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Gwinnett Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Nick Masino

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

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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Becki Womble 1:03
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Nick Masino. Nick is the first Gen X President and CEO of the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership Gwinnett. At the helm, Nick is known for a strong leadership commitment to Gwinnett and more than two decades of making an impact in the community and economic development arenas. As President and CEO Nick shepherded the most diverse board of directors and chamber history, reinvigorated its public policy focus, implemented new strategic plan and is currently overseeing a massive renovation of two Georgia’s largest Chamber of Commerce facility. He also led like Gwinnett Chamber to receive its first ever Five Star Accreditation rating from the US Chamber of Commerce in 2010. In 2022, the former Chief Economic Development Officer for partnership Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Chamber, Nick oversaw the business recruitment and retention efforts for Gwinnett and the implementation of partnership Gwinnett strategy. The chamber led initiative has since delivered roughly 357 company expansions or relocations, representing more than 28,000 new jobs and $4.1 billion in private capital investment. Prior to these achievements, Nick was an executive in the recruiting and staffing industry while serving as Georgia’s youngest mayor in the city of Suwanee. In addition to his day job, Nick serves on a plethora of boards including the Regional Business Coalition of Metro Atlanta, the Coalition for Quality Growth and the Georgia Chamber and the Water Tower Global Innovation Hub Aquanet. His influence in the greater Gwinnett region has earned him many accolades such as most named Most notable Georgians, power 100 Most Influential Atlantans, and 100 most influential Georgians. He holds a bachelor’s degree in interpersonal, interpersonal and organizational communication from The Ohio State University and resides with his wife Suzanne, in Suwanee, Georgia, and they’re the proud parents of three adult children. Nick, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Nick Masino 4:29
Awesome. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. And I’m sorry, you had to bore everybody with my bio. But I appreciate you introducing me. Interesting thing about me I’m, as you mentioned in the bio married to Suzanne Masino. And we actually met in a swimming pool in eighth grade. And she went on to become my high school, college sweetheart and we got married about six months after college, and we’ve been married for 29 years. In two Sundays, so really excited about that.

Brandon Burton 5:03
That’s awesome. Congratulations, you must have been a mature eighth grader because usually those interactions at a swimming pool don’t turn out well. So

Nick Masino 5:13
I don’t know that I was, but he was also only in eighth grade too. So that helps. That helps. Yeah, I think he was forgiving.

Brandon Burton 5:22
Well, and tell us a little bit about the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership when and just to give us an idea of the type of chamber scope of work you do size, staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Nick Masino 5:35
Sure, absolutely. So the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce is located in Gwinnett. County, which most people have never heard of before. We’re situated directly northeast of Metro Atlanta. Gwinnett has a million residents. In 1987 8889, percentage wise was the fastest growing county in the United States. For three years, we’ve been in the top 100 fastest growing counties for the last three years, we average about in the last 10 years, I think we’ve averaged about 18. It’s probably 17 to 18,000 new residents, that’s births and relocations. I’m one of those. I graduated, as you mentioned, from the United State University. And about four weeks later, I moved to Gwinnett County, and I was in search of a job and a career and the Olympics were happening in Atlanta in 1996. This was two years before the Olympics, and there just seemed to be a lot of energy. And I don’t think I was alone. I think at one point, we were the the we had the most the highest percentage of Gen X’s of any metro area, the United States. And I just think it was a lot of people from the Northeast and Midwest. They were looking for something new and a little warmer. And apparently for about a 10 year period. We all moved to Atlanta. Some people moved, moved back home and some of those state. So I’m here in Gwinnett, lived here for 29 consecutive years. I live in the little hamlet the little city of Suwanee, Georgia, of which I was a mayor for eight years, and really, really enjoyed Gwinnett is made up of 16 municipalities, but the most of the counties unincorporated. But we have like every suburban area, we have jobs here we have about 24,000 companies 10,000 sole proprietors. And so we’re a really large suburban chamber, we have 32 to 34, based on the time, full time employees, we are in a 60,000 square foot chamber building, I do believe outside of the US Chamber. It’s the largest chamber building in the United States. We own the whole building, and we’re overseeing a massive 23 year update to the building and which is involving $4 million worth of construction. And hopefully in November, they’ll be delivering a million dollars worth of new furniture. And we’re really excited. With this reinvestment into this incredible building. We’re really unique. We’re right next to an arena and a convention center and to full service hotels. And we also have this is really unique. We have a first class steakhouse on the top floor of our building and a private club. The Chamber members the board members started the private club in the year 2000. The same year, the Chamber building was open. And we introduced in 2017. The Steakhouse and it is first class is the top five to top five revenue producing restaurant in Georgia. So it was really unique little hub of activity here in the middle of Gwinnett. County.

Brandon Burton 8:46
So does the chamber still operate the club and steakhouse or is that been going off?

Nick Masino 8:52
Well, we’ve never operated it. We just our board members started it. I mean, I’m the landlord. I’m a board member. I’m an executive board member of the private club. We have the lease agreement between the private club and the steakhouse. So it is like I had some guests up there for lunch yesterday. And they were like, Oh, this was really nice. And we’re like, yeah, we’re really that’s a really nice cafeteria bars.

