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Brandon Burton (00:00.737)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a dynamic leader and proud Macon native whose career has been defined by a passion for community vitality and economic growth.
In 2022, Jessica Walden was named president and CEO of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, where she leads the organization to strengthen businesses, attract new industries, and enhance the quality of life for citizens across the region. Jessica brings more than two decades of experience in community and economic development, leadership training, and small business support.
Before taking the helm of the chamber, she served as a business and leadership advisor for the University of Georgia Small Business Development Center and the J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, connecting entrepreneurs and organizations with programs that foster growth and innovation. She has also helped launch leadership programs statewide addressing workforce development, entrepreneurship, DEI, and sustainable community transformation.
Her professional expertise is matched by her academic accomplishments. is the first person in Georgia to earn the entrepreneur led economic development certification from the International Economic Development Council.
She is a graduate of Leadership Georgia, Leadership Macon, and Georgia’s Academy for Economic Development. And she’s been an active contributor to numerous community boards, including Montessori & Macon, and the Bragg Jam Festival, and the Otis Reading Foundation. A graduate of Georgia State University with a degree in journalism and a minor in English, Jessica is known for her infectious enthusiasm, her deep commitment to Macon, and her vision for inclusive, sustainable growth.
Brandon Burton (02:00.359)
Jessica, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening. And if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Jessica Walden (02:15.704)
Thank you so much, Brandon, and thank you for hosting a podcast like this. We were just speaking before the show began about how all of us chamber executives are big fans of R &D, a chance to really learn from each other. And I’m just, I’m thrilled to be here today and talk about what I love so much, which is my community of Macon, Georgia, and how it really brought me into the chamber world. What my bio didn’t mention, a lot of this came from a business that I owned
for over a decade, my husband and I operated a music history tour company called Rock Candy Tours. And we actually sold our tour company just two years ago to Visit Macon where it continues operating today under that very same name. But what I discovered with my tour company was just how much storytelling can benefit our community, how much storytelling gets us attention and relevancy and a chance to share so much more.
And for me, was just, was a natural opportunity. Even though I come from this community development, economic development background, my family history in Macon runs really deep. And it starts with the music business where my uncle and my father were the original managers of Otis Redding, the late great soul singer. And then later my uncle would go on to discover the Allman Brothers and my father would discover Lynyrd Skynyrd. And they operated right here in Macon where we became
became a capital of Southern rock and put making on the map through music. And so ironically enough, my chamber headquarters is located on that very same block where my uncle once had Capricorn Studios and where my dad did all of his work with his bands, including Lynyrd Skynyrd. And so it’s just so full circle to be here today and still sharing, making story using music as a continued platform. But I often get the
question, how does a kid who grew up in the rock and roll business end up a chamber president? Because that does seem like a big leap. But I tell everybody it’s a natural fit because at the end of the day, this is all talent, recruitment and retention. And it’s about being able to export our greatest good, which is often the story that we can share about our communities. so I find it to be natural, even though I don’t think my long hair
Brandon Burton (04:23.413)
Right?
Jessica Walden (04:45.484)
hippie parents and all that were at too many chamber meetings growing up.
Brandon Burton (04:50.167)
That is really cool though. So as far as interesting facts go that that’s high up on the rankings for me. You know over 350 episodes. That’s a pretty cool fact. yeah, awesome. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the making chamber, just give us an idea of the size staff, the type of work you guys are involved with budget just to kind of set the stage for our conversation today.
Jessica Walden (04:57.002)
you
Jessica Walden (05:01.837)
Okay.
Jessica Walden (05:10.988)
Yeah.
Jessica Walden (05:16.929)
Yeah, absolutely. The Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce is one of the oldest chambers in the state of Georgia. So we are over 150 years old and we’re located Macon for anyone who doesn’t know we’re right in the heart of Georgia. So in order to get to the world’s largest airport or seaport, which is Atlanta and Savannah, you often have to come right through Macon. Our chamber has, today our chamber’s operating on roughly a $2 million budget.
