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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 46 — What Needs to Happen in Your Community? with Roy Williams
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Roy Williams
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.852 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to Chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:15.926 Brandon Burton
Mm.
00:20.642 Brandon Burton
Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. This is episode 46, and it is my goal of this podcast to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. And our guest today is one of these people that will hopefully spark a lot of those ideas that you can implement at your chamber and explore some of those options. But our guest is Roy Williams from the Oklahoma City Chamber. And Roy became the president and CEO of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber in January of two thousand four after having served as executive vice president of economic development since the mid two thousand since mid two thousand two. Roy's held numerous executive leadership positions in chambers of commerce and e and economic development organizations in Texas, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Additionally, Roy was partner, co founder and president of the Economic Development Group Inc., an international economic development consulting firm with offices in Ohio and Arizona. Roy also serves on the faculty for several professional certification programs, including the United States Chamber Institute for Organization Management and the International Economic Development Council's Economic Development Institute. Roy has a bachelor's degree from Texas Lutheran University and pursued his MBA at Sam Houston State University. As well, he's a graduate of the Institute of Organization Management at South at Southern Methodist University, successfully completed the American Chamber of Commerce Executive Leadership Program at the Center for Creative Leadership in North Carolina, and is a graduate of the Governor's Center for Strategic Leadership. For State Executives Program at Duke University. In 2008, Roy was the recipient of the prestigious Chairman's Award from the Chairman of ACCE Board of Directors for his significant contributions to ACCE and the chamber profession. Roy served as chairman of the board for ACCE from 2012 and 2013. And Roy also recently earned his CCE certification.
02:46.456 Brandon Burton
Dive into a fun and insightful conversation with Roy about what needs to happen in your community as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsor. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It. For all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1. Lowers your credit card processing fees at the chamber, 2. Helps your chamber members be more profitable, and 3. Provides recurring non-dues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit Chamberchatpodcast.com slash C C for credit card. Again, Chamberchatpodcast.com slash C. C C and get swiping with swipe it. All right, Roy, we are back. I'm glad to have you here on the show today. I appreciate you taking some time out to be with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. But please say hello to the audience and if you would, share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know get to know Roy Williams a little bit better.
04:11.558 Roy Williams
Sure. well Brandon, thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this and hello to the audience out there. in in terms of share in terms of sharing something with you, it it one of the most probably unusual things about me is that this is a career I pursued pretty much most of my lifetime. when I was actually a junior in college. At Texas Lutheran University I had the opportunity to do an internship at the Austin Chamber of Commerce in Austin, Texas. And then as a senior in college, I interned with the Texas Department of Commerce. So I knew what my career path was. I knew that economic development, chamber of commerce work, organization management was really my passion. And so about A week after I graduated from college I became the president and CEO of a Chamber of Commerce in West Texas. So I have been on this track my entire career.
05:13.336 Brandon Burton
Wow. That is neat. I know for a lot of people it just kinda happens accidentally.
05:17.87 Roy Williams
Yeah, it does. You you know. But mine was very purposeful.
05:22.966 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. so if you could share with us a little bit about the size and just some background about the greater Oklahoma City Chamber. I know, I mean, it's a a very large chamber. but just if you can give us some background on that, it'll just help give listeners perspective as they hear all these interesting things you have going on there.
05:48.896 Roy Williams
Yeah, we we are a large chamber and it's because of the multitude of programming that is sort of under our umbrella. We're we're probably one of the most unique metro chambers. not because we're so much better than anyone else, but it's because our leadership very strategically created this organization where a lot of entities reside and thus gives us a lot of opportunity to leverage resources. Some of these are, for instance, for forty seven years. We've been running the Convention and Visitor Bureau. the Chambers had a contract with the City of Oklahoma City. So the CVB is actually an arm of the chamber, and the C V B employees are chamber employees. I hire the president of the chamber and so I mean of the CVB. That's kind of unusual. We're the we're the largest metro chamber that does that. We also contract with both our city and our county to do economic development. These are pretty substantial contracts and really leverages public sector funding for very focused and targeted economic development efforts. We also for about 15 years have been running a 10 county regional economic development partnership that has about 45 different economic development organizations in it, all pay to be a part of it. And we market the the central part of Oklahoma as a region, and we've done some pretty interesting programming together as well as developing a lot of technology aids and stuff. we also run a five-year economic development program called Forward Oklahoma City. we're in our 24th year, so we're about to conclude five five-year programs. We're kicking off the sixth one right now. and that gives us a whole lot of resources to do a whole lot of different things and gives us flexibility to do a lot of things. And then finally we're a membership organization. We have about four thousand Corporate members. So when you put kind of all of that together, we have about 75 full-time professional staff. We have about six to eight interns at any one given time. We have about a $20 million annual budget. And as I said, we have about 4,000 members that employ about a quarter of a million people. So we get involved in many, many different areas, a lot of
08:13.024 Roy Williams
on sort of non traditional areas that a chamber gets involved in. but it's because our focus is on building a great community and and not just being a membership organization.
08:26.646 Brandon Burton
Yeah. And I am very impressed with all that you guys take on there at the Oklahoma City Chamber. so what's kind of spurred this discussion today is that that overall question about that's that's led to the development, I think, of a lot of the programs you guys have there. The question being of what needs to happen in your community. The answer is going to be very different for every chamber. every community's so different and And the answers will be different. But in talking with you earlier, Roy, I mean, my eyes were opened, my mind was opened to the possibilities of what a chamber can do and the impact that a chamber can have in its community. So as you go through some of these programs and initiatives you guys have, I just I want to put it out there for the chambers that are listening, these chamber professionals that obviously these things cannot be re replicated by every chamber. you know, we're limited to resources you have to work with and and things like that. But there are aspects of what's being implemented here in Oklahoma City that that can be replicated back at your chamber. And it may s the whole point is to spark the ideas of wow, our chamber can really have an impact in this area and then take it and run with it in however it looks like for your chamber. So Roy Maybe before we get into answering what that question was like for Oklahoma City, I know I I guess it this may be part of that answer, but I know you guys have a lot of community initiative campaigns and things that you focus on. Right. Are are those part of that answer about what needs to happen in your community? And could you elaborate on that?
10:19.85 Roy Williams
Yeah, they they really are. And and this goes way back. our chamber Oklahoma City was a land run city. So in eighteen eighty-nine a gun was fired at noon and at by dark we had a population of about ten thousand people. But within three weeks of that, the forerunner to our organization was founded. the forerunner to the chamber. And it wasn't until a year later that the city was actually incorporated. So we're a year older than the city. And so, you know, we still kinda have that, you know, that institutional knowledge with us because our our our mission in life is to be the voice of the business community, but it's also to be the visionary organization for the region. So that that really broadens what we look at. You know, it's not like a typical organization might be. So back in nineteen ten, believe it or not, and I wasn't here, we the the The Chamber decided they thought it'd be great if Oklahoma City were the capital of Oklahoma, because at that time Guthrie was. So the Chamber ran a statewide marketing campaign to get the citizens of Oklahoma to vote for that, and we won. So we've been running community initiative campaigns and statewide campaigns for a hundred and nine years. And and it and that goes to show that, you know, we take on issues that maybe Oftentimes other organizations would say, Well, that's just not our role. That's not our job. So as a result, we now run all of the school board bond issues, all of the county bond issues, all of the city bond issues, other kinds of community initiatives. We don't run political campaigns, but we run statewide initiatives, et cetera. And Over the last twenty years, we've run twenty different campaigns, all of which have been successful. So there's an expectation that when we get behind something, you know, it is supported and we're successful in doing it. And the Forward Oklahoma City program that I had mentioned earlier is the is the entity that gives us the resources to do that because it costs a lot of money to do that. the last
12:38.978 Roy Williams
Metropolitan Area Projects campaign we ran about seven, eight years ago, we spent a little over two million dollars running that campaign. So it takes a lot of resources. And as people know in their own communities, you know, whenever the city county school is doing a bond issue, you kind of reinvent the process if there's no consistent organization doing it. And we provide that. So we're the consistency here that has just proven. to be a very successful model year in and year out.
13:10.914 Brandon Burton
So and I love this idea of this forward Oklahoma City fund and I see it being so instrumental in being able to allow you that leverage to be able to to do everything that that the chamber's taking on there in Oklahoma City. Can you dive in a little bit deeper about how that forward Oklahoma City fund is set up, how that operates, and just what it means to your organization?
13:36.59 Roy Williams
Sure, and and there's a number of communities who do these. Some do three years, some do five years. I think maybe the five years is a little more common. but you know, and there are professional organizations out there that help communities do this. And you know, it begins with coming up with you know, what's the need? What's the need in the community? you know, and it could be a bunch of things. It could be Everything from, you know, business development, business attraction to public policy, to educational workforce, to talent, you know, other kind of government affairs. It could be, you know, doing initiative campaigns or whatever. But the process that generally gets played out everywhere is, you know, you you sort of put together what a five year strategic plan would look at and what it would address, and then you take it out to the the corporate leadership. while we have, as I said, almost four thousand corporate members, there's only about a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy of them that underwrite this particular campaign. And this is about a twenty million dollar, five-year campaign. So, you know, we get roughly four million dollars a year from these hundred and fifty, hundred and seventy companies to do these very targeted, very focused, very strategic things. So it doesn't compete with the chamber. and and chamber membership, it's it's over and above. It's significantly over and above. So it's not like we're running two parallel organizations. You know, we're running sort of a super organization that really is only gonna be financed through, you know, the significant corporate presence in your community because you're asking them for really big bucks. And the other thing is is by not having it so big, You don't spend a lot of time in organizational maintenance. You know, you don't have to go out and call on these people, you don't have to engage them like you do in a chamber of commerce because they're supporting this program. They're not necessarily supporting the organization. They're supporting these initiatives. And the chamber is the one who puts those initiatives forward. So it it is also a tool that we use to leverage other things.
15:53.57 Roy Williams
Because we already have that capital. So whether we're looking for grants, whether we're looking for partners, whether we're looking for public participation, then we already have the private participation in place. So it's it's it's been just critical to us in terms of giving us the flexibility and the resources to really take on things without having to try to raise money to do them and trying to ask the business community to help underwrite it. They already have.
16:24.16 Brandon Burton
I love the idea of having that flexibility and the ability to leverage the funds that you have there and that fund to to spur some of these other things. So in getting into that, as you ask that question, what needs to happen in your community, what were some of those answers? What are some of those things that have have come up that that you're you know kind of owned took taking ownership of and that are being Funded maybe through the forward Oklahoma City fund, things of that nature.
16:54.776 Roy Williams
Well i i if you look back at our organization further back in history, you know, we we see needs in the community and we address them, but we don't necessarily keep So as a r as an e as a couple examples. One, the chamber actually started our united way. And after it got stood up, we spun it out. we actually founded our arts organization and we started that up and spun it out. We We created our state fair and spun it out. We created our all sports organization and spun it out. We created downtown Oklahoma City and spun it out. So we don't always feel like we have to own everything that we do, but we see a need and the community concurs that there's a need and we're an entity that can convene and have the resources to stand these things up. But then some of the more contemporary things. About four years ago we got very engaged and in a leadership effort in creating an innovation district in Oklahoma City. So the Chamber was the one who put together the funding to engage the Brookings Institute and Bruce Katz and the Project for Public Spaces. And we now have an operational innovation district that's separate from the Chamber. about four years ago we really got connected and better understood The problems we were having locally with regard to our criminal justice system, overcrowding in the jails, stuff like that. And and we had the money through Forward Oklahoma City to hire the very Institute of Justice out of New York. Brought them in, had three consecutive contracts with them. Bottom line, we reduced our jail population by 40%. and now in our next iteration of the MAPS programs and metropolitan area projects. Which we're running that campaign right now. we have an election December the tenth. it will be an extension of a current sales tax, and it will raise nine hundred and eighty million dollars for about sixteen different initiatives, but about a fourth of them, about a quarter of a million dollars, will go toward criminal justice, it will go toward homelessness, it will go toward mental alcohol, drug abuse treatment, it will have diversion facilities.
19:18.584 Roy Williams
to have temporary housing, just a lot of different resources that relate to improving our criminal justice system.
19:27.256 Brandon Burton
Wow. I did everybody hear that? Criminal justice at the chamber. That is that's amazing.
19:30.818 Roy Williams
Yeah.
19:36.638 Roy Williams
It's it's really unique. As I talk to my peers around the country, I have yet to find a Chamber of Commerce who is championed criminal justice. And that's now translated to us doing it on a statewide basis. I'm on three different legislative study committees as it relates to criminal justice and I chair one of So the state has looked at what we've been doing and saying, Hey, we need to learn from what Oklahoma City has done.
20:02.51 Brandon Burton
That's right. No, it's a great example that you guys have set there and and something that can be replicated to some degree in some areas. So
20:10.875 Roy Williams
It it's it it is a model that can be replicated, no doubt about it.
20:15.522 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So you you kinda touched on it when you were going over all these things that that the chamber has kind of initiated and spun off, like the state fair and the arts and and you you mentioned all sports, your all sports campaign. Can you just explain a little bit more about what that is? I think that's very cool.
20:35.148 Roy Williams
Well, the the original initiative was we didn't really have an even though we ran the C V V, we didn't really have an organization or an entity that really focused on trying to bring sporting events here, NCAA events, Big Twelve events, those kinds of things. So we started this organization called All Sports, stood it up. spun it out. And now we're going through a recreation of it and a sort of the next generation of it. And we're in the process of putting together a new organization that will be more broad in its approach. And it won't just focus on collegiate. It will also focus on high school stuff. High school soccer now has gotten to be huge as well as other kinds of multi-state Competitions that, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago didn't exist. but yet they have huge followings, they bring lots of people. So we're looking at a whole lot of other kinds of sporting events that we could potentially bring here that would, you know, enhance our hospitality industry, but also, you know, get us on the radar screen and in ESPN and other kinds of telecasts of some of these sporting events. So, you know, we're we're looking at a lot of different things. We also have the Olympic rings on our river here. Oklahoma City has been designated by the U.S. Olympic Committee as the official canoeing, kayaking, and rowing training center and qualifying center for the Olympics. So that opens up a whole new window with other international Olympic teams as well as collegiate teams that compete in all those areas. because we have flat water and whitewater downtown side by side under a lit river, so we can do things at night as well. So that's why we're kind of reinventing all of this and rethinking what we started, you know, twenty, thirty, forty years ago into well, what's now the contemporary take on all that?
22:51.382 Brandon Burton
Yeah. Now I love how the vision is much bigger than just the city. I mean, you guys are getting on a national stage and even a world stage. with the I mean the Oklahoma City Thunder there and the the Olympic training grounds. I mean, there's so many large stages that you guys are getting in front of that are being driven by the chamber.
23:13.334 Roy Williams
We actually have international regattas in Oklahoma City, you know, and who in their wildest dream twenty years ago would have thought something like that would ever happen?
23:24.404 Brandon Burton
That is amazing. So with this large visioning, when you guys have these discussions about what needs to happen in your community, what do those discussions look like? I mean, how do these ideas get
23:39.502 Roy Williams
Well, you know, they they tend to Yeah, kind of you know, a a typical kind of the the pattern that you we have around here is, you know, somebody has an idea or somebody's been somewhere and they've seen something and and we do inner city visits every year. And we've been doing for fifteen years. So we're always looking out there, you know, w this whole Whitewater thing, this whole rowing stuff. We got that idea from Charlotte because of an inner city visit. And innovation, we got that idea because of what we saw in Philadelphia and St. Louis. So, you know, it's not as though everything we do is original, but it's certainly the way we do it. It is not a copy of somewhere else, it's an idea from somewhere else that we put our twist on that we expand. So, you know, these these things come from someone has an idea and you know, a hundred of the ideas that come to us, maybe we accept one of them. Because everybody's always coming to us because they know we have the resources and we have the capability and capacity to do things, but we can't do everything. We we do have limits on our resources and our time. But you know, it it starts with someone with an idea and then then we go about really trying to understand is this an opportunity or is it just an idea? And and the innovation district was an example of that. So, you know, we brought in the Brookings Institute, which is the premier. international organization to help us dec to decide, you know, is this something we have a shot to do? The same is true with this with the criminal justice. You know, we brought the Vera Institute in because we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know anything about criminal justice, but we went to experts. So we don't really just begin doing something without thorough research. Before we did the Whitewaters stuff, there were four of us who spent a whole week going up and down the East Coast looking at at rowing centers. We went to Harvard, we went to Baltimore, we went to Washington, we looked at a dozen different universities and communities who had boathouses and who had these kind of venues before we decided, is this really something we want to do and can do? And if so, how do we do it?
25:59.244 Roy Williams
So, you know, it's it it's not like we just jump into something and hope we can succeed. We really do a lot of work in preparation before we decide we're even gonna go down that road.
26:09.974 Brandon Burton
Yeah. I love the I you know, being able to get the ideas from these inner city tours and and putting your own twist on it to make it your own. But and that's kind of the purpose of this show too, this podcast is for chambers to be able to hear what other chambers are doing. And not to just totally rip off and duplicate the R and D, but to to be able to put their own twist on it, to be able to take the ideas that can work in their community.
26:18.008 Roy Williams
Right.
26:38.282 Brandon Burton
and make it look the way it needs to for their community. so with that in mind, I mean what is there one action item that you can or piece of advice that you can give to the chamber professionals that are listening that can help them take their chamber up to the next level?
26:57.794 Roy Williams
Well, I you know, and I and I'll I'll I'll address something probably not so much for the organization, but more for the individual, for the for the chamber executive. Okay. And and that is, you know, since I've been in this business for a long time, it it it's changed a whole lot. sorta when I started, you know, they hired you to do things for them. You you were the executive director and here was the stuff they wanted you to do and you went out and debt Today the corporate community, especially in metros like ours, the corporate community is looking at the CEO as a as a CEO and is looking at the CEO to to tell them what do we need to do? You know, if if our pl if our region is gonna be competitive for jobs, for investment, you know, for talent, what do we have to do? Because they don't know. They're running their own corporations. They're so You know, we now as as chamber executives really need to be the ones with the ideas, the ones who convene people who can help, you know, create the ideas and the and the pathway and and really be a leader and really be courageous in doing that, really effectively communicating that, and then being very consistent in it. So I think it's more those kind of qualities as opposed to, you know. Here's an action item. because there's gonna be dozens of opportunities and dozens of action items, but how you approach it, how you lead it, how you communicate it is what is gonna determine whether it's successful or not.
28:41.066 Brandon Burton
I like that distinction between executive director and a CEO and that that transition of how things used to be to how a chamber executive or or CEO is looked at today in really a leadership role and to take that driver's seat.
28:58.402 Roy Williams
Yeah, you know, and and I I speak a lot at at chamber meetings and stuff like that and and you know, and and I tell especially people just getting into the business, you know, w what do you think this is? You know, do you think this is a job or do you think this is a career? Because you approach those two things extremely different. anybody can take a job, but are you really trying to pursue a career? And that means you look at it very differently, you treat it very differently.
29:27.276 Brandon Burton
That's right. So this next and final question I asked everybody that I have on the show and I'm curious to hear your your take, being that you are a a lifelong chamber person who's sought this out. But how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
29:46.904 Roy Williams
Well, i this kind of is a takeoff of w sort of what I was just talking about. You know, I I still see a lot of chambers that are really nothing but membership associations, business association, and and primarily, you know, everything is geared toward the members. all the services and programs are geared to the members, the networking is geared to the members. I think the chambers have to be much more communally community catalysts and community Transformational, meaning, yeah, they need to take care of their members, but the community is critical because if if it's not a great community, you're not gonna have members. You're not gonna have good members. And so, you know, figuring out how do we position ourselves as being critical to the future of our community as opposed to being just an association of members, that that that's that's the future. That's That's how you're gonna stay relevant, and that is by being thought of as being critical to the transforming d the community on a daily basis.
30:57.31 Brandon Burton
I appreciate that. so Roy we'll have some of the highlights that you've talked about today on our show notes page for this episode, which will be found at chamber chatpodcast dot com slash episode forty six. But if there's anyone listening that would like to get in contact with you about the things that you're doing there at the Oakland City Chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?
31:23.266 Roy Williams
y you you can find me on our website, okcchamber dot com, or you can email me at rwilliams at okcchamber dot com. So I'm very visible on our website. y all my contact information is on the website, so you don't have to go to great lengths to search the website to see if you can find me. All o our entire staff is on there with all their contact information. So we're very transparent from that standpoint. and you know, my phone number is four five two nine seven eight nine three nine. but email is what I tend to respond to quicker.
32:08.102 Brandon Burton
All right. We will get that updated on the show notes page as well so people can can connect with you. But Roy, thank you so much for spending time with us today again here on Chamber Chat Podcast. You've brought a lot of value and hopefully sparked a lot of ideas in the minds of the chamber chamber professionals that are listening today. Thank you for that.
32:28.44 Roy Williams
Thank you for the opportunity, Brandon. It's been a pleasure.
32:34.07 Brandon Burton
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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 45 — Step by Step Member Experience with Jonathan Packer
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Jonathan Packer
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.83 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community. And now your host
00:18.37 Brandon Burton
week. He's my dad, Burton. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. This is episode forty-five, and it is my goal of this podcast to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. Today we have Jonathan Packer with us from the Austin Chamber in Texas. And Jonathan is the senior vice president Of customer experience at the Austin Chamber of Commerce, where he leads digital initiatives, marketing and communications, and membership strategies as well as customer success. When he isn't working, you'll find Jonathan shooting hoops with this kid, and he likes to spend as much time as possible in Southeast Asia. Today, Jonathan will talk to us about the step-by-step member experience and kind of how you Make that initial introduction to to building that relationship with your chamber members. And we'll get right into that as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsor. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It for all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1 lowers your credit card processing fees at the chamber, 2, Helps your chamber members be more profitable and three, provides recurring nondues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit Chamberchappodcast.com slash CC for credit card. Again chamberchappodcast dot com slash C C and get swiping with swipe it.
02:18.542 Brandon Burton
All right, Jonathan, we're back. Please take a moment to say hello to the Chamber Chat podcast audience and if you would, share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
02:30.412 Jonathan Packer
Hi everybody. yeah, so I guess I'm at the point where I've been in the chamber in economic development industry for thirteen or fourteen, fifteen years. don't ask me to do math. The you know what what I think's really interesting about my career is that I've served organizations in rural Suburban, military, and metro economies. I've worked on a one-person staff here at the Austin Chamber, our staff's in the forties. I've worked in cities that were inherently positive about their future. I've worked in places where it was more challenging for the chamber to set a positive vision for the city. And so, you know, I I I can't say that happened on purpose, but I I do think I'm grateful for that experience and that you know, I I've seen I've seen a lot of different environments that chambers operate in and I'm really invested in how they can be successful.
03:44.718 Brandon Burton
Well, I think that adds some perspective to you as well. You know, as you're able to take what you've learned from these experiences at different chambers and different types of chambers to be able to kind of bring that experience all together to to create a good experience for your current situation. So can you share with us maybe a little bit more background about the Austin Chamber? I mean, we know Austin is a big city in Texas, but if you could share with us, you know, some more maybe about size, budget, things like that. So people listening can relate to kind of how their chamber sizes up, not to compare, but just to to see the perspective.
04:23.33 Jonathan Packer
Sure. so we are you know, I one one of my jokes is that every chamber can give you a different number about their members depending on how they lie. I think in in our case, and we'll we'll get into this more a little bit, that I I like to use the term customer more than member. But you know, like most chambers, we were founded in the eighteen hundreds. currently If depending on how you count, we're in the two thousands on on members. we also have an economic development fund, like many chambers, and we have a pretty robust set of programs and events. So all told, you know, revenue is over 10 million an annually, split up among a couple of different companies as a technicality. So we have the Austin Chamber, we have the Greater Austin Economic Development Corporation, and we have a five one C three as well.
05:29.386 Brandon Burton
Okay. Well that that helps to give an an understanding of where you guys are coming from and resources you're working with. But so our topic today, I kind of alluded to it as we did the introduction for this episode, but we'll be talking about the membership experience, the the customer experience, if you will, in your terminology. But what are the those top of mind things for you and kind of what you've seen there at the Austin Chamber about kind of developing that customer experience.
06:03.736 Jonathan Packer
So I think to accurately answer that question, I need to go back a couple of years. And and we were at a point that I think a lot of chambers will find familiar where we we were seeing membership churn that our new member sales I wasn't keeping pace with enough to grow the way we wanted to. Uhhuh. we we felt like operationally, even you know invoicing processes and the insights we had about our customers wasn't where we wanted it to be. And we also felt like we had a pretty significant technical deficit in terms of you know CRM, payment gateway technology, marketing software, et cetera. Yeah. And and so, you know, to kind of distill that, I would say that. We've I felt like personally that good ideas were being blocked by our our technology and teams. So what I mean by that is you you you sit in a room and you say, Here's this problem, and somebody on your team with intelligence and creativity says, Why don't we do this? And then everyone realizes that in order to do what is a really good idea, you'd need to spend a lot more work than you than you would hope because of the limiting technology capabilities you had. Yeah.
07:35.34 Brandon Burton
Whatever resources you're working with. Yeah.
07:37.75 Jonathan Packer
Yeah, so that's that that's that's that's a a major blocker in twenty nineteen or t I guess twenty seventeen at the time. you know, if you think about what motivates young talented workforce, i I can guarantee you it's not being blocked by old fashioned technology. And so that to me was it's a it's about more than technology and I guess that's a theme in the work we do.
07:58.094 Brandon Burton
Ha ha.
08:07.64 Jonathan Packer
So so what we did is we is we had we hired a contractor to develop a digital transformation plan. Okay. And this this plan is certainly a technology plan, but and I think I did share it with you, Brandon, it's it's it's also a staffing plan. It's revenue plan. And so you know what I like to say is it's a it's it's a re revenue plan with technology and staffing strategies to get there. And so
08:44.802 Brandon Burton
So maybe before we jump into that, would do you mind sharing what the the big great idea was that sparked the need for being able to have this the technology to catch up to what the need was?
09:00.654 Jonathan Packer
So so I I I don't I don't think it was a a sing single moment. like one great idea that suddenly we couldn't i implement. It was a s series of small to medium so
09:13.566 Brandon Burton
No. Cumul cumulative frustration of not being able to do what you want to do.