Brandon Burton 9:18
That’s fantastic.

Nick Masino 9:19
It’s pretty awesome. It’s some of my peers at ACC. I was able to host I think it was in the summer of 21. I hosted a peer group of about 20 CEOs and I actually forgot to tell them we had a steakhouse. I just said, Oh, we’re going to dinner and I just told them where it was, but I did tell them it was on the third floor of the chamber. And they thought I was sandbagging, like as a show off. And I was like, Oh yeah, they were like Nick, you brag about everything. You didn’t brag about the steakhouse.

Brandon Burton 9:49
That’s awesome. I love it. Yeah, so you mentioned as far as the size of the building so had is it just like over the years hearing the size of a They’re chambers buildings, he kind of benchmark, you know, and where you guys kind of fall in there. It’s really

Nick Masino 10:05
interesting. I think in like 2007 or eight, we had that that years Chair of the US Chamber doing a road show. And he had been to like seven teen, like large suburban and Metro chambers. And he said, he said, I have been to almost every large chamber, you know, of a certain scale and above, he said, This is by far the biggest building. And so that just got us interested. So we’ve been kind of on the lookout for a building that might be bigger than ours. And we’ve yet well, we did find it, it was the US Chamber of Commerce. Yeah. We actually have two buildings in DC, which are both bigger than ours. qualify it?

Brandon Burton 10:47
Yeah. That’s good stuff, though. So you guys, obviously you’re involved with economic development, though? twos, as far as the chamber work goes?

Nick Masino 10:55
Yes, absolutely. i It’s funny, I failed to mention that, because you asked me. And I did lead our economic development initiative for almost 13 years, called partnership Gwinnett, which is a community collaboration between the county our municipalities or school system, or in community improvement districts, and then the private sector and the chamber. And we lead that effort. And it encompasses about 10 of our 34 employees. And they get up every day to recruit, retain and expand businesses, both domestically and internationally.

Brandon Burton 11:28
Awesome. Awesome. Well, what I the way I like to kind of structure these chamber, the or finalist interviews is to really focus on the two programs. So you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application, so if you could just tell us what those two programs are at a high level, and then we’ll circle back and go into more detail on each of them.

Nick Masino 11:49
Sure, absolutely. And so we really just set the stage for the one of the two, which it was our partnership with that initiative. And this is the community initiative. As I mentioned, it has three goal areas, recruit goal one, goal two, is to make sure we have the right workforce in place. And then goal three is all those it’s kind of that bucket that holds everything else from community development, to transportation to redevelopment. So it’s a three legged stool, economic development strategy, not uncommon to other large chambers. And then our second section that got us to where we are is our public policy initiative. And I think that that one probably is not super unique to large chambers. I think what was unique for us is, in our five US Chamber fivestar audit, for the previous audit we got, I don’t know that we got to zero, but I think we got to 20 out of Ardrey. So that’s pretty much a failing grade. And and then a few years later, when we really focused in the three years we were we went we’ve hired a full time public policy person put a lot of effort in initiative. And not only do we have the effort, and the action and activity, we have results, and we and then the US Chamber recognize that and gave us 100%. So we went from 20 I think it was 20% to 100%. So ACC the they recognized all of what I just mentioned. And I think we also did a really nice initiative this year with our state, House and Senate. I’ll talk more about that and follow up questions on on the Gwinnett day at the Georgia Capitol. And they went over really well. Yeah, no,

Brandon Burton 13:39
that’s great. So that that gives us a good idea what the two programs are. What we’ll do is we’ll take a short break, we’ll come back and we’ll dive in deeper on both of these programs and learn more how you guys structured them and maybe some of the origins of them as well.

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Brandon Burton 17:06
All right, Nick, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned what the two programs are, if you don’t mind, let’s let’s dive in a little deeper on the partnership when it and you had mentioned it has kind of the three legs to that program. And maybe just tell us a little bit more about the program, the evolution of the program, kind of how you got to where it is today to be recognized on national stage.