The majority of that budget is in our special initiatives such as workforce development and that talent recruitment and retention. We have nearly 800 investors and we have a staff of an incredible staff of 10 here at our chamber. We just added on a new staff member just a couple weeks ago. We’re located in the heart of downtown Macon so we’re in our commercial business district. If anybody has any prior history of our chamber then they
remember our old building that was just off the interstate and that was still standing when I came on board almost three years ago but it is no longer there. We’ve actually bulldozed that building in anticipation of great community progress and we’ve moved our chamber headquarters across the river to the vibrant area of an incredible downtown renaissance that we’re experiencing here in Macon and this is where we operate.
much the traditional chamber initiatives and programming in the sense of we had a very packed house our last business after hours of the year last night but we also are into innovative community driven programming and in a big focus of ours now we really turned towards the the lighthouse of that talent retention piece so in addition to our greater together message for the business community is making bibs most significant organized business community
We also have launched and really along the drumbeat of Choose Makin, which is both a website and an initiative and a call to action. So we have a lot of that going on all at one time as many of us Chambers do. But it is, it’s a really…
Jessica Walden (07:36.974)
I like to say our chamber has really continued to progress with the times and right now the times in Macon are amazing. It’s excellent here. We have installed a new 12,000 seat amphitheater. We’ve got now home of the world’s largest pickleball arena of all things. Our downtown has been recognized by Main Street America as the great American Main Street. And we’re all working really hard together and collaboratively on
trying to make Macon’s Old Mulgee Mounds America’s next national park, which means big things for us. So while we’ve got this urban vibrancy piece, like we’re in the middle of a renaissance here, we’re also looking towards conservation and nature and creating this giant green space that will be a huge tourism boom for this region and this state.
Brandon Burton (08:31.947)
You know, 10 years ago, I don’t think any chambers were talking about pickleball. And now it’s such a part of our society, know, social outings, right?
Jessica Walden (08:36.768)
I know.
Jessica Walden (08:41.623)
vernacular now. Well, fun fact, fun fact about our pickleball, not only is it the world’s largest indoor pickleball arena,
But the whole story behind it is so incredible because it was, it was the, so I’m born and raised here in Macon and shopped at the Macon Mall, sat in Santa’s lap at the Macon Mall, was a total child of the late nineties, or I’m sorry, late eighties, early nineties mall scene. But like many malls in our nation, it went through an economic downturn and it just sat pretty much, you know, abandoned for all, except for a few anchors and
completely underutilized and we have some really visionary leadership here including our own mayor who saw more than it could be and so the world’s largest indoor pickleball arena is has been repurposed and is located in what was the make-a-mall or what is the make-a-mall I should still say and so now we affectionately call it the pickle mall.
Brandon Burton (09:42.86)
pickle mall. I love it. I also I really like when chambers are located in their downtown. I think it’s just it’s a good signaling of being right there in the heart of business and where things are happening. But it doesn’t have to be you know, for anyone listening who’s still on the interstate or you know, different type of location, but I do like it when the chambers in the downtown so
Jessica Walden (09:57.87)
Absolutely.
Jessica Walden (10:08.301)
Yeah, you know, it’s important to meet businesses where they are. And right now, such density of business is in our downtown. And the other piece of that is like right across the street from me is the Tubman African-American Museum. Our visit-making, our CBBR Tourism Bureau is right here. Our terminal stations, I like to think we’re very neatly positioned along the welcome corridor into our community, which I also think is so important for a chamber to be.
Brandon Burton (10:35.187)
It is. That’s great. Great alignment. So today we’re going to focus most of our conversation around fostering strong engagement. And that can be such a topic that chambers across the country are always thinking about. How can we better engage our members? How can we create a stronger community feeling? So we’ll dive into some of the approaches you guys have taken and really what strong engagement looks like, especially there in Macon. We’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.
Jessica, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about what it looks like to foster strong engagement at your chamber. So maybe start by telling us what does strong engagement look like in Macon? What have you guys done to foster that and create that?