09:18.87 Jonathan Packer
Yeah, but there's there's there's some themes, right? And so I'd say two themes that come top of mind really quick is themes around the ease of using technology or maybe more accurately requiring staff to keep certain data sets alive. So a lot of poor software by by not being very usable. prevents people from wanting to use it. So yeah so if keep keeping one data point about your customers is like a depressing task for somebody, there they might not do it. Whereas if the software is easy, then they they are more likely to do it. The second theme would be around automation. So some you know technology helps you scale things that it's hard to scale with people. And And not only that, but if you think about like accounting tasks, for example, the less manual data entry that you have to do, the more the accountant gets to do the things that really motivate them. Uh-huh. So ha ha having in place that automation that makes harder projects more feasible with the limited bandwidth we all have is was a major theme.
10:38.958 Brandon Burton
So I can see some chambers, some chamber professionals thinking automation takes the personal touch out of relating with your customers, your members, your partners. I think that's a good example as far as accounting goes, if you're able to automate an invoice to go out versus spending time to type it out or or however the old process was. what would your argument be as far as how automation actually can strengthen those relationships that you're trying to to build.
11:13.23 Jonathan Packer
Well, I'd I'd say make two points. One is to clarify and then one is to th they're both clarifying points. So th the first is that most automation that we've looked at is to relieve the the kind of non-glorious tasks we all have in an on a daily basis. Certainly accounting's a good example. But things as simple as if you have data on what pages a person was looking at on your website, when it shows up in your CRM as a lead, it's nice to have that automatically flow through as an insight for staff. So you know the types of things that were at our fingertips, but maybe not easily grabbed. I think other things from from my perspective, you know, when I ask for how many leads do we have or A question like how many membership sales came from our website Lee Gen. it's nice that that doesn't require a week-long research project. Yeah. And so and so, you know, really th th these are things that exist outside of the personal touch, and is more on the management business insight side. Yeah. the second thing I'd say is that, and this is where I I think chambers just have to get a little bit shrewd, is Most chambers entry level membership dues are under a thousand dollars. and most are well below a thousand dollars. And if you look at the the strategies that are gonna improve outcomes, whether it's retention or new sales, my belief is that you're always gonna preserve that person to person in touch at the high end of your customer base. So automation and technology are never gonna, you know, sway the relationships of your premium investors like person-to-person touch will. Yeah. But you'll spin your wheels endlessly if you try to take the same strategies and apply them to your base level customer base. And so it's really for me about what what's the shrewdest way to produce better outcomes on multiple fronts. And
13:39.008 Jonathan Packer
At that base level with the smaller dollar amounts, I feel like technology is a vital component.
13:45.164 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So what are some examples of the technologies that you put in place with this transformation plan and implementation? What did that look like for you guys? if you have examples maybe of of some of those technologies that chambers could look at too about integrating at their chamber as you explain it, that would be helpful.
14:07.286 Jonathan Packer
Yeah, yeah. So we we've we operate on a calendar year, so January through December. And in December of twenty seventeen, our board of directors elected to fund the digital transformation plan over two years using reserves. So it truly was an investment by our board. And I'll I'll list the projects in a second, but Something that I felt was very important were two things. Number one is we couldn't sacrifice daily operations. So we're not gonna take a break from running effective sales teams. Yeah. Yeah. Or we're not gonna just be like, you know what, we're just gonna take a hit at the same time as we're using reserves to fund this. So we had to kind of run a project in parallel to normal operations. The the second is that I wasn't gonna sacrifice timeline. So you know, don't sacrifice good for perfect. and so we adopted a pretty aggressive schedule. So we we launched in January of twenty eighteen, we had a new CRM, which we went with Salesforce by June first of twenty eighteen. We also launched a new marketing platform. with an integration to our CRM around the same time. And we launched a new customer portal that we built custom and the integrated with our CRM around the same time. So in the first six months, we completely reset our customer technology stack and managed integrations with our financial system, DocuSign, payment gateways, then a whole host of other things. But it was really important that in the first half of the year we could say that thanks to the board for investing, our sales and marketing teams are now using completely different tools than they were six months ago.
16:19.094 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So that marketing platform, there are a few examples of what that looks like now.
16:27.256 Jonathan Packer
Yeah, so we we ended up and I I gave a presentation on this project at the twenty nineteen ACCE conference. Uh-huh. And and w one thing I was very trying to be very clear about is that what we did, I don't mean to be very prescriptive for everybody else. I know why we chose to use the tools we chose to use. and I do think that in you know, sharing with another chamber, there might be similarities and suggestions that could come with that. But I also know that every chamber's different. And so whether or not we use Salesforce for CRM or HubSpot for marketing doesn't mean that I'm saying I think every chamber needs to do that. so yeah we we did use HubSpot. There's things I really like about it. There's been some challenges. but at the end of the day from a marketing perspective, we had to have better insights and better automation. so that we could be more discreet in our marketing strategy.
17:29.248 Brandon Burton
Okay. That makes sense. I I didn't mean to interrupt you with your your flow you were going through. This is implementation, but gonna jump back to it. So you talk about CRM marketing platform and then the membership portal and then what else?
17:40.526 Jonathan Packer
That's okay.
17:47.116 Jonathan Packer
Yeah, and and you know, one really important thing that might be a question on every chamber's mind is how you handle events. I think events are one of those things that has probably more than anything else caused chambers to use all-in-one technology platforms. And what what we ended up doing is we used Ticket Bud for event registrations, which is a local Austin company. And it's nice to be able to call the CEO cell phone. But there's many other platforms that are are really nice. What we did is we just decided that not only did event registrations create A lot of technical complications on like how you offer membership discounts or whether somebody logs in. But we found that a very minor portion of our membership base was actually logging in to register for events. In other words, they'd rather not get the membership discount than remember how to log in. And and so what we ended up deciding was to just use the honor system. And I know we're not the only chamber that's done that, and it's it's something that we've found very successful. So we did launch a new events platform, but we we took a strategy that was as simple as it could be and didn't require a bunch of complexity on the customer side. we had already had a a modern financial system implemented a few years ago, and our teams had already been using Slack and Asana, which is group communication and project management. so those were already in place. We we did notice that at the end at the end of last year, our Asana and Slack usage rates tripled and quadrupled respectively. So that's a good sign, right? Is that you bring in new tools and you start to hire new teams and they're being used. They start to use the software more.
19:54.476 Jonathan Packer
And then in 2019, our major project was I'd say two major projects. One was stabilizing that very fast-paced implementation. We had a lot of projects we had to do to where something just didn't turn out exactly as we planned. and to build a new website on top of our member portal that we had already built. So we launched that website in July of 2019. So to my point earlier about not wanting to take a long time to do stuff. And in two years, precisely almost after our digital transformation plan was published, we implemented a new CRM, a new marketing platform, about seven or eight integrations and a new website. and one thing I'd like to talk about later, with the right moment, is we've we also completely restructured our marketing and membership teams. And so that's pretty fast paced.
20:49.662 Brandon Burton
It is. In fact, I think that's probably a good time to talk about. I was going to ask the next step. So you have all these implementations. That's a lot of change. And either you're spending a whole lot of time getting current staff up to date on how to use everything. I know any one of those integrations on their own could be overwhelming for some people to to try to adapt and and make that implementation, let alone the whole suite you know that you've in introduced. So How did the staffing alignment work to to make that transition successful?
21:23.918 Jonathan Packer
So yeah, you have to balance progress with being practical. and one I've I've learned so much about change management that I guess that number one thing I've learned is that even if people are 100% enthusiastic about the change, it's still hard. you know, if you j if you just think about the people that are close to you and you know, some people are very visual. Some people need you to explain it to them before you show it to them. Some people go to the 150th next step after you explain one thing to them. Uh-huh. Some people go to the to the the tangential thing when you explain it to them. And so I think, you know, we really had a great attitude as an organization about this change. I think there was You know, th there was moments where we had ch challenging reactions, but for the most part it was it was really positive. but change was still really hard. And so literally every change management strategy that we had, whether it was training or getting stakeholders, took longer than we anticipated. but we also, in terms of building teams through natural attrition, had some opportunities. And so what we did is we essentially took small opportunities when they presented themselves to restructure our team. give you two examples. We we lost our database administrator, and we hired somebody with a job title of business analyst that had a digital technology background. we lost a communications manager and we hired a position called digital strategist. and And our our plan called for a complete realignment of teams, but we took these incremental steps when the opportunities presented themselves to add some capabilities to our team that we didn't have before.
23:37.782 Brandon Burton
Yeah. I I like that. So you're able to kind of replace what you had, but bring some added value along with it or better maybe un understanding of the technologies and and leverage it that way. That's that's really good. as this has all been implemented, what overall change I know it's only been a couple months since everything's been fully in gear, but what can you point to to show success of this transformation.
24:09.656 Jonathan Packer
Yeah, let me let me maybe add some I I I think I have a good answer to that question, but let me add a couple more milestones on the team side. Yes. So in in 2018, with the heavy focus on digital projects, it was basically a a two and then midway through three person team that was implementing this. at about a year ago, we took a big step and we merged our membership. and marketing teams. And so that's new member sales, retention, and then the entire marketing communications team. And we merged that into a customer experience team that I was asked to lead. And so and that that's a really important part of our our plan is to I think we found is many larger chambers might find themselves to be kind of siloed and not because we were strategically not aligned, but because we're very very busy and working on a lot of fronts and that creates natural unintentional silos. and what we wanted to do was be completely aligned on improving the customer experience on on these teams. And so We were fortunate to have a stable sales team, but I had to completely rebuild our retention team that we now call customer success. And so that customer success team formalized itself in January of this year. and so we we let me speak to a little bit to some of the early early success. I I I think in twenty nineteen we've done a really good job of stabilizing operations. so what are the expectations for customer success both in in communicating at renewal time, but also what are their metrics and goals when it's not time to pay an invoice? and and so but we're about a year since all of this started from a staffing perspective, and we do accrual accounting. So
26:20.546 Jonathan Packer
You know, the improvements you make don't always show up until a year later. Yeah. But but we've we've already as the end of October, we've already beaten twenty eighteen retention by two percent. Okay. And so on the whole year. And so I hope that ends up being four or four to five percent over twenty eighteen retention. and so that's kind of the first big milestone. We've also seen a slight shift in or a slight improvement in our digital membership lead generation efforts. So it's it's not enough to, you know, put on my gravestone yet, but but but we've we we've seen improvements there. For me, twenty twenty is the big year. So we're setting some pretty aggressive goals on
27:06.435 Brandon Burton
Yeah.
27:14.36 Jonathan Packer
the fronts that should be impacted the most by improvements to technology and team. And we're optimistic but curious to see how it turns out.
27:22.634 Brandon Burton
So I appreciate that that response. I think those are good benchmarks to look towards and and wish you the best of luck with next year with those ambitious goals. so I know that the old adage is out there that if you've seen one chamber, you've seen one chamber. Yeah, every chamber is very different. But with that in mind, for those that are listening, I can see some people feeling excited. Yeah, with the opportunities of being able to implement a digital transformation and being able to automate some things and implement new technologies to be able to improve systems within the chamber. And I can see another group of people that are resistant, overwhelmed, wouldn't know where to begin. so is there one action item that you can give kind of based on your your background and this experience you've had with this transformation that you can offer to these chambers that can maybe help them take their chamber up to the next level. I I know you can't just jump in and do everything all at once, but but what advice or what action item would you suggest they start with?
28:33.752 Jonathan Packer
Yeah.
28:42.188 Jonathan Packer
Well, I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna give you two. Okay, we'll take they're related. One's a little not as tangible as the other. but so one one thing I've noticed is that in being heads down in this project for the last two years, when I popped my head back up at the conference this summer, I noticed that way more chambers
28:46.99 Brandon Burton
Take it. Well d that's call that a bonus.
29:11.354 Jonathan Packer
were embarking on digital projects than were when I started. So I I feel like when we started this major project, that was kind of the end of the real angst over these all-in-one systems and how it was limiting your ability to improve as an organization. So kind of and and none of the projects looked the same as our project. So I guess and and and we use board reserves, but that's a very you have to be in the right position as an organization with the right leadership to do that. And so I I'd say based on all those factors, find the biggest pain point you can find and solve it would be my first advice. we certainly could have taken a more incremental strategy than we than we took. And while I'm glad we did what we did, there would have been advantages to doing that. So You know, we all do work plans on an annual basis, identify something that's very discrete that is a major pain point, and solve it. Even if it's, you know, not the most comprehensive project you could imagine. the second thing I'd say is that team matters more than technology. you know, we it's and it's not just a generational thing. I think that's a part of it. But I think the future of chambers embracing technology is gonna rely on our ability to hire people that think in a way that technology facilitates helping. and so we were very intentional about hiring different profiles than we had in the past. So I hired several people that had experience working for technology startups. That's certainly a luxury we have being in Austin, which is a a big technology town. But I'd I'd argue that in any community there's gonna be pockets of talent that you haven't thought about before and you should be open to to fr freshening up your your team.
31:23.938 Brandon Burton
That makes perfect sense to me. I love the the first bit of both pieces of advice are great. But the first one, the find the biggest pain point and solve it, that reminded me back to the beginning of of our interview as you talked about having these big ideas at the chamber and then the the frustration that comes that you can't implement these big ideas because the technology isn't there. So that was kind of a trick answer there. They find the biggest pain point and solve it because that starts the snowball effect, I think, of being able to go down the road of implementing these other things that will make things more efficient and be able to better solve those pain points that that are affecting the chamber. But great answer. so you alluded to the future of chambers. So I'm gonna ask you directly as I ask all the guests of this show. Is as we look to the future, how do you see chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?
32:25.592 Jonathan Packer
So as long as I've been in the industry. And I think I've I've probably arrived about the time this was starting to be normative as a frustration, which is there's a lot more competition than there used to be. The things the chamber used to do almost exclusively, it no longer does so exclusively or as exclusively as it used to. you know, people could spin up a meetup in five minutes, right? I think and this tiered dues revenue strategy really came out of that where we saw that people didn't remain members for the reasons they used to. And as an industry we attempted to solve that with more value-based membership offerings. And what I've noticed lately is that that wasn't didn't make all our wildest dreams come true like we thought it would. There's certainly been improvements and there's people that do it really well. And I've I've designed a tiered revenue model and I've in and I've managed one like I do now and tried to make improvements. I think as we're looking to invest in customer experience and and really modernize the way people engage with the chamber and trying to be as holistic as possible in how we define that engagement. And that's why we use customer more than we use member. We we try to not use narrow terminology. but at the end of the day, when I look at our numbers, I have one inescapable conclusion, which is that when we we sell networking and access, it's very challenging to renew it. But when we get people engaged with our mission, whether it's at the committee, board, or other level.
34:32.16 Jonathan Packer
It's they that's very stable investors in the work we do. And so, you know, I I think for me, finding ways to be modern and relevant and creative and serve people's needs with value they can understand and measure is important. But we've got to figure out how to not sacrifice on that core mission that is really the stable foundation of our organizations. And I don't think I have a lot of answers, but I think that's for me the core challenge this industry faces right now. or at least in my current job, the one that I think about the most. and and so yeah, so I I think our sales teams and our retention teams tend to deal with those networking engagement customers very frequently because they're very plentiful. And it's a major source of our churn. And so figuring out a way to reconcile that is very important.
35:35.754 Brandon Burton
And it's not bad. It's just i if it can be seen more as a gateway into the bigger, you know, getting them engaged with the vision and being clear about what that vision is so people can get on board with it. But the the networking and everything, I think that's the gateway to get them involved with the chamber and then show them the bigger picture. So this is what the chamber is all about and come along for the ride with us. But great, great insight. I love that.
36:01.942 Jonathan Packer
I agree. I think it's you know, I've always thought collaboration is very difficult but not very complicated. So the reason I say it's not complicated is because people collaborate when it's in their self interest to do so. Yeah. And so and so think about collaborating with our customers. It's how do you make the mission of the organization relevant to what might be their more transactional needs is is a huge challenge. And so I I agree with what you said and I kind of view retention as a marketing exercise because of that.
36:34.55 Brandon Burton
Yeah, very much so. Well, Jonathan, I think you've shared some great tips. Some obviously the experience you've had with this digital transformation is very insightful for chambers that are maybe just about to embark on it, or maybe those that are in the middle of it to give some ideas that will help with their t trajectory of of what direction they go. But I'm gonna put Yeah, some of this up on our show notes page for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast dot com slash episode forty five. But how can listeners get in contact with you if they have any questions specifically about how you went about this transformation or some of those tools and resources that you're using?
37:17.738 Jonathan Packer
emails great. J Packer. Packer let green bay at Austinchamber dot com.
37:24.43 Brandon Burton
All right. And we'll get that on that show notes page as well. But again, Jonathan, thank you so much for spending time with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I appreciate it and look forward to connecting again in the future.
37:37.282 Jonathan Packer
Likewise, thank you.
37:40.502 Brandon Burton
If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 44 — How Your Chamber Can Add Value to the Marketplace with Libby Spears
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Libby Spears
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.842 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:13.768 Libby Spears
And now you're our host loves to watch his daughter's volleyball games. He's my dad, Brandon Burt.
00:21.166 Brandon Burton
Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. This is Brandon Burton, and it is my goal of this show to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. I'm excited today to have Libby Spears with us. Libby is the founder of Bravo Communications and Consulting, which is a communication consulting venture. That works with professionals and organizations across the world to stand out in a crowded and competitive marketplace. For more than 15 years, she's developed the highest quality communication and leadership topics designed to help her clients communicate and lead with confidence. She owns every stage she's on, from the corporate classroom to international conferences. As an author of three books, Libby has a love for writing and educating. She is gifted at challenging people to get out of their comfort zone and try new things. Libby knows that everyday decisions that can make or break a career or an organization's success come down to the ability to communicate and lead. As a native of Texas, Libby's first paid gig as a speaker came at an early age. At seven years old, she was invited to tell a joke at an in-studio taping of a game show. When she was done, her life changed forever. She got paid and and applause. Years later, Libby taught college in the communication studies departments at the University of North Texas and Texas Christian University. In 2005, she started Bravo CC. Today she focuses her business on three things to educate, liberate, and entertain every person every person she works with. Libby offers keynotes, workshops, coaching, and programs to reach people who get it. But are not sure how to get there. Libby's not just an educator, she's a professed coffee addict. She remembers way too much pop culture trivia from the 70s and 80s. She was a debate nerd in high school. And this is important, she knows every word to the 1980s rap classic, Bust a Move. So Libby's here today to talk to us more specifically about how your chamber can add value to the marketplace.
02:37.602 Brandon Burton
We'll jump right into this conversation as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsor. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It for all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1. Lowers your credit card processing fees at the chamber, 2. Helps your chamber members be more profitable, and three, provides recurring nondues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit chamberchappodcast.com slash CC for credit card. Again chamberchappodcast dot com slash C C and get swiping with swipe it. All right, Libby, we are back. Thank you for being here with us on Chamber Chat Podcast today. I'm excited to have you here. But why don't you take a minute and just say hello to the Chamber Chat Podcast audience? And usually I I also have you share something interesting about yourself, but I think I'll give you an option. You can either share something interesting or you can sing bust a move to us.
04:00.046 Libby Spears
that's a solid four minutes right there. Well, first, thanks for having me. I just love the opportunity to contribute to the conversation that you're having with chamber professionals. I find myself in rooms with chamber people probably 10 to 15 times a year, whether it's at conferences or institute and They're some of my absolute favorite people to work with. And so I just love being able to help you grow your audience and expand the conversation. So I'm not gonna I you you have to you gotta be in the room for a whole full on experience of bust of news. I guess like if I was gonna that that was a pretty long bio of me. I I beyond that, I guess the thing that I always sort of my claim to fame is that I birthed my second daughter naturally and I did it with No drugs. It was certainly not in the plan, but it just ended up happening that way. And I I don't know. I feel like it's sort of a source of pride that I did a whole natural birth thing at the last moment. So it wasn't like I had weeks and months to prepare myself for it. It was an in the moment decision. And I felt like I earned like one million bonus points.
05:29.718 Brandon Burton
Yeah.
05:30.858 Libby Spears
In the mom category for having done that.
05:34.252 Brandon Burton
Right. For whoever's keeping score. Yeah, a million points.
05:37.952 Libby Spears
Someone is, right? Like someone is keeping score, yes, because there better be some sort of like ribbon ceremony at the end of this whole thing. Yeah.
05:46.508 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So I I totally maybe not relate exactly, but my wife has that sense of pride about just we have four kids and our third one, she went into labor on her own, like all the rest were planned and you know, induced and everything. But our third, she went into labor on her own. She's like, At least I know what that feels like, like I can do it. And so I I understand where you're coming from. She may not have earned a million points, but but yeah, that's that's awesome.
06:13.87 Libby Spears
We're in a very exclusive club.
06:17.346 Brandon Burton
That's right. Well, why don't you share with us a little bit more about Bravo C C. Just give a a little bit of background so chambers listening can better understand what all you have to offer and and where you're coming from.
06:30.872 Libby Spears
So I, as you mentioned in the bio, I was teaching college for about a decade. And my intention was from a pretty early age that I would grow up and be a professor the rest of my life. I th I felt like that's what I wanted to do professionally. And so starting this business was really just a stroke of good luck and and good fortune because I had never had an intention of being a business owner, but I I had a great friend who was a marketing director for an architecture firm reach out to me and say, I'm I'm just killing myself to get our principals, which is the equivalent of what a a partner would be in a law firm, to get them into the room to win these contracts that we're bidding on, and they're just doing a crash and burn. And she said, Can you come in and and help them with their public speaking skills so that we can start winning some work? And That's what I did. I mean, that's what I taught. I taught public speaking. I taught business communication, telling, anything really pretty much under the umbrella of communication. At one time or another, I had I had taught that. And so I went in and did a one day workshop with this group of I think there were about five or six principals in the firm. And I remember when it was over with, I got in the car. And I had a Blackberry at the time. And I called, I called my friend up on my Blackberry and I said, Thank you very much. I figured out today what I want to be when I grow up. And I I had no I had no idea that that path would get revealed to me. But I went home and just started doing some research on how do you start a business? Like what does that even look like? And I got a a pretty crazy. crappy $500 website set up for me and ordered some business cards on VistaPrint and had a had a a pretty when I look back on it, I thought it was a cool logo, but I look back on it and I'm like, my God, that's so bad. But I just I put the, you know, the wheels in motion and started
08:37.334 Libby Spears
Back with that original client and ended up working with them for seven years. And along the way, just through primarily referral, I did very little advertising and marketing. I just was getting referrals from that architecture firm and I started building a business little by little. And so fast forward 15 years later, we our team covers a pretty wide footprint, not just geographically, but we have The great fortune of being able to work with clients across a number of business models. So we still work with architects and engineers, we work with healthcare clients, we work in education, school districts, K-12, higher ed, and then we work with quite a few chambers and associations. And the reality is that anybody that is doing work of any kind, if they want to put out a quality product or service, there is going to be a point at which they will have to consider the degree to which their communication skills are either helping them get to where they want to go or holding them back from getting there. And so we just want to hang out with, talk to, and work with clients who understand that Their communication skills are going to impact how they lead and going to impact how successful their organization is.
10:06.264 Brandon Burton
So I love this stressing the communication skills and how important that is. And yet when you started, you had this crappy logo as you said, and you know, the website and but you got it out there. You didn't sit and wait until it was perfect, until the communication in that aspect was perfect, but you acted and then you're able to refine and develop that and and make it better and better as you go. And I think so many people will wait until things are perfect before they act and things will never be perfect. So that That's a great message, great takeaway, I think, for people to to act. Once you have that idea, that that inspiration, just run with it and then things will get figured out. And if you need help with communicating, here's Libby for you. So
10:50.658 Libby Spears
Yeah, I mean, it is one of my so as you work more and more with us, you start to figure out we've got a pretty strong philosophy about the work. And one of the things I just I just did this two days ago, I was with Texas Mutual up in Austin for one of their annual employee conferences and was telling them about this very thing that we're talking about. And that is everything that we do is an iteration. Everything. And if we can adjust our mindset and think about everything is iteration, it releases us from that tendency to want to put out a perfect product. And there is number one, there is no such thing as a perfect product. I think Apple is a fantastic demonstration of that. They want to get their product to market and they will once they get the product into the market, they will then fix and adjust as needed based on what they learn. That's why, you know, when we buy that first new generation of the iPhone, you're gonna have a couple of glitches that they're gonna address with a software update, right? Because they just need to get the product into the marketplace and then they'll learn as they go. And I really like that philosophy that if we just realize everything is an iteration, it'll give us some courage and help us not try to be perfectionists.
12:13.55 Brandon Burton
That's right. Great perspective. So in regards to the chamber world, you just mentioned how Apple, you know, they get into the marketplace and then it's iterations along the way. Well, how can a chamber add value to the marketplace? What what's top of mind for you as far as a chamber adding value to the marketplace?
12:33.752 Libby Spears
Well, but I'm gonna before I answer, I'm I'm gonna put a little disclaimer in front of the answer and say that this is my answer. And I'm not I'm not giving it as a form of job security because ultimately I don't really I as long as you're working with someone who brings great value to to the equation, then work with me, but work with whoever. Because here's my answer. I when I'm in the room with chamber people. The conversation inevitably ends up at Are We Still Relevant? And when I started working with Chambers over 10 years ago, they were still, they were having that conversation then. And so it seems as if this is an ongoing challenge that Chambers continually are having to confront. And some of them are confronting them in Proactive ways. They're trying to get in front of it. And then I find some chambers are very reactive to the changes in the marketplace. So, with all of that being said, my answer is quite simply this. I think that chambers should be positioning themselves as the go-to place for professional development. And here there's really two reasons why. So the first reason is if you're if you're in my world. Every year there is a hot topic. So there is something that we're talking about pretty much across the board, across profession, industry, business model, et cetera. And I go all over, not just the United States, but the world. And there's two things that are happening. Number one is workforce. Everybody has workforce on the mind because the workforce is changing rapidly. We have a census coming up. And we're going to learn even more about what's happened since the last census. And I think that strategically, Chambers should be positioning themselves as the organization in that community that says, we are, we've got you covered. So as the workforce changes, we have resources in place for you to be able to tackle head-on this challenge.