Nick Masino 17:32
Thank you so much. I’m really proud of it. Because I was hired as the first partnership with that chamber employee and Ay, ay ay, ay, took the strategy. And then I hired all the employees raised the funds. So it was really, it goes back to 2007 When I started here at the chamber, and it was kind of my baby for 13 years. So it started in 2006, where Gwinnett County government, again, one of the fastest growing counties in the 80s that continues in the 90s got to the point by 2006 that they said, Hey, we probably need to have an economic Recruitment Policy. So they created their first ever economic incentives. And it was basically crickets for six months. And they thought, well, if we create it, they will come. Well, they didn’t because there wasn’t someone getting up every day, beating the drum to say consultants, corporate consultants, doing recruitment real estate consultants. So they said, Okay, we need to do something. And in communicating with the chamber, and the private private sector industry, there was a there’s a company, which everyone’s heard of is called Cisco. They have a major presence here in metro Atlanta, and then a huge office here in Gwinnett at the time, and they said, Okay, we’ll write a $50,000 check to do an economic study. And then that was matched with another $90,000. And they hired a consultant, they did a nine month strategy. And out of it, we came partnership on it, which is as as mentioned, and 2007, we rolled out this, it was a five year strategy. It had a three legged stool, which was focused on we need people to get up every day and targeted industries to recruit. So goal one is to recruit, recruit, retain expand jobs in our targeted industries. Number two, make sure that we’re aligning all of the workforce efforts, from K through 12, to post secondary to retraining retooling into those five target industries. And then make sure that we have a safe, clean, vibrant community that is continually redeveloping and investing in itself with new roads and infrastructure. And those three things if we stay focused on that we should have economic success. And so we implemented that strategy in 2007 to 12 months later running into Great Recession. We’re like so ready to go. And that was a bit of a pitfall. And we retooled. And it actually brought Market Street back and we said, hey, just 16 months ago, you said we’re supposed to create. It was something like 40,000 new jobs in five years. And they were like, Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen now. So they gave us, they brought him in for a couple of months. And they re told us a little bit, and we got going again. And it was really awesome. Because right out of the gate, in our first five years, we ended up landing NCR fortune 500 headquarters. And then literally, four months later, we landed Asbury automotive, another fortune 500. And then two years later, we landed and retained the merger of two companies, which became rock 10, which was another fortune 500. So we started the recession with one fortune 500 company and ended it with fours. So people were like, Oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever. Let me tell you, we’re really good. But a lot of it is happenstance and being at the right place at the right time. And it all just worked out for us. And we have a lot of success. And we continue to have lots of success. But we went from like the high of here we go in 2007, to the low of eight, nine, to end that first five years with having, in our time starting the recession, with one fortune 500, ending with four it was, it was an amazing rollercoaster ride. But we’ve continued on an every five years, we brought in a consultant to do a top to bottom soup to nuts review of our strategy and our community. And we roll out a five year strategy plan, we then do a fundraising campaign behind it, to raise the money to fund the strategy that we’ve done that now for almost 20 years. We’re in year, I guess, like 17 or 18.

Brandon Burton 22:00
Wow. So as you kind of talked about the origins of it back in 2006 2007 kind of timeframe. And thinking, nowadays, a lot of things, you know, rely on social media to help, you know, perpetuate a message or, you know, whatever messaging you’re putting out there to try to attract and retain and everything. So at that timeframe that was before, I mean, that’s still like MySpace days, right, like 2006. And so there has to be different strategies starting off and building that momentum. Right.

Nick Masino 22:33
Yeah, 100%. And I have to say, I’m gonna be very quick. So I want to I’m sure you’re familiar with IEDC, the International Economic Development Council. So I was very involved in that as an economic developer. And I went to my basic 101 training. It was actually right here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. And we had a session on social media. So the social media I knew was LinkedIn. Yeah. And, you know, we’ve all been on it, our resumes there. I was in the recruiting industry for 12 years. So I knew LinkedIn. Well, I left that session, and I was signed up for MySpace, and Facebook. We know how all that worked out. But it was funny is it 2008? Like, I’m doing all kinds of like, a posting stuff on Facebook, about the community. And my wife’s like, what are you doing? You’re wasting time. And she’s giving me such a hard time for being on Facebook. And then I could I love the like, two years later, she gets on it. And she’s like, Oh, okay, I was such a hater to Facebook. And I kind of didn’t understand what you were doing. Right. And of course, my face was completely creepy. And two weeks later, I turned the thing off. Never went back on it. Because of IDC, that course and we got super focused on creating Instagram. And we I think we maybe had one of the first Twitter economic development accounts. And we actually won an IDC award for like the best social media of a large IDI organization in the country. So like around 2010. So we’re really proud of that. But so yeah, there was really just that was just the beginning of social media. So I’m not kidding. We must have done a dozen a month of these community meetings that some like two people would come to and we were really pumped when we’d have double digits and people would come. And we had to just do it. I was I was at every rotary every cuantas club, every community HOA meeting, just tell them the story. This is what we’re doing. And not even I wasn’t really trying to raise money. I was just trying to get awareness out there. Yeah. It was really interesting. You know, people asking, you know, raising their hands. Why are you doing this? Why does it matter? And it was really awesome, because professional meanings people aren’t going to really put you on the spot, go to an HOA meeting. The hard questions and they’re like, they almost like revel in it. But it really helped me with my talking points and And after my first year of doing that, I was like I could take on any talking point I was. So I was like, excited to go out to public meetings.

Brandon Burton 25:06
That’s funny. Yeah. So with the three legs you talked about, the one that really stands out to me that I’d like to learn a little bit more about is how you approach the you’d mentioned aligning the workforce efforts from kindergarten on up to be able to keep and retain them in the community and have that workforce pipeline, what are some of those key things that you do to help align those workforce efforts?