Jessica Walden (11:24.683)
Well, you there’s there’s always the numbers to back it up. And one thing we noticed was a trend. Now, again, I came on board three years ago, very new to the chamber world, but I wasn’t new to make in. And for me, it was signaling a whole new chapter for us. Like I said, we we moved buildings. We we completely we’d switched to a tier system. All these things happened at once within this three year change. But one of the things we noticed
at the end of that year as we began to see an increase in engagement in our post 2020 world. And it really did ask, you know, make us really ask like, what is this uptick from? And I think what a lot of that what strong engagement really looks like, it is good attendance. I mean, none of us want to do this to an empty room. So it is strong attendance. But it’s also creating a welcoming environment, setting the stage
for that natural connection to take place. And in order to have great connection, great engagement with one another, you definitely have to have a variety of people in the room. So, you know, just like many of our chambers, we’ve got the mom and pops to the largest industries in our chamber.
And what I am seeing, and it’s really exciting to see this, when I look around the room now, I’m seeing a lot of people I don’t know. And again, have you been born and raised here? And you think you know everybody, especially when you’re in the chamber world. But I’m starting to see a lot more younger faces. I’m starting to see a lot of these boomerangs, the people who return to their hometown, and they may be returning for a variety of reasons. Part of that reason may be that they’re taking over the family business, businesses are
transitioning, they realize that you can come home again, all those things, but I’m seeing this, this burgeoning new crew, like this burgeoning new leadership. And I’m like, that’s what you want. Like, that’s what we want to see is we don’t want to continue to, to grow, you know, stale and just talk to ourselves, we want to see new people entering. And so what positions our chamber is that that point of entry, and a lot of that is the relevancy, making sure that your chamber
Jessica Walden (13:46.272)
is relevant, but a lot of it is being really focused on what is the best use of people’s time. So, I mean, our chamber, again do staff of 10, team of 10, we do nearly 100 programs a year. So, I mean, and again, in the chamber industry, that’s no big deal. But when you actually do communicate that to your investors, they’re like, wow.
No wonder it looks like you do a lot. You do. I that’s almost something every single that that usually is something every week, if not five things every week. But.
Brandon Burton (14:15.319)
You
Brandon Burton (14:21.643)
Right.
Jessica Walden (14:23.197)
Our job isn’t to do more. mean, we look at our calendar every year and think, what can we cut, combine, and do better in order to keep that attendance at an all time high, in order to keep people talking and connecting with one another. And so I really think good engagement looks like a good use of people’s time. And the communication and again, tour guide on the side here, the storytelling piece of it is making sure
that our programming aligns with the community in the sense that you’re coming here and connecting for a purpose even greater than you. It’s for the greater good. It’s for our greater community. It’s because Macon’s on the move. It’s because Macon is experiencing a resurgence, a renaissance. It’s an exciting time to be here. You want to be in the room where it happens. so, you know, I think to me that’s what good engagement looks like. And it is. It is a variety of demographics. It is your small business owner.
being able to connect with your larger industries. It is diversity in all kinds of demographics and it very much is the new audience that we don’t know yet who it’s our job to nurture, help them create leadership opportunities and hopefully keep them here at the end of the day.
Brandon Burton (15:41.942)
Yeah, I love what you said about with all the events and everything you do to be able to cut, combine and do things together. as a as different, you know, chamber members look at engaging and business owners look at trying to get involved as their local chamber. There can be some overwhelm when there’s so much that is going on. And we talked about a little bit before we started recording, but my background is in chamber publishing. And over the years, I meet with
members about advertising and different publications. And I often hear from them almost a sense of guilt. Like, I, you know, we joined the chamber three years ago and I haven’t been to an event yet. You know, I just, I’m too busy. I can’t make it to the luncheons or the mixers, the after hours, the ribbon cut, whatever it is. And so being able to cut, combine, do things together, show where there’s value in these different events that you’re doing. So they want to be
there, so they make it a priority. Do you have some examples where you’ve been able to do that, look at some different programs, cut, combine, do them together and how that resulted in more engagement?
Jessica Walden (16:55.189)
Right, yeah.
Well, and you know, I’ll say where that comes from is, and I joke all the time that I’m a recovering entrepreneur having owned a small, I’ve owned several small businesses, but in particular, the tour company being one of them. And I understand what it’s like. I worked independently, every commitment that I made was taking away billable hours. Like, you you don’t want to have people stack away from the register necessarily. At the same time, community engagement is everything for your business.