14:43.788 Libby Spears
And then the second reason that I think that chambers should position themselves as the go-to resource for professional development is because I'm finding that no matter the size of the organization, so it could be a small business all the way up to a Fortune 100 business, they are slashing their budgets for for professional development because it is expensive. It's costly. I mean, I my what I do costs money. And so if chambers could say, okay, look. You may not be able to run this program in-house because of the cost, but if you could afford to send two or three people to this program that we're going to run through the chamber, you could you could afford that. And so I feel like if chambers would really tackle that and take it head on and say, we're going to commit to providing the best content, programs, resources, etc., around how do you address workforce development? And then how do you provide meaningful professional development at all levels in your organization? It seems to me like that is a fantastic way to make yourself relevant. And we know consistently, year in and year out, Gallup and Pew, when they're doing their surveys of employees, we know consistently that across the board, no matter the age, that people say that professional development is one of the top indicators of whether or not they are engaged at work. So right, so it just makes sense to me that a chamber would say, let us be the place where you can get this thing called professional development.
16:25.772 Brandon Burton
Yeah, especially as a chamber looks to see what the engagement level is with their membership. That's one of the key ways to be able to engage the members is provide the training, provide the development, and have it be something of value that these members are going to get something for. You know, I love what you said about being proactive versus reactive. just the previous episode I had Rob Bradham from Dalton, Georgia chamber on and we were talking about relevancy of chambers. And one of the things that we addressed is with the you know back with the industrial revolution, it took about a hundred years for that to transpire. We're now with the digital revolution took about 10 years for that change to happen. So the change is just happening faster and faster, which we need to react to, but the more proactive we're able to be and look at a strategic plan for a chamber and be able to be proactive and kind of see where that future, you know, what what it looks like and what direction you want to go, the better chance you have of being able to chart your own future rather than constantly reacting to what the marketplace is saying and what your members are saying and the community saying or complaining about. Cause that that's what it'll end up gut, you know, coming to if you're not being proactive. So I wanted to ask you, you shared a a note with me about chambers thriving. Yeah. What is what does that mean to you for a chamber to thrive versus survive?
17:58.61 Libby Spears
So at Bravo, one of our most requested topics that we go in and work with organizations on is change leadership and change management. And we love to talk about what does it mean to be adaptable in this marketplace? And one of the distinctions that if you were in a workshop setting, for example, and we were talking about change leadership and change management. One of the distinctions that I make early on is that there is a difference between an organization that is simply surviving and an organization that is thriving. And the way that you can figure out which one you're in is to look at evolutionary biologists, right? So evolutionary biologists are interested in understanding why it is that certain animals are able to thrive in their environment. Particularly environments that are very hostile. So one example, you know, in nature would be a hostile environment, would be something where there is extreme weather that's going to happen on a regular basis. And so sort of drawing on that and translating it into our world, we know that the organizations that do three things consistently are the kinds that are thriving in the marketplace. So the first thing is that. They are very courageous in looking at what's no longer working in the organization and letting those things go. So I think you and I, as we were going back and forth through email, the classic example of that in the chamber world is the golf tournament. I think the the other one I hear about too is the ambassador program. So those are the two that I'll, you know, people, particularly like if I'm at institute teaching and we're looking for examples, those will be two things that'll come up. And so the question becomes, I well, I don't know. Do we keep doing the golf tournament? Because you know, these five people really love the golf tournament. And so the question then has to become: what's the measuring stick through which we determine if this thing should stick around? And you know, the the most common way we measure it is just through value and if we're making money.
20:13.166 Libby Spears
So are we making money or are we losing money? a second level of analysis could be are people showing up? That's another way to determine if this thing should stick around. And then the third thing I think you can ask is if they are showing up, is it's the is it the same people showing up every single time? Because if we're not getting new faces in the room, then we're probably not expanding our footprint with this event. And that might be okay. Like the the organization might say, we're okay with that. But it might also be a situation where you say we're not okay with that, because one of our goals in our strategic plan is that we want to grow the number of people that are showing up for our events. And if they're not showing up, then that's a moment where you have to decide, do we hang on to this thing or do we let it go? And then the second thing that we would look for in an organization that's thriving is are they introducing new things into the organization that are directly responding to what's happening in the marketplace? So is is, you know, and workforce is a great example of this. So I had someone in one of my institute classes this summer in Athens who she had come from a stay at home mom role. She decided to get back into the workplace. And so she entered back into the workplace. And as she was looking around in her community, she realized that there were so many women. Who had chosen to stay at home with their kids. They had college degrees. They had some career experience early on, you know, in their career life, and they wanted to go back to work. But many of them were telling her they were they were overwhelmed by the prospect of re entering the workforce. They weren't quite sure how to do it because they had been gone for so long. And this is being felt Beyond her community. There's great academic research on this. So it's not, this was not an anomaly that she had stumbled upon. Like you can find this all over the United States. And that is a demographic of educated women who left the workforce to raise their children who want to re-enter the workforce. And so she just went out and she started drumming up support, finding some people within the chamber who would sponsor the creation of a program.
22:32.098 Libby Spears
Where they would bring these women in and they would teach them how to write a resume, how to do a great interview, how to get their LinkedIn profile up. She hi she got volunteers from organizations within the chamber to come in and do mock interviews. Fast forward, I think the program's been in place two or three years now. Now she has a waiting list for the women to participate in the program. as well as a waiting list for people who want to come in and do the mock interviews because they want the first go. They want to see the women in this program first so they can snatch them up before they get out of the program. And so it's become this huge win-win. They are making great money from it from the sponsorships that they've been able to to bring in. And that's the kind of thing that that when I Because I have constant outsider status, right? And that's one of the things I love the most about my job is that 99% of the time I'm walking in as an outsider. And what that means as an outsider is that I get to see things that sometimes people can't see because they're too close to it. They're so they're so in it that they don't see it. So what we get to do is come in and and see some of these things like she was able to notice. And we can help them dream up the possibilities of new ways of doing, new ways of being, new ways of believing, etc. And so that's the third thing we look for. So number one, are you letting go of things that no longer serve the mission or vision of the organization? Number two, are you creating new things that are in direct response to what's happening in the marketplace right now? And then number three, are you taking that and translating it at a cultural level? into the organization in terms of this is who we are now. This is how we talk about ourselves. This is how we talk about the work that we do. And so it's like a fundamental shift in the way we talk about who we are as an organization. And those are the kinds of organizations that I am constantly on the lookout for because I want to work with them, but also because I want to learn from them. And when I learn from them, I can take that
24:55.82 Libby Spears
And I can pass that on to other organizations who might benefit from it as well.
25:01.23 Brandon Burton
I love the idea of being the outsider looking in, being able to see those things. And if you think about a basketball coach or a golf coach, it's like a Tiger Woods, right? So he's probably one of the greatest golfers ever, yet he has a coach. And what is the coach, you know, Tiger Woods can beat his coach in golf. So what does the coach have to offer? The coach has to offer of outside perspective. He's able to say, here's what your swing looks like, here's you know, all those fundamentals. that he's able to help adjust and tweak his performance to make him the best that he can be. So that's so important to have that outside perspective. So again, for chambers that want to thrive, gotta be courageous and being able to let go of things that are not working, introduce new ideas that are directly related and relevant in the marketplace, and then translate that into a cultural shift, a cultural way of being in your organization. great advice there. I love that that little summary there of of how to thrive in a chamber. do you have any other tips about things that that chambers can do as far as adding value in the marketplace? Anything else come to mind?
26:07.469 Libby Spears
Yeah.
26:19.47 Libby Spears
Well I you know, I think I think there are a number of ways that you can add value as long as you understand your marketplace. Like I I think that's where sometimes it can feel frustrating for us as a team. when we know more about the client's marketplace than they know about their marketplace. And and one of the things that I one of the things I say, and I I tr I'm a little bit cheeky and I I try to I always try to be cheeky but in a way that isn't too you know confrontational or too aggressive. But but one of the things that I I say all the time to clients is Everything I have access to in terms of information is accessible to you too. I don't have access to a secret society of information. The difference between me and maybe someone else is that I keep my eyes and ears open all the time. And I am I am forever engaged in ongoing conversations. I'm curious. I'm asking hard questions. I'm showing up. I'm participating in a way. That because of that, I'm getting access to a lot of things that otherwise I wouldn't have access to. So I think, in a in a broad sense, to answer your question, when you say what can chambers do to stay relevant in the marketplace, I think my big broad answer would be you have to show up. And you have to show up in a way that you are paying attention and you're contributing. And you're adding value. So if you don't mind, can I use an example to try to help answer that? Yes. So I had a I had a chamber. I'd spoken at this conference a few years back, and it was a just a little keynote on branding. It was just a really short 60-minute talk on branding. And one of the things that I say in that talk is that you can't develop a brand if you're trying to be all things to all people.
28:07.977 Brandon Burton
Yes, absolutely.
28:30.318 Libby Spears
And if there is one thing that I see that chambers really hold themselves back, it is trying to be all things to all people. And so they they get really overwhelmed by we've got to provide value for the person who sells candles to the corporate CEO who's running a multi-billion dollar company. And they can't figure out how to really focus in on who is our audience. So I had a chamber reach out to me after I did that talk and they said, We want you to come in and work with us on a rebrand, which is really not what we do. We don't really do that at Bravo. And I said, No, I don't, I don't, I don't want to do that. I don't, that's not really what we do. And and she said, But I want you to do it. And I said, I'm really busy and I've got a lot on my calendar. I can't do that. She said, We'll wait. And I said, Okay.
29:24.278 Brandon Burton
You should have just sent her your first logo and said, Are you sure? No, I'm just kidding.
29:28.622 Libby Spears
And so we ended up putting a package together for them and and we do consult, like we we do consulting all the time. I mean, that is a big part of the the what we do at Bravo. but I didn't I'll I'll really be honest. We I didn't want to do it because I didn't trust that they would actually do what I told them to do. Okay. And so I ended up saying yes and I came in and We did, it was probably a four to five month project, start to finish. And as I was trying to understand the impetus for this, why were they so like invested in making sure this happened? She revealed to me that where they lived, the community in which their organization was, there was going to be a big tech kind of think tank that was coming into town to set up. And they were, they were trying to position. this where this was as kind of a a a hub for tech development. And they found out after the fact that in leading up to the the completion of this, they had invited community stakeholders to the table to help them plan and figure out what would be the best way to get into this community and start doing big things. And the chamber was not given a seat at the table.
30:54.548 Libby Spears
Right. And they were devastated. They were they were devastated. I think they were a little humiliated. And they were asking themselves, why were we not top of mind? Like, why would we not be one of the first people to be invited to the table? And so I think because of that, they realized we have got to rebrand and and really change the way people think of who we are. And so that's essentially what we did. And they they actually came a long way. And it ended up being a great experience and loved working with them and was really pleased with their willingness to do some things that I asked them to do. And that they came up with some of their own ideas too. I'm not just there to dispense, I'm there to facilitate too. so I use that as a sort of probably long answer to a short question, and that is. If you're not showing up in the marketplace and if you're not aware of what things are happening and not just what's happening today, but what's happening tomorrow and next week and six months and a year and whatever down the line, then you're going to really struggle figuring out how to be relevant. So so I know there's a not as much specificity to that answer as maybe you would like, but I don't really think we can answer that question unless we have a really solid understanding of. the community and the marketplace in which that chamber is doing their thing, we've got to have a better understanding of that. And from that, we can start to say, okay, let's try a couple of things that would be a direct response to what we've learned.
32:32.674 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So Libby, as we start wrapping things up here, I'd I wanted to ask if there's one action item you can think of that you'd be willing to share with chamber professionals that they can do to help level their game up at their chamber and kind of take them up to the next level.
32:51.586 Libby Spears
Yes, so this would be the homework assignment. The homework assignment for me is, and this is a perfect extension into that example that I just gave you, I no matter what kind of organization you are, in this case we're talking specifically about chambers, you need to be able to answer what do we bring to the table? And so when I teach this in the classroom or from the stage. There's three things that should go into that answer. And so for if you're listening and you're thinking, I want to do something with this, what I would tell you to do is to order a couple of pizzas, grab some soda, and get your staff and some of your bored people to the table and work through the following three things. You need to be able to answer who are we? What do we do? And why does it matter? And there's There when you do that, you're gonna start figuring some things out that relate specifically to what we've talked about in this conversation today. When you can answer who we are, what we do, and why it matters, you start to understand where you are relevant and what you have to offer and what value you bring. And then from there, there's some things that you can do beyond that. But that's the first place that I would tell you to start.
34:10.346 Brandon Burton
I love it. Who are we? What do we do? And why does it matter? Yeah. so the last question I ask everyone that I have on the show is as we look to the future, how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?
34:26.83 Libby Spears
I think I've learned so much from the professionals that I've worked with that are chamber professionals. And I'm always so interested in hearing some of the novel and interesting ways that they have not just survived but thrived. And I think for me, just surveying all of the different experiences that I've had, I would I would probably reference Plano Chamber of Commerce as the one that I think has done a great job of positioning themselves to thrive in the future. And I think you can, no matter the community that you're in, I think a lot of what they've done well you could extend to almost every chamber. And that is, I'm so impressed with how they have partnered with the community. So they have gone out and they have created strategic partnerships with other organizations in their community in ways that I think have kept them top of mind. And so the best example of that is a couple of years back before their CEO Jamie Jolly left, she pursued a partnership with a bank there in that community in order to find new space for the chamber. And it was a it was a partnership. The bank took on probably the majority of the actual financial cost of that partnership, but they understood that it would be a win win. And the win was that the space in which the chamber now resides is actually the second floor of one of their bank locations. And that space is not only a space to house the chamber team. But they also have shared space. So they have co-working space, they have conference space, they have a larger space for events. And that space is available not just to the chamber, but it's available to the bank as well. And so what that means now is that there's a lot of people walking in and out the door of that bank who would have never walked in that door otherwise. And for me, I think that that's a great illustration of how chambers should be thinking in the future.
36:45.054 Libby Spears
I think partnering is going to be very important to Chambers livelihood in the future, whether it's partnering with your school district, partnering with the community college, the university, partnering with your city, whoever it is, I think that is going to be critical to the livelihood of Chambers in the future.
37:08.226 Brandon Burton
Great job. A great great answer and great example with the Plano Chamber. well Libby, I I wanted to thank you so much for spending time with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. It's been a pleasure having you and you've you've brought a lot of great information for Chambers to ponder on and to to figure out what they can do to be more relevant and to add value to the marketplace in their community. So I appreciate that. We're going to have a show notes page up for this episode at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode 44. So if anyone wants to dive in a little bit deeper, maybe see some of the highlights of what you talked about in this episode, they can find it there. But also what's a good way for listeners to connect with you if they wanted to either hire you to to work with you directly or if they had questions about what you talked about in this episode, how can they reach out to you?
38:05.666 Libby Spears
The best way to reach out to me is just simply to visit our website. So it's just BravoCC.com. So that's C communication, C Consulting, BravoCC.com. And there's a couple of ways that you can get to contact. So there's a contact form on there if you want more information. You can also opt in and that way you'll get communication from us weekly, just in terms of what we're doing and where we're hanging out and what we're talking about and thinking about. That would be the the easiest way. And then of course our social media information is on our webpage homepage as well if you wanna come hang out with us on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.
38:47.288 Brandon Burton
That's perfect. We'll we'll get your website on the show notes as well and point them there for the contact, the opt-ins and the social media connections. So we will get that up there. Again, thank you so much and look forward to this value that you are delivering to Chambers. Thanks a lot.
39:07.19 Brandon Burton
If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamberchat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 43 — Chamber Relevance into the Future with Rob Bradham
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Rob Bradham
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.948 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:15.246 Brandon Burton
My dad, Brandon Burton. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. It is my goal of this show to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. what you just heard was my son, Brody, he's my 13-year-old son, just did that introduction for this episode. And that's something new for the podcast that I'm gonna. start rolling out as I have four kids and we'll take turns having them do a a a brief introduction, sharing a fun fact about me, and then that way you guys as an audience can get to know me a little bit better as we develop this this program and this relationship. I'm excited today to have Rob Bradham with us from the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. Brad serves as the Dalton Chambers president and CEO, where he oversees all aspects of the chamber's work. Rob believes that chambers of commerce are community builders. Local chambers have a unique ability to serve as catalysts for economic growth, a convening point for important community conversations, and a champion for stronger communities. It is with this philosophy that That the chamber launched Believe Greater Dalton in twenty seventeen. Believe Greater Dalton is a is a five year strategic plan for Dalton in Whitfield County aimed at addressing six of the community's most pressing needs, which are community pride, downtown development, economic development, educational outcomes, entrepreneurial growth, and housing. Prior to joining the Dalton Chamber in November of 2015, Rob worked as Vice President of Public Strategies at the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce. There he was responsible for all advocacy efforts, including lobbying state and local government officials, as well as overseeing the Young Professional Association of Chattanooga and the Chamber's workforce development, public education, and leadership programs. During his time at the Chattanooga Chamber,
02:32.63 Brandon Burton
He was privileged to be a part of the team that launched Thrive 2055, which is now the Thrive Regional Partnership, a regional visioning and planning effort for a 16 county area in southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, and Northeast Alabama. Rob has 20 years of governmental and public relations experience, 14 years of experience in trade association management, and 10 years of experience working directly with local chambers of commerce. Rob has lobbied for chambers, universities, hospital systems, school systems, medical practices, developers, manufacturers, transit agencies, contractors, alcohol distributors, and many trade associations in three different states. Rob holds a bachelor's in history and a minor in political science from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. We're excited to talk more specifically about the relevance of chambers going into the future. And we'll dive right into this conversation as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsor for today. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It for all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1.2 Helps your chamber members be more profitable, and three, provides recurring nondues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit chamberchappodcast.com slash CC for credit card. Again chamberchappodcast.com slash C C and get swiping with swipe it.
04:29.23 Brandon Burton
All right, Rob, we are back. glad to have you on the show today. Can you take just a moment and say hello to the chamber chat audience and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better?
04:42.766 Rob Bradham
Well hello everyone and it's my pleasure to be here. Brandon, I I appreciate the invitation to to join you today. tell you a couple of interesting facts about myself. I I grew up at the beach and I was the absolute epitome of a beach bum when I was growing up. and and I'm I'm an absolute geeky nerd today. So I don't know how those two things combine to e i into each other and But anyway, I get called a geek all the time.
05:14.158 Brandon Burton
Do you still get a chance to get to the beach fairly often?
05:19.442 Rob Bradham
not as often as I used to. Dalton is about six hours away from the nearest beach. so I don't get a chance to go surfing or anything like that like I used to do when I lived there. but still like to go maybe maybe once a year is about all all the opportunity we get.
05:38.104 Brandon Burton
Yep. Well, share with us if you would a little bit more about the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce. Maybe a little bit about the size, location, you know, just so we can all relate a little bit better to the perspective you're coming from from your chamber.
05:52.598 Rob Bradham
Absolutely. So we represent the city of Dalton, Georgia, which is in the northwest corner of the state of Georgia. Dalton is the county seat of Whitfield County. population for the entire county, which is our service area, is a hundred and five thousand people. most people know of Dalton, Georgia because we are the car carpet capital of the world. modern day tufted carpet was invented here in Dalton. The manufacture of that product is still centered around here. We're the third largest manufacturing community in Georgia. And we have three major headquarters operations in the floor covering industry, two of them located here in the city of Dalton, one about 20 miles south of us. so floor covering is our dominant industry here and and we manufacture. floor covering as well as house the headquarter operations for the three major players in that industry.
06:52.928 Brandon Burton
Well that is a fun, interesting fact about Dalton.
06:56.076 Rob Bradham
Yeah, absolutely. And just size of the chamber, we actually just finished a membership drive and prior to the membership drive we were right at seven hundred and fifty members. now we're at one thousand one hundred and eighty-five, so we were very successful with that. as far as budget is concerned, if you take chamber and our five year strategic plan that you mentioned, which is called Believe Greater Dalton. Those two together come up just shy of a million dollars a year.
07:28.268 Brandon Burton
Okay. Good deal. so as I mentioned in the in the introduction here, our topic for conversation today is around chamber relevance going into the future. And in each episode of the podcast, I always end the episode by asking each guest what their outlook looks like for the the future of chambers, just to get everybody's taste, you know, going forward, what how do they see it? So this whole episode is going to be more focused around that topic because I I think that's a a topic that is top of mind for chambers all over the country as they try to stay relevant, as they try to provide value and really try to find where their place is in their community. So I look forward to to what you have to share with us today, Rob. but what's top of mind to you when you think of chamber relevance going into the future?
08:25.346 Rob Bradham
Well, think our industry is undergoing a a fair amount of change. we're in the middle of a generational shift in the workforce and the what what those generations want out of life is, you know, fairly different, particularly when you look at the the difference between millennials and and the folks who are on the verge of retirement today. And I think that dynamic poses a a a real challenge for us in the chamber industry. And you you said you like to ask people about what their outlook for the industry is is going into the future. And for me, I I think chambers are gonna have to adapt to a new reality. And the ones that will continue to be successful will will make that transition in in the near term and and I I have a great deal of concern about chambers in this country that that either don't see that generational shift happening or or aren't equipped to react to it. And obviously my thoughts about relevance for chambers going into the future is is based on largely on that concept of of the tremendous transition that's happening in the workplace right now because of generational shift.
09:47.148 Brandon Burton
So as you talk about that generational shift, it it brought to mind something that I maybe a a point of perspective that I had heard a couple of weeks ago was that the industrial revolution took about a hundred years, you know, for for things to change in the world, where the technology revolution took about 10 years. So as we look at these generational shifts, people used to have a lot of time to get used to adjusting. to to how the world is. And now things are just so fast that that generational shift, the these newer business owners, these newer entrepreneurs, people coming out of college right now, their thinking, their way of thinking about business is so different than somebody who's been in it for 30 or 40 years. So being able to bridge that gap, I think, is super important. What are some of those areas of focus for you to to stay relevant and where you see the the most bang for your buck, if you will, as far as spending your time to stay relevant.
10:51.927 Rob Bradham
So the the main thing that our chamber focuses on to to maintain relevancy in the community is being at the tip of the spear of solving our community's problems. you know, I I think too oftentimes chambers can get what I call a country club mentality where we're you get focused on events and networking opportunities and things like that for our members. And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. You know, our chamber does those things too. they're they're important. we certainly have members that that join the chamber for that purpose. And I'm not so I'm not knocking that. I think that's an important aspect of what a chamber of commerce and a local community needs to do. But I think the the the real piece of the puzzle, particularly as we move forward with this generational shift, is you know, what are you doing to solve your community's most intractable problems. you know, I hear a lot of talk in the industry about how we as a membership organization engage millennials that typically, you know, don't don't want to join just for the sake of joining something. there there needs to be a purpose for them and and in a lot of cases the purpose isn't going to be networking or coming to an event. You know, if you're out there solving your community's most intractable issues, that's a purpose. And millennials are more likely to engage in in a purposeful activity like that than they are, you know, coming to a networking function or coming to an event. you know, for us here locally, I've been here at this chamber now, it'll be four years next week and November eighth.
12:42.178 Brandon Burton
Congratulations. Yeah.
12:43.68 Rob Bradham
thank you. I appreciate that. also happens to be my birthday. but I spent the first three months I was here, you know, I was moving to a new community, didn't know anybody. All I knew about Dalton George is that we manufactured carpet here. and so I really wanted to get a gauge on the community, you know, what what what's going on in the community, what what's the history of the community? how do people perceive the chamber? What do people expect of me as the new president CEO of of this chamber? And I had roughly a hundred meetings about that topic in a three month time span. And you know, it got to be sort of repetitive, to be frank. I kept hearing the same things over and over and over again. And what I what I heard most of all, and and just to give your listeners some history, You know, the times times up until the last recession here in Dalton were were really, really good. we had a housing boom. Obviously we're manufacturing floor covering products here. So when people are building houses, they're buying floor covering. So the economy was really good here locally prior to the recession. Two percent unemployment. you know, workforce was a big issue, which I know it is now in a lot of areas in the country. and then We also had a housing recession that followed that housing boom and nobody was buying floor covering. So we went from two percent unemployment in 2004, 2005 to 14.4% unemployment in 2009. And the r the recession was deep here. It took a heavy emotional toll on this community. And then again in late twenty fifteen when I started, we still had s our unemployment rate was above seven percent. So we hadn't gotten back to normal yet. But there was the light at the end of the tunnel. And what I heard most most of all from lots of different people is, gosh, who's got a plan for for for the direction of our community going forward? And by my way of thinking, who is better positioned in most communities than the Chamber of Commerce to lead that effort? you know, i is government best positioned to do that? Maybe.
15:06.102 Rob Bradham
are private businesses best equipped to do that? Maybe, probably not. but but chambers of commerce stand in the middle. We're conveners. we can get people to come to a come come sit around a table and talk about common goals and objectives and create partnerships with other organizations in the community. And so that's what we did. and we created our five year strategic plan for our community with with input. Not just from the business community, but from our local governments, from nonprofits in the community, from civic leaders, all contributed to coming up with our five-year strategic plan, which we call believe Greater Dalton. And we're two years into executing that plan. But because we took so much input on the front end, we did surveys, we did focus groups, we did all kinds of stuff, data collection, quantitative and qualitative. You know, the buy-in, the buy-in from the community was built in on the front end. We haven't had to worry about going and selling what we're trying to do. And you know, our six strategies are focused on the six most important things that this community needs to address to be successful moving forward. That's that's created relevancy for our chamber in this community because we are we are given credit, even credit we don't even deserve. for being out front and leading the community forward. We've also been able to engage millennials in what we're doing because again, it's purposeful work. We we get millennials to come around the table and say, this is making a difference in my community and I want to be a part of it.
16:51.308 Brandon Burton
Very good. So as you started that convening process for this particular issue you had, you're looking at employment was kind of the the number one issue is is what I gather that you're trying to to tackle and improve. And with that there's the ripple effects throughout the community, of course. But as you went about that convening process, what did that look like? I mean, who did you reach out to first? what direction did that go for you?