Nick Masino 25:30
Absolutely. And I will tell you in 2008, to 10, really, up until almost it feels like the beginning of COVID. This was completely unique. People were barely talking about this. Now, every chamber in the United States, it’s their number one priority. And it’s very innovative to talk about the last three years. But in 2006, and seven, when we were kicking this off, it became very clear that we were pretty good at already doing this. But we had to create some formality around it, which was committees and goals and Task Force and action committees around getting the talent creators together with the employers. And so we literally started this, I guess, you know, 18 years ago, projecting, hey, we’re starting this new division. And we’re going to need this type of workforce. And we started at the same time creating career academies in our high school. And even now, it’s actually now all the way down to middle school. We that was one of the epitomises to start what we call the Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology. We went to go visit one on a peer tour outside of DC and Fairfax County. And we created it a year later in Gwinnett. And it’s been the number one academic school in Georgia, for the last 11 years. We’ve since because of this connection between the workforce, and in education, we now have four STEM schools, one focused on AI, and it’s actually a K through 12. Ai, integrated system. So a whole school cluster on AI. But we’re, we’re probably year five or four on our engineering STEM school. So if you want to be an engineer, mechanical, electrical, you have a specific engineering school. And then the last one is health, and it’s anywhere from EMT to a doctor, if you think you’re gonna go to medical school or become a nurse or a PT or an OT, you could go to this school. I also think it’s important to point out we have 183,000 students, and our K through 12 public school. And then we have a municipal school. And we have some very large private schools. So we have well over 200,000 students being educated K through 12, not including our college, and our 12 or two year technical school. So we have a lot of people like this past May, we grant we had we had 15,000 graduates in Gwinnett. County between all those school systems. So we don’t leave out the private schools or the city schools, the alignment, and we do the same with the technical college and the four year college.

Brandon Burton 28:12
Wow, I love how you refer to them as talent creators, instead of just schools, not just the school system and their talent creators. And I think if they can really adopt that, that title, it puts out that that talent and workforce with a specific focus on what they want to do and what they want to become when they grow up. Right?

Nick Masino 28:32
Yes. And in two weeks, I will be in front of 1500 new teachers, just because of turnover and our system is so large, it’s about 12 to 1500. And it’s the big orientation of all the new teachers. And I’ll go, they gave me five minutes as tamper CEO, and when I was Chief Economic Development Officer, and I just do five minute pitch on them. And they’re the future is on their shoulders, because the future workforce or Gwinnett. County is in your kindergarten class or is about to graduate in the next nine months. So that the talent creator, I’ve been using that for some time, and I give them I hopefully inspiring speech about what their impact is in the classroom, what it means to Gwinnett County’s future.

Brandon Burton 29:14
Absolutely. There’s so much focus these days on content creation. So to be a talent creator, that’s important. No, no pressure to those teachers, you know. But let’s shift gears a little bit over to the public policy initiative that you guys had on your your application for chamber the year and tell us about that. And, and what makes that stand out?

Nick Masino 29:36
Yeah, and just briefly, the standout is we were doing very little, and we started doing some stuff at a quick fast paced level. I always say whatever you put in your budget is what you do. And so we budgeted for a full time employee and we budgeted for them to have funds to invest. And right out of the gate, was it The first year of our first new leader in public policy. And almost seven years, we were up against a big community vote to for one cent sales tax to fund capital improvements for our cities in our county, which means police departments and 911 centers and parks and libraries, in roads and sidewalks and bridges. And so we said, we’ve got this, we’re going to take the take this on, we’re going to, we’re going to lead this effort through our newly staff position. And we raised monies and hired money and we hired consultants. And we actually at the end of that vote, we actually had that was the highest vote yes, in the previous three campaigns. And so that was huge. And then we said, well, we need to start doing one that Day at the Capitol again, and go down there. And we did one last year, which was pretty COVID centric. Last year spill, we’re very limited, but we were there. And we did it was within the rules of COVID. But this year, those rules were removed, and we’re all back to normal. And we’re trying to find the date that worked best for them. And for us. It actually ended up being Valentine’s Day. So our awesome marketing and communications graphics team came up with you remember in elementary school you gave Valentine’s out? Yeah, yeah, we created Quinn net loves Georgia, Valentine’s. And we’re giving it to all of our legislators with candy. It’s awesome. It is awesome. And I just say it’s cording, but apparently no one had ever done that before. And I was really shocked. Because our we have a state legislature that needs annually, and it meets from January to March. So Valentine’s Day is always there. Like, how are we the first I think it is, but we have a really, really creative marketing team. And they came up with it. And I thought it was 100% corny, but I didn’t want to do it. And they were like, no, no, we got to do it, we’re really gonna stand out. And I was like, I don’t know if we’re gonna stand out for good or bad. But well, we’ll go for it. And everyone loved it. I was wrong. They were right. It was it was super positive. And all the photos were super cool. And it was it was really memorable, which is what was important. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:21
it’s nice when you can have a little bit of humble pie when something really, you know, is well accepted. And it’s okay, you know, to accept that and give your team all the credit for their good ideas, right?

Nick Masino 32:34
Oh, yeah. If they would have listened to me, we would have would have not done it. And we would have not been a finalist in the ACC. I give all the credit other places? Absolutely not, I

Brandon Burton 32:45
think you hit on something important that you know, where you put the budget is what gets the attention, right. So being able to align your intentions, you know, fiscally towards public policy, you’re gonna see more focus and more attention and more results by doing so. So I think that’s a good leadership note right there for others to take note of that if you don’t budget for it, it’s not going to happen. So

Nick Masino 33:11
totally agree. That’s, that’s definitely one of my mantras.

