessarily and certainly costly. So any money that we could free up for immediate needs, we felt like that was going to be a benefit. So we made an allocation to our local Smart Start agency of $210,000 to support tuition for October for everybody that was in a licensed childcare center. They were able to pull some additional money to work that grant off of another grant. And we ended up deploying just shy of $240,000 to that effort.

which nearly covered every student that was in licensed childcare here in the county. We had a few centers that opted out because they had other funding that backed that up so they didn’t want to take money away so we could spread it farther. And we were able to provide that tuition assistance for that first month. And that was a life changer for not only the centers, but the families. And that really got us started. Then we were, because of that success, I think people saw our foundation as a trusted destination for funding. The vast majority of what we got,

In that 1.4, I was talking about earlier, were locally driven funds. We’ve had three allocations from two different large grantors that totaled up about $750,000. So about half of that came from the private sector. And again, small gifts. There was a house party at App State that donated a couple hundred bucks to us from their proceeds. it really got crazy there. But I think part of that was also telling the story of how we were spending the money.

not wanting to toot our horn by any stretch, especially at that time. But I think if you don’t tell the story, people don’t understand what your capacity is. And we wanted to let people know, like we said, if your dollars come here, we’re gonna keep them local and we’re gonna keep them going toward community function. And that childcare allocation was the thing that kickstarted the whole process.

Brandon Burton (22:33.02)
Right.

So you had mentioned that the foundation is fairly new as the storms coming and you saw an opportunity to be able to utilize it in this way. Had you guys raised any funds for the foundation ahead of time? there, I guess, how have you proactively gone about, obviously after a storm happens, after there’s a catastrophe, it’s easier to broadcast that and get people to donate. But for those listening who want to be proactive ahead of time, who maybe already have a foundation,

trying to collect funds and be a magnet so then when it is needed to be deployed, it’s there and ready whether economic development or disaster relief or whatever the need may be. What was your guys’ situation like?

David Jackson (23:19.499)
Yeah, that’s another great question. know, thinking back a little bit, yeah, first off, I wish we had this foundation longer. You know, knowing what we know now, there are so many uses for something like that. And every community’s got their need and their specific set of needs. Prior to the storm, we raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 total.

in the history of the foundation for things outside of childcare. Now in the childcare space, we had been involved and part of the reason why this was the thing that we chose for about an eight year period of time. Now we’ve been involved in a deeper community conversation around that childcare industry support. years ago, before the economic development machine here in Watauga County had a destination for funds, our smart start agency held what was called the

Early Childhood Education and Development Fund. And that was an area for us to take public sector dollars and private sector dollars and merge them into an account where we could pay for various workforce supports within the industry. Once we got our foundation started, the county commissioners actually suggested that we take that fund out of the Smart Start Agency and put it into the Economic Development Support Agency because it was just a little bit cleaner and would eliminate any…

impropriety or thought of that with mission drift of the smart start agency. So it was done to really kind of protect them in a way, but also give us the opportunity to then, because it’s in under economic development, allow other people to see that that wouldn’t maybe necessarily see that fund if it were embedded inside of a smart start agency. So with that, we did end up getting some extra traffic there, but you’re talking about $60,000 a year, you know, with some private donations here and there.

You know, so we were, we were in the, the chump change category, really kind of limping along so much so that we had a part-time staff member that we onboarded in August of 2024, and said, all right, part-time staff member, we’re going to limp along here. We’re going to bring you on for 10 hours a week. We’re going to turn that into 20 hours a week by the time the year starts. And then hopefully by next summer, we’ve got you as a full-time member that’s out there working, trying to grow this foundation. Well, you know, the storm hits and he was full-time by the end of the year.

David Jackson (25:41.422)
Uh, and, continues to be just a tremendous asset for us in all of the grant management and the, the, the amount of paperwork that we had to turn around at the end of 2024, all the 10 99s we had to let fly because of the grants. was a great problem to have, but that was a financial burden on us too. You know, so we, really had to think about on the backside of all of this good, you know, it was, it’s also crippling our staff that was worn slap out at the same time, you know, so.

We’ve gotten smarter with that now. And I feel like if we’re ever pressed into that emergency position again, we’ve got an understanding of what emergency dynamics when it’s related to fundraising look like and how we need to be prepared as an organization. And that, unfortunately, I don’t know that you can really prepare for until you do it.

Brandon Burton (26:31.975)
Great, great perspective. So I always like asking the question, especially for those listening who are trying to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you share with them, whether it’s related to this topic with disaster relief and foundations or something totally different, what would you suggest for them in trying to accomplish that goal of taking their chamber to next level?

David Jackson (26:57.589)
Yeah, you know, when you sent me questions ahead of time, this is the one I stood on the most. I think that it’s kind of twofold. know, certainly when, when I’ve been at this chamber for almost 10 years now, and, know, this is a small tight knit community here in the mountains of Northwest North Carolina, right? So relationships are everything. And it’s proving that you can do what you say you’re going to do.

that allows you to get in the next room and to be a part of the next project. you know, coming to this role from a very different role in the same community, I had to earn that level of respect personally that I wasn’t just the radio broadcaster from App anymore. I had some understanding of what this job was about. And then we built a team that could meet the moment in a variety of different ways, all again centered hardcore on relationship equity.

You know, we’ve got a professional staff here, many of them that were App State grads that have those deep community ties. So when something like Helene happens, you’ve got faces that you know, you’ve got people that you trust and you’ve got a track record behind you that will allow you to be at the epicenter of things. know, that Saturday after the storm hit Friday, we were called to a meeting at the courthouse, sheriff, police chief, you know, all the emergency response folks, and we raised our hand.

And we said, tell us how we can help, you know, put us to work. And our track record in previous smaller situations, led the director to say, all right, you guys are in charge of supply chain distribution, which that’s a whole other episode to talk about why you might not necessarily want to get into that business. But, but we had a member with a warehouse and that, it was a pickleball court, actually an indoor pickleball facility that turned into the supply depot. But that was a relationship with that member that, that.

Brandon Burton (28:49.255)
Perfect.

David Jackson (28:54.985)
allowed us to perform in the moment for in a relationship setting that the county needed a resource. And to be able to provide that means that you need those relationships to really be forged on the sunny days. know, every opportunity that you’ve got to make an impact and again, sign up for something that you can know that you can accomplish and do it well for your community that’s gonna make them lean on you. Now the downside to that is when you’ve got that track record, they’re gonna lean on you.

But I think we all want to be in that moment, right? Because we’re all about community support. We’re all about getting our community over whatever that hurdle is. So we had a front row seat to disaster response. It wasn’t something that I ever thought that we would be in position for at that level, but man, I’m glad we went through it because we were able to help our community directly. We showcased some members and their ability to help their community. And I think got some people thinking differently about business here.

certainly got people thinking differently about Appalachian state. They were tremendously helpful with space, time, effort, energy, volunteers, internet, showers, all that kind of stuff. The town gown relationship has been rocky here in the past. It is as good as it’s ever been. And we have been in a position to tell that story from the inside. And I think that’s helped everybody. So just some thoughts, relationships matter much more so than the bumper sticker than we all have on our cars.

Brandon Burton (30:19.993)
Yeah, I love that idea of forging those relationships before, you know, during the sunny days so you can call on them when you need them. So that’s awesome. As we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

David Jackson (30:26.657)
Yeah, that’s right.