17:20.46 Rob Bradham
Well, I I I I guess it was maybe January, February twenty sixteen after I'd finished all these meetings and had a meeting with my board chairman at the time and and I said, Look, I've I've finished all these meetings and here's what I'm hearing and the biggest question I'm being asked is, you know, what's the plan for our community going forward? And his name's Chuck and I t I said, Chuck, I think that the chamber is the is the appropriate organization to take this task and and get it done. And I was able to convince Chuck and then Chuck and I together went about the process of of convincing our board that we should do this. Of course we were having conversations with our elected official our elected officials, our mayor and chairman of county commission and city council members and county commissioners and of course building buy-in from From our membership base as well. That process of building the buy-in and getting consensus from all of those entities, other nonprofits in there too, took us about three months. And so really from the time Chuck and I had that first conversation in early 2016, it was really August or September of that year before we launched. You know, it is it was about a six month process of sort of lining it up and getting everybody on board just with going through the process, just to start the process. you know, and and and we frankly, you know, I I said we have our budget is just under a million dollars a year. we're lucky to be financially healthy, but you know, hiring the consultants and doing all the work that it was gonna take to actually do the process was We we budgeted a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to do that. And that's a pretty big risk for an organization that has an annual budget of a million dollars. So, you know, from the board's perspective, you know, there there was a a fair amount of concern about taking that risk and what if it doesn't pay off and you know, we we might find ourselves in a big hole. So we had to deal deal with that at the board level too. it was not an easy thing to do.
19:47.414 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So in this example that you've you've been talking about, this is where you have a an obvious issue that you're trying to tackle. And in doing that, you see the chambers being the answer to be able to be relevant in providing that answer, providing a solution. what kind of advice could you give to a chamber that's in a community where things seem to be pretty good? Maybe Dalton you know, before the recession. how does a chamber in that kind of a situation go about staying relevant?
20:25.762 Rob Bradham
You know, if you're not if you're not moving forward, you're falling behind. would be my advice to to communities like that. you know We, Dalton, Georgia, are competing with every other community in our region for talent. We're competing with every other region really in the country, every other community in country for jobs. we're competing for, you know, all kinds of different things. And, you know, the communities that are that are have a strategic focus on making themselves better, even if they're already a great community, are the ones that are going to be successful. And you know, I would I would say to the communities that are out there resting on their laurels laurels thinking that they're they're just great and everything's moving fine, you know, we're coming for ya. And you know, hey, and I'll t I'll tell you what, if you if if if you'd come to Dalton in in two thousand three or two thousand four and said, Hey, we need to do this five year strategic plan they said, No, we're too busy making money. we don't need to focus on that stuff and and then look what happened here during the recession. You go from two percent unemployment to fourteen point four percent unemployment in the span of four years. And of course I wasn't here in two thousand nine, but I bet if I'd gone to those same folks in two thousand nine and said, You want to plan now? The answer would have been absolutely.
21:55.416 Brandon Burton
That's right. So you had mentioned you're about two years into the strategic plan and this this way of of kind of turning the ship. what kind of results are you seeing? what kind of feedback are you are you receiving? I I know it's still kind of early on in this in the strategic plan, but what what kind of positive notes are you seeing that things are working?
22:21.654 Rob Bradham
well let me let me talk about the six things we're focused on first and then I'll sort of run through how how how we're doing against our goals on those six things. So th the first focus for us is education. you know, that that's important for every community. It's especially important for us for reasons I'll talk about in a minute. because, you know, families when they're thinking about where they want to live, if they've got kids like you and I do. You know, the first question is where are my kids gonna go to school? And ev every every other question is based on the answer to that one. So if you can't convince a family that their kids can get a good education in your community, then y you're not gonna be successful. the second one for us is serious focus on housing. We have a terrible shortage of of sort of middle income housing in this community, and that's both multifamily and single family. you know, we're we're very fortunate to have an industry based here that most communities our size don't don't have that indust industrial base that we have plus the headquarter operations that we have.
23:39.662 Rob Bradham
Two Fortune five companies headquartered probably would be just outside that in a community of a hundred thousand people. That's just odd. We import thirty thousand workers a day. And it's not because, you know, they don't want to live in our community or you know, that they find the quality of life to be higher somewhere else. It's because we just have a severe lack of housing. We just don't have place for them to live. so these folks are living somewhere else and commuting here for work. they're spending their money in an in another community. they're they're you know going to church, they're coast coaching baseball in another community, they're engaged civically in another community, they're paying taxes in another community. there's a whole host of negative consequences. we were going through the strategic planning phase, we discovered that sixty two percent of the people who earn forty thousand dollars or more at a job in Whitfield County, live somewhere else. So th I mean, th think about that. I hope your listeners will go back and listen to that stat again. It's it's it's just So what we discovered is our middle income and higher income workforce are living somewhere else. housing is the biggest, biggest issue that we're dealing with that that causes them to live somewhere else. you know, today we we talked about generational shift. I'm 43 people my age and younger, which would be Xers and millennials, that are in the workforce today, they expect downtown, wherever that is,
25:23.352 Rob Bradham
For us, it's downtown Dalton to be the center of the community. It's where the community gathers, it's where the important events in the community happen. you know, and and just to be frank, three years ago downtown Dalton was dead. You know, people came to work eight o'clock in the morning and you know, they did their work thing and then at five thirty you could literally the joke was you could walk down the middle of Hamilton Street, which is Main Street, Dalton, Georgia, and and not see a car. that was true statement three years ago. So establishing downtown Dalton as a destination district has been one of our goals and is probably the one we've had the most success on. we had a vacant piece of property. our building is on Main is on Hamilton Street, which is our main street. We had a vacant piece of property directly across the street from the chamber. And it's a beautiful beautiful story about a park that we have now in our our downtown. A young professional in our community decided that vacant space across the street from the chamber building, which is on Hamilton Street, our our main street, should become the center of of downtown Dalton. She went out and got a twenty thousand dollar grant to animate that vacant lot. and we were able to leverage that twenty thousand dollars into a million dollar donation from a private individual to create. a performing arts park in the center of our downtown. Wow. And you know, so so during the summer we have a Friday night concert series and we've been doing it two two years now. We we will have a thousand people on a Friday night come to their downtown to listen to music. And you know, you can't you can't even go out to eat in downtown Dalton anymore 'cause those thousand people are filling up all the restaurants.
27:20.244 Brandon Burton
And they're gonna have to look both ways before they cross the street. So that's right.
27:24.046 Rob Bradham
So r re recently we've started getting complaints about people having trouble finding a parking space when they come downtown and you know, I I'll take that complaint. Yeah.
27:37.122 Brandon Burton
Yeah. It's a good problem to have.
27:40.04 Rob Bradham
Absolutely. we've seen probably in the time since the park's been open, which is two years, we probably had half a dozen restaurants open up in our downtown. And and previously we had two. So we've gone from two to probably eight good food options downtown. So the park's had a tremendous impact on our downtown. So we're very proud of that. obviously we're focused on economic development. I think most every community does something in that space. you know, Dalton is a is a community that was built on entrepreneurship in the floor covering industry. And we found during the recession that we were doing absolutely nothing to support entrepreneurs in the community. So we created actually last year, a a physical space for entrepreneurs in our downtown. It's called the Dalton Innovation Accelerator. we actually did our first Shark Tank style pitch competition last year as well. the winner of that what's that?
28:50.996 Brandon Burton
I I just said nice, that's exciting. Everybody loves Shark Tank. Yeah.
28:55.284 Rob Bradham
well, a great story to tell. The winner of that show of of our local pitch competition was a twelve-year-old kid named Trip Phillips. And his product is a water-soluble glue for Lego style building blocks. so the glue is strong enough to hold your Lego creation together, but if you want to take it apart, you just dip it in hot water and the glue dissolves and you can take it apart. He ended up going on Shark Tank and getting an investment from Mr. Wonderful. So we're pretty proud of Trip.
29:30.968 Brandon Burton
That's awesome. Kevin O'Leary. Everybody loves Mr. Wonderful. That's awesome.
29:38.506 Rob Bradham
And and the final thing we're we're focused on really is community pride. You know, coming out of the recession, we had a a a real problem with our own internal self image. we've created a branding campaign that we'll launch probably the beginning of the year, so early 2020, to address that. We're putting the finishing touches on it right now. so talking about successes in those areas, we're we're building a a nonprofit. That will be affiliated with the chamber that will help us address our housing issues. So we'll create a revolving loan fund so that we can help reduce the risk for developers who might want to build multifamily or single-family residences in our community. that's also in the final stages. We'll we'll have that up and running by the beginning of next year as well. we are implementing on the education front a strive model of collective impact. we just launched our baseline report for our two school districts, city and county school districts, back in September of 2019. So that's pretty fresh for us. so we and but the biggest thing that we've managed to do in this community over the course of the the last couple of years is change our own internal perception. So we were a co a community that was down on its luck coming out of the recession and we just weren't proud of ourselves and the changes that have happened downtown, you know, things like trip going on Shark Tank, those have created a tremendous amount of positive energy in our community and and I would say over the course of the last two years we've gone a c from a community that was down on itself to a community that believes in itself.
31:29.398 Brandon Burton
Yeah, that is fantastic. it's just a neat story kind of seeing it come back around. So I I know we need to start wrapping things up here, but normally, like I mentioned at the beginning of the of this interview, normally at the end of the interview I ask you as a guest what how you see the future of chambers. But since we've been focusing on that all all episode, I may forego that question. But I do want to ask you, Is there one action item that you would encourage chambers to implement and to to see through at their chamber to help level up their game and to stay relevant going into the future?
32:11.948 Rob Bradham
Yeah, it's to me this is a question that's very simple. i if you're not at the tip of the spear focused on solving your community's most intractable problems, you're gonna struggle with relevancy going forward. I again, you know, we've we've done that through Believe Greater Dalton and every every community is gonna be different. you know, no community is gonna have the same set of issues and and everybody's gonna have to go about attacking that differently, but Chambers are are the best positioned organization in any community to get that stuff done. And if you're focused on solving your community's most intractable problems and you're engaging partners in in that work, you will attract. no trouble being relevant. You will have no trouble attracting members. Still got to do the other stuff, the networking and the events. I'm not saying don't do that, but your your future relevancy is tied to whether or not you're at the tip of the spear solving your community's problem.
33:13.842 Brandon Burton
That's right. I I couldn't agree with you more. so Rob, we'll we'll put some of these things that you've talked about and like your six focus areas of relevancy for your chamber on our show notes page, which will be found at chamber chatpodcast.com slash episode forty three. So if anyone listening wants to dive in a little bit deeper and maybe they couldn't take the notes as they're listening 'cause they're driving in the car or or whatever they're doing. they can go to the show notes page and check that out. But Rob, is there a way that people can connect with you if they have any questions or wanna bounce ideas off of you how you're doing things at your chamber there in Dalton?
33:55.928 Rob Bradham
Yeah, would say the the best way to get in touch with me initially is is via my email and that's really simple. It's Bradham, that's B R A D H A at Daltonchamber.org.
34:10.242 Brandon Burton
That is simple enough. And we'll get that on the show notes page as well. So make it nice and easy to find everything in one spot. But Rob, I I really appreciate you spending some time with us here today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I feel like you've delivered a lot of value that other chambers can can take and implement and maybe do some of that self reflecting and assessing to see what they need to do to be able to stay relevant, stay on that tip of that spear. So they can be relevant going into the future. So I appreciate all you had to offer us today.
34:43.438 Rob Bradham
Well I appreciate the opportunity. It's my pleasure.
34:47.862 Brandon Burton
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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 42 — Chamber Travel Events with Bob Quick
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Bob Quick
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.83 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:15.906 Brandon Burton
Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. We're here today with episode 42 of Chamber Chat Podcast, and I'm Brandon Burton. It is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Bob Quick, president and CEO for Commerce Lexington Inc. in Kentucky. It's a 1750 plus member investor driven Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Organization. In 2018, Commerce Lexington was awarded a top 15 Matt Conway Economic Development Agency by Site Selection Magazine, and in 2016 was named Chamber of the Year by the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives. Bob is a 1985 graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign, Urbana. In his spare time, he enjoys participating in outside sports and reading political memoirs. Today, Bob will be sharing his experiences with us around chamber travel events. But before we get into this discussion, we'll take just a quick break to hear from our sponsor. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It for all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1. Lowers your credit card processing fees at the chamber, 2. Helps your chamber members be more profitable, and three provides recurring non-dues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit chamberchatpodcast.com slash C C for credit card. Again, Chamberchappodcast.com slash C C and get swiping with swipe it. Okay, Bob, we are back. Glad to have you with us today. If you could please
02:24.482 Brandon Burton
Take a moment, say hello to the audience and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
02:32.086 Bob Quick
Well, thank you, Brandon, for having me on and having a chance to share a little bit about Commerce Lexington, Central Kentucky and Lexington, the Bluegrass region. gosh, I I guess I would have to say I'm in my 30th year of the profession. I've had an incredible upbringing in that I was born and raised on a farm in central Illinois, corn and soybeans and at the time livestock. And at a very young age, my father allowed me to run a big part of the business. I mean, when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. Wow. so I I grew up very quickly. My father was a full-time farmer and a full-time off-the-farm worker. So it and I got to do a lot of the farm work. I was in a youth organization called FFA. It's called that today. Back then it was Future Farmers of America. And I got to travel all the United States. gosh, about 40 plus states. And prior to that, I had been out of the state of Illinois three times in my life. And I got to also experience overseas trip. And then I got to go work for the Ronald Reagan administration in the the US Department of Agriculture with the Secretary of A John Block. And that led to more amazing things. And then I got involved in the chamber work in Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, back in The last century. So it's been a w a a ways back.
04:01.593 Brandon Burton
Makes it sound so long ago. Yeah.
04:04.056 Bob Quick
My gosh, I think some days it is, and then other days it's a flash. So anyway, I've had this incredible upbringing and had a real diverse upbringing that allowed me to see a lot of and understand a lot of things about the world that helped me in this job.
04:16.639 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So as a ten year old, what kind of things is your father having you do on the farm?
04:21.858 Bob Quick
Well, I was his shadow leading up to the day when he would be with me, but I would help plow the fields. I did everything but plant. I actually even harvested, I would be with him. when I got to be high school age, I was doing it by myself. plowing, harvesting, planting, you name it, raising livestock keeping records. We were in four H and then eventually got involved in FFA and I did at the time all the neighbors kept my dad, you're gonna kill this guy, this young man. He, you know, he's too young. but my father but my father had really instilled in me a sense of maturity. I knew if if the combine we had a bind on it, I knew how to shut it down. I never got out of the cab without I mean little things like that, I it seemed kind of trivial, but that was that was life and survival, you know. I I I I I was fortunate at the time to be raised. at such a young age to be able to get involved in a in an enterprise in an entrepreneurial enterprise like farming and it served me well for the whole rest of my life.
05:27.868 Brandon Burton
builds character too. So I'm sure that that has set you up. Good deal. Well, as as I mentioned in the introduction, today our topic of conversation is around chamber travel events. So Bob has he has some experience and some some great travel experiences. And we'll kind of dig in here and and have you tell us a little bit about these different trips that you've been a part of.
05:31.328 Bob Quick
Absolutely. Yes, it did.
05:57.111 Brandon Burton
if you wanna start with talking about leadership trips, what does that look like? Yeah.
06:03.694 Bob Quick
And if I can, Randon, let me kind of hit the the trips. I a lot of times I'll run into individuals in our membership who'll say, you know, the trip is just a junket. Yeah, it's great to go see the world. And I'll say, no, no, no, no, no. I go to understand today how to be effective and to be a good leader and to be able to survive and be a strong leader of the future, you really have to know what's going on around the world. The the world is changing rapidly, dramatically. And if we aren't out there benchmarking, experiencing, seeing, involving ourselves and others, our members, if we're not bringing that information back to our communities, then I I we're I think we're gonna we're gonna miss out on a lot, but we're also not gonna be able to position our communities to be on the front edge of of this new world. And there's a ton of books out there's a ton of books out there that talk about that. But let me tell you, you have to go see an experience. So we just got back from an international trip, which I'll touch on here in a little bit, but wow, it just it shares a whole new part of the world that we hadn't seen. But leadership isn't Commerce Lexington has been doing leadership trips for 80 years. last year was our 80th year. We were in Raleigh, North Carolina. We take On average, anywhere between 180 and 220 people a year. We charter one, seven thirty-seven. We used to charter two. the risk factor is why we went back just to one. And then when we sell out the plane, people have to you know, find their way to get to these different destinations. In 2020, we're going to Austin, Texas. But we've been doing these for like I said, 80 years. It goes all the way back to when we were trying, and they were obviously. Trips didn't go as far as we can today because of the reach of a plane. but it goes all the way back to where we were trying to bring some military installations into the region. And and we did. but now today we're able to go out to the Raleigh's, the Minneapolis, Minnesotas, Charleston, South Carolina's, Kansas City, Missouri's. we've been to Charlotte with Greater Louisville Inc. Chamber. we combined together Omaha, San Antonio.
08:18.7 Bob Quick
And the list goes on. In some places we've now gone twice because they have evolved and changed so much and in very successful ways that we wanted to ex to experience that. But we on these trips are not junkets. We go, we meet with the community leadership, public and private. We we select the the hardest thing we do is selecting the community to go to because it's got to match up to challenges, opportunities that we face in our community. We want to go see where someone's done it right and learn from the lessons of what they did wrong. Yeah. And so I have to tell you, I had a hard time convincing my previous chamber where I was at to do these. They now do them. But when I came over here and I saw all the takeaways from these trips, it was amazing. so people in our community, the reason why the mayor and the president of the university, not always, but most often the university president, but the why the community leaders go on these things is because of the takeaways, because how and how it's enriched. our community. And we only know the things that we set out to learn from these communities as far as the takeaways. Individuals who go, the different entities they head up, and maybe a business or an organization, they go visit their peer and they learn at a level that things that we don't we're not even aware of till sometimes many years later. So the leadership trips have really served as well. And so the number one takeaway, Brandon, of our leadership trip every year by a high percent is the networking. that occurred because on these trips there is a there there are three days where you are with the mayor, you are with an entrepreneur, you're with a young, old, you're and it's like an isolated time together and and everybody lets their guard down and we talk about a focus of how do we make Lexington, Central Kentucky better. So the number one takeaway is the network. And we're always trying to bring new new faces, new people into this.
10:13.356 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So networking I think has there's different ideas of networking, right? You can go to a networking mixer or something and that's one thing, but networking on this kind of level, it it almost should be a different word for for networking because those guards are down and you're actually able to be productive with that networking.
10:32.002 Bob Quick
You know, I've been doing this 30 years and oftentimes networking gets played down by so many. I think one of the most important things that we do is we network, and we network in a way we bring in new faces all the time. We bring in the old guard to make sure we're we're learning from them, to make sure they're growing. we bring in, you know, folks from the university setting, folks from public, private, regional. GLI when Greater Louisville Link and our chamber went together, we were bringing in two regional powerhouses in Kentucky together. Yeah. And we hadn't done that before, believe it or not. And we got to know each other better. So you get to know each other. But networking to me, the one takeaway in my 30 years of doing this has been that networking is probably one of the most important things because it's your heart and soul. It's the people are going to roll up their sleeves to get these things done. And if they don't know each other or know each other well enough, you're at a disadvantage.
11:24.386 Brandon Burton
Well, the people that are going, they have a commitment level. So that networking is gonna be amplified and i it's gonna be exponential, you know, the the power good that you can do. So yeah.
11:36.366 Bob Quick
Point. All right. The the second trip, and again, the trips have been so enriching in and so beneficial. In 2008, we had a board chair, one of my youngest board chairs ever. we were entering in into the recession, we knew it. And he came up with this idea that we one time in our history used to do regional tours where we would go to a different quadrant of the state as a community and as a region. We're we're a very wealthy region. I mean, we're home to the horse, horse capital of the world. we're home to another set of horsepower called Toyota, 8,000 employees, and they build their high line car high-end cars here and vehicles. And The rest of the and we have the University of Kentucky and 10 institutions of higher ed in a in a 40 mile radius of Lexington. We're a very rich area, not just in money, but in talent and in other resources. And our board chair, I remember when he proposed this going back and doing these regional tours. And I'm sitting there in our staff, we were like, How could this happen? We we're heading into recession. We may have to downsize a little bit. resources already are tight.
12:39.096 Brandon Burton
Yeah.
12:57.142 Bob Quick
And I would have to tell you, Brandon, in my 30 plus years, that regional tour may have been one of the top five most important things we ever did. Because well, we went to southeastern Kentucky, which is known to be Appalachia, has going through its struggles with the coal industry. and they've had they they've had struggles from an economic standpoint. And we and and there was a lot of disenchantment in the southeastern quarter of the state with central Kentucky and us because people felt like
13:05.102 Brandon Burton
Really? Yeah, tell us more.
13:26.254 Bob Quick
we really weren't being as respectful, helpful, connecting. And and yet most of my key leaders in Lexington came from Eastern Kentucky. So I felt a strong strong bond, but many people there didn't. We our first trip was to eastern Kentucky. We made our way all the way through Eastern Kentucky, got to Pikeville for our night stop, and it was stunning how when we went, we said number one, we said thank you to all the folks that would that came and listened to us. And there were large gatherings of leaders. Said number one, thank you for what you meant for Central Kentucky, what you mean to the Commonwealth in in general. thank you for the many things that you've done successfully in Eastern Kentucky. And they would recognize different pieces of infrastructure, like in Pikeville, they have this incredible medical complex that most people in the Commonwealth don't even know about. And there was many other things. And so anyway, we got to know them more and they got to the respect level was incredible. They had thought that we were opposed to coal in in central Kentucky. And we said, no. And you know, it's it's a part of the dynamics of our industry and our economy. And in any way, so we went and showed them a lot of respect. That was the simple thing of it, a lot of respect. We were getting police escorts through little tiny birds in eastern Kentucky. The respect they had because we came there, every stop we said, show us something you're proud of. And they did. And some of it was beyond what we had, which humbled us. And and other parts of that were things that, you know, were not that it didn't seem like at the time that important, but it was, it was to them. And so we got to know southeastern Kentucky. And the next year we went to northeastern Kentucky, and then we went to Louisville and kind of a west north central, and then we went to Western and we went to Bowling Green on the southwest and Paducah. We've now hit every and then we went South Central. We've hit every quadrant in the state, not just once. Now we're into our second trip. The amount of respect we have generated has been something that I could never have imagined. and also then we've been able to help them in the legislature, and some of their legislators have helped us on issues. So again, I go back to we built strong networks, but we went and we experienced Kentucky as it really is, and it helped us to help people with their opportunities to grow them.
15:44.072 Bob Quick
and also to help them with their challenges. So that was the second trip travel event that that we did the third thing was where I live or where our where our home is in Lexington is across from Dunbar High School, which is known to have probably one of the largest international enrollments of kids from the international community high end high end academic programs well On our street, I would say 40% of our neighbors are international. My kids grew up not knowing any different other than that we lived in an international world. If you had asked people about Commerce Lexington, the general membership or people in the community, they would say, you know, Lexington's not that international, except for maybe Toyota, some aspects of the University of Kentucky. And we're like, no, we're we're we are very international. We had all kinds of international programs that we did, but For whatever reason, people didn't think of us as an international community in the international chamber until we did our first trip to China. And we just got back last week from Egypt, where we spent 12 days. So over the last nine years, we have or since 2011, we have traveled to different places around the world that are unique. Not we don't go to Europe. We did go to to Sicily and Malta. But we we try to stay away from the common areas that most people go to. We try to go to those unique spots, Vietnam, Dubai. We've been there several times. Like I said, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil. at least I've been to Brazil. We haven't had an international trip there as a chamber yet, but one day we want to. Argentina last year. So once we started doing those trips nine years ago, all of a sudden people said, my gosh, they're international. The chamber, they're very global. So anyway, sometimes perception is different than reality, but I think now most people don't really know how important the regional sector is. So how
17:47.406 Brandon Burton
How big of a how big of a group do you have going on the international trip?
17:51.716 Bob Quick
we took ninety-four with us to Egypt where we went to Cairo, Oswan, Luxor, and Alexandria over those twelve days. we the other highest a number we've taken was ninety-two or ninety-three to Cuba. Cuba was an incredible interest. And that was several years ago. And then next year we've got like five or six high end communities online, but We probably average in that seventy to eighty area. We we we and then we take we and we take enough seat commerce lexington staff to make sure that we take care of those folks who've invested and and but again we do the international trips not as just a trip. If you if you're not looking ahead and seeing where the world is going, you're gonna be left behind. And that's something that I think chambers of commerce do globally, is that we keep We don't just look at today, we've gotta keep our members, our investors, our community looking forward.
18:53.58 Brandon Burton
I love the idea of the perspective that you're able to gain by seeing just how all these different communities and countries do things and keeping yourself ahead of the curve, but also seeing maybe where some of their struggles are and so you don't fall into that either. I mean it I think it works both ways.
19:08.814 Bob Quick
It does. It does. Yeah. So the so the trips have been collectively have been very important to kind of the maturation of our chamber, but also I think it's with Toyota, they have 8,000 employees here in central Kentucky. And it's helped us as we've seen the world to understand that you know what real value they do bring to us. how they've helped not just our economy grow, but our culture to help us as a community and as a region to be stronger, better. but then we've got a responsibility to figure out how to best take care, better take care of them as well, because they're a major fabric of our economy. So all these trips together collectively have been tremendous for us. It's been part of our growth. and and and you know, and and we benefited. I know I personally, I've got three kids that Have traveled the world. Well, I was 18 before I set outside the US and went to Germany with the FFA organization I referred to earlier. Yeah. My kid, my kids think now, and many kids in our community, you know, traveling the world is not a goal. It's something that they that they're doing and they know they're gonna do the rest of their lives.
20:28.162 Brandon Burton
That's right. We're more of a global community now, for sure.
20:31.318 Bob Quick
Sure. We are. We are. And we have and and the point is we have to understand, like in Egypt, we not only learned about Africa and what they talked about, the oncoming war in Africa may be over water, but we also learned about the rest of the Middle East, which Egypt is a part of. And we went and we put our feet in places that I've only heard about and studied in history books. in geography books. And it's like, my gosh, this is incredible. And then to hear the people talk about today and where and the pride they have of where they see Egypt going tomorrow and and how all these different countries and then how the Copic Christians and the Islam faith, how they work together and how they've protected each other. how the Muslims and the Christians, you know, it's like, my gosh, that's that's we don't hear that here very much in the States. But that's been survival for both. Of those of those religions.