Brandon Burton 33:15
Yes, for sure. Well, Nick, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any tips or action items with listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level. What piece of advice might you offer to them?

Nick Masino 33:33
Absolutely. I think this one’s actually I’ve read it. Like he first stopped me when it when you kind of gave me the heads up, I needed to answer that question. It but I think the answer is so obvious. Because this is what I’ve done for my entire career. When I was a mayor, I got involved in the Georgia Municipal Association, surrounded myself with peers learn best practices. And I think just as important is to avoid the mistakes that they shared with you that they made. Then I became an economic developer, and I joined the International Economic Development Council did the same thing. And it literally, I started on as the chamber CEO, July 1 of 2019. Two weeks later, I was in Huntington Beach at the annual conference, learning best practices. And I literally showed up like I took a flight really early, so I could go attend the board meeting of which one I was not allowed to attend because I wasn’t on the board. And I tried to play the well no one said I couldn’t do it. Let me sit in I just like I like if I’m going to do something I’m all in and they were like Well, sir, sorry, you cannot see. First of all welcome, but you’re not here. You can be here I need to be just not in this office. So So I went I you know, I went to the new member orientation and then I went to the big welcome ceremony, and it was all awesome. And the next day I got on a peer group I have which I’ve been on for four years, I’ve met some incredible chamber leaders from literally across the country across. There’s great folks from Canada as well in the Caribbean. And it’s been awesome. And I have learned so much. When anytime I dive into something, I want to hear what the people that have done it, what they what, like, we didn’t have a foundation at our chamber. So I’m sitting there in a room with 40 CEOs, me and one other CEO did not have a foundation, I immediately went back, why don’t we have a foundation sound out we did. And we had created our Community Foundation 20 years prior, we just found it out. And they were doing a really unique, important work of the community. But it wasn’t around business. So we actually created a chamber foundation focused on helping businesses that have owners that have been historically left out people of color women, veterans that haven’t been given their fair share of the pie. So we’re focused on that group, because nobody else was doing that work. And so that those peer groups are so important. You never know what you can learn. And also, just as importantly, what you can avoid. So sorry, that was a long drawn out answer is join, well join ACC, get on one of their peer groups in there based on the size and complexity of your chamber. So there’s a peer group for anybody, any chamber CEO,

Brandon Burton 36:23
right. And that’s one of the main reasons why this podcast became what it is, is to be able to share some of those best practices, get to know others in the peer group and learn from mistakes and successes of others. So do do all of the above as far as learning from your peers and those best practices to adopt those. I appreciate that. Nick, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Nick Masino 36:53
Well, I see a bright future for chambers. I do think that that’s a complex question, because it really depends on the community. Because not there is no cookie cutter chamber. They are as different as the individual communities. And I think it’s a great question every chamber leader needs to ask themselves. For us. We’re a very, we’re the fifth most diverse county in the United States, again, a million people, a quarter of them 250,000 People were born outside the United States of a million people on my community. And so we’ve been super intentional about inviting people into the chamber. Because if you don’t know a chamber, you’ve never been involved with one. A lot of people think chambers are government. And we find people that are first generation American, don’t have a lot of trust in government. And so we have to be super intentional about inviting people. That was what it was for us. And we knew that our physical structure of our chamber wasn’t super inviting. So we had to make it more open and bright and welcoming. So we’re doing a $4 million renovation right now. And that’s what it meant for us. But I think, you know, view as 10 chambers that question, you might get 10 different answers. But I think what’s important is you’ve got to think where is your community headed? And are you headed? Are you in a parallel direction, because if you’re going east and your community is going west, that’s that’s not good for your chamber. You’ve got to be mirroring your community have what they need. And that means thinking differently, as your community might be changing.

Brandon Burton 38:24
Right now, that is such a great answer. So every chamber is right yeah, every chamber every community is so unique. And you need to be able to listen to that community see what direction you need to go and, and it’ll kind of chart the course for you. But every every answer is slightly different. As I asked that, you know, now in 238 episodes, we get different answers from everybody. So I love it. Nick, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things or when it would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.

Nick Masino 39:02
Sure you go to GwinnettChamber.org I will point out when that is two ends in two T’s by the way, Gwinnett you’ve never heard that name before. It is one of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia. You’re gonna love this the guy’s name was button. Bu t t o n button good at

Brandon Burton 39:27
just don’t name their kids Button anymore.

Nick Masino 39:29
No, I know it’s such a classic thing. So what net chamber.org You can reach me at Nick@GwinnettChamber.org Pretty, pretty simple.

Brandon Burton 39:39
All right, we will get that in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy for people to find you but Nick, this has been great having you on the show and hearing about the exciting work you guys are involved with. I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year and it’s been great having you on the show.