David Jackson (30:37.523)
Yeah, that’s another great question that, that I feel like it’s things like this that, that are going to be as important as, as you know, membership, and, the, the non dues revenue cycles that we all get chased into, because I think members see that reaction. Excuse me. I think that a lot of times our, our work trying to sell our value is really about what we do. It’s not about what we say we do. And when people see an organization like a chamber.

or an economic development organization leading to try to solve the problem rather than trying to sell themselves on being an answer to the problem. The membership takes care of itself. I don’t necessarily see membership eroding necessarily. I think the motivations for membership change. I think people will want to invest at a time where ROI is certainly at a critical point for anybody that’s in a membership related field.

I think that the work you do is going to drive the investment that people see in you. If they see you as a solutions-based problem solver, that’s going to take care of itself. But then what do you do with your organization to make sure that it is always geared toward community support and making the community better tomorrow than it was today? And for some communities, that is to be the party starter, the parade organizer, the fun.

energetic beacon of light inside, know, difficult conversations sometimes. For others, it’s about leading forward with economic development thoughts and all of those types of things. For us right now, that’s going to be about rebuild. You know, this is going to be a multi-year conversation here, thinking about how you take hundreds of millions of dollars that are going to come in and infrastructure support and make sure that your community is better forward. So we’re hosting those meetings. We want to try to be

a part of that, not drive it. We don’t want to own it, but we want to facilitate. And then, you know, we can storytell a little bit. So I think it all boils back down to being nimble, relationships, and understanding that people will trust what you do when they see you do it. And that will take care of the investment that we all need them to make in us. And we hope that they make positively and see the results based on what we can all do for our communities.

Brandon Burton (32:58.565)
Yeah, I love that.

Make the impact, don’t just talk about the impact that you are talking about making. Actually put the rubber to the road and make something happen. So I love that. Well, David, this has been a great conversation. Hopefully it’s one that kind of gets the wheels turning for those that are listening, thinking about what can they do to be better prepared for when disaster comes to their community or hopefully it doesn’t, but you wanna be prepared for it. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share

David Jackson (33:04.045)
Right.

That’s right.

Brandon Burton (33:30.665)
share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about the structure of foundation, how you guys have deployed things, or anything else you’ve touched on. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

David Jackson (33:38.529)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. And thank you as well. I’ve listened to so many of these. heard one of our colleagues, Tanya Stevenson on a few weeks ago and that was awesome. Tanya is great. She’s two counties away from me. But yeah, boonchamber.com is our website. We’ve got a podcast as well called Mind Your Business. I encourage you to check that out, learn a little bit about our little pocket of North Carolina.

Brandon Burton (33:49.006)
yeah.

David Jackson (34:04.417)
But in all seriousness, because so many people paid it forward to us, if there is any community in any shape, in any part of this country that is going through something similar to what we experienced, please call us. If for no other reason than to talk to some people that understand and can give you that 10 minutes of levity where you can just let it all out and you may not need anything, you just may need to talk to somebody that’s been through it. So we can help there. We certainly have…

some fresh perspective on what today’s FEMA SBA mechanism looks like and can share some thoughts there. But really we just want to help because so many people helped us, lean on us anytime. BooneChamber.com, come and find us.

Brandon Burton (34:46.437)
That’s perfect. We’ll have it linked in our show notes as well to make it easy. David, this has been great. I hope you feel like you’ve been able to touch on the main points you wanted to cover in this conversation today. But thank you for joining us here on Chamber Chat Podcast for sharing your experience and things that you’ve learned through this process. I think it’s incredibly valuable. Thank you.

David Jackson (35:08.333)
Well, thank you very much for having me.

Attract, Don’t Recruit with Christine Cribb

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Brandon Burton (00:00.536)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Christine Cribb. And after a decade in the Chamber world, where she led the largest Chamber per capita in the entire state of Washington, Christine brought her signature spark and unstoppable energy to the Chamber to a chamber in the foothills of North Carolina. Last year, she made a bold move and stepped away from an industry she deeply loves and stepped into what’s next. Christine went back to school to earn her executive presence certification from Cornell University, launched her own boutique PR and strategy firm, Christine Cribb and Company, and poured her heart and experience into writing her powerful first book, Attract, Don’t Recruit, A fresh relationship driven roadmap for chambers and nonprofits who want to grow with purpose and energy. These days, she’s all about living fully and leading boldly by helping organizations connect with passion while soaking up every moment with her three amazing grandbabies. Christine brings energy, authenticity, and heart to every stage, every project, and every conversation. Get ready because Christine shows up with energy and

The room shifts when she arrives. So Christine, I’m happy to have you with us again here on Chamber Chat podcast. For those who are regular listeners, she was with us in episode 270 if you wanted to go back and listen to that. go ahead and say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening. And I always like to get the interesting fact about you.

Christine Cribb (01:44.143)
Hello Chamber Champions. and an interesting fact. Wonderful. Hello Chamber Champions. It’s such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much, Brandon, for allowing me to come back on. An interesting fact about me would probably be that I spent 2020 during COVID in Italy. And I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me because I drink lots of wine.

I learned how to cook authentically and it was probably the best adult timeout I had ever had. So there’s an interesting fact about me.

Brandon Burton (02:23.054)
of good food that I haven’t been there but I’m a fan of Italian food so how long were you there in 2020?

Christine Cribb (02:30.988)
I was there for an entire year. we were there when January, when it closed down in February. And then when the airports opened back up, I came home and did a nationwide search to go back into Chamber World. I really thought that there was no better time for chambers to be engaged and active and supporting small business than coming out of COVID for sure. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:56.088)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, tell us about your new venture, your new PR firm and the endeavors that you’re embarking on these days.

Christine Cribb (03:13.368)
Sure, sure. So you were cutting out a little bit there, but I believe you asked me what about after I left the chamber. Is that was that your question?

Brandon Burton (03:22.476)
Yeah, yeah, tell us what you’ve been up to these days with your PR firm and what you’re embarking on today.

Christine Cribb (03:28.298)
sure, sure. So I left the chamber last fall, just about this time of year. I left the chamber. visited with family all over the country and I was able to be present in my children and my grandchildren’s lives, which was really incredible. As everyone knows in chamber world, you’re balancing 27 plates and even though you’re visiting someone, you’re thinking of something else that should be done or needs to be done or did I tell somebody that? And so I was completely present. I came back.

I did go to school. went back to Cornell University and got an executive presence certification. And then I started my own. So I wrote my book January and February. I wrote my first draft and then started that entire process, which is phenomenal for anyone that wants to write a book. It’s just a great process of putting so much knowledge and story that you have to share that hopefully you make a difference to one person is incredible. So I wrote my book. I went back to school.

I started a little PR firm because I still have a great desire to help small businesses and businesses grow. And so instead of representing 600 members, I represent six. Six businesses that I can help put decision makers in front of them. I can give them exposure, public relations. It’s just delightful. It’s just a wonderful hands-on.

I am in charge of my own schedule. Don’t be envious, Chamber Champions, but I’m in charge of my own schedule. And I love the work so much. I still am absolutely passionate about helping businesses succeed.

Brandon Burton (05:08.13)
Yeah, and in this stage, you don’t have a board to report to or anything like that. So you’ve got a lot more freedom for sure. Yeah, I think.

Christine Cribb (05:16.93)
No board. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton (05:22.102)
I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard of the book writing process as being phenomenal from somebody. So you must have done something magical with the book. And a lot of other people talk about how strenuous it is and what a labor of love, those kind of descriptions. So I’m excited to learn about the book too. So most, go ahead.

Christine Cribb (05:41.707)
Right.