21:32.046 Brandon Burton
Well, and like you mentioned there in commerce, it's very diverse community where you have a lot of international people and it you know, you may not have the the violence that can come out with the conflicts and religion or things like that, but there's things that can still be improved on to be able to serve in the community together and be good neighbors and yeah, help the overall economy and and community grow and flourish. Great great things to learn.
21:56.13 Bob Quick
Yeah. And and I I had another trip. our school system here in Fayette County is selected to be one of twelve in the United States and globally, where we come together. it's Tokyo, it's Beijing, Shanghai Schools, it's Denver, Seattle, Lexington. I know I'm missing a whole bunch of other world centers, but we all get to come together. And one of the trips I went on with our school superintendent was to Singapore. And I, you know, and I haven't even mentioned all the other trips we do for economic development and all that, but yeah, we went to Singapore not only to study what Singapore did 60 years ago, they were they were poor, they were broke, they were a third world nation. You go to Singapore today, they built they built their whole economy around education. And it's stunning just how advanced they are and they don't ever give up on you based on your grade point. A lot of communities, if if you're not doing well. You get D's and F's, well, you're done. yeah. And just you're gonna be a pauper in the in the society, but not in Singapore. They the the schools that these kids that get D's and F's go to are some of our would be like some of our better brand new schools, but they don't give up on you. And that's why they've they've totally transformed that economy. Had I not gone to Singapore, I would have thought just the opposite. But we learned, we learned so much, Brandon, about how we could bring ideas back. from Singapore and these other many major cities and school systems to help our school system. And it and it's paid dividends. Our school system continues to s to to grow, to get better, and and you know, so on and so forth. But it's it's again because of these trips that we've learned so much about the world.
23:47.714 Brandon Burton
Very good. So I know you had a another trip you wanted to touch on, this Washington D C.
23:54.412 Bob Quick
The Washington D C trip. Yeah. I know a lot I know I know a lot of chambers do those, do those trips, but I gotta be honest with you. We one of the things that we did that was so smart is it wasn't just to go meet our legislator, but we do two things now. We go meet their staff, we build relationships. The trip is two days. The other three hundred and sixty-three days we still have to, but now we work not just with the elected official but their key staff. We know all their staff inside and out in Washington, DC, and then back here in central Kentucky. And we have like I said, one of the most important things is too many chambers go on the DC fly-in from what I've always witnessed and heard. and they see it as you know that, you know, where they took their issues to DC. Well we every owner of every issue has to work their issues. And too many times legislators are the only ones that get talked to by the communities. Well, again, as I said, we talk to the staff, we work with the staff, we build relationships, and we're working our issues 365 days a year. The other thing is we've gone regional. And we used to be where it's just Lexington issues, Fed County issues. Now we have an eight county area. We go collectively, we take a unified agenda. and that agenda, if you have an item on there that we're working collectively, 365 days a year. if you have an item on there, it's got to be an I an issue that affects more than just your county. It's got to affect two or more counties. Well, let me tell you, I know how simple that is, that people are kind of going, ho hum, yeah, right. Well, it the most powerful thing for us was on our very first regional trip that we did back 16 years ago when we had a mayor of another community advocating on an issue that really focused on the other side of our region, the other half of it. And we all what happened was we were all buying into each other's issues, which we should have, but we just never had done that before. And our let elected officials were blown away because they were used to having 15 different groups come out and talk about the business agenda. And now all of a sudden they've got one unified group coming together that represents eight counties and multiple more chambers. And we were unified. again, it's just at the end of the day, it's the simple things that get you ahead or the simple things that put you behind.
26:16.862 Bob Quick
And that cooperation and and working together recently has paid off in many dividends over the years.
26:23.052 Brandon Burton
That's gonna get the attention of the elected officials. Instead of trying to weigh in from fifteen different communities, if you have a a group coming together that's all united, it's like, Okay, I don't need to go do all this polling, you know, you guys are all here representing each other together.
26:38.2 Bob Quick
And let me tell you, our f our f Brandon, our first several years, they they had by the time we were really getting into gear on this thing, they were checking to make sure that we weren't just some like the sixteenth group going out there. yeah. And disguising and disguising ourselves. I mean, they they did, they found out we had done our homework, we knew the issues and we knew them well. And also when we went out there, it wasn't a surprise anymore. We had been working on those issues with them every day of the year. outside of that of that trip. And so the relationship now with our elected officials is very significant. And they trust us. They share more with us. they you know, they know who to call in our communities and our region to get things done. And it's just, it's really, again, a lot of times people see all these different trips as more of junkets, but they're not. Every one of these trips has to bring value or our members walk away. You know, they won't invest. our communities, our public sectors, they they will they will connect with somebody else if we're not effective. And that's and again, there's so many other things that we do at Commerce Lexington that I think add to this. But again, the trips is something I think to get overlooked and especially the networking that goes on, bringing people together.
27:53.87 Brandon Burton
Well, I know just from what you've shared with us today, you've opened my eyes wider to the purpose and relevancy of of chamber travel events and and you guys have really honed in and and really have a a defined purpose for each one of these trips. And I I appreciate you bringing that. I hope others are getting value out of this and the perspective you're bringing, just like you're gaining perspective from seeing others. How other people in other communities and other parts of the world are doing things by doing these trips. But if you were to summarize from everything you've talked about today, what is one action item that that a chamber professional who's listening can do to help take their chamber up to the next level?
28:41.56 Bob Quick
Well, the the thing that I what we've talked about today, the one thing that really stands out is you ha to understand the world, you have to experience it. You have to see it. And the world, yes, we're part of the world in each of our communities and regions, but we're a dot. And you really have to get out and you have to take your top leaders, your top movers and shakers. And to me, again, you got to understand the world like no one else in your community. But then to be able to get the others to understand it, you've got to help them to ex to see it. They've got to experience it. And I think ultimately that will make us much more of value in our communities. And quite frankly, five, 10, 15 years from now, it will make us better communities.
29:33.748 Brandon Burton
I agree. Great, great advice. so Bob, I ask everyone this question that I have on the on the show, but as we look to the future, I think you've brought great perspective for us today. But how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose?
29:52.718 Bob Quick
there's two things that to me chambers of commerce have to do if we want to stay viable and and really deliver that value. And and we're getting into a world where you've got to bring value. So there's two things. One is it you you have to help your community, your region create new dollars. I know this is not gonna sound glammy, glam glamorous or sexy, but You got to do two things. One is you got to help your region grow new dollars. And if you're not, then you know, as a region and for what's expected of us and the things we have to do, you're not going to be able to grow. So you got to create help create new dollars. And the second thing is you've got to help grow quality of place. in Lexington now, we have lots of people who've been moving here. And they're moving from big population centers and big tech centers and other places that are very vibrant with their economies. And they're coming here because they see us as that quality of life place where you've got you know good education, strong education, where we haven't overgrown ourselves, where we're safe. but they'll always point out all these quality of life aspects about us and quality of place things. And so We've got to continually be building our communities in ways that will make us prosperous for the people who live here to want to stay here, live here and work and raise a family, and for others to want to come in and help us to grow our economies.
31:28.45 Brandon Burton
I think that's a great answer. And it's totally relevant, even if your chamber is not tied with economic development. It's still a a responsibility. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Bob, thank you so much for being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. If listeners wanted to connect with you about how you're doing things at Commerce Lexington or about your travel events that you talked about today, how can they get in contact with you?
31:54.296 Bob Quick
Well, my email and my phone number is on our website, www.commerce lexington dot com. feel free to reach out. And again, I will probably I always say this, I'll probably learn more from you in that conversation than you may learn from me. But that's the value of the network that we have. But anyway I can help at any point, at any time with anyone on an issue, easy or hard, love to do it.
32:20.11 Brandon Burton
That's great. I know it's on your website, but we'll make it easy for people and put it right in the show notes for this episode too, which those show notes can be found at chamber chatpodcast.com/slash episode forty-two. And thank you to everybody who's out there listening. I hope you got a lot of value and had a a new perspective on chamber travel events as you listen to Bob and his experiences as he shared them with us today. And Bob, thank you again for being with us today and And giving up some of your time to to help lift up the other chamber pro professionals that are out there listening.
32:55.704 Bob Quick
Thank you.
32:58.038 Brandon Burton
If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 41 — Resources and Trainings for New Executives with Michael Gallops
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Michael Gallops
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.842 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:15.928 Brandon Burton
Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. This is episode 41, and I'm Brandon Burton. It is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Michael Gallops, president and CEO of the Rowette Chamber of Commerce in Texas. Michael's life has always been revolved around service to the community and country. As an Air Force veteran, he's also a former City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem, who has been involved in the Rowlett community for many years. Michael is an active member of the community emergency response team and fire corps program that serves the Rowlet Citizens Corps and Council Board of Directors. He has served as Chamber Ambassador, Director, Chair Elect, and Chair of the Board of Directors, and as a director on the Chamber Foundation Board prior to taking on the role of Chamber President CEO in May of 2017. Regionally, Michael served on the Emergency Preparedness Planning Council, the Legislative Coalition of North Texas Crime Commission, and the Leadership North Texas Steering Committee. He's a graduate of Leadership Route Class 19. Leadership North Texas Class Four and Rowette Citizens Fire Academy and the Rowette Citizens Police Academy. He also serves on the boards for several nonprofits. Michael's a resident of Rowette and is married to his wife Jill. Together they have 10 children, seven girls and three boys. Michael and Jill have a deep personal commitment to working with and promoting the nonprofit organizations that serve Rowette, especially those that focus on helping children and families. They fostered and adopted several children. Today, Michael and I will be talking about his experiences in his first two and a half years as he settles in as the chamber as a as a newer chamber executive and any tips that he has that he can share with others who may be on similar journey. And we'll get into this discussion right after a quick break to hear from our sponsor.
02:27.872 Brandon Burton
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03:35.298 Michael Gallops
All right. Well, thank you, Brandon. Hello, everybody. good morning. gosh, there is a lot of information in my bio. And I think one of the things I always like to share with people that's kind of a fun thing. I have actually, because of my military experience, my father was military. I've moved around a lot. I've actually lived at thirty-seven different physical addresses in multiple states and countries. And I have visited forty-three US states. I've yeah, I've I've gotten to see quite a lot of the country, especially and and a little bit around the world too. So it's it's been a fun and interesting and always changing life.
04:14.754 Brandon Burton
So do you have a a country and a world map that you kind of shade in the the states and countries you've been to as you travel?
04:21.888 Michael Gallops
I don't have anything like that. No, no. I I always do those those little game things on Facebook where it pops up and it's like on the states you've been and it's like, no, this takes too long.
04:32.696 Brandon Burton
Try. I don't have time for that. Yeah. Very good. well, can you take a moment and just share with us a little bit about the Rowlet area and your chamber so listeners have a better idea of the perspective that you're coming from there in Rowette?
04:47.288 Michael Gallops
Sure, sure. Rowlet is a suburb of Dallas, Texas. we are east of Dallas on beautiful Lake Ray Hubbard, suburb of about sixty-six thousand. And gosh, we have relatively small chamber, about three hundred and sixty members, and we our our annual budget's just a little under three hundred thousand. the community is mostly a bedroom community. It's probably eighty-five to ninety percent residential. so a small business community but growing. We have a a we have not a lot of land left, but the land that's left is is under development or soon to be under development. We've got about about a billion and a half dollars, a billion and a half dollars worth of development going on, commercial development going on right now. So lots of exciting things happening. we're gonna have a crystal lagoon, we're gonna have we're gonna be building a a hotel and convention center here in the next two or three years. so lots of lots of good growth and just just a a great place to live.
05:58.016 Brandon Burton
Nice. That sounds great. So with the eighty five to ninety percent residential population, do you see with your membership, do you get a lot outside of the Rowette area, maybe in the greater Dallas area or or the majority there in Rowette?
06:17.454 Michael Gallops
But the majority are still businesses in Raoulette. but we it's probably about probably about a seventy, thirty split. we we a lot of our members in that thirty percent are are contractors or corporations that do business with or in the city. and we reach out to them anytime the city, you know, has a new developer come along or you know, a a new construction company or a new road construction company, we reach out to them. anybody that does services for the city. We we have a great partnership with our city. So we're able to do that and reach out to them. So there are those but most of our membership is is here in Raoulette and the of course the vast majority of those are small businesses.
07:03.958 Brandon Burton
Yeah, very good. That's pretty much in line with what I would have expected. So that that's good. so our for our topic of discussion today, we'll kind of focus around resources and trainings for new executives. And so you've been there now at the Rowlet Chamber in the in your current position as president CEO for about two and a half years. maybe a little bit of an unconventional way of of Getting to that position. do you wanna tell us a little bit about that journey and maybe some of those things that have helped you along the way to kind of settle in there in in this position?
07:46.938 Michael Gallops
well yeah, I I I started getting involved with the chamber about ten years ago. I was I went through leadership roulette or was involved in leadership roulette, started attending networking. at the time I was actually unemployed. I had just gotten laid off from a major telecom company and during the height of the recession in two thousand nine and started coming to networking, got into leadership roulette, started meeting people, Someone in leadership Rowette made made the comment, hey, you should, you know, maybe you may you may run for city council one day. And six months later I filed and ran, ended up serving on our city council for six years. During that time, I worked for several different employers, and at least a year and a half of that, I was I sold life insurance. So I was a business owner. I became a member of the chamber. so I was an ambassador for the chamber at that time. I was a member of I got invited to serve on the board of directors. ultimately asked to be chair elect and then chair, and started my term as chair in January. In May, our then current president left and we started looking for somebody to replace her. And I was like, you know what? I I I like this and and I think I'll throw my hat in the ring and did, and ultimately got hired and and went from one day being the chair of the board to the next day being the president and CEO of the chamber and them being my bosses. So yeah.
09:15.754 Brandon Burton
So so at at what point did you get in there and be like, okay, now what do I do? You know when did that reality hit of you know, I need to learn how to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so what did what did your journey look like? How did how did you re how did you learn to be a president CEO?
09:36.984 Michael Gallops
Well, I I of course I I was able to fortunately shadow the the former president and CO for about a month. She stayed on. We had a little bit of time overlapping. you know, I I've been in a variety of different positions before, never that level, never the executive level before, but been in a lot of boards. I did have I had the perspective from from, you know, the the volunteer side of things. So I knew kinda, you know, I had a good idea kind of what the chamber did. But running the chamber was just something completely different. So I was fortunate. I was able almost immediately. I started the job in May and in June I went to our state conference, to the Texas Chamber of Commerce Execs Conference down in Clear Lake. and that was eye-opening. It was, you know, I was a month and a half on the job. I went down, I went to every session that I possibly could that had anything to do with presidents, CEOs, or chamber execs, and started meeting people. just started just digging in. I I think I signed up for every email list I could get on. Just information. Just it was just information overload. And I'm a researcher, so I I get online and I start s you know, I start Googling, you know, what can I find? Chamber of Commerce president, Chamber of Commerce CEO. What does the chamber do? What does the president do? And just I I mean everything.
11:00.978 Brandon Burton
I love it. You got into the position. You're like, what what does the president do? What does the CEO do? So so you were a a month into it when you went to your first TCCE. Was it a little bit like drinking water out of a fire hose? with every all the information coming at you and people you're meeting and things you're learning that you need to do and implement. I mean, how did that sink in for you?
11:27.154 Michael Gallops
It yeah, it was absolutely overwhelming. I took pages and pages and pages of notes and and was like, my gosh, we need to change this, we need to fix this, I need to do this, I need to get that. out of that conference, I found out about ACCE and and became a member almost immediately. actually met Dana Ketterling who who recently passed away met her at that TCCE conference and she got us set up. You know, being brand new in the job, I'm like, you know, I've got a budget. I don't know how much I can spend. She let me do monthly payments. I don't know if I'm supposed to tell everybody that, but I did monthly payments on that TCCE membership. And and and just just having that connection and of course that was more resources. I I met people there. I met Redonna there, I met I met I mean I could I could go on with a list of names. I met Kelly there. There's a lot of people that I met there that I just started reaching out to and asking. from there I found out about the North Texas Chamber Execs. So we have a local for the North Texas area, we have a a Chamber Execs organization that gets together quarterly and was able to tap into that. we have a regional membership group. up in up in the same area that's connected with N T C E I was able to kind of tap into that and make sure that my membership person was tapped into that. but those those were the initial ones. And then and then surprisingly my board was okay with me going to institute that first year. So I went to actually went to institute in July. So two and a half so a month and a half on the job I went to TCC and then two and a half month and then a month after that went to I went to institute.
13:20.846 Brandon Burton
Wow. Hopefully you're a a quick learner and just absorb things very well 'cause this is that's a lot of information coming at you very quickly.
13:30.83 Michael Gallops
Well you know, to be honest, that the first the first TCCE and the first institute, I d I I think I took a lot of notes, but I really don't know if I learned that much from those just because it was so much information. I remember I I I commented to somebody I'm this this just this year, in July, I I did my third year of institute and I commented to one of my classmates. I said, you know, after that first year We all came back the second year and I couldn't remember any of your names. Everybody else remembered everybody, but I was so overwhelmed. It was it was almost too much. Now I remember them all. You know, they're like they're like I've known them their whole lives. But after that that first year it was just so much I couldn't remember it all. But fortunately had a lot of good notes. and and have been able to go back to those and and reflect on those.
14:22.996 Brandon Burton
It probably helps too to be able to have more of a base to be able to relate back to. So as you're learning things at you know, institute or at different conferences, that you're able to make those applications to your current situation. So when you're coming in and maybe don't know what the current situation is exactly or how that applies, it it you that's what you do. You end up taking notes, but then the next time you go back, you're like, okay, I see how this applies. I see how how this is all important and relevant. so d as you attended some of these conferences, started making some connections, is there any personal moments of people you connected with that made an impact that maybe mentored you a little bit or became a go to resource when you had questions or just to help you out along the way?
15:17.078 Michael Gallops
Yeah, absolutely. I I mentioned I mentioned Dana. I I reached out for several months after that first T C C conference. Dana and I had a lot of conversations, a lot of emails back and forth. she was she was a great help. Radonna Radonna is the president and CEO at the Grapevine Chamber up here in the Dallas area. she's someone that I can call and reach out to and and consider her a mentor. And and and surprisingly and honestly, the the neighboring chamber next door, Darby, is the president and CO there now. She was not in that position, but we ended up in an institute together and her her and I have become really good friends. like I said, we're going to institute together, so we see each other there, we see each other locally at events, we share a lot of chamber members. so a new business comes in, they join both of our chambers and so Darby and I get together pretty often and we we bounce ideas off of each other and just just share and it's like, wow, I didn't think of that and and both because both of us are brand new presidents. so it's it's yeah, that and that's that's one of the key things is finding somebody, you know, somebody that that can make a mentor and somebody you can make a friend that you can connect with and just be able to to share ideas with and and cry with sometimes yellow mad and just moan and groan and and just just share the realities because you know there there are definitely ups and downs, mostly ups, but it's nice to have somebody there, just to have, you know, have someone to talk to and and help figure things out sometimes.
17:01.318 Brandon Burton
as you're explaining that or giving that that reply, it made me think of the value of a mastermind. You know, if you're able to connect with a couple other executives and and to be able to bounce those ideas off of I mean, typically when you think of a mastermind, you've got, you know, six or you know, seven people in a room or or maybe it's a remote thing, but you're all together at the same time to be able to have these discussions and get advice and tips from each other. But it can be a one on one thing too. So one on one with multiple people. And get those best strategies and and that's you know, hopefully one of the outcomes of this podcast too is being able to not necessarily connect with the people one on one, although you you could afterwards. We tend to put the contact info out there for each guest on the up on the podcast. But for people that don't, you know, maybe want to get out of their comfort shell, they can still learn from these other chamber professionals. not necessarily all executives, but chamber professionals that have good tips and strategies to share to help you get your feet wet and to get you settled in in a new position. yeah. So was there a so you mentioned these conferences and and institute. Are there other resources that you came across that were a big help to you as you settled in?
18:22.316 Michael Gallops
Yeah, absolutely. I mentioned that I had done a lot of online research and and of course being at the conferences, I met people in the expo portions. I'm gonna give a th shout out to three people who have been a tremendous help as well. Kathy Height, Frank Kenny, and Kyle Sexton have been absolutely amazing. they have stuff that you can download from their websites, they have they do webinars, they do articles that you can read. constantly sharing. Frank Kenny's got the Chamber Pro Facebook group. I found that pretty quick and just jumped right in. that that one has been absolutely amazing and and you can actually you know you you can go in there and ask just about any question that you have, anything, and you're gonna get answers. You're absolutely going to get answers and they're gonna be good and helpful answers.
19:13.708 Brandon Burton
That's right. In fact, I just interviewed earlier today, in fact, the episode will have aired a couple of weeks ago, but Kathy Height. So if if people want to go back and listen to her episode, she was episode thirty-nine and Frank Kenny as well I had on the on the podcast back episode sixteen. So if if if you're living under a rock and haven't haven't haven't heard of of Frank Kenney or Kathy Height and hopefully we get Kyle on here soon too, but go back, listen to their episodes, get to know them a little more. Great people, ton of good resources, and really can help you, you know, leap ahead in in this journey of learning what you need to be able to to do and to to get comfortable as you serve your your chamber members and and your overall community. So good good resources right there that you shared. what if you were to to give one good piece of you know, advice or tip that somebody new in the industry could use to to really figure out what they need to be doing or to get comfortable in in their new position. What what piece of advice could you offer to the to these people?
20:30.964 Michael Gallops
well it it's one thing but it's kinda it's kind of combined it's two things but it's kind of combined into one and it's it's one I've really already mentioned. If if if if you know if you're in a situation where you're a brand new exec, you don't have you may not have the resources or the funding to do these trainings or go to these conferences or stuff, join that chamber prose group and just find somebody there. Frank had it set up, it may still be set up where you can actually go in and ask for a mentor. You can you can do that. So join that group, find somebody in there you can connect with, or find somebody locally, reach out to someone in a in a nearby chamber. but make a connection with somebody that can help you, that can you know that can just give you some guidance and some direction, can open your eyes to things. I I think that's the biggest thing is having somebody, either the chamber pros group or or a local mentor to help you, you know, to help just, you know. Give you clo give you clarity on things when you need it.
21:31.5 Brandon Burton
Yeah, you're right. They're two different things, but totally one. I mean, you can't just be one sided and just be in your shell looking online. get out and be able to bounce ideas off of somebody and and find that that person that can be your mentor, whether it's an official mentorship or not, you know, just somebody that you can look up to that you know is doing a good job that you can learn from and and see, you know, just kind of shadow them, see what see what they're doing, see what works for them, and and take those those high points and try to implement it back at at your chamber in your position and see see how that resonates. So Michael, I ask everybody this question that I have on the show. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see chambers and their purpose?
22:30.04 Michael Gallops
You know, I I think and I know there's a lot of discussion. There's there's the horizon initiatives that are out there and you can watch those videos and and chambers are gonna have to adapt to new businesses, new personalities, new generations. But I think we're gonna keep doing what we do best. We're gonna keep growing our communities, we're gonna keep you know, in in in activities and and and our purpose, you know, serving our business community. We're gonna keep growing our business community, we're gonna keep advocating for business. that's not gonna change. It you know, how we do those things, the the methods we use, the styles we use may change, but we're still gonna we're gonna chambers are gonna keep reaching out, keep growing communities, growing the business community and and advocating. And and you know, the the newer generations coming up, they're they're they're seeing the value in that. they may wanna interact a little differently, but they're still seeing value in the things that we do. And I think we're just gonna we're gonna keep doing what we do and As long as we're doing it well, we'll be around for a long, long time.
23:31.884 Brandon Burton
Yeah, I agree. I I totally agree with that. so Michael, how we'd mention or I'd mentioned earlier that we try to put the the contact info for all of our guests out there. So if people do want to connect with you as a a mentor of sorts or bounce ideas off of you or questions how you're doing things at the Rowlet Chamber, how can somebody get in contact with you to to make that connection?
23:58.994 Michael Gallops
any just about any way. You can you can of course you can find us online. Our website's Rowlet Chamber dot com. My email is Michael at Rowlet Chamber dot com. You're welcome to call my cell phone. My my cell phone number is four six nine six two eight seven nine two six. or you can call the chamber number, you can find that online. I'm I'm here to help. I'll you know, I'll answer questions. love talking to other people and and doing what I can.
24:28.032 Brandon Burton
All right. Well, I appreciate you taking time today to visit with me here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I really want to say a thank you to everybody who's out there listening. I hope you all are getting value out of this. And just like the things that Michael's talked to us about today, I hope you're able to find those episodes on this podcast that resonate with you, things that you need to focus on that you can be strengthened by and Go that extra step and make that connection to these chamber professionals that are out there offering this great information and bounce ideas off of them. Ask them how they're doing things. You know, make it an open dialogue so you can further your progression as you serve your your members and your community. but thank you for being here listening and Michael, thank you for taking the time again to be with us today. I appreciate it. And hope everybody got a lot of value out of this. Thanks a lot.
25:24.513 Michael Gallops
Thank you, Brandon.
25:28.032 Brandon Burton
If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 40 — Strategic Planning and Blowing Things Up! with Henry Florsheim
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Henry Florsheim
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.83 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:15.758 Brandon Burton
Hello and welcome to ChamberThat Podcast. This is episode forty of ChamberThat Podcast, and I'm Brandon Burton. It is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Henry Florsheim, president and CEO of the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce in North Texas. A native of Monroe, Louisiana. Floorsham is a graduate of University of Louisiana at Monroe. in business management and the University of Oklahoma's Economic Development Institute. He has an MBA from Louisiana Tech University and is alumnus of Leadership Louisiana. He received his IOM designation from the Institute of Organization and Management, where he now serves on the Board of Regents. He also serves as a board member for the Texas Association of Business and Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives. And was recently accepted into the Air Education Training Command Civic Leaders Group, representing Shepherd Air Force Base and Wichita Falls at a national level. Florsham was just named to the US Chamber Foundation's Business Leads Fellowship, which focuses on innovation in education and workforce development around the country. A creative problem solver, Florsham has nearly 20 years of economic development experience. And a history of developing successful strategic partnerships. He serves the implementation lead for the new community-wide strategy for Grow Wichita Falls. Henry and his wife Kimberly have six children and have served as foster parents to many other children in need. Today, Henry and I are going to be talking about strategic planning and one of Henry's favorite things, blowing stuff up. We'll get into this discussion right after we hear from our sponsor. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It for all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1 lowers your credit card processing fees at the chamber, 2,
02:38.69 Brandon Burton
helps your chamber members be more profitable, and three provides recurring non-dues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit chamberchappodcast.com slash cc for credit card. Again chamberchappodcast dot com slash cc and get swiping with swipe it. Okay Henry, we're back. Please Take a moment to say hello to the audience and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better. Sure.