Nick Masino 39:55
Thanks so much. It really was an honor. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 39:58
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Bowling Green Area Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Ron Bunch

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

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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

Our guest for this episode is Ron Bunch. Ron is the President and CEO of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce a five star accredited chamber, which has been invited to apply for Chamber of the Year by ACCE for nine of the last 10 years, making it to the finalist stage five of those years. You can see so or listen to some of Ron’s past appearances on chamber chat podcast and episodes 24 and 182. But since Ron has joined the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, their community has announced over six and a half billion dollars in capital investment and more than 12,050 new jobs. Bowling Green has been ranked in the top six nationally by site selection magazine for the top 10 metros for new new and expanding facilities for populations under 200,000 for 10 consecutive years, including number one overall in 2018 and win three consecutive Matt Conway awards from site selection magazine, which recognize the team as a top 20 economic development organization in the country for their performance in 2020, 2021 and 2022. In 2022, the community announced its second largest project in the history of Kentucky, a $2 billion in 2000 jobs.

Ron, I’m excited to have you back with us today on Chamber Phat podcast. And first of all, congratulations to you and your team has been selected as a Chamber the Year finalist again, I’d love for you to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Oh, great.

Ron Bunch 3:50
Thank you so much for allowing me to be on here. And I really do appreciate this opportunity. We’ve been very blessed as a chamber and a community. And so thank you for having us on and talk about that. But I’m not that interesting. So let me let me see if I can get a more current thing. So both of my daughters got married last year. So two and one year and then I became a grandfather. About a month ago now for my oldest daughter just had a little girl so I got to be a grandpa so I’m excited about that.

Brandon Burton 4:22
Oh, congratulations. That’s awesome. Just start calling your grandpa Ron right. That’s exciting. So will tell us all a little bit more about the bowling green area Chamber sizes, chambers scope of work staff budget, just give us that perspective before we get into the programs that we cover in this episode.

Ron Bunch 4:45
So we’re fairly complex chamber, we actually run six different companies, our chamber part of our businesses about a $2.4 million annual budget. Got her Around 1300 partners or members, as many would call them. And we do a VOD wide variety of things with other organizations that we also run. We have a staff of about 18 to 19 people with about how you look at contract work. But we do everything from land, securing land, designing land, preparing land, building speculative buildings to the traditional things you would understand where the chamber or networking events and other activities, so pretty broad range of things, and those six organizations with six different boards.

Brandon Burton 5:38
Yeah. So in your, between that explanation, and your bio, you guys are heavy in the economic development work, which is awesome, you guys are making a huge impact there. So just for the for the listeners out there, that kind of the format that I like to do with these chamber, the year finalist interviews is I like to focus on the two programs that you included in your chamber, the your application for 2023. Maybe at just at a high level, tell us what those two programs are. And then we can circle back and dig a little deeper in both of them.

Ron Bunch 6:14
Sure, you know, and and the two different programs. One was the trans Park, which is the industrial park that we develop through the intermodal transportation authority that we run, it’s about a 2000 acre park and we landed most recently, envision in that park. Envision ASC. That’s the $2 billion 2000 job project. So we’ve talked about how we expanded the park and landed the project. The second summary was about what we’re doing with SC K, which is our region South Central Kentucky launch, which is learning about unique and new careers here. The portion of that program that focuses on eighth graders when young people are really learning their interests and aptitudes we help bring a real detailed look at what’s in the economy, what types of jobs and careers are here so that we can match that up with our interests and aptitudes greening that happens at the school level.

Brandon Burton 7:15
Awesome. Yeah, so I’m excited to dig in a little deeper on both of these kind of learn the details and maybe the origins and how you guys got to where you are now. First of all, we’ll take a quick break and then we’ll come back and dive in a little bit deeper.

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Donna Novitsky 9:50
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Brandon Burton 10:44
All right, Ron, we’re back. So let’s let’s go in a little bit deeper about the this trans Park project and the Envision project. You don’t that you guys attracted there. Tell us what what is the scope of this project? What were some of the origins and evolution of it to get you to where we are today with this big economic development when?

Ron Bunch 11:09
No, I appreciate that. So, you know, the beginning story really is us continuing our engagement with the public sector. The ITA, the intermodal Transportation Authority that owns the park is funded by the city in the county and we operate that public entity. And we’ve thanks to the success we’ve had, we found ourselves in a place where there was a scarcity of land that needed to be developed. And although it was during COVID, we approached the city in the county to go ahead and issue bonds so that we could acquire more property to be ready for prospect activity during COVID. And they support us with a $46 million bond issue. As we began bringing that property on our pipeline for projects was very active. We’re actually meeting with four or five different evey battery projects at the time, shortly after we were acquiring the property. And we narrowed down to our conversations with Envision. And in those conversations, we determined we needed to buy some additional property. And so we had to go back to the city and the county to get almost another $12 million of investment just to acquire the property we were going to need cite the project.

Brandon Burton 12:30
Because it was fun to go back and ask for more. Right.