Christine Cribb (05:45.869)
super

Christine Cribb (05:50.242)
I just wanted to share that I thought I wanted to write a book. I wasn’t as secure in it until I did the research and realized that I had a story to tell and somebody will benefit from this story. And when I put it out to beta readers, the nicest compliment was, we can hear your voice. can hear that people could hear my voice in my words. And I thought, I’m going to share it.

I am not a literary virtuoso by any stretch of the imagination. I’m a Midwest girl. I speak in run-on sentences. I speak way too fast and I’m in the foothills of North Carolina. So be know that my editor constantly was slashing run-on sentence, run-on sentence, stop it, slow down. anyway, I did enjoy the process and it was, it’s my first of many books, I think. So I guess I enjoyed it where other people.

might have found it to be a challenge. I enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton (06:46.99)
That’s great, yeah, and other people say, I’ll never write another book again. And you’re just saying it’s the first of many.

Christine Cribb (06:48.653)
I also did lots of, Brandon, also did a lot of Yeah, rookie mistakes. So people, you you make mistakes. The first time doing something, you make mistakes. And I made a few. So, but it was a good lesson learned for sure. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:05.228)
Yeah, that’s great. So we’ll spend most of our conversation today talking about the theme of your book is attract. Well, it’s the title, but it’s the theme that we’ll carry on for this podcast recording is attract. Don’t recruit. And the importance of that.

When you look at it through a chamber lens, through a membership organization lens, I think it’s a great idea, a great concept, and great principles that we’ll dive into as soon as we get back from this quick break. All right.

Brandon Burton (07:39.31)
All right, Christine, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about attract, don’t recruit. So this is the title of your book, but tell us about how that title came to be, how that became the focus for your first book and what some of those lessons are that you share.

Christine Cribb (07:55.833)
Sure.

Super, thank you so much for asking. So a track don’t recruit came to me when I was coaching a membership position at my second chamber. I was coaching her and she said, so-and-so is not a member. I want to go get them and pitch them. And I said, you know, what’s interesting is that we doubled the chamber numbers in Cleveland County. And I never ever knocked on a door, handed a card.

said you’re not a chamber member come and visit me. We created energy and momentum that people leaned in and they came in and one by one we met every single one of them met with me.

They felt the benefits, they could see it and feel it, and they wanted to be part of it. The best example why I knew this was a track don’t recruit had to be the title, Brandon, is because in about my second year at this chamber, a woman came in and said, I can see so much energy on Facebook. I want to be part of this.

And I knew then that we had a little magic momentum going on and that needed to be the name of the book. Of course, I didn’t even know when I would be stepping down and retiring then, but I just knew then I would write a book and it would be called Attract Don’t Recruit. It would be all about infusing energy and making sure that people that ran chambers knew that they are the energy. They are responsible for managing up and managing down. They are the energy for their entire organization.

Christine Cribb (09:36.11)
So that’s kind of the meat and potatoes of the concept of how it got the title. And then it just evolved after that. would think of a topic like one of the most popular chapters right now that I’m getting feedback from is knowing your why.

Everyone talks about that. You really need to dive into why you do what you do and it empowers you to feel so much more authentic and convincing when you’re talking to someone when you understand your why. The other chapter that’s getting a lot of attention is the risky business I call it and it’s about taking risks. If you stay in the same mode you’re in, you will be in the same spot you’re in

two years from now, but if you take a risk and do something you’ve never done before. And in the book I share great risk takings. have a couple of really funny stories and then I share some failures. Like I can be completely bombed on something and it’s okay because at least I took the risk in doing it.

Brandon Burton (10:43.584)
Yeah, I like that. And with highlighting those two chapters, the why understanding your why is going to give you that drive that motivation to create that energy that you’re talking about, but also the risky business aspect. I’m sure there’s precautions, there’s things you need to look at. So you’re not just being, you know, totally flagrant with what you’re doing. But the risky business when you do something that’s exciting, it’s going to build that excitement that’s going to draw that attraction. Is there more that

can talk on on those two topics and building the energy around those those ideas.

Christine Cribb (11:20.599)
Absolutely, the risky business most importantly is that it’s strategic obviously and well vetted. I’ll share one really funny story. I was asked by a local community college to do a TV show.

and on Chamber World and Small Business. And so I went to my advisory committee, who is our board members. They’re the group that hired me and I wanted them to stay involved and I created an advisory committee. So the one, the chairman of the board said, let’s go drink some bourbon. We’ll have some bourbon brainstorming going on for, to discuss this. Well, I’m not a bourbon drinker.

So the host was about four doors down from where I live in my neighborhood, went to the bourbon brainstorm meeting. In five minutes, we decided that this TV show was not in our lane. We were not going to do it. and I agreed with that, but I just wanted it really well, once again, well vetted to take a risk of my time and energy. Right. And so I did drink my first old fashioned and I probably drank two of them.

Brandon Burton (12:33.804)
Okay.

Christine Cribb (12:36.347)
I then took something out of a jar and ate it and said, is the best grape I’ve ever tasted. And one of the men at the event said, at the meeting said, should we let her know that that is a bourbon soaked cherry? So that tells you that I was, I was enjoying that old fashioned.

On the way home, it was this time of year, on the way home, was kicking the leaves, walking home, and I had the brainstorm idea that we needed those gentlemen loved their bourbon. We needed to have a bourbon, gentlemen’s bourbon dinner. And we were looking for a way to raise capital funds to take care of the building.

So between within 24 hours, I was creating a gentleman’s bourbon dinner, tasting and dinner. I secured everything secured a sponsor, started to pull it together, pitch the board and said, let’s just try it. If it fails, it fails. But if let’s try it because of what I saw resonating with how much these gentlemen love their bourbon. So sure enough, we did it. I think it’s still in place now at the chamber and might be its fourth year.

that it’s happened, but it’s taken a risk. mean, we were adding alcohol in the Bible Belt in the foothills of North Carolina, and it was a huge success. We raised a lot of money, started the renovations on the building. It was fabulous. But that’s one example.

Brandon Burton (14:02.764)
Yeah, I think last time you’re on the show, we actually recorded the day after you had your bourbon event. it does, yeah. I believe so, I believe so. So I remember the energy coming from that, so yeah.

Christine Cribb (14:11.564)
That’s great. That’s great. Was it the first one? Was it? I think it was the… my gosh. That is great. that’s… Yes, that is one story that’s in the book. The other story I’ll tell share a failure also because everybody needs to take a risk of failing for sure. Coming out of COVID, there were so many positions that were open.

Brandon Burton (14:32.076)
Yes.

Christine Cribb (14:41.74)
Brandon that businesses needed employees. And so I thought, well, we’ll have a Friday career cafe. We’ll open up the chamber. We’ll have businesses set up little tables. We’ll have people come in that want to work that are seeking jobs. Well, we had businesses want to come in and they did great. They sat there, they visited with each other, they networked and we had tricklings of people coming in interested in looking for a job. And what that told me

was that our lane was not in the people looking for work. We did not work well in bringing those people in. We needed to leave that to the people that do that, NC Works. We needed to leave that to the groups that are part of unemployment and helping people get jobs and partner with them. We didn’t need to do something solo. So we tried it for three months and

And it was not successful and I was okay with that. At least we tried it and then we were able to partner with other organizations to help fill some of these positions for businesses. But we took a chance.

Brandon Burton (15:51.235)
Yeah.