03:11.892 Henry Florsheim
Something interesting. So I grew up in Louisiana, moved to Texas about six years ago. so I have have become pretty ingrained in Texas culture, but I'm I'm still a a Louisiana guy. I I went to the LSU Texas game and watched my Tigers destroy. Well, maybe it was close. Watched them beat Texas. I'm pulling out my gumbo pot this weekend because it just got cold. I speak French and I still love Louisiana, but man, we've been having a good time in Texas. My wife's from Texas and so it was it was a an easy way for us to get close to her family and Wichita Falls has been a great fit for us and so we're happy to be here.
03:54.414 Brandon Burton
That's great. I know I've been here in Texas for I think about twelve years now and just love it. So it's a it's a great place to be. yeah, in your bio, we hit on you guys have six children. I have four. And I think you know, we get a lot of comments and stared, you know, are those all yours? I'm sure you get you guys get that, I'm sure. Well, that's funny. Sometimes
04:16.992 Henry Florsheim
I feel the need to explain. But yeah, we got three biological daughters, and then we were we fostered for a while. We fostered probably 30 kids just because we wanted to do it. And one point we said, you know what, we could we could see adopting another kid. And it it didn't work out for a year and a half. All the kids that came through the house, that there were some we would have adopted, but they found other family members to to send them back to. And then we finally got a call and said, Hey, there's a five-year-old boy that needs to be adopted. And he's got two sisters. We yeah, we basically double the size of the family overnight. And it's just it was probably god, six seven seven years ago and it's just been awesome. They're they all fight and play and love each other just like birth siblings and no if somebody hadn't heard the story they would never know.
04:49.811 Brandon Burton
wow.
05:10.584 Brandon Burton
Just the way they should, right? Yeah.
05:12.365 Henry Florsheim
Exactly.
05:14.326 Brandon Burton
That's great. So before we just jump into the discussion today, can you give us all a little bit more perspective maybe about the Wichita Falls Chamber and your area so everyone can relate a little bit better to where you're sure.
05:25.688 Henry Florsheim
Sure. For starters, Wichita Falls is about two hours northwest of Dallas. So if you're heading to Colorado from Dallas, you're probably going to come up to 87 and you'll you'll drive through Wichita Falls, then you'll head due west to Amarillo and further. And so we're home to Shepard Air Force Base, which is a big flight training base and maintainer base. And the chamber here has about seven hundred and fifty members. We've grown a little bit over the past couple of years. We've grown more in in revenue per member than we have in the number of members, and we'll talk about why here in a little bit. But we are the economic developers for the community. We're a 4-A community, and the 4-A board hires the chamber to serve as the economic developers, and that's my background. I started out doing economic development 20 years ago in Louisiana. And so because of that, our staff Chamber and Economic Development Staff Combined is eleven people and probably gonna go to twelve by the end of the year. budget of about a million point six. Okay. And probably two thirds of that is is our economic development contract with the city.
06:43.702 Brandon Burton
Okay. Very good. So as I I mentioned in the introduction to the show, the topic for our discussion today is strategic planning and blowing stuff up. So let's let's jump into it. Why don't you from from your perspective, tell us maybe first of all, let's lead with the blowing stuff up. I was gonna save that for for later, but sure. What what does that mean to you?
07:11.81 Henry Florsheim
Well, I'm a change agent and I think that's why I was brought to Wichita Falls in the first place. This this city, when I got here six years ago, it was six years ago, October, and it just felt like an old city with old leadership attitudes, and the chamber felt the same way. The chamber was just in a big rut and there wasn't a whole a lot of excitement around what we were doing. And there was no real pathway. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that there was no plan. or vision. And so morale was bad. I mean, I had I had employees fighting with members about stuff, ac actively fighting with them, you know. Yeah. And it was just weird. And so I knew that I was gonna have to come in and blow the whole thing up and really just start over. It it's harder to to start over than it would be to start a fr a brand new chamber, right? Yeah. And so we so we had to to figure out how to strategically manage the blowing up of stuff. Because you can't just come in with a staff of ten or eleven. You can't come in and just empty the shop and start over. You can't just come in and stop all your programs and start over. So that's always been one of my challenges is how do we manage the transition from what we were to who we want to be? And so you you have to start small. And for us it was it was one employee needed to go more than any other. And and when I did that, I I started getting calls and emails from people saying, my God, I didn't think anything was ever gonna happen. And so so we started looking at the things that that really needed to change programs and due structure and figuring out, well what can we actively manage right now? Because Until you change over your staff, until you've got the right attitudes and skill sets on staff, it's not like you can just go and make something new. And so started out with some tweaks. But overall, if you look back, look at us from six years ago to today, nothing looks the same. Nothing. We don't have any staff left from then. there were a lot of programs we used to do that we don't do anymore. The programs that we do still do don't look anything like they did before.
09:31.574 Henry Florsheim
And one good example is our business expo. It seems like every chamber feels like they have to have some sort of business to business expo. And I know some communities do and still and they still have a lot of success with them. Well, ours, even though we were pumping in more promotional dollars to get the word out and we were doing better on social media getting the word out, attendance and feedback just kept dropping. And so finally, I I think it was last year. It may have been two years ago. Finally, we just made the decision internally. We said, we're not doing this anymore. Even though we made a little mu we made a little money on it. We said we're not doing it anymore because nobody seems happy with it. The attendance is not great. And really, if you look at does it fit our mission, may maybe you could twist it a little bit to say it fits our mission, but what else could we be doing with that time? And so we We basically blew it up and walked away and said, We're not doing that anymore. And you know how many complaints we got?
10:37.333 Brandon Burton
I'm guessing none.
10:38.58 Henry Florsheim
Not a sing not a single one. And I know I've talked to a lot of chamber professionals that are just scared to cut the cord on something like that. Not one single person complained. And think about it, we got 750 members, which means we represent probably tens of thousands of people throughout this community. And even if five people complained out of out of 10 or 20 or 40,000, does it really matter? It doesn't. They're going to complain once. And then then you're gonna move on. And even if they keep complaining, does it really matter? And so it it really all starts with what's your mission? And then you figure out the easy way to do this is figure out, well, what are we already doing that doesn't fit our mission, doesn't help us generate the resources to accomplish our mission. Those are the things we need to go blow up first. It's real simple, but we get caught we get caught up in the day to day. And we're down in the weeds and trying to answer all our emails and and it it's hard for us up to all to step back and think strategically about what those things might be.
11:45.742 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So there's always somebody in the community that will complain about any kind of change. And the fact that you had zero complaints about getting rid of the business expo, yeah. I mean, that tells me number one, like the impact that it was having on the community. Like people didn't miss it, right? Once it was done, they didn't miss so unless you drew attention to it and said, by the way, we're not doing the business expo this year, you know, nobody's missing it. To draw the attention to complain that you're So and I was just with any of the programs, you know, what if you were to evaluate and say if we didn't have this program anymore, would anybody miss it? You know, and and that's a good, you know, self check to see how relevant is it and what kind of tweaks need to be made. But sorry, go ahead.
12:15.65 Henry Florsheim
Yeah, exactly.
12:34.71 Henry Florsheim
And well and there are some programs like that that are easy to I say easy, relatively easy to kill and deal with the aftermath. And then there are some some communities, I know the chambers do things like the Christmas parade. and I was my last chamber in Arkansas, we had a parade that we we managed. And that's fine if that's part of your mission and that's what the community expects you to do, whether it's a festival or a parade or whatever.
13:04.27 Brandon Burton
Sounds like you were really enthusiastic about it.
13:06.926 Henry Florsheim
If it doesn't if it doesn't fit your mission, so that that's one of those where it's a little more dangerous because you'll definitely take some hits. But here's the thing I've always thought. If that Christmas parade or that Easter festival or whatever is so important to your community and and yet it doesn't fit your mission, if it's that important to your city, somebody else should be anxiously willing to take it to taking it over. And if nobody else is willing to take it over. And they're just using you to get what they want, then who cares? You don't need to be doing it in the first place.
13:43.404 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So I think that that's a perfect transition to lead into the strategic planning part of our discussion. So if you have that strategic plan and these programs or events don't align with that strategic plan, then you need to have that evaluation and see what you you know, see how you can blow it up, see how you can get rid of it. or like I had Kevin Sheeley on a few weeks ago from the Ocala Marion County Chamber in Florida.
14:11.011 Henry Florsheim
Right.
14:11.634 Brandon Burton
He just said you need to have a barbecue. You know, put these sacred cows out on the barbecue and just in here in Texas, you know, we like barbecues. So that that resonated with me. But so as you go about strategic planning and especially coming into a chamber where there was changes that needed to be made, how did you go about creating that strategic plan knowing that some things needed to be changed?
14:16.701 Henry Florsheim
Get rid of
14:35.0 Henry Florsheim
Sure. And let's let's talk about why first, then we'll get into it how we do that. A strategic plan, especially if you've never been through the process before, it can be a scary, imposing thing, right? Because it sounds it's so severe, it it's rigid, but it can be your best friend, especially when you've got programs you want to get rid of, or if you've got a board or a community where people are always bringing you new things that they think you ought to be doing. A strategic plan allows you to To point to that and say, I appreciate you bringing this idea to us. It doesn't currently currently fit with our mission and our plan, but I'd be happy to take a look at it again in a year or two when we update these things. And so it helps you more than anything because it helps you figure out how you should be budgeting and where you should be allocating your time, your staff time, your own time, your volunteers time. If it doesn't, if it's not on the plan. And the plan is the right plan and it has been is has been created the right way, then it's gonna be your absolute best friend in the world. Yes. It does. And so when I got here, we did not have a strategy. We so we actually we didn't have an economic development strategy for the community, and we did not have a strategy for the chamber either. And so since that time, really in the last two years, I I've addressed both of those. And so we
15:38.062 Brandon Burton
Yeah, it keeps your focus.
16:00.218 Henry Florsheim
used our our 4A board to help hire a facilitator for a community-wide economic development strategy that that I'm the lead implementation chair for. And so we pulled together a huge community group and developed a plan for that. And then last year we brought in another facilitator that helped chambers create strategies and worked with my board just my board and me and the facilitator to create a strategy for the chamber. And so The the good news is now there is complete clarity as to what we should be doing. The big challenge that you've always got to think about is that well, who's going to be in charge of it? Because you're going to end up with some action teams and a bunch of volunteers and staff people doing things, but there's got to be a person in charge of leading the implementation. And so for us on both of those strategies, it's me. And so it's it's a lot to handle. But the end the end result is going to be that we're doing the things. that we have deliberately determined we need to do as a chamber to improve. And as a community, we're going to be deliberately doing those things as a community in an economic development program to grow the city. And so to me as the the chamber CEO, those are two of the most important things I can be doing. And so if I have to put other stuff off to to dedicate time to to those two strategies and getting them implemented, that's what I've got to do. And so what I'd what I'd recommend is if somebody does not have a strategy for the chamber, first off, just reach out to some other chambers and look at their strategy so you have a general idea of what they're talking about. Because it wouldn't make sense to go talk to a facilitator and start the process yourself if you're not really clear on what a strategy looks like. And our strategy, so this is an interesting, interesting contrast. Our economic development strategy. And all the data that backs it up is like a hundred plus pages. And and that's the firm that we hired, we wanted that to be a data driven process. And so that's what that group wanted. Our chamber strategy is maybe four pages. It's very simple. Now we're building out the the list of action items, which will be longer than that, but the strategy itself is very, very simple. And so I'd be happy to share it with anybody. And it gives you a really good idea of the framework we're following to get better.
18:26.06 Henry Florsheim
And so just take a look at one of those so you have an idea when you go to your chair or your executive committee or your board and say, hey, I'd really like us to pursue the development of something like this. You have an idea of what that looks like. after you do that, figure out well, who's out there that can help you do it? Is do you have the money to hire a facilitator? Do you have a statewide organization that's got somebody that could do it for free or very, very cheap? Is there another ch is there another chamber nearby? I've seen a lot of chamber execs do it for neighboring chambers. And in fact, we've got a small town about 10 minutes north of us that's maybe 10,000 people. I'm gonna be leading their board and new director through a planning process in about a month because they don't have the funds to hire somebody. And so I'm just I'm gonna help them with it. So gat gather all that info first and then go to your your leadership and and just say, hey. What do you think about this? This could help us get better at at what we do.
19:26.924 Brandon Burton
Yeah. So we'll make sure we get your contact information in the show notes for this episode. So if people wanted to reach out to you and take up your your offer to share that four page strategic strategy that that they can reach out to you and get that. But knowing that you're coming into the situation where a lot of change needed needed to happen, how did you go about creating that plan? And then as you as you get those requests from members in the community. to do things that are not part of your plan, how do you keep track of those things to be able to address it as you reevaluate the plan the next time?
20:04.142 Henry Florsheim
Sure. So for us, we we probably did it backwards. We like I said, I've been here six years. So I got here at the end of thirteen and we we only just created the chamber strategy last year. So in 2018. However, we we hired somebody to help us revamp our entire due structure, God, probably four years ago. So back in 2015, because our due structure was such a mess. We were hemorrhaging cash each week, each month, and and it was the the due structure was a nightmare. There there were fifty different exemptions for different types of companies, you know, for a car dealership we were charging based upon how many cars you had on the lot, which is impossible to maintain. You know, for hotels, how many rooms you had and restaurants, how many seats you had, just all these stupid different things. And it was impossible, it was impossible for our staff to to even remember if we couldn't memorize the the structure, how do you expect business to understand it? And so we Yeah, exactly. And and ever and we were and and every member got the same benefits. And so whether you were paying us two hundred fifty bucks or
21:14.454 Brandon Burton
Or to or to recognize the value they get at
21:26.132 Henry Florsheim
or eight thousand dollars or whatever, everybody got the same benefits. And so it just didn't make sense. We were leaving money on the table. And so I s I still was not through with my rebuild of the entire organization, but I had changed out my membership and events team. And so I said, okay, it's time I can do this. Maybe I can't do a big strategy yet, but I can I can go ahead and change our due structure. And so my my board was already on board because I've been talking about this concept since day one. I learned about tier dos. at Chamber Institute back in back starting around 2011. And I had made the transition to a tier due structure at my last chamber. And so I knew we could handle that. And so we hired a facilitator, came in, worked with our board and some volunteers and the staff over a period of months and we started rolling that out. And as a result, our our revenue per member went way up. Our retention rate went up a little bit. And we started being able to show much more value to our members because it was easier to tell them what they got. And now they have a choice. And we were able to remind them that hey, you joined at this tier because you like this benefit. This event is coming up that addresses that need. And I just want to make sure you are aware of it. So when it came time for renewal, hey. How did you like this tier? Does it still fit for you? Those needs that you talked about? Did you did you attend? Did you participate? Are you getting what you want? And so that was really a strategic decision that changed the face of our chamber because the at that point we became much more focused on providing value, really providing individual value. Because the company specifically deliberately decided on it on a tier. And they're gonna upgrade their membership and they're gonna spend this much money because they want this thing over here. That allows us and forces us to think about, okay, for that member we got to focus on this, but for this other member, they want something different. So it changed how we deal with with individual members, existing members. It also changed how we sell our members membership because now we're focused way more on finding out needs up front instead of just dumping our briefcase and telling everything that we do.
23:47.04 Henry Florsheim
And so that was really a strategic change without being an overall strategy. And so we did that. and it was probably three years before we actually went out and and created our own strategy. But the good news was in our new strategy, due structure wasn't a part of it because we had already addressed that. And so I I worked with my board. I said, Hey, now's time. I've got some money dedicated in the budget to do this. And do you agree? And executive committee said, Yes, we're gonna do this. So I went out and found the the facilitator that I wanted. We worked out a schedule, worked out a fee schedule, and and brought him in. And we did it was a it was basically a a how did we do it? It was a couple of hours one afternoon, then a dinner with the facilitator and and just a couple of my leadership, and then the next morning we did a half day. And at that point we were done. And so it wasn't a it wasn't a Unwieldy amount of time for our volunteers. It wasn't you know, our economic development strategy took nine months to develop 'cause it was so so data driven. But it's a bigger thing. But for the chamber strategy, it wasn't you know, let's do trust falls and play with Plato Plato and all these icebreakers. No, the the guy we hired, it was just nuts and bolts and conversations about who we are, who we want to be, what does the community need out of us. And so then It took him another couple of weeks, I guess, to go back and and write everything up. And then we were able to review what he had written and determine if there were any tweaks that we needed to make to it or or clarity to add to any of the sections. And then we were done. It was so simple, didn't cost a whole lot of money. And and if you don't have the funds, like I said, there are there are other resources out there that can help you do this. And it just helps us in prioritizing. And so now we've got a strategy in place that we're working our way through. We're developing a list of all the action items, which then tell us what what groups, you know, what action teams do we have to create or committees or whatever. And then we just one thing at a time. And so I'm the lead on the implementation. And so I'm just constantly looking at where are we at on each piece? What is my tracking system look like? What what do we need to start yet? Because starting's the hardest.
26:08.49 Henry Florsheim
Starting something's always the hardest. And so it's just work once you've got the strategy, it's just working your way through what's priority right now, what would be the easiest thing to accomplish, or what's the most important thing to tackle first, and just biting off one piece at a time. And and and it's it's messy and it's difficult and it's challenging when you're in the middle of it. But then a year or two down the road, when you look back and say, my God, we actually accomplished something. Whereas Without that strategy, you just tend to stay down in the weeds all day, every day, caught up in your email or what's on fire or what's the biggest crisis right now, or what what employees having a problem, and you don't spend any time on on the strategic stuff and you don't accompl you don't move forward. And so what this what these strategies have helped us to do is even though we're hit with a thousand different things every day, you know You can ignore your email for a day and come back to it and it's gonna be okay. Right? Yeah. But you can't ignore you can't ignore bad cash flow or you can't ignore major community workforce issues for for years at a time and expect things to automatically resolve themselves. And so that's why that's why blowing stuff up is so important. And that's why making sure you got a clear pathway is so important. Whether it's a strategic plan or initially it's just a list of priorities. However, you do it, having that big picture stuff to fall back on is the most important thing you can possibly be doing because that's how we as chambers can create huge impacts on our communities. It's always interesting to see when we get together in big groups like ACCE or Chamber Institute or whatever, you know, every chamber is so unique. And our role in our communities is so unique. And so some chambers. are almost solely focused on big picture economic development type stuff and some are solely focused on membership and some are solely focused on these you know parades and stuff. And so it's it's interesting to see the difference in the dynamics of all this stuff, but it doesn't matter which kind of chamber you are, you still need a pathway. You still need to figure out, are we doing what we're supposed to be doing? And are we doing it as well as we could possibly be doing it. And if not, what's our plan to move forward?
28:34.132 Henry Florsheim
And so it's really a simple thing, but I know it is scary and intimidating before you do it if you've never been involved in it before. And so like I said, just reach out to others, look at some plans, talk to some facilitators. I guarantee you every one of the professionals out there is happy to talk to you about how their process works because that's how they find clients. And even if you find out how a process works and you can't afford to hire that person, you've learned a little bit about planning.
29:03.458 Brandon Burton
That's right. And so sorry, I wasn't saying you had mentioned the economic development strategy was very data driven. would it be fair to say, I mean, it sounds like even the the chamber strategic plan was data driven based on what you learned through the due structure. What was important to people. Yeah.
29:04.654 Henry Florsheim
Yeah, go ahead.
29:19.502 Henry Florsheim
Absolutely. They're both data driven, just in a different way. And so, you know, dealing with a community of 100 plus thousand people versus a chamber of with a staff of 10 or 11 and some volunteers, it's a different process. But yeah, it's absolutely data driven. And the way we did it, our board was fully engaged. Even the ones that couldn't participate, they they were given data ahead of time and were allowed to give input after. And so everybody had the chance to buy in, whether they did or not, everybody had the chance to buy into it. And and so that makes it so much easier moving forward when you create your next year's budget. It's gotta be strategy driven. And so those things in the strategy need they need accounts. They need they may need dollars tied to them. And so since you gotta have your board approving and buying into your financial plan, they they really need to understand and buy into the strategy that's backing it up in the first place. And so using the data and using the people that are gonna be vested in and need to be champions of that plan once it's done to help design it, it it just makes sense. And it's really not that difficult.
30:31.83 Brandon Burton
Yep. So Henry, I know I know we need to start wrapping things up here. but what based on what we've covered today, what is one action item listeners can do to to start taking their chamber up to the next level?
30:45.496 Henry Florsheim
Sure. I I'm gonna give you two. If that's all right. first first I would say reach out to me in our chamber on Facebook because we share a lot. We don't just share stuff, membership stuff. We don't just post our next event. We're we we post tons of community development type stuff. And I do on my my my own Facebook page is a complex mess of personal stuff, family.
30:48.46 Brandon Burton
Okay. I'll take him. I'll take him. Yeah.
31:14.464 Henry Florsheim
Stupid observations and football and food I'm cooking and chamber and community and economic development type stuff. And so I know a lot of chamber execs that are really personal and and walled off from their community on their social media feeds. And and I I think you miss an opportunity to connect with your community when you do it like that. And so so reach out and befriend me, even if we don't know each other, it's fine. I'm I'm I'm friends with a lot of people in this business that I don't that I haven't met personally. And so I'd love I'd love to help people through this sort of thing.
31:47.436 Brandon Burton
And that way we can see what your gumbo looks like too.
31:49.912 Henry Florsheim
Yeah, exactly. I'm cooking gum on yeah, this this weekend. and then the other thing, and you and I talked about this before the show, there's a Facebook group out there called Chamber of Commerce Professionals. And I got introduced to it a few years back. And it is the to me, it is the single best source, daily source of of lots of different chamber related issues, second to this podcast, obviously.
32:18.414 Brandon Burton
Yeah, that's right.
32:20.074 Henry Florsheim
But it it is a go check it out. It's called Chamber of Commerce Professionals, and there are close to 8,000 Chamber of Commerce employees from all over the world in this group on a daily basis posting about different issues, asking questions about hey, who's who's redone their due structure, who's done a strat, who's done a plan, who's done a you know, who's done a business expo lately, who's got an idea for this, or people sharing best practices about things that they do. And so it is an awesome way, even if you don't post. If you just go in and lurk and browse and watch the things other people are posting about, it it is a it is a great way to learn more about this business and it is a great way to make professional and personal connections. I've got hundreds of friends from that group that I haven't met in person and I'll go to ACCE and it's and it's like a reunion because we know each other. We see everything we're doing on each other's doing on Facebook. We just haven't happened to meet yet. And so just in as as an example, looking at this this Facebook group right now, there's a conversation about how do you manage your face your your chamber Facebook page? There's one about what do you do on Chamber of Commerce Week? There's one about how do you celebrate an out-of-town business coming to town? How do you engage with a micromanaging board? What marketing materials have you used to on a campaign to renovate your building? And so it's just this huge, crazy. array of stuff to talk about and you learn about other resources out there like this podcast too. And so it it is a great starting point, especially if you're new to the industry. But even if you're not, it's a great way to share what you do and learn from others. And so I highly recommend it. So the two things, reach out to me and and the Wichita Falls Texas Chamber of Commerce on Facebook. And then this other group is called Chamber of Commerce Professionals.
34:14.206 Brandon Burton
Great advice. And we'll we'll put links to both you, the chamber, and also the chamber pros Facebook page on the show notes. so Henry, as as we finish here, I asked this question to everybody I have on the show, but as we look to the future, how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose? I I'm curious with your mindset of blowing stuff up. What do you what does it look like to you?
34:37.686 Henry Florsheim
I I think you know, a lot of times it d it definitely depends on our community and and the leadership in the organization. But and a lot of people talk about how, well, chambers are going away or chambers are losing their relevance. Well, they only do if you let it, right? They only lose their relevance if you let them. And certainly weak leadership or or a group that that lets themselves be dominated and and not really focused on what their mission ought to be. you can lose your relevance and some chambers will. But in general, we have an opportunity to be the lead organization in our respective communities in terms of moving us forward. Think about like this. What other organization in any community is generally tasked with building a better city? And and there's probably not one. Maybe city council or something, but but I'm not talking about government. So our job, especially the chambers that that are actively involved in economic development as well, we're all in economic development, but some of us are are involved in your traditional format of recruiting business and that sort of thing. as long as we pay attention to what what's going on in our community and what our mission should be, we have a chance to be that lead. go to organization that people that people look to when there's a crisis, that they look to when there's an opportunity. And so that's what I'm gonna make sure my chamber is. And that frankly, that's what we've done over the last six years is turn us from an irrelevant organization where people had very low expectations of us into a very vibrant, active, engaged organization That people expect great things from us. And so the challenge is the bar has been set much higher. It's been moved for sure. But I don't know about you. I don't want to I don't want to run a mediocre chamber. I don't want to run a group that nobody has any expectations. I'd rather run one, I'd rather be transparent and have people know what we're up to and why. And when we fail at something, we say, Well, this is what happened, and we move on, we try something else, and then when we succeed.
36:52.524 Henry Florsheim
We let the community celebrate. And so so to me, we to me we're we're even more important than ever because the world's becoming more polarized, the world's becoming more specialized. so many cities look just like any other city. And the ones that have good leadership are the ones that are they're the ones that are gonna win.
37:14.86 Brandon Burton
That's right. Yeah, that answer sounds like it could have come right out of your strategic plan. I mean
37:21.07 Henry Florsheim
We probably had that conversation while we were getting it for sure. And so if you know, I'll just say this. Everybody's got a different leadership style. And everybody has a different confidence level when it comes to talking to your leadership and your community about stuff like this. Obviously, and this this has come over over a lot of time in this industry. I don't have any problem talking about these things to my leadership. And so if you're just not quite there yet.
37:24.814 Brandon Burton
You're creating
37:50.658 Henry Florsheim
Learn from others. All right. Just pay attention to what's going on. And it will come. It may not be a natural thing for you, but man, this stuff is not rocket science. It's very simple to figure out what's happening in your in your community. What are the things people are really looking for help with? Can you accomplish those? Then and then if so, how are you going to do it? It's not complicated.