Ron Bunch 12:34
They first thought we needed 25 million and ended up being 46 million, then we came back for another 12. So we have an amazing relationship that we’ve built over the years with our city and county government. So they knew the kind of return they would get. So even during COVID, when not many people were bringing the property to the market. We had their competence, and we were able to do that. So I mean, we could do probably a whole show on that that conversation how we got there. But those kind of numbers. But so now we’ve acquired the property, we’re in deep conversations with Envision, we finally put together the package to get him get them here. But in that we determined we needed around almost 60 million and infrastructure improvement. So we got with our lobbyist, and then we went directly to the legislature met with Senate and House convinced them for about $15 million dollars in road improvements. And around 43 46 million in water and sewer improvements that would position us to land the project. And through all that collaboration, we’re able to pull a project together now instead with the governor and everybody else on stage. And at that time, it became the second largest investment in the entire history of Kentucky, obviously, our largest investment in the history of laundry in Warren County. So 2 billion in 2000 jobs. And the other great news is that the way we’ve configured this site, there can be further growth. So it’s entirely possible this could be much bigger than it even is today.

Brandon Burton 14:17
So it’s great to be able to make an announcement of this big win of the financing, being able to come in the infrastructure, the improvements, the attraction of corporations coming. What is the timeline look like from when when that’s announced to you know, the hopefulness I guess, I’ve seen I don’t want to say completion, but maybe completion to this part of the vision because there’s that room to grow and continue into the future. But what’s the timeline looking like from forget best estimates?

Ron Bunch 14:55
Excellent question. So I mean, we announced that around April of last year in April 22 and the 1.6 million square foot tad is developed, steel is up skins going on building, there’ll be soon delivering equipment will have on offer somewhere around 300 individuals that come here from another country to help install the equipment. So by, you know, the December timeframe, they ought to have equipment set and be well along in their hiring so is a very fast moving project. And that’s, you know, one of the things that we’ve prided ourselves on being able to move quickly from announcement implementation, which helped us win that project.

Brandon Burton 15:40
Yeah. So what are some of the maybe the, let’s say, the coattails of the project, or some of the maybe lagging indicators or, or secondary benefits of a big project like this coming? Like you mentioned, 300 employees from another country coming to help install it? I mean, that’s hotels and restaurants and everything else. What other impact are you seeing through this?

Ron Bunch 16:05
Yes, it’s a tremendous amount of activities on both of the things you’ve mentioned, you know, I’d say we probably have about 1000 contractors there. And then you have another 300 equipment, installers come in, you know, obviously, I’ve been there, you know, a little over a year now. And so the overall impact and all the shopping all the businesses happening at our local companies, food trucks that are coming out, you know, just a tremendous amount of chamber activity and other spillover benefits and multiplier effects. But then on the other side, this industry needs a whole supply chain with it. So we’ve been courting a number of other companies that would be in our market, in order to supply and interact with this particular major project. That’s awesome,

Brandon Burton 16:53
that it’s one of those things that every community dreams of having that that big, you know, economic windfall, so to speak, of having all the jobs the, you know, the infrastructure, everything that comes along with it is such a great thing for the community. And I guess in in our audience, yeah, who people were talking to and see it that way. Have you had any kind of pushback from anybody in the community of you know, we don’t need this kind of thing? And did and how do you address any any negativity that may come with it?

Ron Bunch 17:26
That’s an excellent question. So we also run what we call the plant managers roundtable. So I do our existing business calls myself, and we host that plant manager roundtable every two months. And with that kind of ramping up of manufacturing, hiring alone, there has been some concern among other companies and being able to find talent, because, you know, in the US right, now, you’ve got to open jobs for every individual position. And so that’s been, you know, a thing we’ve had to navigate through, and helping them understand. Because many of our companies that have been here a long time, are as aware of how we build a custom talent sourcing strategy. And so it’s given us an opportunity to go back with them and help walk them through all the different pieces and parts we’ve put together to help them find and develop talent. And so it’s led to a lot of good conversations. We really haven’t had any other pushback on the other than how do we help our existing companies retain their talent and find new talent. And, you know, through some convening we’ve done our city and county are vested in about a quarter million annually, and a talent recruitment campaign that’s been ongoing for two years now. And so we’ve got many of the parts put together. It’s just growing on that success now as what we’re working on.

Brandon Burton 18:43
Yeah, that is great. Because there’s usually those those NIMBY people, right that don’t right in their backyard, and, and it sounds like those relationships have been built. And in the timings, right, everything is just developed at a rate, you know, the right cadence for this 10 fold the way it has, so congratulate,

Ron Bunch 19:00
are really excited about it, too, because we’re, we’re about 18% manufacturing in our economy, that’s, you know, at least twice the national average. So manufacturing has really embraced here, and quite a bit of that as automotive related with Corvette being located here, Holly being headquartered here, and, and other suppliers. And so having this new generation of propulsion for vehicles here in our community was something that was very welcomed.

Brandon Burton 19:29
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I would imagine that some of that workforce kind of plays in well to your STS SC K launch program as well, if I’m not mistaken. Do you want to gears over into that and tell us maybe how the two are related?