So I think, and I like that example, it makes me think about even from the employer standpoint, when you interact with businesses or for those listening with your member businesses, the practice of attracting and not recruiting is beneficial even in the hiring process, when they are looking to bring on employees. I see this firsthand right now, my wife is applying for jobs and stuff and it’s tough when some of these businesses are not

trying to attract, you know, they’re they’re doing more of the recruiting style instead of, you know, showing how attractive they are and drawing people to them. And then they have the same problems all the time of, know, we just don’t have enough people or we can’t, you know, retain people because they’re not attracting. So I think there’s parallels from the membership organization to the employer standpoint as well. But it looks like you have an idea to expand on.

Christine Cribb (16:29.03)
Alright.

Christine Cribb (16:37.393)
Hmm.

Christine Cribb (16:49.57)
Absolutely.

Absolutely, I do because when you’re applying for a job You want to know also what’s in it for me your wife wants to know? What are you offering me? Not just what you need. I need you to and the old job description is not enticing anymore, right? And we just want to know is there family flexibility is there?

you know, what are the perks of working for you, not just hone in on what do you need? I think that’s really important. And I think there’s businesses that are definitely shifting to that because they want to attract the right people, not just fill a position, right? And then not as much with seeking employment, but with the membership aspect.

It’s all about relationship building, right? It’s about making somebody feel so incredibly valuable in your organization that they want to be part of it.

We worked really hard on, and it’s in the book of not, we tried never to say the word no. If someone asks for something and everyone in Chamber Champions, you know, people ask for things all the time. When someone would say, do you know what the Chamber should do? I would think, wait, am I sitting back eating bonbons? I don’t think so, right? You know what the Chamber should do. Anyway, I think,

Christine Cribb (18:19.674)
that relationship building. lost my train of thought there because that was so funny to me. I remember people saying that, but it’s all about relationship building for sure. Cultivating relationship that people want. and we never said no. So we had a list of things that we don’t do. Brandon, we didn’t say we can’t do that. That’s not our job. If somebody said, can I pay my electric bill here? Well, obviously you cannot pay your electric bill at the Chamber of Commerce, but instead of just saying no,

Brandon Burton (18:23.874)
Right, yeah. You talked about never saying no, right?

Christine Cribb (18:47.26)
Our front desk gal, the administrative assistant, Catherine, would walk the person out the front door, share with them going down to City Hall. They could pay their city bill, write down one block down, take a left, it’s right there. She would try to over deliver. She would not just simply say the word, no, we don’t do that. Then I had something called, can I say a bad word?

Brandon Burton (19:12.814)
Sure, we’ll clean it up if we need to.

Christine Cribb (19:15.022)
Okay, I said.

Clean it up if you need to, but we would have something in an email. People are so busy and they have so many emails. I would tell staff, just deliver a shit sandwich. Deliver a really nice opening. Be a nice, warm, hello, thank you so much for the email. Then get to the point without saying the word no, you’re dreaming. We can never do that. We’re a chamber of commerce. Deliver what you can do, not what you can’t, and then end it very, very positively. So I better come up with a new name for that, but that was the philosophy.

also no negative words never saying anything ill about your board somebody else your employees your members just keeping it so Genuinely positive that once you’re in the habit of not doing that. It’s like a piece of cake Yeah, and that infuses energy by staying positive all the time. Yeah

Brandon Burton (20:09.016)
and you’d rather have a cake than one of those sandwiches.

Christine Cribb (20:11.996)
Right. That’s right. That’s right. I also had a really special moment on the I have a chapter called train and trust. And in that chapter, I share a story about someone who’d worked for me that had been in chamber world for 11 years. And I took her to the first chamber conference, her first.

And when she came back, she bloomed in such a beautiful, incredible, empowering way, giving her some tools that she was able to go someplace for three days and speak the language of chamber world. Not only leaders and board members need to go to those, but when you bring your staff…

to an event like that, they feel so empowered when they get home and she bloomed, she was already phenomenal, but she even bloomed even more, more so. So that empowerment, the train them, give them the training and then trust them to do their job is really great.

Brandon Burton (21:16.342)
Yeah, I love that. So from a membership perspective, does the train and trust, does it have applications there as well when you’re trying to attract rather than recruit?

Christine Cribb (21:29.058)
Absolutely, so we, two things happened that taught me about this. The first was at my first chamber and a really great supporter and mentor of mine, Dan Aulis from Would Be Coffee, he came in and said, your structure is wrong. You have a membership coordinator, but you are on top of her all the time and wanting to make sure that every new member meets with you.

Why don’t you make her events coordinator and you just take membership? Because these people are coming in the door and they want to talk to you. So we actually changed the structure. Then when I got to North Carolina, there were only two of us at the time. So I absolutely met with every single new member. When we were able to grow, we hired a membership coordinator. And that is when I started to share that attract, don’t recruit. They’re walking in the door. Our job is to give.

not just sign that person up, but cultivate that relationship that makes them feel like they belong. You don’t need to be out on the street knocking on doors to people that don’t know what the chamber is. Let the domino effect, the energy in which you’re projecting, let that trickle down through your ambassadors, through your board, through your brand new members that just thank you. They thank you for these benefits and they walk out the door and they tell other people and they walk in the door. And it doesn’t happen overnight. We were coming out of COVID.

You know, I think on that first podcast I did, I shared that we were coming out of COVID. We had 14 events and that year coming out of COVID and within two years we had 149. I mean, we just set things on fire, whether it was a ribbon cutting once a week, whether it was adding more events like the bourbon event and some other events that we did too.

And so it’s really, it takes a little while, but it absolutely is worth the stop trying to beg people to join your Chamber of Commerce.

Brandon Burton (23:27.68)
Yeah, yeah, be attractive. Is there another key point or two that you want to draw out from the book before we wrap things up?

Christine Cribb (23:35.376)
Well, sure, one thing is, there’s so many cool things to share. But one is to make sure that you, one chapter is a refueling station, that you make sure you take time to take care of yourself. That is more critical than ever because that work is never ending and I’m well aware of that. When I could step back and be completely present in my children’s lives, I didn’t know that I was doing exactly what I told people not to do.

Brandon Burton (23:42.72)
I know it.

Christine Cribb (24:04.335)
which was just drinking from a fire hose, even though I thought I had it all together. The other thing is key performing indicators. When you start to brainstorm and take a risk, when you have key performing indicators that are valuable, not just the board wants to know how many members and how much money we have, use really good quality key performing indicators to help you determine your risk taking and the decisions that you make down the road.

And then there’s a whole chapter on time management because I tried every single one of them. There’s like 14 different tactics to manage your time. I’ve tried everyone. I’ve merged them. I’ve said this is never going to work for me, but there’s some great tools in there. And mostly it’s about really being the energy behind your chamber. You know, I have a hashtag called room shifter.

Like be a room shifter when you walk in a room people should light up you should be able to Attract the energy if you walk in a room and nobody’s walking up to talk to you You need to put a smile on your face and you need to start walking up to them and put shaking hands and working the room That’s not even beginning there’s 23 chapters brandon Yes, yes

Brandon Burton (25:17.687)
Right? Just hitting a few of the highlights, right? But I love the idea about being a room shifter because there should be an energy change and if there’s not, like you should take the energy you have and then go find those others that need to either have an infusion of that energy or just connect with that energy or whatever it may be, but it should change the tone of that room and show that what you’re doing matters, right?

Christine Cribb (25:24.111)
Yes.

Christine Cribb (25:36.813)
Yes.

Absolutely.

Yes, I also told people that if you’re not a networker, just come alongside me during an event and before you know it, you will be paired off with somebody that you had never met before. And if you yourself as a leader are not a networker, go find one. Go find one and learn how to do it. Really know how to work a room. You should light up that room when you walk into it. Yep.