38:12.214 Brandon Burton
Right. And that's the whole purpose of this podcast is to be able to learn from others and apply it back to your channel. And that's the thing. You can learn but you have to apply. You have to take action and start, like you had mentioned earlier. Yeah.
38:22.778 Henry Florsheim
And I love that you do this podcast because so many of us we we get in this trap where where we feel like we're alone, especially if we're not part of a bigger group and we don't reach out to other colleagues and we don't reach out to other resources like this podcast. Man, there's so much stuff out there right now. Really, there's more content than you can ever possibly digest. But what's cool about it you know, but what's cool about it is you can pick and choose. And so if you're in the chamber industry and you really want to to get better at what you do, listening to podcasts like this and then the other resources I talked about earlier, it's easy to it's easy to do. There's no excuse for you not to to to do that. And so I don't care how scared you are about it, it doesn't hurt to to just behind the scenes do the research, listen to stuff like this, read some plans and learn about it. And if you do that, well, maybe in a year, maybe in two years. Maybe you're ready to to go talk to your board about it and I just I would love to help.
39:23.852 Brandon Burton
Yeah. And that absolutely you got to pick and choose, otherwise you get too overwhelmed. And even on the podcast here, if you go back in the past episodes, you can see the show titles and pick and choose the ones that may be relevant to what you're, you know, need to learn more about, you know, in your current situation. No doubt. And and you don't need to go back and listen to all, you know, the forty past ones. I mean, it's great if you do, but pick those ones that will be most relevant and resonate the most with you at this moment. Yeah.
39:52.62 Henry Florsheim
Absolutely.
39:53.976 Brandon Burton
But Henry, thank you for spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. where can listeners connect with you if they have any questions or if they wanted to get that copy of the strategic plan or you had already mentioned your Facebook connections, but is are there other ways they can reach out to you? Yeah.
40:12.408 Henry Florsheim
Absolutely. And and I mean that about reaching out to me on Facebook, but also my email address is Henry at Wichita Falls Chamber dot com. And send me a note anytime our the number at our office is nine four zero seven two three two seven four one. I'm happy to chat. I'm also on LinkedIn, but I really don't know what the heck's going on there. So I I log into LinkedIn maybe a couple of times a month to click yes to connections. Yeah. our marketing director's trying to push us to get more engaged there and then I think Twitter's gonna have to be next, but man, I just
40:47.512 Brandon Burton
You know, run out of time and you gotta pick and choose. take your own advice.
40:52.302 Henry Florsheim
There's so much out there. And so yeah, absolutely. You gotta pick and choose and prioritize. And so yeah, call me at the office, send me an email, reach out to me on Facebook. I it doesn't matter to me. If you've got some questions, I'd love to chat. I would share our strategy with you, both the economic development plan and the chamber strategy. And yeah, I'd love to chat.
41:15.266 Brandon Burton
That's great. So we'll get all that updated in the show notes, which can be found at chamberchap podcast dot com slash episode forty. And Henry again, thank you so much for spending time with us today. It was a pleasure visiting with you.
41:27.724 Henry Florsheim
My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation.
41:32.662 Brandon Burton
If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 39 — A Chamber Member's Journey with Cathi Hight
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Cathi Hight
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.83 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:15.832 Brandon Burton
Hello and welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. We're here today with episode thirty-nine of Chamber Chat Podcast, and I'm Brandon Burton. It is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Cathi Hight, president of Height Performance Group. Kathy is the developer of the member retention kit and a new approach to tiered membership. Kathy helps chambers meet expectations of their members. She provides strategies to help chambers manage constant change, deliver benefits that members value, leverage volunteer and staff resources efficiently, and effectively communicate the value of membership. Kathy has a diverse career experience, which includes serving as a senior vice president of growth strategy for the Austin Chamber, VP of Operations for the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii. Regional Sales and Marketing Manager for Doll Foods and Dean Foods, National Manager for the Kaufman Foundation's Fast Track Entrepreneurship Program, and a Motorola University instructor for continuous improvement. Kathy was a national trainer for ACCE for membership development and has been an instructor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organization Management for over 14 years. Today, Kathy and I are going to have a discussion around a chamber members journey and we'll get into this discussion right after we hear from our sponsor. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It for all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1.
02:18.306 Brandon Burton
Helps your chamber members be more profitable, and three, provides recurring nondues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit chamberchapodcast.com slash CC for credit card. Again chamberchappodcast.com slash C C and get swiping with swipe it. Okay, Kathy, and we're back. Please take a moment, say hello to the audience and please share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
02:53.1 Cathi Hight
Hi, Brandon, and hello everybody. I'm so glad that you're listening to this podcast. Hmm, something interesting. I guess that's that's always in the the the ears of the listener. some people may know this, others perhaps not, but I spent twenty five years of my life in Honolulu, Hawaii, and I actually grew up on the west shore of Oahu. So you know, you can always take a gal out of tech out of Hawaii, but I don't think you ever take the aloha out of the girl. So I'm your Hawaiian connection.
03:24.46 Brandon Burton
All right. Well being that we're both Texans at at the moment, you in the Austin area, me in the Dallas area, I know Texas is a great place to live. A lot of people come here for various reasons and they can't leave. But I mean it's it's gotta be a a good poll to bring you here from Hawaii. That's
03:43.886 Cathi Hight
well, you know, I had I had kind of an in between stop. I first when I was recruited by the Kaufman Foundation, I was recruited to Denver to run the entrepreneurship program. And then I kinda migrated up to Boulder and I spent sixteen years there. So so getting me over the water was the first challenge. But once I got here and my son went to school at C U Boulder and then he moved to Austin with a j with his first job and started a family. So that that's what made me pick up and and come and come and be here to be close to them.
04:16.866 Brandon Burton
That will do it. That's strong poll. Yeah. So I I I know I touched on it a bit in your bio, but can you tell us a little bit more about height performance group, just for anyone who may not be as familiar? just share with us a little bit more about your business and what you have to offer chambers as you serve them.
04:19.197 Cathi Hight
S.
04:36.622 Cathi Hight
Sure. so I launched my company in two thousand and one. I tell everybody that I was an accidental chamber consultant. I started my business doing organizational development, strategic planning, marketing, and customer loyalty strategies, leadership development, things like that. And I volunteered for my that the Boulder Chamber and they were having a retention issue. And the one thing I think that I didn't realize about chambers, even though I used to work for the state chamber in Honolulu was that they didn't really understand their their members very much in terms of segmentation. So we did a lot of work sort of doing a deep dive into the membership creative retention plan. And that was in showcase at ACCE. And the next thing I knew, I was in the chamber consulting business. But over the eight 18 or 19 years, that's kind of migrated from not I still do a lot of membership development here at model development, a lot of strategic planning. Board and staff retreats. But really, my essence of how I try to help chambers is to help them to continue to evolve, to meet the expectations of their community and their members, and to stay essential to the communities that they serve. So that's how I all sort of preface it, and the projects that come out of it are varied. So I'm working with a group of five chambers now that are looking to merge. just got done working with another chamber, redesigning vision, mission, core values. so it really varies. but but I think I I think I find myself working with chambers that really are inspired to stay essential to their communities and they're not afraid to change. So that's that's that's sort of what draws and it kind of connects us together.
06:24.974 Brandon Burton
That's great. I I noticed as you're explaining that, the five different chambers you're working with right now and how they all have different outcomes. as you were giving your explic explanation about how you serve these chambers, my the thought was coming to me. I'm sure there's some things that you kind of have a similar approach and maybe similar direction to begin with. But then what are what are some of those things that the chambers you know, are unique to them? that may take that course a different way to make those outcomes different for each chamber.
06:57.594 Cathi Hight
you know, oftentimes your approach by the executive director or the president that says here's what the challenge is and here's what they want to work on. I always ask to interview key stakeholders, you know, influencers in their community, whether they're members or not. and I might interview about 25 of them. and and and I think that that's really helpful to sort of get the lay of the land, get some different perspectives. And sometimes what comes out of that really guides the chamber in a different way to say, well, it's not really about that, or that's a small piece of something that's actually bigger. and so I really let that be an outside in process. So sometimes that initial thing that they want to do changes to become a really different initiative, but it's usually the right initiative. And I think that's that's important. Let's not just chase the The red herring, let's you know, I always tell people my job is to help you figure out the real problem and solve it. And sometimes the problem they present isn't the real one.
07:58.774 Brandon Burton
Yeah. I like that how you interview so many of those key stakeholders. That way you're not just the person coming in from out of town thinking that you have all the answers, but you're actually finding out what those needs are and helping them come to their own answers is what it sounds like, which is a great, great setup.
08:15.575 Cathi Hight
Yes, yes.
08:17.624 Brandon Burton
So so our topic of of discussion today, as I mentioned earlier, is is going to be focused around a chamber members journey. So there's some different steps along the way to kind of establishing a chamber members journey. Y could you start maybe explaining to us about developing a a member persona?
08:39.212 Cathi Hight
Yes. I I think a lot of chambers have seen the matrix. I think the the four types of members. I know that Kyle Sexton and Frank Kenny and I have talked about that. n none of us developed it was actually developed by a board of directors at the Kitchener Waterloo Chamber in Ontario, Canada. So I think they're the brilliant minds behind that. but I think you can kind of do a little bit of a deeper dive and and and again kind of goes to my earlier conversation. or thing that I mentioned about segmentation. It's about really trying to understand different groups of members. So a persona is it's it's it's you thinking about different groups of members but sort of putting yourself in their shoes and imagining who they are and what their lives are like. So a persona is usually a fictional representation. Like we never use pictures of real members, but it's based on real things and we know about them, like demographics, behaviors, where they are in their career, you know, if they're married, if they have family, if their what their role is in an organization. And so we kind of spend time creating personas. sometimes we design four, six, eight different personas. It's wherever you think you've got the largest pockets of representation in your in your in your membership. Because when you look at the matrix, it they're just four generic sort of descriptions. Personas, that's the whole thing about the word persona, person, is sort of imagining a particular person. So I'll give you an example. So maybe there's entrepreneur Emily. And entrepreneur Emily, she she may be, you know, in her late twenties. she started a business or she bought a franchise. she might have just might just be her. She maybe she's got a couple of other people, she might work out of her home. So we try to kind of think about well, what is Emily's life like? Okay. She's married, she got two kids, she's juggling this business, working out of her house. this is her first business, so there's a lot she doesn't really know. She's afraid of failing because she's, you know, put a lot of time and money into it and she's left her job.
11:02.206 Cathi Hight
so we really kind of get into the the person and sort of think about well, who is this person and what are they like? What are their fears? what are they really trying to do and and what do they need? and then we kind of talk about marketing Mary and she she really her job is to market the company. She doesn't own the company. she's trying to really create visibility for the company, kind of talk about their story, their message. position, maybe this is a new market for them and there's a lot of competition. So how does she kind of get in front of the right people? and this is the person who may be buying sponsorships for you. But the idea is what is what is Mary's job and what and what are the challenges that she faces and what is she trying to do? And then we could have CEO Charlie and he could own the company, maybe not, but he's he's the big decision maker. He probably has quite a lot of staff. And so what are his concerns, you know, not finding the right workforce, kind of wanting to leave a a legacy, but really trying to keep the company in good hands before he retires, looking out at the market, seeing a lot of changes in competition, maybe worried about what's going on in in the schools, concerned about traffic and I wanna I want to, you know, retire here, but I want to make sure this is a good place for my grandkids. So, you know, each of those personas is different. And so spending that early time really just having that emotional connection that what I call customer empathy and really profiling. So if you think about like CSI or what is the other show that kind of that has the behavioral criminal model Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's the same thing. It's like you're going to do profiles.
12:48.366 Brandon Burton
Yeah, criminal minds, yeah.
12:55.048 Cathi Hight
and that's when I realized that a lot of chambers really didn't had a hard time doing this because they're like, you know, I don't really think I know them that well. Or I'm not really sure how do I how do I bundle them together so that I can actually create a profile. so it's harder than it sounds, but it's it's actually a lot of fun. And we kind of would have a picture up there to say, okay, this is Emily, everybody. Everybody kind of so you kinda think about like the old picture of the on the Wheaties cereal boxes from a long time ago. It's sort of that image, it's like Can you picture him or her? so that's the first place is is doing the personas.
13:31.608 Brandon Burton
So I know as you're talking about personas, I'm I'm hearing you know, a lot of other people that I've you know heard of are they call it creating an avatar, you know, for their their audience. And it's the same thing where you're able to to pin a name, maybe have an actual picture that you can look at and say, This is Emily, this is Mary, this is Charlie. So when you look at them, you know what their story is, you know what their purpose is, you know what their goal is and what they're trying to accomplish. w through their membership with the chamber. question I I came up with is you're talking about CEO Charlie. So he's with the bigger company, a lot of employees. In those instances as you're creating these personas, are you looking at the person that actually took the step to join the chamber and making the persona around them or around the business? Since CEO Charlie's business may have several reps underneath the chamber. How do you look at that?
14:29.954 Cathi Hight
Well, even though we tend to look at companies as being our member accounts, companies don't make decisions. People do, right? And and if you're familiar with the book called Strategic Selling, came I think came out in the eighties and it's been redone a few times. They talk about the fact that if it's a company, there there are multiple users. And you need to understand the needs of the different users. So that's kind of where I come from in my sales and marketing background is If I really want to protect an account, I I might have to identify three or four users, right? The CFO, the the the the CEO, the VP of marketing, and realize that I've got to have a value proposition that works for all of them, right? So in that case, if that's who I'm gonna be trying to engage at the chamber, I have to profile those most common roles or customers. And make sure that I have something for them, right? Because it could be a collective decision that CEO might leave. And so have I resonated, have I demonstrated value with the other users who might be making that decision? so it's it's it's not the company, even though like I said, yes, the company's the member technically, but when you were trying to engage people, it's the people you are personifying. Yeah.
15:53.864 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. Okay, so the the next step that we'll look at here is the member journey maps for joining. You wanna dive into that and explain what that looks like?
16:04.354 Cathi Hight
Sure. so you know, this concept has been around for a while, probably ten years in the for-profit sector, but relatively new, I would say, in the association space. And they've been kind of delving into this the last a couple of years, and I would say really brand new in the chamber space. We tend to lag behind associations. I don't know why that is, but they were the first ones to use tiered models. so you know, they just tend to be a few years. I think I had a chambers. so this concept about journey, a customer journey, is to say that, you know, every customer is on a journey, with or without you, they they're on a journey. You need to understand what that journey is. And if if they're doing the journey with you, then you need to recognize the journey and you need to be able to make it successful for them. So for instance, you know, if you were to think about, you know, somebody wants to be a member already is a member and their and their journey, their professional journey is elevating their brand, right? So the brand of the company. So that's that's at Marketing Mary. You know, that that's my journey. I'm I'm figuring out how to elevate my brand. You have other members who are on a journey to grow their business, right? My journeys grow my business. Or I want to, I want to shape our community or a region, or hey, I want to advance my career. so if you can sort of identify a few journeys that your members might be on, there could be the journey to lead, you know. I'm I I want to be a leader, or I am a leader and I'm looking for an opportunity to serve, right? Those are all journeys. So the whole idea is to realize that they have a greater ambition or goal. And when they're looking at the chamber, they're looking for ways to activate that journey. So this idea about the journey is thinking about the fact that there's a path that they're on, and we happen to be partners in that journey, and I want to make sure that I can help them navigate the journey with what we have to offer to help them have a successful set of interactions with us. But it's their journey, it's not ours, even though I think we have the intention that we want them to sponsor.
18:29.004 Cathi Hight
Or you want them to stay members. Again, it's coming from that customer empathy, that place in the member that says, What's my journey? What am I trying to do here? And then tapping into that journey and mapping that out so that you can actually be an influential partner in that journey.
18:46.454 Brandon Burton
So as you're explaining that, it it sounds like there's some similarities to developing the member persona with creating the the member journey maps. maybe the difference that I see is with the member personas, you're looking at these groups, these segmented groups of people, and maybe kind of making a blanket assumption that the people in this group are doing this is their why as to why they're engaging with the chamber. And then the member journey becomes more personalized for that individual. to see, okay, what is their individual purpose? They they came from this persona, this is their blanket purpose. But then as you get to know them more personally, what is their individual why and how can we help them accomplish that?
19:29.43 Cathi Hight
Right. Right, right. So like let's just let's just take for example, and there's a book out there called Managing the Member Experience, which is written by Sue Frogett and Mark Levin. And they mostly work with associations and they released this book, I want to say it was twenty fifteen or sixteen. and in there th there are three member journey maps, which is great. Now they don't they don't really get into the personas, but it's a great overview of the concept of journey map. So I would recommend that to anyone. And I think you can only buy it from they're two separate consultants, but you can kind of only buy it from their website. So I don't I haven't seen it on Amazon, for instance. so so one of the the maps, which is really common, I think every chamber could use, is that first year onboarding journey, right? So we all want to onboard our brand new members. Because we know that first-year members don't have the best retention. So we can kind of create a 12-month journey map, probably broken down by quarters. And and the authors talk about that. They say, okay, that very first stage and the very first three months of this onboarding journey is is is the welcoming stage, right? And the member is probably thinking, okay, I joined, now what? Right? How do I get started? how do I tell you about me? how do I learn more about what what you guys do? And and where do I find this information? So that would be sort of generic, right? And then there is a connecting stage, there is an engagement stage and then a renewing stage. And so what the book then says, okay, so if you know those are the stages, then you design the map, right? So what should happen in the first 90 days and the next 90 days, etc. So That's great. I think creating just a broad onboarding journey map for the first year is a great idea. But I think you could take that further by adding the personas to say, well, what if I had like a little questionnaire and I welcomed you and I'll say, you know, we know that people joined the chamber for a number of different reasons and we would love to be able to serve you better. Could you
21:53.144 Cathi Hight
Could you help us out by answering just a few questions, right? So if if I just, you know, I wouldn't tell, I wouldn't ask what journey are you on, but but I would might but I might ask a question that says, you know, as you think about your motivation to join, you know, the chamber community, which of these things would be important to you, right? So to elevate my brand, grow my business, shape our community, or advance my career. Right. So they might pick one of those. And then what would be great is if I actually had four different little journey maps for onboarding based on those motivations. So if you told me you wanted to shape our community or shape our region, I'm probably not going to be inviting you to member orientation into business after hours. That would not be what I would do. I might do that with Grow My Business. advance my career, but I may not do that with you. And especially if I think that you're if you're the CEO Charlie, then maybe the first thing I would do is is have a board member welcome you, right? So so I think kind of plugging in the persona, thinking about the journey and then finding a way to customize that journey would be the ultimate goal, right? So when we think about onboarding, yes, we want everybody to have a successful first year. We know that's critical, but But I think adding the persona element to that journey map would help you to actually customize the approaches and who on your team would be helping to orchestrate that or what would you be pointing them to on your website. Maybe your emails might be slightly different.
23:32.83 Brandon Burton
And I love that, being able to personalize that message. In fact, the episode I did last week, it was a a book review on Pat Flynn's book called Superfans Developing You know Followers into a Superfan base. And in that book, he he starts off talking about you need to learn to speak the language of your followers. So with your chamber members. What language are they speaking? You don't want to say, let me help you create your journey map, because that's a chamber language, right? Right. So you want to help them establish what their purpose is and what their goals are and how you can help them. But then he talks about creating quick wins. So when you're you had mentioned about the keeping the retention after that first year, if they're getting quick wins along the way and you're helping them see the value that the chamber has to offer to them, and then broken up, you know, throughout that first year. then that retention is gonna stay much higher than it would be if you just let join and just kind of float along the way for the year and then, you know, flip a coin to see whether or not they they renew the next year. but then he talks about being keeping them connected and then engaged. So
24:41.206 Cathi Hight
It's it's it it's very, very similar. So if I'm gonna move to the connecting engagement stage, how I would navigate that for a CEO would not be the same as I would be navigating that for Emily. That would be totally different. the groups that I would introduce them to, where I would try to get them to engage, it needs to match sort of what that motivation is. Otherwise it just it feels frustrating when you think that the organization doesn't understand you and is not is not targeting you with opportunities that make sense to you.
25:17.624 Brandon Burton
So with the ongoing engagement, you had mentioned kind of breaking them down into segments. So you're reaching out to them and inviting them to different things that appeal to their specific journey map. are there other things that you you could give us tips or advice as far as engaging members on a more on a personal level like that?
25:37.994 Cathi Hight
well, you know, if you understand who the who the members are, so for instance, I was just talking to a chamber yesterday, they really want their whole team to sort of feel responsible for engagement, you know, that it just doesn't fall on the membership person. And they said, you know, maybe you could spend a couple of hours with our staff sort of looking at how do we How do we enhance the member experience and and what are our roles in in doing that, regardless of what you do, whether you're the front desk person or you're the person that puts on events? and so you know, like we're gonna actually have them all do a preliminary exercise, which is just based on the matrix itself with the four types of members, to have them identify three to five members that they think fall into, you know, those particular ones. but you know, just pulling up someone's profile. in the database and looking at their activities or who they are, what what their role is, their company, what does their company do? And if you have if you have someone on the phone, that would be a great thing to just be able to pull up their their profile and to know a little bit more about them and to be able to log that conversation, the gist of that conversation into the database so that other people who might do the same thing and pull it up would actually see that interaction. to start to realize that, you know, the more that you get to know and you start to s recognize them as people and understand what they're all about is certainly going to help you. So whether or not you have a journey map designed or not, I think just the just the essence of know your customer, right? Or get to know your customer would be important regardless of what your role is. because I think we all interact with members, but we all don't capture what we've learned about those members. And I think collectively, when you you've got different people doing that, you can get a really nice three sixty view of that member, instead of just the person who brought them in the door. So
27:45.358 Brandon Burton
I'd love that tip to be able to log those key count conversations in the database because I know so many chamber executives or membership engagement people, they'll they'll have these discussions and they get to know these members and individuals on a pretty personal level. And as I talk to them, they'll tell me, you know, John from ABC Company, you know, he has these things going on. And it's all in their head, you know, they They know these conversations because they've had it. But if somebody else on the staff were to have that conversation with John, they don't know where that left off. So being able to log some of those key conversations, I think, is a great tip for anybody to apply.
28:24.962 Cathi Hight
Yes, and and I'll mention just one one additional thing, because I think most of the association management systems like chambermaster or member clicks or anything like that can actually produce a total engagement report. And I think if you were to pull that a couple times a year, which just sort of captures the engagement over the last year or two, you know, which basically says here's their dues, but here's what else. they invested in, right? So maybe the dues was just a thousand dollars, but they did a five thousand dollar investment to a capital campaign or economic development plan. They somebody went on the Washington DC trip. they were a sponsor, you know, at the annual meeting or something else gives you a really good idea. You can't just look at the dues. You you sort of had to have this this overview. And of course it's only looking at transactions. It's not recording committee participation and other types of things. But when we've done that with some chambers, it it's been really interesting how they'll say, God, I didn't even know that that company did all that. So you know, like they're only paying 500, but wow, their their tall investment was was really like $10,000. And it that that tells me a lot about that company. And I was like, yeah, right, exactly. So even just pulling a report like that a couple of times a year. can give you some more insight into the members, maybe guide the conversations a little bit differently. So data can be your friend if it's there, whether it's captured as notes in the database or running reports. But all of that is usually already available. We're just not we're just not tapping into it.
30:11.146 Brandon Burton
So that maybe just open a new can of worms, but I'm thinking when you when you when you pull that report and you can see, you know, maybe the the top 15 or 20 businesses that have invested in the chamber that in the past year, do you then maybe put more attention on them and try to provide more value for them? Or do you look further down the list at those that didn't? contribute as much to try to add more value to them and build them up to where they're being more engaged.
30:46.23 Cathi Hight
Well, I mean I mean I think it's both. I think you definitely want to maintain those that are already very engaged with you. it's probably easier to get ten percent more engagement from those that are actively engaged. But I would definitely look at who's not engaged because one thing that we've known is up t up as many as I I think I can go up to seventy-five percent of dropped members are have usually not been engaged at all. So I I think looking at who is under engaged or not engaged at all, and just following up with them. And it's not to say that everybody has to be engaged in a transactional way, but I think it's it's sort of wondering why they haven't found anything to be of value to them. And maybe it's because we don't really understand what they're looking for, or it's just a lack of awareness of what might be available. So I think that it would make me want to pick up the phone and Or go visit and at least have a conversation so to understand a little bit more about it.
31:45.516 Brandon Burton
Yeah. And as you were giving your answer, I thought there may be a way even to take some of those top investors and help them to be able to express the value from the chamber to those that are not as engaged. So whether it that's through testimonials or videos on your website or, you know, some way to have them express the message of the value that the chamber's provided for them and the connections they've made and have them become a real advocate for the chamber.
32:12.406 Cathi Hight
Right. Absolutely. I mean, you know, they tell the story the best. So I think I think that's I think it's a great way of doing that. Okay. Well, anything else you want to know?
32:23.426 Brandon Burton
Yes, I would I was gonna ask you just as we start wrapping up here, besides obviously hiring you directly, which many chambers should do, call Kathy, what is one action item based on our discussion today that members or that chambers can do to help their members have a a successful journey with the chamber? If you're just to sum it up in into one action item.
32:47.616 Cathi Hight
Well, I think they could definitely get started on on c creating the personas. we usually do that with, you know, just we kind of make a list of the different types and then put one type per flip chart and just start kind of profiling and and trying to answer similar questions, you know, in terms of, you know, what do we think the age range is and w you know, what do we think income is and What do we think the biggest challenge or fear is for that type, right? So you kind of kind of do something sort of similar in terms of an exercise, but that's something they could easily do, I think, just within their organization. if they're an ACCE member, I've done webinars on member personas and journey maps. And if you're a member, I believe they're free and available on their site. on my site, there's lots of free articles, there's lots of webinars as well. but I think based on what we talked about, I I think people could probably just get started. They could also just Google, you know, j journey maps or customer personas, learn a little bit more about the concept, and then just sit down and and try it on for size. I think that's the only way that it really happens. and I and I think people actually have a good time doing it. And I th you know, I think it just makes it a lot easier. And what's what's interesting is I use a software, it's not for chambers, but a CRM software. And I've gone to their headquarters. And what's interesting is when you walk through their headquarters, you actually see these like what they look like cereal boxes, big cereal boxes hanging from the ceiling. And all of them feature their customer personas. That's yeah. So that as you walk around you can you can see Bill. and so Bill's, you know, motivation is this and this this is these are the challenges that really keep him up at night. and and here's what he's trying to do with the software. And it's there so that you just look up and as you're talking to somebody, you're like, I'm talking to Bill, you know. But but I do think that we can not to say you plaster that all over your chamber walls, but I think the idea is how how can we help everyone on our team understand
34:58.222 Cathi Hight
who our most common types of members are and how we serve them. the other thing you can do is once you have your personas, you can look at all your programs and you can actually go through your list of programs and say, who's it for? Is this for Emily? Is this for Charlie? and and and think about whether or not you have the programming that actually matches up to the reasons why they would want to be engaged.