Brandon Burton (17:18.646)
Right.
Jessica Walden (17:26.177)
and being visible and I mean to me it’s cause related awareness, it’s cause related marketing. One of the best ways that you can market your business is to be seen and be visible and be out there and connecting. So coming from that place of understanding like really being able to meet businesses where they are.
and realize that they just, one, they can’t do everything. So can you offer like just really intentional programming that again is worth their time to step away from or fits more along there, knowing your audience and knowing who your target audience is and what their schedule may be. So for example, I mean, I would just say restaurants, that’s one of the hardest things chambers have, they come and go in our membership, right?
they join for the ribbon cutting, it’s hard to always retain them. And then of course during 2020 our chamber saw drastic drop in the restaurant hospitality industry. Now we’ve started seeing them all come back in. Well they’re not going to be able to go to some of the traditional, they can’t come to a lunch and learn for example, I mean that’s a peak time for them. So can we create relevant opportunities specifically for our restaurants? They give them a reason to
invest in the chamber. And so what that can look like is our breakfast programming if they are not a lunch spot. Or what that could look like is our taste of making committee, which is an online virtual session that’s offered once a month that is during like an afternoon. Like I think it’s around like a post lunch rush time where we offer all the opportunity for industry specific businesses in
restaurant industry to gather to share best practices to have some type of featured speaker from the community side of things so they can be aware of things going on and then also inform them on the calendar and what’s coming up and where are opportunities to plug in that they may want to consider and so for them many of these it’s just that pause that they can they can do such a thing. you know this is this is I don’t know if is I don’t know if cut was quite the right word in this
Jessica Walden (19:48.448)
this one example, but we all do golf tournaments, right? Like every chamber does one. We have a successful one once a year called the Legacy Golf Classic. I inherited it as I came on board. In fact, my first day on the job was our golf tournament. And immediately I began thinking about this program, knowing that it’s a great revenue source, knowing that we’ve always done it this way, you know, that sort of thing.
also noticing that it really doesn’t include everyone and there’s not an opportunity to participate in it. And unfortunately, I’m not a golfer. I can drive a mean golf cart, but I’m not a golfer. And one of the things I started talking about on day one, and it did take us two years to implement, but we introduced the bingo component during the lunch. And this provided an opportunity for our sponsors, our general membership,
our ambassadors. If you didn’t play golf, you wanted to be there during lunch because you could play bingo. when I say bingo, we’re not talking about, you know, like nursing home level bingo. We’re talking about legal gambling with beverages, you know, and the chance to really have fun together. And bingo is making quite the comeback. In one of our favorite bars up the street does it. And that’s where our team went to go learn how to
to run a masterful bingo game. But we introduced that component. And what that does is it has created a whole other sponsorship avenue for us in many ways, because from the card to the hose to the collar, mean, there’s all that. But it also engaged the non-golfers. And so now we don’t have a legacy golf classic. We have a legacy classic. And so it’s this classic part of our chamber on the golf course. And now with this fun inter…
way to have lunch together and play bingo. And some of the golfers even last year were like handing me money and being like, can you proxy for me? Because I wish I was in there too.
Jessica Walden (22:00.949)
You know, and I took it and I did it, but, you know, that’s enough. That’s one way of it. business after hours, this is, all, so many of us do business after hours and I have heard pros and cons. I’ve heard that some do, you know, for us, it is a very easy lift. We offer it as a sponsor. The host sponsor pays their sponsorship. They provide the food and beverage. We, we handle registration. That’s our primary goal with it. But,
And you know, it is it’s a significant revenue generator for us in addition to that. But it’d be easy to do 12 business after hours a year. But would that be easy on our team? Does that get in the way of being able to market some of our other programming? So do we end up with like a marketing backlog where every all of our programs are competing for the same calendar and the same messaging time? And do we have can we
do less business after hours, but get more people there. And that’s what we decided to do. So now going from 12 to last night was our last one of the season, our ninth business after hours. We’ve had consistent high attendance to each of these. We’ve had consistent sponsorship ease for each of these. We’ve easily crested 150 people at these after our programs.