Brandon Burton (25:54.35)
Great idea.

Brandon Burton (26:07.628)
Yeah, I love that idea. Christine, is a yeah, this has been great. You’ve hit on a lot of great ideas and topics and points from the book. I wanted to ask you for the Chamber Champion listening who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item would you leave for them as they try to accomplish that goal?

Christine Cribb (26:10.884)
All right, the screen froze. There we go.

Christine Cribb (26:36.668)
I would like to tell them to start living like you’re a legend. Start energizing people, rooms, have over deliver in being authentic, but your energy, your positive energy shifts people, shifts rooms, shifts organizations. We all know the toolkit. We all have the rule. We’ve all read the books. We’ve all, we know how to run a chamber.

What you have to have is that authentic, genuine energy that takes it to the next level.

Brandon Burton (27:12.543)
I love that. It’s a great tip. So I know I had asked you this question when you were on the show before, but I like asking everybody for their current perspective. As we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Christine Cribb (27:14.448)
Good. Good, good, good.

Christine Cribb (27:31.087)
I love it. I will look back and see what my answer was a couple years ago when I was here because it has changed. So when I wrote the book and I did some research on chambers throughout American history, what happened every decade was that chambers would shift their priorities across the country. They would shift.

what the priorities were depending on what was going on during that time. So I believe chambers will thrive and survive. Absolutely. I feel like they have to do it being open and willing to change and do things differently than they’ve ever done it before. So for example, obviously during COVID chamber was a huge part of workforce and knowing what was going on. The other thing would have been to be

I would tell Chambers to be a change agent. Be the change agent. If the future is AI, get on AI. Figure out what it is, offer classes, make sure that you learn everything that you can about it. If something’s going on in your county, get a seat at the table that lets you take the lead in being a change agent.

Brandon Burton (28:46.252)
Yeah, being able to just sit back and see the change happen is not going to serve your organization well. It’s not going to serve you as a leader. Well, you need to be that agent driving the change, recognizing where the future is going and be seen as that thought leader and that change agent. It’s ahead of the pack.

Christine Cribb (28:53.424)
No.

Christine Cribb (29:01.175)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I feel like that’s, that’s, that’s phenomenal. That’s the deal maker is, is being able to get a seat at the table, to be part of what’s coming next, because there’s always something coming next. You can’t sit still for three, five, 10 years and think that you’re not going to have some changes going on that you need to be a major part of. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:30.22)
That’s right. That’s right. Find your original answer. Well, Christine, now the important question is for those listening who want to connect with you and learn more about attract, don’t recruit or where to pick up the book or connect with you, where would you point them and what would be the best ways to connect?

Christine Cribb (29:32.206)
Now you make me want to go back and look at my first video chat with you. I will look at that podcast for sure.

Christine Cribb (29:54.374)
Thank you.

Thank you so much. So you can purchase the book through Amazon. The name of the book is Attract Don’t Recruit, by Christine Cribb You can also reach out on Facebook in any time. I have a workbook coming out that’s going to be a companion workbook to the book, which will be great for directors, presidents of chambers. It’ll be great for board of directors and for staff. The workbook will have how to work your why.

really understanding your purpose and how to organize the time management aspect is in the workbook. That’ll be out by the end of December. So Facebook, but you can also reach me on my website is christinecribb.com. My next book will be announced on there. It’s called Mind Your Own Business. And it’s really for entrepreneurs that are trying to do a startup.

Brandon Burton (30:49.163)
Okay.

Christine Cribb (30:54.844)
you know, the people that say

I make a great lasagna, so I’m going to open an Italian restaurant. So it’s really a great guide for directors and presidents of chambers to guide entrepreneurs in the right direction. When you don’t know what you don’t know, you better find someone that does know, right? So that is one book. And then I’m going to write a book called Lipstick and Laugh Lines. And it’s about women that reinvented themselves after the age of 50. So if anyone has a great story,

of a woman who reinvented herself after 50 years old, it could end up in my book. And so if you think of the old chicken soup for the soul, I don’t think you’re old enough, Brandon, to remember that, are you? So if you remember, okay.

Brandon Burton (31:37.964)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s a great compliment, but yes, I do remember it.

Christine Cribb (31:45.457)
So Chicken Soup for the Soul, it will be that kind of stories. They’ll be small stories in there of women who reinvented themselves out of inspiration. So I got the bug to write books and so now I’ve got a couple more coming down the pipe. But ChristineCribb.com will get you to my website. Facebook will very easily message me on Facebook, follow me on Facebook. It’s really fun to watch what’s happened with the book.

We had 60 people come to the book launch at the chamber here in Shelby and I was overwhelmed. It was so humbling and exciting. Yes.

Brandon Burton (32:20.908)
That’s fun. That is really cool. Well, congratulations to you on getting your first book out there. We look forward to getting our hands on it, but also the future books that are coming out as well. And we’ll make sure to connect all your shout outs, your Facebook and website and Amazon and everything in our show notes. So it’ll be easy for listeners to connect and find the book and follow your journey. So this has been great. Thank you. You bet.

Christine Cribb (32:26.214)
Thank you.

Christine Cribb (32:40.592)
Thank you.

Christine Cribb (32:46.032)
Thank you so much. Brandon, thank you for this opportunity. Thank you.

Importance of Vibrant Communities with Christopher Germain

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Brandon Burton (00:01.171)
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 Christopher Germain, CEO of the Lake Superior Community Partnership, where he’s been making waves since stepping into the role in 2022. With a background that includes everything from environmental regulation to urban planning and political communications, Christopher brings a diverse and dynamic perspective to regional economic development. Before LSCP, he spent six years with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, helping communities across the state through redevelopment ready community programs.

A proud Michigan native and Northern Michigan University alum, Christopher fell in love with Marquette and the Upper Peninsula and has become one of the strongest advocates. His leadership at LSCP has introduced an ambitious, comprehensive economic development model that is tackling major regional issues like housing, childcare, air service, and small business support.

When he’s not working, you’ll probably find him out exploring the natural beauty of the Upper Peninsula, cooking up something delicious in the kitchen, or even logging some time, or even logging some hours in flight training. He shares his adventures with his husband Aaron and their energetic cattle dog, Woody.

Christopher, 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.

Christopher Germain (01:51.448)
Sure, yeah, thanks, Brandon, for having me this morning. It’s really great to be here. We’re excited about this. know, additionally, beyond the flight training, which is usually the part people find the most interesting about me, you know, I’ve been teaching myself to code video games as well, because I don’t have enough to do, apparently. So that has been a really cool kind of feature as well. But honestly, my dog doesn’t let me do anything that sits down. know, if anyone else owns a cattle dog or a blue healer, they would understand.

Brandon Burton (02:17.321)
right? That’s awesome.

Christopher Germain (02:19.209)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:20.585)
Yeah, the flight training, is super interesting. A friend of mine is a flight trainer. has his own company doing flight training. And last Christmas, I had the idea, I reached out to him, like, hey, would you take my wife and I up to look at Christmas lights? And it was pretty cool to look at the Christmas lights from the sky. But there’s a lot of cool things you can do from the air. The video game coding too, that is interesting.

Christopher Germain (02:26.509)
you

Brandon Burton (02:50.539)
That’s a first that I’ve heard. So is that a, what drew the interest to coding video games?