35:22.38 Brandon Burton
That's perfect. So get started and have fun with it. That's what I Yes.
35:27.18 Cathi Hight
Absolutely. Absolutely.
35:29.226 Brandon Burton
As as we look to the future, I ask everybody this question I have on the show. As we look to the future, how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose?
35:38.338 Cathi Hight
I think that chambers are always going to be necessary in the community as long as they understand what their core roles are. It is really not so much about events as much as it is understanding what your community's challenges are, defining how you help to address those challenges, and then be willing to change your how, or like Simon Senex says, understand your why. and it's true. It's like if you look at the community and you ask yourself, why do you exist and what is your purpose? And then you can shift the your how and your what to meet that purpose. So don't get too hung up on, you know, your annual festival or your your big events. Don't lead by that. Lead lead by the why, and then I think everything else is easy.
36:31.254 Brandon Burton
That's perfect. Well, Kathy, I wanted to to thank you so much for taking some time out of your day today to to be with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And thank everybody who's out there listening. The show notes for this episode will be found at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode thirty-nine. And in those show notes we'll we'll try to get the links to the books that you mentioned, Kathy. And also I'd like to put your contact information on there too, so people can get in contact with you. What are the best ways that you'd prefer listeners to reach out to you?
37:05.544 Cathi Hight
well, I mean they can they can always find me on LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook just by looking at Kathy C A T H I Height H I G H T. the website is height, H I G H T performance dot com. And they can always send an email to me at Kathy at high performance dot com. So lots of ways to find me and get in touch with me. if you just Google my name. lots of things will come up, so I won't be too hard to find.
37:39.894 Brandon Burton
All right. We'll we'll get those links in the show notes. But again, Kathy, thank you for spending time with us today. I really appreciate it.
37:46.744 Cathi Hight
Thanks, Brandon.
37:51.5 Brandon Burton
If you are a Chamber Professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast, new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you're finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 38 — Superfans
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Solo
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.098 Brandon Burton
What are you a fan of? Are you a super fan of anything? Maybe a sports team, a band, a TV show, or a brand? Let's talk about this right after the intro. This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:32.556 Brandon Burton
Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I'm Brandon Burton and I'm here to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your Chamber members and your community. Now, something about me. I am a super fan of the San Francisco 49ers. When I was a teenager, my friends and I would hang out at the 49ers training camp each summer. We would Watch the players practice, we would get autographs and pictures of the players and coaches, and we would learn everything we could about every player. My friends and I we were so connected to the 49ers that as training camp progressed and started to wind down, they would have to make roster cuts, and my friends and I would find ourselves devastated and just quite honestly upset with some of the players that they would have to let go. Now I also got to meet some of the Forty Niner greats like Steve Young and Jerry Rice and Terrell Owens before his ego got too big and and Ken Norton Jr. But my bedroom, it was filled with all sorts of Forty Niner memorabilia, and even my office today still sports much of my prized Forty Niner collection. So that question I asked at the beginning. What are you a fan or a super fan of? Were you able to give that some thought? Think about your experience when you were first introduced to this thing that you're a fan of. And at one point you were just a casual observer. And what took you along that journey from being a casual observer to becoming a super fan? I decided that today I I wanted to do sort of a book review for Pat Flynn's new book titled Superfans. For those of you who may not know, Pat Flynn, he is the founder and host of a podcast and a blog, both by the same name of Smart Passive Income. He considers himself to be a crash test dummy for business. He tries things out and lets you know what works and what doesn't work.
02:52.058 Brandon Burton
And in his new book, Superfans, he takes you through the journey of a fan, starting off as a casual observer to becoming part of an active audience, to being a connected you know, being connected to the community, and then finally becoming a super fan. So, as I become a bigger fan of Pat Flynn, obviously I've I've bought his book and I I subscribed to his podcast and over the last year or two I've learned a a lot from him. I learned about how to get this podcast started from studying what Pat does. One thing that I really like about Pat from the first time that I listened to him is that he was very selective about any sponsors or advertisers for his show. He talks about receiving large offers from companies to advertise on his podcast when he was just getting started. before he was really making any any kind of money from it. And he turned them down because their message did not fit his brand. It it was not in line with his subscribers. And I've tried to bring that same kind of thing into Chamber Chat Podcast. I could get advertisers or sponsors for any random products. in fact on other podcasts I hear many ads for security systems or shaving kits and and things of that in those lines, but that's not for my show. My audience consists of chamber professionals. Not that you don't need a security system or shaving kits, but I you're here for a reason and I want to serve you the best way that I can. So I want any of my sponsors of this show to be in line with you, with my audience. So most chamber fet professionals will want to use a local business for anything that they're able to in order to support their local economies and that's great. And I totally encourage that. The two companies that I've chosen to sponsor with so far with Chamber Chat Podcast are Community Matters and Swipe It. I decided to work with both of these companies because, well, let's start with Community Matters. They specialize in chamber publishing of maps and directories. And even though you may have and probably do have local publishers in your city, there is a difference.
05:19.028 Brandon Burton
in working with a publisher that's familiar with chamber publishing. And Community Matters always follows through with their commitments, which is a big deal, making sure that you as a chamber get your your part of your nondues revenue, but also get a a good quality product on time and from a company that treats your members right. Now you can learn more about having Community Matters work with you on a a future project, map, or directory by visiting Chamberchatpodcast.com slash CMI, which stands for Community Matters Inc. So again, Chamberchatpodcast.com slash CMI. Now Swipeit, you've probably heard their ads on on the this podcast, but Swipeit is a credit card processor, and I'm sure you have a press credit card processor or two that are members of your chamber. Or you may even use your local bank for processing credit cards. And the reason I chose to partner with Swipe It is because they beat the costs of most competitors sometimes by as high as 40%. But maybe more importantly is Swipe It offers an affinity program that they can pay your chamber non dues revenue year after year. You're able to help your members become more profitable by saving their in their credit card fees and you can help them you can you know earn non recurring non-dues revenue for the chamber for each member who starts swiping with swipe it you can you can have a representative from swipe it probably the owner kevin hodis contact you about getting your chamber set up with their affinity program by visiting chamberchatpodcast.com slash cc, which stands for credit card. So chamberchatpodcast.com slash cc. Now in this episode today, I plan to walk through about the first three-fourths of Pat Flynn's book, Superfans. And as I mentioned, I I'll be highlighting the things that stood out to me and specifically how those key points apply to chambers of commerce.
07:37.794 Brandon Burton
Now, as you listen to this episode, I'm sure that you'll hear some ideas and you'll probably have some ideas from your own, just you know, sparked from from what you hear. I would encourage you to write it down. Write those ideas down if you can. If you're driving, don't write them down, just keep driving. You can always go back to this episode and listen to it again and and then jot those notes down. But I want to be sure that you can act on these ideas as impressions come to you. I've Always thought that it would be awesome to see a chamber with a fan base of members who serve as ambassadors. Not the kind of ambassadors that wear the red coats and show up to ribbon cuttings, but I mean real ambassadors who go out in the community who share the message about what the chamber can do for businesses with everyone they meet. Just think about how powerful that would be. Imagine that. So without any further delay, let's get into the book. So he has the book broken up into four parts. And the first part he talks about the casual audience to becoming active audience. So casual audience, these are going to be people who they may hear about the chamber because you do a 5K or the chamber because they see ribbon cuttings in the the newspaper, things like that. They're that's all it is is just casual, Bystandards almost. They don't really know exactly what the chamber has to offer, but they've heard heard the chamber name. They may know a business that's a member, but that's about the extent of their their interaction with the chamber. So back in episode five of Chamber Chat Podcast, I had interviewed Tony Felker from the Frisco Chamber of Commerce. And he talked about Something they do at their chamber is I can't remember if we call it a yellow highlighter or green highlighter exercise, but the the point is they take a a highlighter, they print out their membership list, take this, I'm gonna say a yellow highlighter, and go through the membership list and highlight the name of each business who is an active participant with the chamber. So first of all, what defines an active member?
10:00.894 Brandon Burton
Is that somebody who shows up at all the mixers? Is that somebody who shows up at all the ribbon cuttings or all the luncheons? Or is that somebody who sits on your board? Is that somebody who advertises in in whatever the chamber puts out there? And I hope the answer is yes. I hope that answer is if somebody's participating in any one of those things, that they are an active member. And even today. You could say if they are commenting or reacting to your social media posts from the chamber, that I would consider them an active member because they're plugged in. They're they're getting some kind of value from the chamber. So part one in this or I guess this is the first chapter in this part, he talks Pat Flynn talks about learning the lyrics. And he he tells a story about his wife. Who was a big Backstreet Boys fan when she was a teenager. And they have the the popular song, I'm sure you're familiar familiar with it, but quit playing games with my heart. Quit playing games with my heart. And now you probably all have that song going through your head now. But they knew Backstreet Boys, they knew who their audience was. And They knew that their audience was teenage girls. They knew that these teenage girls would have crushes on boys, and that they would end up having their hearts broken. And so having these lyrics quit playing games with my heart, they were speaking to their specific audience. They knew what they were going through, and they created lyrics that resonated with their audience. I in episode six of Chambertop Podcast, I talked about Good vibrations, frequency, and resonance. And in that episode it kind of goes along these same lines about what you can do to resonate or speak the language or the lyrics of your audience or your chamber members. So do you know the lyrics for your audience? Do you know what your chamber members or what the greater business community is looking for, what their needs are?
12:27.254 Brandon Burton
Are you speaking to them? When your members get emails or see social media posts, is it speaking to their lyrics or the language that they care about? So just think about that as you get your branding out there. Is it speaking to them? And in the next chapter he talks about breaking the ice and to not be so formal. I think in the especially in the business sense, everybody Wants to be so formal, you know, handshakes and wearing suits and all these things, and not that any of that's bad. in fact, a lot of it's good, but be willing to share things about yourself and your staff that are personal. You know, not just on the business level, but let them know if you're a super fan of the 49ers, or whatever you're a fan of. Maybe you're I don't know, Billy Idol fan, w whatever it may be. let your let your members know who you are what what makes you tick and that's going to make you more real to them and they can connect with you and build a better relationship with you. So this will create real bonds with your members. Now Pat Pat Flynn is a he's a huge back to the future fan and his audience knows all about it. And he talks about how whenever His fans see the movie Back to the Future, they'll often hit him up on Twitter and say, Hey Pat, I'm watching Back to the Future, I'm thinking about you or they'll come across some kind of paraphernalia or, you know, fan gear for Back to the Future and they'll often send these things to Pat because they know he collects Back to the Future memorabilia. So he has in the book even he showed pictures of all these things, you know, from the movie that people have sent to him. Because they know what a big fan he is. And it really just makes that connection real and creates a bond between these fans and and you. So think about how you can become real and connect with your chamber members by just sharing personal things about yourself and break that ice. Now the next thing that that Pat dives into is he talks about creating quick wins.
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And if you can create an opportunity for your casual or potential members to get a quick win, then they'll come back for more. And this is why social media and video games are so success so successful is they create quick wins constantly. People are in just in life, people are busy and they often want to know what's in it for me. So if you can show them How you can serve them, give them that quick win, give them something of value right off the bat, you immediately establish a good value for the chamber. Now I know some chambers have created a program for new members that pairs them with a mentor who's another chamber member in a related industry. That can be a quick win. They can create a relationship that can feed each other business, and then they both win. It's a win-win for both of them. So, what are some other quick win opportunities that you can create? You may have some flashes of ideas come into your mind. And again, if you are, jot those down so you can act on them. Because creating those quick wins are going to bring them back over and over again. So, as I mentioned, Pat is a big back to the future fan. So his next step here, he's titled it Drive the DeLorean. So By Drive the DeLorean, he's talking about helping your members or potential members to imagine how their situation could improve by being an active member of the chamber. Now, this can be done by testimonials and by real stories of people who've walked this path from being a casual member to an active member and what that action has done for their business. their networks and their overall relationships. Pat says, tell them a story of what their problem looks like and what it looks like once it's solved. So I'll repeat that. It says tell them a story of what their problem looks like once it's been solved. So you have the answer to help them solve their problem and often using the words like imagine. You know, picture this, imagine this.
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You have this problem, we have the solution, and with the solution applied, your life is dramatically different or your business succeeds. Without this answer, you may continue to struggle and continue to go down the same path that you're already on. But let us help you get to that next level by trusting the chamber and the resources we have for you. But overall, just show them some examples of transformation of some of your members. So his next step that he highlights, he he titles Return Every Handshake. Now this one is huge. How many of you are connected to or follow Frank Kenny on social media? He's a great example of what it means to return every handshake. Whenever someone comments on one of his posts, he always, at least from what I've seen, he responds to their comment in a personal way. He'll often mention their name and something unique to what they commented about. It's far too easy to get too busy to be bothered with returning every email or replying to every comment on social media, but this is a game changer. Some chamber executives put off the impression that they're untouchable. You can't reach them. And they're always too busy or can't be bothered by the average Joe. If you see the average Joe The average Joe is leaving comments on the chamber social media posts, you should be drawing notice and making Joe feel welcome and glad that he's participating and being active. This may be his way of making the cut on the yellow highlighter exercise. Now, as a side note, when we talk about returning every handshake, I'm not talking about just hitting like or the thumbs up button with their comment, but actually put a little effort. Into responding with a personal touch so they know that you spent some time thinking about them individually. So, part two of the book, he gets into the next transition of taking this active audience to becoming a connected community. So, how do you take active members and turn them into a connected community? The first thing he talks about, he says, let them take a shot.
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So Pat shares a story about a man named Steve Spangler, who produces scientific videos that are very entertaining. And he's known for performing scientific demonstrations on video, specifically on YouTube, that really wow his community. Now, Steve Spangler learned that without engaging his audience in the right way, that although his videos would get a lot of views, the comments were very lackluster. People may comment and say, Wow. Cool, that was neat. But that was about the end of the comments, and there would only be a few of Now that was before he learned a simple strategy. Rather than explaining how the science worked in the video, he would demonstrate he would go about his demonstration and then he would ask his audience to leave a comment in the comment section on YouTube about how they thought the experiment worked. He left it up to his audience. To explain how it worked. Now, this experiment of his of asking for the input from his followers put his comments and engagement through the roof. Everyone likes to show how smart they are. And if you provide a platform for them to share what they know with others, then many people will engage. This may require some creativity to implement this at a at a chamber level, but give it a try. You know, simple questions, even even like Posting up what is healthier, kale or spinach. Yeah, you could put that on your Facebook feed for the chamber, just to get some reaction, just to test it out. And people will weigh in with their expertise, for good or bad, or you know, sometimes they'll get into you know little back and forths with each other about which one is is better for you. so also good, you know, what would you do questions. would be a good option to help get some unique feedback and and find some answers for unique situations. For instance, if your city is struggling to find employees for restaurants in your area, you may ask your members in an open-ended question, what would you do to attract these types of employees to work in our city? And people will weigh in. They'll give their feedback and let you know i some of them will be terrible ideas
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And some of them will be pretty good ideas. It will spark something that that you can try, you know, that you can work with the city with. then he talks about letting them decide. Let your audience, let your members make a decision. So this step is similar to let them take a shot, but it may be a little bit more specific. So in essence, you want to ask your members for input on making a decision. For example, if you're working on a rebit rebranding campaign, you may ask your members to vote on your top two or three logo designs. You could do the same thing when it comes to a program for a luncheon or speakers to choose from for an event. The idea is to give some control to your members so they feel like their voice is making a difference. Now the next step is create a challenge. Now this is a fun one. As I read this chapter I had a few ideas, but as you onboard new members you can create a challenge for them to meet certain requirements. And if they complete the requirements, they can get some kind of an award. Now these requirements, they they may be to reach out to, you know, a certain number of members to create a network of their own, or to attend a certain number of chamber event events in their first three months. Or to bring a potential member to an event. Yeah, you get the idea. But you could even step this challenge up by creating little rewards throughout the challenge so they get the instant wins, those quick wins that we talked about earlier, all along the way. And that will help to get them addicted in a good way. So they can continue and and complete the challenge that you set out for them. And that's really going to ingrain them and get them get their claws into the chamber and and everything the chamber can do for them. Now the next step that Pat talks about is opening the factory doors. No, by this he talks he means to kind of show behind the curtain. Anytime you can p pull back the curtain to show your members how much you really do on their behalf, they will appreciate your efforts so much more. Especially if you only offer this behind the scenes peak to certain people, maybe those who complete your challenge, or those who are most engaged with the chamber, this will not only make them feel special but
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But it will give them something to talk about as they visit with other members. And it'll make them feel special that they know something that the other people don't and they'll they'll be happy to share it. So often I see advis advocacy efforts go unnoticed by many of the chamber members. But if just a few businesses could see how important and what an impact those efforts are to every business in your community, then they'll start to talk. And help spread the message of the good work that the chamber does for everyone. So hopefully that's given you some ideas of what you can do to open the factory doors, let your members see behind the curtain of what you do for them. So the next step, Pat talks about staging an e a gig. I was gonna say stage an event, but he calls it a gig. So hopefully you have gigs or events on a regular basis. I will not go into Too much detail on this segment, other than these events should be an opportunity for people to get know get to know the chamber and and the staff of the chamber. So these events can be very stressful, I know, for for chamber staff, as everything always seems to get pulled together at the last minute, but they are the opportunity for the community at large to get to know you. So take advantage of the opportunity, and even though you're very busy, try not to To look busy. Make time to shake hands and build those connections with those members that are taking time out of their day to be there. So this next step, I love. the next step he says, give them a name. Give your audience, give your membership a name. I love this idea. So I wish I could see a a r a show of hands, but how many of you have a name for your chamber members? Think about that. What I mean it it makes total sense to be able to have a name so you can you can say the name and it refers to your whole membership. So couple examples. If you think of Trekkies, you know that I'm talking about Star Trek fans, or cheeseheads are Green Bay Packer fans, or parrotheads are fans of Jimmy Buffett, or Swifties are fans of Taylor Swift. I actually didn't know.
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Swifties that Taylor Swift fans were called Swifties. I learned that from Pat in his book. But fans of Pat Flynn are called Team Flynn. So there's a lot of power that comes through a group of people having a common identity. Pat shares a story in the book about how Star Trek was almost canceled only after one season, after one year after a launch, because it just it didn't have the ratings. But there was such a fan base of Trekkies that got on board with a letter writing campaign to NBC that they had to keep producing Star Trek. They ended up producing in total 31 seasons and over 740 episodes. Now a group with an identity can go to bat for you. They can they can fight for you. So if the chamber ever receives bad press, your fans will have your back and support you all the way. I'd encourage you to give some serious thought to what you should call your chamber members. Sometimes your members come up with the name and sometimes you have to give it to them. This may be something that you can let them decide. Put a couple options out there on Facebook and on your social media accounts and let them vote. Let them decide what the name should be for the your chamber membership. It may seem uncomfortable at first to refer to your membership by a name, but you'll get used to it and it'll create an identity that they can all relate to. I think this that step right there is magical. So the as we keep moving along, the the next step is bringing them together. So this happens already with chambers, but maybe you can step it up a notch. Maybe you can reach out to your most active members and invite them to a private get together. This is how your biggest fans this it it allows your biggest fans to support each other and become even bigger fans because of the connections that you're facilitating. So with that it it takes us on to the next step, which is make them shine. So this topic is pretty unique. The idea is to take your biggest fans and put the focus on them. Maybe
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Maybe they are the focus of the of a newsletter article or a social media post. the bigger the platform, the better. Pat tells a story of the company Chubbies. Maybe you're familiar with them, maybe you're not, but they they produce men's shorts, kind of unique designs and stuff on But in the world of Instagram, Chubbies was getting tagged in photos from their customers wearing the shorts. picture somebody out of the pool, you know, and they're wearing chubby shorts. They get a picture and they tag Chubbies in it saying, check out my new Chubbies. but at one point it the Instagram feed for Chubbies was featuring 95% of the posts were their customers that were tagging Chubbies in their posts. in fact in 2015, Chubbies took this to the next level by hiring male models for their ad campaigns. out of their customer base to feature their brand. I just I thought that was awesome. But those fans that got chosen to be the male models, i imagine I mean they're gonna be fans for life. They're gonna wear chubbies, you know, as long as chubby's is around. So those were models that they used for their their own customers. But This this topic is very open to creativity, but the i idea is to find ways to put your biggest fans in the spotlight. So not every chamber member is going to be your biggest fan, but you will have some that rise to the top, and those are the ones that you want to make shine. So the third part to this book, so like I mentioned, we're going three-fourths of the book in this this book review on this episode, but the Part three is taking the connected community to becoming super fans. Now this is where it gets good. This is where your real super fans really rise to the top. So Pat talks about this, he he calls it Remember the Lemons. So he tells a story when he was a waiter while he was in college. He and his his fellow waiters, they would play a game when they would wait tables to see who could earn the most tips on a given night.
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So Pat noticed that a certain man was a pretty regular customer. He would come in a few nights a week, and sometimes he'd come in with work colleagues. But Pat made it a point to be this man's waiter. And Pat would notice that the way that this man would would place his order, and he made it the goal to make this li this man's life and his ordering as easy as possible. So every time the man ordered, he would specifically ask for water and Three lemons. Not a bunch of lemons, or not one lemon or or a whole bunch, but three, very specific. So Pat got to know the man's name, which is Albert, and he got to know Albert's regular order. He formed a relationship with Albert because he cared about him to the point that Albert would ask for Pat to be his server whenever he came in, and Pat would always bring him his water with you got it three lemons. His tips went up drastically too, from the standard fifteen percent tips to tips ranging from twenty to twenty five dollars all the way up to a hundred dollars when he would have other colleagues in there with him to eat. So the lesson that Pat learned was to pay attention to the individual and you will get rewarded. So people, businesses all have different reasons why they get involved with the chamber in the first place. If you can figure out what their why is, what their reason is for joining the chamber, you can learn their name, name of them individually, their business, what their needs are, and then deliver and make it better and better over and over again. Then you'll be figuratively bringing them lemons every time they visit. So I love that story. But the next step. is send unexpected messages. So think about how it used to feel when you would check your mailbox. I mean your actual mailbox, you know, where the mailman delivers mail. how did it feel when you received a letter from a friend or a family member? Especially if it had been a while since you last communicated with them. Those little things make a person feel special. If you were to take a minute and send a quick email
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or even a physical note to one of your members, totally unexpected, and not asking for anything, but just to say thank you, or that you're thinking about them, how would that make them feel? Now we're also in the time where we have access to pretty amazing technology. So what would it mean to one of your members or maybe a new member to get a personalized video message from you? If you acknowledge what they're doing within the chamber community and mention their name and their business. They would know that you took the time out of your day to think about them and to even take action to reach out to them. Now in the book, Pat talks about an app called Bonjuro, which gives you an alert on your phone every time someone joins your your list, your email list, or whatever that list may be. But the app will prompt you then to make a short selfie video to send to the new subscriber. Now I've not used this app yet. But I have done something similar when chamber professionals have joined my email list. I've sent personalized video messages to them to welcome them to the chamber chat podcast community. Gee, I really need to get a good name for you guys. But I offer to help them along the along their journey as they explore all that the podcast has to offer to them. So this almost always, every time I I've sent a video. message like that's personalized almost always gets an email response back because it's an unexpected message. It's going above and beyond. So you can see big payoffs by finding pleasing ways to interrupt the pattern of day-to-day operations for your members. Make them smile and know that you care about them. Now this next step is Pat calls it just getting them involved. So whenever you can make sense of it,
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Get your members involved. This may be in a committee, this may be some role at a chamber event or in a larger level. You have members that serve on your board. I mean, they are involved. So the ways to get your members involved are limitless. It just takes a little bit of creativity. So a mentorship program could be a great way to get more seasoned fans of your chamber or members to help bring new members. Along their journey to help them become fans. Now, this last step that he highlights is to offer platinum access. So provide opportunities for your biggest fans to get a little more. Something special. So this may be a paid feature or a bonus to make certain members feel more special. Think about Going to a ballgame where you're looking to meet up with some friends, only to find out that their tickets were upgraded to box seats with an all-you-can-eat buffet. That makes them feel pretty special. But that's the kind of thing that you want to do, that you want to be able to offer to your biggest fans. Now, you can pay for box seats, or you can get an upgrade, if you know what I mean. Maybe you have a a big name speaker at an event and This platinum experience could be an introduction or behind the scenes introduction to the to the speaker, or maybe early access before the event. Maybe it's special seating or reserve seating. You can use your creativity to come up with better ideas than what I'm throwing at you, but the idea is to make them feel very special. Now, this really hits on the highlights of what I got out of the book Superfans by Pat Flynn with regard to how it can be applied to chambers of commerce. This book really targeted is it's really targeted to entrepreneurs. But as I read the book, I started to think about how an entrepreneur has to build everything from scratch. While these principles can be applied to a chamber very easily, since so many systems are already in place, including some kind of a following. You already have a membership, some following that you can apply these principles to. Now the idea is to turn that following into
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Superfans who will stand up for the chamber and help inform others of the great value that your chamber has to offer. Imagine having an army of business owners and representatives going throughout your city that promote and tell every other business how great the Chamber of Commerce is. So I enjoyed doing this little book review for Pat Flynn's super fans. You can check out the show notes where I'll plug in some of the highlights from this discussion or or episode. The show notes page is chamberchappodcast.com slash episode thirty eight. And share with me do you like this? Do you like this kind of format? Should I do other book reviews over time? drop me a line on Facebook or or email, whatever whatever your preferred preferences or LinkedIn I And I'm happy to hear from you. But anyways, this is fun and I look forward to talking to you again next week.
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