And now we’re done for the year. Now we can focus on the legacy classic coming up in October, our annual awards coming up, our making in eggs, which by the way, we have making in eggs instead of eggs and issues. That’s a great part about living and making Georgia. know, and so we’re able to focus on our signatures towards the end of the year, make sure that our marketing can hit those marks. And at the same time, we created strong series of business after hours.
Brandon Burton (23:42.639)
That’s great, yeah.
Jessica Walden (23:59.612)
We did have to take that revenue cut at the end on the sponsorship side, but what we increased was the attendance, Adam, by doing that. So it works. It worked for us on that. And then just one more example of something that we learned to do better. Annual awards. Again, so many of us have these programs. Ours was evening. It was long.
and it was tired. It was one those that you know, you know that it’s right. And you know, I’m like many of us if once I go home, I’m not going to necessarily get back out there. So it was one of those where I was like, you know, is this the right time?
Brandon Burton (24:29.655)
That sounds familiar. I feel like I’ve heard that before from other teamers. Yeah.
Jessica Walden (24:48.359)
Is this the right format? And so we switched that up recently. And so in the last two years, this will be our third year this year, we’ve switched our annual awards to a three o’clock start time. And we’re doing it at a brewery, but it has a very large event space at the brewery. And so now it is our annual awards and it has the tradition and the sense of giving out awards. But the happy hour component indeed helps. It has created
incredible where the doors open, people gather, we have a happy hour period, then we move to the awards portion, and then we open it back up to happy hour. And we laugh, like we do it earlier and now people don’t want to leave. Like they’re not leaving the program when it’s over because they’re still gathering and celebrating and that sort of thing. And, you know, again, I think we met people where they are with that by doing that, changing that
time, altering that format, being willing to do it differently, just create. And now our annual awards is uniquely ours. It complements well with our neighbor chambers. One has an incredible morning annual awards, one has an evening one. Those all work for their communities really well. And for investors who are in multiple regional chambers, ours works again really well because they could fit ours in during that happy hour time period in the late afternoon.
Brandon Burton (26:17.823)
Yeah, that’s great. So I love the examples you shared as well. And while you were talking, you saw me turn around and grab a book off my bookshelf. I’ve plugged this before on the podcast, but it’s a book called You’re Invited, the Art and Science of Cultivating Influence.
Jessica Walden (26:34.765)
just gotta write that down.
Brandon Burton (26:34.955)
And as you’re talking about knowing your audience, it’s so important to be able to understand who it is that you’re trying to gather together and being able to extend those invitations so they know that there’s purpose in you reaching out to them to be at that event because there’s something there for them.
Jessica Walden (26:45.069)
Yes.
Brandon Burton (26:55.439)
and whether that’s having more industry specific type of events or even looking at if every event the chamber does has to do with, has a happy hour component to it. I mean, it works very well, but I can bet there’s probably a segment of the membership that doesn’t come because family responsibilities or, and maybe if there was something that was family friendly.
that there was something for that. it’s just, goes back to knowing your audience and extending those invitations.
Jessica Walden (27:27.137)
is. You know, and that even is a happy argument by moving it up to that three, that also freed up that family time too. I mean, you know, and I’m a mom.
Brandon Burton (27:35.697)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Jessica Walden (27:39.884)
I just, know the value of all that, especially as a chamber president, as many of us can relate. Like, you know, our time is just everything that we get outside of all of this for that. having that level of consciousness of like, if we’re going to create, you use the word purpose and that’s what it is. Just having that, we’re going to do it, it has to be worth people’s time. Otherwise we shouldn’t be doing it. And I know when I started this job, I was given that sticker that said,
it.
This is how we’ve always done it. And then I had a big X over it, you know, and being able to have that. I’m okay with us being able to do our traditional things, but how do we evolve it just enough for our newer audience and the audience we want to be and an audience that is truly invested and engaged in what we’re doing and time. mean, money is one thing, but we know time is what is attached to that. And we just have to be conscious of every ounce of people’s time that we’re using.
Brandon Burton (28:14.069)
Yeah.
Jessica Walden (28:41.483)
and knowing that what we do, they leave saying that was worth my time to be there.