Christopher Germain (02:58.317)
So I learned it a number of years ago and I kind of lost it. But honestly, what’s re-driven my renewal of it is an old video game from like the early 2000s that they don’t make anymore. And I’ve been trying to recreate it. So I’ve been using Claude and Chat GPT and all those AI coding assistants, you know, in addition to those years of actual school now.

games as best I can. So it’s pretty cool.

Brandon Burton (03:22.259)
That’s awesome. That is really cool. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Lake Superior Community Partnership to give us an idea of the size of the organization, staff, scope of work, budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Christopher Germain (03:38.383)
Yeah, absolutely. So the Lake Superior Community Partnership has been around for 28 years. We’re always say we were an organization that was born out of crisis. So in the mid 90s up here, we had an Air Force base called K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base. They used to launch B-52 bombers from it during the Cold War. And that Air Force base closed in the mid 90s, like a lot of other bases. And so there were three chambers at the time. They all formed into a single chamber called the Lake Superior Community Partnership and started down this path.

towards greater economic development in addition to chamber services. So today we’re an organization that really focuses heavily on economic development but retains those chamber pieces as well. We have 400 members currently, which is about a 30 % growth over the last three years as we’ve really changed our model. A 12-person team, about a $900,000 operating budget, but a multimillion dollar budget when you factor in the grants that we’re entrusted with from our state and federal partners as well. So…

We tackle honestly everything from traditional chamber services like business after hours and ribbon cuttings and breakfast events to a full-scale business retention expansion program, tackle issues like housing and childcare. We do advocacy in Lansing and DC. My friends joke that I’m never home, you know, because we’re always so active doing something, so.

Brandon Burton (04:54.121)
That’s right. Man, yeah, that’s enough to keep you busy there. Luckily, the 12 staff helped to get that done, I’m sure. that’s a…

Christopher Germain (05:05.806)
They sure do, and that’s about a 50 % growth over the last few years. So it’s nice as we’ve grown, our team has been able to grow.

Brandon Burton (05:12.598)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, for our discussion today, we’ll focus the majority of our time around the idea of the importance of vibrant communities and the different aspects that revolve around that topic. So we will dive in deep on that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Christopher, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about the importance of vibrant communities. So what does that mean for you there in the Lake Superior area as far as building a vibrant community? know communities look different everywhere, right? So for you guys, what does that look like to have a vibrant community and what does a chamber do to help facilitate that?

Christopher Germain (05:58.157)
Absolutely. So honestly, I think the test for vibrant community is pretty simple and it’s are you proud of your community, right? Every single community looks different but the first step to asking anyone to invest in your community is whether they see everyone around them believing in the future of that community. And so for some places that’s super vibrant, downtowns with tall buildings and lots of restaurants.

For other places, it’s vibrant neighborhoods, right? Homes that are well taken care of, community organizations that band together, small businesses, right? That really define the community. So up here in Marquette County, which is geographically the largest county in the state of Michigan and one of the largest east of the Mississippi, we have a bunch of different communities. So honestly, what it looks like in the city of Marquette is different than what it looks like on the west side of the county in Ishpemine and Ragani or in Big Bay or in Gwynne, or they’re the places that we cover as a countywide organization.

So, but to give you maybe a sense, you know, of some really great examples of what we think is driving community vibrancy is obviously downtown, right? Areas that people can walk, they’re walkable, the businesses are filled, there’s events. And we’ve seen some really incredible strides on that front that we still talk about here, including the Community of the Year here in Michigan, which is right here in Marquette County, thanks to all of their downtown vibrancy.

Brandon Burton (07:15.067)
Yeah, well, tell us more about that Community of the Year. That’s awesome. you’re right, for building that vibrant community, you do kind of have to have that hub, right? That central gathering place, that downtown, like you mentioned. And there’s going to be a different feel in different communities or different parts of the communities. being able to have that focus and that hub, I think, is important. But yeah, tell us about the award. That’s awesome.

Christopher Germain (07:18.798)
Yeah. Sure.

Christopher Germain (07:41.389)
Yeah, so, you know, the city of the Gani, which is about 10 miles outside the city of Marquette, has this incredible city manager. to give a shout out to Nate Heffron and all the work that he’s done around the community to drive that pride. This idea, again, that the Gani is a community that historically has a mining heritage to it. And a lot of mining communities have struggled in recent years. But when Nate came on board, he was able to harness that community pride that did exist and really leverage it into something else. And so.

using about a million dollars in state grants, they totally overhauled their downtown a few years ago, which has then resulted in this incredible resurgence of commercial and housing developments all throughout downtown. So there’s fire pits now, there’s events, they’re constantly still doing new events on top of everything else they already have. They’ve seen the biggest turnover in commercial investment they’ve ever had in their history as far as they can tell. And there’s just this sense of pride now.

And so the Michigan Municipal League every single year identifies what they call a community of excellence. It’s actually a really competitive award. They name finalists and you actually basically have to lobby for the votes to be named that. And so to get that from a town of a few thousand people here in Northern Michigan, which only has 3 % of the state’s population in our entire Upper Peninsula, is a huge win for us up here. And so we’re really proud of the work that they’ve done, but it’s translated to additional businesses.

additional economic activity that’s still spilling over today.

Brandon Burton (09:07.079)
Yeah, that’s great. So I very much think that in order to have a vibrant community, there has to be good things going on in the community, right? There needs to be jobs. There needs to be a good economy. There needs to be those opportunities to get out and connect with others and to be able to enjoy what the community has to offer.

From the chamber perspective, what are some of the approaches and you guys are heavily involved with economic developments? So what are some of those things you guys are doing to drive the stronger economy there to be able to help, you know, in the end have that vibrant community in a place where people want to be?

Christopher Germain (09:49.187)
Yeah, so ultimately we’re taking a really multi-pronged strategy here. So the core of our work for a long time has always been a business retention and expansion program, of course, which I think it’s important to have your pulse on the business community to understand what those barriers are, not only locally, but at the state and federal level. But in recent years, we’ve really expanded that to really focus on our overall health of our communities. What does that quality of life look like? And so for us, that means tackling issues like housing.

It means helping with the availability of childcare. In a rural area like ours, it means ensuring that we have convenient and accessible flight service. A lot of rural areas might have one or two flights a day. And so that’s not exactly conducive to business. If you need to get out and that flight schedule doesn’t work. And then even for us, we dive even deeper and then we talk about rural healthcare. We talk about energy costs, which are very high in the Upper Peninsula compared to most of the country and how all of that ultimately impacts

how people feel about their community, right? And again, that sense of pride. It’s so easy, frankly, to derail community efforts, right, with the negativity that you can see on social media or that people show up to public meetings. And so working as a chamber to go meet with those businesses, to hold public events, to bring as much from outside, like from underneath, I should say, the paywall, right, a membership of the LFCP and just do good community work.

is really vital to us. And it’s possible because of our public sector partners really coming to the table. I think it’s primarily probably due to our economic development side of the house versus the chamber side of the house. But by combining the two, we’re able to leverage the benefits of both, right, and help our small businesses connect with the public sector and connect with their neighbors and connect with each other. And so they can actually offer their services, you know, in a coffee shop from the art shop down the street.

We see those kind of connections happen too and that drives that community pride too.

Brandon Burton (11:45.384)
Yeah. So what really stood out to me was the flight service and being able to have a focus on that and help bring more flights and more people in. How do you approach something like that? I mean, I think, you know, a flight will come and go as there’s a demand for it is what I would assume, but maybe I’m assuming wrong. So how do you approach that to try to get more flights coming in and out of town?