Brandon Burton (28:47.537)
Absolutely. I think that sticker, if I remember right, is a YGM sticker. So there you go. All right. So I feel like I have to ask you about this before we move on, but you had shared with me ahead of time that you do an event with singles, trying to mix singles. Yeah. Can you tell us just what that is about? yeah, just tell us what that event is.
Jessica Walden (28:52.149)
Yes it is, yep.
Jessica Walden (29:04.915)
So glad you asked.
Jessica Walden (29:11.469)
Yeah, I was wondering how we’re gonna get to that, you know, it is definitely, um, all right, so another example of, you know, of cut combined or
and do it differently. And our young professionals network was at one time strong and going well. And then of course, 2020 happened and it really had a hard time getting traction again. then around this time is when I’m coming back on board and again, looking at everything closer.
It started out more as a joke because I was mildly offended that I was no longer considered a young professional and I didn’t like the age cutoff and I’m like if we’re gonna be an inclusive chamber that includes age too. that was one piece of it. But what we heard by listening to our investors, listening to our community and listening along the needs of workforce and again,
Brandon Burton (29:54.33)
Ha
Brandon Burton (29:58.168)
you
Jessica Walden (30:12.025)
attraction and retention. It was the fact that
that love’s not easy, connection’s not always easy, but when you have a really good employee and let’s say they are doing so great at their job that they don’t have the greatest love life or they’re single and they don’t have anything, well then they may look online and start swiping left and right and next thing you know, they’ve met somebody and maybe that somebody’s out of town and now they’re moving out of town.
for companionship and you’ve lost an incredible employee and No matter you know in different ages, especially This gets harder and harder. So we heard what people were saying and I said well You know, let’s think about this. What if we took this idea of like young professionals, but made it more aimed towards singles and Really the intention on this being for those who are looking to make connections
connection, relationships, love, whatever you want to call it, that we create an in real life opportunity that’s not necessarily speed dating and is, I keep saying, not creepy. Like we wanted to make sure that it maintained some integrity here to bring people together, to convene people. And we had our
Brandon Burton (31:33.52)
Yeah
Jessica Walden (31:43.522)
young team who are who a lot of them chose Macon who graduated college chose to stay here they came forward with an incredible plan for these these mixers so we call them the Mac mingles with singles and Mac stands for Macon area connections and it is a low entry low cost program to attend where you come in you register you self-select while you’re there so you can pick up a cup
And that cup may mean that you are seeking women, seeking men, or maybe you’re a wingman and you’re just there to support someone who is doing all of that. And you’re able to mix and mingle. We have some actual icebreaker programming put into it. Of course, it is a very business after hour style event, but it is a young audience. It is a unique location and it is heavily programmed. you are, um,
you know, it’s curated enough where you actually intentionally meet people. And it was one that like, I have to say it’s not scary, but you are worried like how is this gonna come off? It has been so well received. I have many of my industry say, I am putting that flyer in our break room. I’ve had industry say like, I have.
Brandon Burton (32:51.435)
Yeah.
Jessica Walden (33:01.151)
of really strong, like all male staff. I need these guys to meet some people like they are in a lot of them, you know, if they’re working all the time. And so the industries have been supportive in that sense. The attendance has been, we’re really pleased with it. It has been a growing attendance, but like the first one, we were worried if any guys were gonna register. had quite a few women register, but we’re like, is there gonna be anyone else?
Well, they showed up. They just didn’t pre-register. There was a lot of people who were just trying to ease on in there, see what it’s about. Now it has really picked up steam in that sense. And they just had one a couple of weeks ago and we made it a game night theme. So they actually had a chance to go from table to table and they were doing card games and fun stuff. we had about, it was like, we were almost 70 people show up to that one. And so we’re starting to hear about some matches being made.
Brandon Burton (33:34.391)
Yeah.
Jessica Walden (34:00.992)
hopefully can share those stories soon too. But it’s a fun way. mean to me this is now our YPN group. This is our way to look at it. We just look at it through different lens.