Christopher Germain (12:04.856)
sure.

Christopher Germain (12:11.116)
Yeah, you know, so it’s interesting for us up here in the Upper Peninsula, we have six commercial airports for an area of about 300,000 people. Now we’re really geographically dispersed, right? So it makes sense that you can’t just have one. But five of those six airports, federal subsidies through a program called Essential Air Service. So program that was set up in the 80s when the airlines deregulated and basically it was meant to help transition rural areas as consolidation happened. They would maintain

Brandon Burton (12:24.691)
Yeah.

Christopher Germain (12:40.142)
critical air service if you were too far away from a hub. It’s become one those programs that has existed kind of into perpetuity, right, whether or not, and our airport actually doesn’t get essential air service because at the time of deregulation, we had two airlines and one of the requirements was you can only have one. And so for us, what air service looks like is actually going to meeting with airlines and doing what we call demand and leakage studies where we actually see what demand is generating in our travel shed and where it’s going.

In our case, we’re actually losing 52 % of the demand that generates in our travel shed to places that are either subsidized by the federal government or folks are driving the six hours to Chicago to take an international flight, which sometimes that makes sense. So we literally go meet with airlines. We do the data studies. We do marketing. And we work directly with our airport to make sure that they’re enhancing the overall experience. in the last state budget,

The LSCP was really the one who put in the request for three million dollar state investment in our airport primarily because we don’t get federal subsidies and we’re now working through how to spend those dollars in a way that’ll drive long-term fiscal sustainability for the airport which will make it more appealing to airlines and I think part of you all of that work we’ve done for years just last week maybe two weeks ago now actually the

United Airlines announced that they’re coming to Marquette-Sawyer Regional Airport, it will be the only airport in the region that has three, all three major airlines coming out of our airport going to Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit. So it’s been a collective effort. It really takes a whole village to make that happen, but you just have to stay proactive, sort of the answer.

Brandon Burton (14:21.181)
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a great win to be able to see American come in and to be able to open those doors. Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing.

Christopher Germain (14:26.766)
Yeah, we were very surprised but happy. Two years ago, I was out in Utah, sky west, which is one of the biggest regional carriers in the country. We had lost service in Minneapolis in 2022 during the pilot shortage and the plane shortage prompted by COVID. We were able to get it back starting this year and it’s been a game changer for our businesses, especially who have business out west.

They can now hop on a plane in the morning via Minneapolis and make it out to the west coast by lunchtime.

Brandon Burton (14:58.119)
Yeah, that’s awesome. That is, that’s a game changer for sure. So I know you guys recently had a local economic exchange. You want to tell us what that was about and how that plays into this whole conversation of building vibrant communities?

Christopher Germain (15:16.686)
Yeah, absolutely. So we were really proud of this event. It’s been on my list since I started in this role in 2022 to just bring together the public sector, the private sector, our nonprofit partners and have a day focused on solutions, right? We sort of know what our challenges are. And so the whole idea was to bring folks together, talk about how we move the needle on issues like housing and energy and childcare, rural healthcare, all of those issues. And so the day had about 120 attendees, which I…

say for a first time event is a really big win. We’ve had nothing but positive feedback about it. But ironically, you know, people laughed at us a little bit when we started out the day with a data dump, right? Just tons of data. We had the Federal Reserve come and go through their data. We had our own data. And I think we saw some rolling eyes and some confusion, but it really set the foundation really well for folks for the rest of the day. And so between that, from there, we went to an inspirational story from the village of Casapolis, which is an incredible success story here in Michigan.

a small village that just decided enough was enough, right? And they were just going to go after every resource they could go after to make their community more vibrant. And that led to these great breakout sessions and a legislative panel. And so we were just so proud of the events. And in the month since we’ve had it, the momentum has been very real. We’ve had more people come to the table. We’ve had more ideas come out of the woodwork than we can even handle right now. And so that’s a good problem to have.

We’re really proud of it as we move into planning for 2026 and figuring out what are our focus areas. They’ll likely come out of that event.

Brandon Burton (16:47.175)
Right. Now that event sounds like it’s great and really just drawing attention to some of these good things that are happening throughout the region. But at the beginning, as we started talking about vibrant communities, I really liked what you had to say about really creating a place that you want to be. it may be tough to measure, you know, what is, are we a vibrant community? Have we increased our vibrancy? we decreasing? Where are we at? But what are some of those

marks you look at as far as is your community vibrant? it going in the right direction? Is it going the opposite way? What are we doing to help kind of regenerate that excitement and desire to be a part of the community? What are some of those things that you look at to measure that?

Christopher Germain (17:32.921)
Sure. So, you know, I think there’s, yeah, there’s qualitative and quantitative stuff, right, that you can look at. And so I think on the quantitative stuff, there’s some simple things like population growth, right? Are you seeing new housing being built? Are you seeing new students in your school districts? Are you seeing investment, right, in your downtowns your business community? And you can ask your businesses if they’re seeing growing sales because that likely indicates new events or more people coming to those businesses, choosing to spend their dollars locally.

We can look at city municipal tax revenue, right? As well as a really big key indicator of a vibrant community. But it really is that qualitative stuff. I always get those two mixed up. The qualitative stuff that you walk downtown and you see folks, you know, are they pointing to the shops, right? Are they deciding to move events that maybe left the community back into the community? Are people taking ideas that they have and actually finding the other people in the community who also share those and can…

create those ideas. And like one really great example is there’s a group of folks in the western side of the county that are looking to create a Christmas market for the first time ever. And I honestly think maybe five years ago, you would have found a lot of naysayers, right? Who would have said there was just no way this is going to happen. And today that momentum feels so real. And so they had no problem finding people to form a committee and finding partners and finding people to build stalls. And so

it’s that kind of qualitative stuff that is really hard to measure. Economic development, think in general, you we’ve really always measured ourselves based on investment and job creation. And those are really core metrics that we need to have, but there’s a lot more to economic development than just that piece of it. And so I think that’s where community really comes in.

Brandon Burton (19:16.795)
Yeah, I think, you know, we’ve all seen and talking for the people listening as well. We’ve all seen the communities for the downtown is just basically a ghost town, right? Where it’s just depressing. It’s sad. It’s, you know, it hasn’t had any life going on there in 20 or 30 years, maybe. versus the communities where there’s stuff happening, you know, there’s events going on. There’s holiday things. There’s, you know, all these different things that happen and drive people out there.

Christopher Germain (19:30.84)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (19:47.012)
and really build that sense of community. One of those things you had mentioned as far as measuring the growth was the population growth and the housing. I know housing is one of those things that you guys are trying to tackle as an organization. What are some of the approaches? I mean, obviously, you guys are creating a vibrant community because it becomes enough of an issue that the chamber needs to say, hey, what are we going to do about housing? So what are some of those solutions?

Christopher Germain (20:01.88)
Yep. That’s right.

Christopher Germain (20:12.846)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (20:16.655)
the approaches you guys are taking to housing.

Christopher Germain (20:20.014)
Sure, so we could do a whole podcast on this brand and just in alone. And as a trained planner, of course, we have a plan, right? And so we have an eight point plan right now that’s really focused heavily on things like collecting data and educating the public, right? Arming folks who want to say yes in my backyard and showing up and giving public officials cover to approve housing projects. But really there’s some really cool, tangible things that are happening too.

Brandon Burton (20:22.055)
Right?