Brandon Burton (34:10.613)
Yeah, it’s a great retention strategy as you alluded to. And I love how it engages other staff of the different chamber members. But you may need to be thinking of a 2.0 for this as they matriculate, and they’re no longer singles because this is so effective. So yeah.
Jessica Walden (34:14.07)
Yes.
Jessica Walden (34:21.537)
Yeah.
Jessica Walden (34:28.525)
I I don’t know. They’re starting to come to, you know, lot of these folks had never been to a chamber event or they don’t even know it was a chamber program when they signed up.
And now we’re starting to see like second dates at business after hours. So that works too. They graduate, they graduate to full. But this also feeds into our membership, I mean our leadership program. You know, we operate leadership, leadership make in and if you think about how we create this programming that really does create a pipeline, that’s what it’s about.
Brandon Burton (34:42.039)
That’s great.
Brandon Burton (35:00.873)
Yeah, I love that. Well, Jessica, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for the listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or strategy might you be able to share with them to help in encouraging them with that goal?
Jessica Walden (35:19.021)
I don’t know if it’s a strategy, but I’m gonna quote Dolly Parton here. Find out who you are and do it on purpose, which is sort of my favorite thing she says. And of course we can apply that personally, but how do you apply that to your chamber? And I think it is, find out who you are as a chamber and not just about doing it on purpose, is about doing it with purpose. And again, everything that we’ve talked about on that, who is your audience? What is it you’re trying?
to provide your audience and does this fit and does this fit into your community right now and where it really doesn’t meet your business is where you are but what your community needs and
and create that community out of it. So I would just say that, you know, really being able to evaluate, like, evaluate that strategy, but is there a purpose? Is it purpose driven in what you’re trying to achieve? And I think when you have that, that is as a strategy, that it ends up working out in a way to really be able to curate those programs for your year that make it worth everybody’s time.
Brandon Burton (36:34.795)
think that’s great advice. I’d like to ask everyone that I have on the show as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?
Jessica Walden (36:46.303)
Yeah, well, and you know, I’m like, I’m new to this world, but what I really realized very quickly.
is the past was about recruiting industry. And it’s not to say we all don’t do that as community or work with our with our economic development team to do that. And we’re very blessed here. We’re a collaborative community right now. And so I work with our development authority every day. In fact, he’s texting me right now about something else that I but I appreciate that relationship. But I very much understand that in that he may be recruiting industry. But my job as a chamber president is to recruit people.
So we are now in the business of recruiting people. And I think that’s where we’re going for us. Our choose making strategy is really our North Star. Like that is our chance to continue to bring people into our community, to keep them here and to be really bold and innovative of what that looks like and how we do it. so, you everybody talks about location, location, location, and I can talk about making all day is an awesome location.
But I would say it’s about people, people, people, and that’s where our chambers are heading.
Brandon Burton (37:57.922)
Yeah, and if you’re single, they’ve got a place for you to meet somebody. I love it. Well, Jessica, for those listening who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you’re doing things there in Macon, where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?
Jessica Walden (38:01.809)
I mean, we are, it is wraparound services around here, that’s for sure.
Jessica Walden (38:16.087)
Yeah!
Obviously you can find me on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn Jessica Walden, but I would say go through MaconChamber.com our new websites rolling out next week So I’m really proud to show that off and easily way to connect with us You know our communication is something that we’re all really proud of as a team. So One of the things I love sharing is our newsletter format that we put out weekly I actually do a weekly video component to it and so if you want to see that that, just shoot me an email, we’ll get you signed up for that and we’ll stay in touch that way. Thank you, Brandon.
Brandon Burton (38:51.627)
Very good. And of course, we’ll have that all linked in our show notes to make it nice and easy. But Jessica, this has been a fun conversation. I appreciate you setting aside some time to join us here on Chamber Chat podcast and to share your experiences and the things that are working for you guys there in Macon. It’s always great to talk about engagement and what’s working for chambers in that realm. So thank you.
Jessica Walden (38:56.894)
Awesome.
Jessica Walden (39:16.077)
Thank you Brandon for providing the platform to do so and thanks to my counterpart in Cobb County, Sharon Mason for recommending this opportunity.
Brandon Burton (39:27.032)
Absolutely.
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