Christopher Germain (20:45.218)
Marquette County is the first county that we’re aware of, at least similar to ours, that has a dedicated housing specialist. So somebody whose full job is basically to work with developers and work with local government officials to move the needle on projects. And he also happens to be the executive director of our land bank. So we have a kind of a one-two punch there in terms of having two great tools. The LSTP and a number of other partners helped fund that job and our position, I should say initially, and we really…

move forward with that. But we’re also working on things like pre-reviewed housing blueprints. We are collecting data through a target market analysis that shows our market could hold up to 10,000 new and rehabilitated housing units over the next five years. We don’t think we’ll hit those numbers. We think that’s where the market breaks, but there’s clearly a demand for those. And the story I always tell people honestly is

I went to Northern, you in the late 2000s, as you mentioned, the introduction and like a lot of folks, I left after that, not because I wanted to, because I just couldn’t find an opportunity in the field I was in. Ended up in Ohio and spent the next 14 years trying to get back. And in 2022, I was recruited back to this position. And the night before I had to give the board an answer, my answer was no. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to be here. It was because I literally couldn’t find anywhere to live.

And so it was too hard to move from Grand Rapids. And I had to find something that my husband would also be happy with. And so something, know, a view of the lake and all that kind of stuff. But it is still was, you know, I don’t ever want anyone to have to go through that situation. And we lose far too many northern students who want to stay here or people just in general who want to stay here. And they start to get priced out as second homes get built and as Mark Hat, you know, particularly does get more expensive.

to live in. So that’s really why housing is a critical issue because if the folks who work in our restaurants and run our schools and operate our libraries, right, and public safety and all these folks can’t find places to live, you lose the vibrancy of the community. And so that’s really why we take an issue. And so we have a website, it’s called housingnow906.org that I always tell everyone to go to. Everything we do around housing is there. We’re happy to share it.

Christopher Germain (22:56.418)
We’re really proud of our leadership position on housing because I think a lot of economic developers in general would tell you housing wasn’t on our radar even five years ago. It was somebody else’s problem. And now I think we’ve really figured out that we’re losing projects. We are losing deals and losing expansions because our businesses can’t find the workers that they need to expand. So they’re opting to just not expand. so housing is the real deal there.

Brandon Burton (23:24.883)
Wow. I almost feel like you needed to have that experience of not being able to find housing to really be able to share your personal story about why this is so important. know, the community loses out on talent. Like you said, the vibrancy when we don’t have places for these people to live and be a part of the community. So that’s a, I love that you guys are approaching that and making that a priority there at the organization.

Christopher Germain (23:51.543)
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s necessity. Every meeting I have, Brandon, housing, housing, housing, it doesn’t matter what it is. Housing comes up.

Brandon Burton (23:58.634)
Yeah, and there’s a lot of creative opportunities out there that I’ve heard from different chambers. And each one is unique to their own community. it’s fun to see those answers, those solutions come to pass. Well, Christopher, I wanted to ask for those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Christopher Germain (24:31.118)
So, you know, the thing I always tell folks is chambers should be talking to their local planners, like their local community planners. And you know what? It feels like an odd one to throw out there, but the decisions that your planning commissions and your planners make around zoning and regulatory reform and the future of the community impact the business community. Right. And so having a really deep understanding of those and not having a confrontational relationship with them, I think is really critical to any chamber really being successful.

And again, I say as a trained planner and as a board member of the Michigan Association of Planning. So like I see both of those worlds and I see how planners also don’t necessarily understand chambers very well or economic development in general. so having that dialogue, I think is important. So breakout, right, of the traditional chamber training modules, which are again, very helpful. And I do a lot of those as well, but go to a planning conference, take a zoning course, take something that can really help you understand.

with that other side of the regulatory environment and seeing, and it’ll make you a much more effective advocate for your businesses when you understand.

Brandon Burton (25:36.754)
Yeah, I have not heard that as a tip yet and that is so wise as I think of a chamber executive just being able to understand what’s possible from the community planning standpoint, being able to understand what obstacles they’re dealing with as well, what their constraints are, what their blind spots are, and being able to come to the table and say, here from the business community, these are the things that are important to have a vibrant community. So how can we make these things match up?

and find solutions together, but without having those conversations ahead of time and kind of knowing what those community planners are thinking and what they’re working with makes it really hard to walk into those conversations without having it be a little bit confrontational because you’re coming from perspectives that neither of you understand. So I think that’s such a wise tip. Yeah, I love that.

Christopher Germain (26:29.658)
Exactly. You know, and the example I always get folks brand into is I sat on the master plan steering committee for the city of Marquette and early on we had the set principles, right, guiding principles for the plan. And one of them was to protect neighborhoods. And, my response was like, yes, like I love the area where they live in and I don’t want it to massively change. But if we’re setting out to not change anything, we’re not creating new business opportunities and we’re not creating opportunities for the neighborhood to really evolve in a way we want it to.

And I think it took the business community pushing to change that a little bit. And so it’s a balance, right? But really, our local government partners and planners, not our enemies. They really can be our allies when we understand each other.

Brandon Burton (27:10.589)
Right. Yep, absolutely. Very well said. Well, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Christopher Germain (27:27.864)
So I think there’s always going to be this human need for connection, right? And this idea of learning from each other and partnering together. And so I see chambers that are embracing technology like AI to amplify their value for their members. And whether it’s a smarter business listing or taking your networking events that maybe are heavily on networking right now and incorporating an educational component to them, that’s what we did with our breakfast and business series. So it’s not just about having coffee with your friends, but…

you always leave having learned something or met somebody new. That’s where I really feel the future is continuing to evolve in that way, but also integrating economic development. I’ll admit like our structure is very complex and sometimes it is hard to balance the economic development and the chamber side of things. And sometimes quite frankly, they’re in conflict. And so trying to figure out how to balance those two can be really difficult. But I also think if chambers in their local communities have an opportunity to

partner with their economic development organizations to consider some sort of structural marriage, I would really encourage them to do that because I also think that really is the future if you can plan it correctly. There’s a lot of models that don’t work too, but if you can find the one that fits, you’re going to be better off as a chamber working directly with your economic development organization than you are as separate entities.

Brandon Burton (28:45.789)
Yeah, yeah. And there’s no harm in looking to other communities and seeing how they do it and what’s working for them and seeing what those structures look like that are working. All of us have those other communities we look to and maybe want to be a little bit more like and look and see what those structures look like in those communities. So I think that’s a great.

Christopher Germain (28:54.721)
yeah.

Christopher Germain (29:06.956)
Absolutely our model today, I borrowed from someone downstate, you know, and I’m not shy about it. And so it works.

Brandon Burton (29:11.389)
There you go.

There you go. Well, Christopher, I wanted to ask for those listening who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing there, how you guys are doing things there at the LSCP. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Christopher Germain (29:33.106)
So honestly the easiest way is to find me on LinkedIn. My team jokes a lot that I’m on there more than I am on Facebook and so people can see that. But also you know our website marquette.org so marquette.org has all of our contact information so they can reach out to us directly that way for sure. Yeah I love to chat about this stuff you know I sort of stumbled into this world and like so many of us but I find it fascinating.

Brandon Burton (30:00.551)
That’s perfect. We’ll make sure we get both your LinkedIn account and your website on our show notes for this episode. So we’ll make it easy for listeners to be able to connect with you. But thank you for spending time with us today, sharing your insights, your experience with the listeners here at Chamber Chat podcast. Really appreciate you spending time with us today. I think it was a fun and insightful conversation as well. So thank you.

Christopher Germain (30:14.475)
you

Christopher Germain (30:26.456)
Awesome, thanks for having me Brandon, I appreciate it.

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