Ron Bunch 19:47
Absolutely. And actually, SEK launch. That program was instrumental in us winning this project. So it was something they cited compared to other states that made a difference in their decision to come here and That program has been great for a number of years now, we’ve actually had a hiring event, I think for four or five years now a high school hiring event. And this year, it was phenomenal. So many direct hires right out of high school. We also started a kind of somewhat related, heavy equipment program over the last year. And those first students got hired. And we had 23 students in the initial class, and every one of them got hired, we had a signing event that was extraordinary. So SEK launch has been just instrumental and all that we’re doing in the community. And really, it’s given us a different brand image in the community, because of the amount of investment and how long and how deeply we’ve been engaged with the education, infrastructure, our community, we’ve been doing, you know, making investments, I’m working on SDK launch for about 11 years now. And I’ve been here a little over 13. So it’s been awesome. Our other summary related to just a portion of that. So SDK launches really detailed, go to career program that is all day every day in every school, K through 12, in Bowling Green, and Warren County. But the one we chose to focus on was the eighth grade portion. Okay. And so with the eighth grade portion, we’ve actually hired a curriculum developer some years ago, and who came from education help us build out modules for every core sector of our economy. So we run the data on what jobs are open every month. And we use that to inform how we look at our sectors. And so she’s developed a curriculum that’s shared with not just every eighth grader in Bowling Green, and Warren County, but every eighth grader in our whole labor market. So for the first time ever, when eighth graders get assessed on their interests, and aptitudes, every eighth grader and our regional labor market, we’ll learn about careers and manufacturing careers and healthcare careers and business professional services. And then they’ll come to what this year was a two day, hands on career fair. We’ve had so many students, we had to extend it to another day. So now we have two full days. We had about 35 30/608 graders go through the event. 45 businesses, hundreds of volunteer, so it’s a big event. And just the excitement around it is is amazing. As you see eighth graders, explore a career and then see that light turned on, they get excited about a job in a career that they never even knew existed.

Brandon Burton 22:48
Yeah. So I know a lot of eighth graders out there have no clue what they want to know what a high schoolers until they get into the later part of their senior year, and reality is hitting them in the face. And they’re needing to start making some decisions. Right? So how does that with the focus on the eighth graders? Had you talked about the aptitude test and everything? But what what sort of things are playing into this to really help them catch a glimpse of what their future could look like? And what direction they’d want to go?

Ron Bunch 23:19
Yeah, I mean, the curriculum for each sector is crucial. So we are looking at, you know, how many open jobs whether they pay, what’s the pathway, you know, what positions can you get into with just a certificate, so really maps all that out for me really well. So that’s their first glimpse into really how broad the economy is, as well as the educators teaching it. And so that prepares them for what they then see. And we broken the experience up into different worlds. So there’s a world that we would call it for each of the sectors, and then that you’d have equipment and employers and so like in the healthcare sector, every eighth grader in our labor market would be able to come in and see robotic surgical unit, and, and interact with it. And so it’s that kind of hands on, they get to see law enforcement and, you know, get into the vehicle and check that stuff out. So it’s it’s very hands on, and we create a competition among the sectors where the students would get to vote, which sector they liked best. So it creates a kind of competition among the companies each year to up their game. Things that are more and more engaging for the eighth graders, because again, we want them to be excited about what they can go to and we want to create more of a poll. And then those eighth graders after they do that, they begin selecting their career pathway for the whole high school experience. And so if you have discovered, oh, wow, I really think I want to be in healthcare, then you get in that career pathway starting in ninth grade. And we’ve invested in for example, having an ambulance in the classroom and so you’re taught On the actual equipment that you will see in the field, through your high school career at your home high school. And so that’s the second part of the money we’re gonna raise beyond the 2.6 million is to put more and more of those hands on Career Exploration things in each high school.

Brandon Burton 25:17
That is awesome. And just to be able to get that that hands on experience, like, you know, how often do you hear somebody who is committed, and they decided to go to law school, maybe and then they get into for a year of practicing law and realize they hate law. Right. And they never spent any time in a law office before they got, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars in debt. And now they’re, they’re committed. So providing some experience when they’re young, I think is so valuable.

Ron Bunch 25:43
And I think we can all relate, you know, if you’re doing something, you have an interest and an aptitude to do, you’re going to enjoy it more. We’ve all had to do some things that maybe didn’t fit her interests and aptitudes and our careers as professional, but to find out in eighth grade, sort of how you’re wired and then be had that opened up to you at that point. And then we do I mean, you touch on that other part, we do an externship program. So we take educators into business to inform them more so that they can reach the students and help them know. But we also do a hands on career exploration for the high schoolers. So we seek to and have every high school or be in a business engagement, career exploration, in addition to the what they’re gonna get in the classroom, so they’re physically in a business during their high school career.

Brandon Burton 26:38
So I guess a question that comes up for myself is as they go along this career exploration, if at some point, they realize this really is not what I want to do, right, are they able to make that shift and somehow within the program, kind of realign with their values, and their division is awesome. Yeah, that’s

Ron Bunch 26:54
the great part about it. We’ve, through our engagement with the schools, in addition to guidance counselor’s our school that prioritize and put in place career counselors are so much better to learn during high school when it’s not going to cost you anything to switch career pathways. Yeah. And so they they’re able to work with their schools and take the lessons they have the in the credits they have gained, and then shifted over into another pathway that can get them to graduation.

Brandon Burton 27:21
All right, that’s great. Well, right, as we begin to wrap things up here, obviously, you guys are making a huge impact in your community. And that’s what what every chamber should be doing. But I wanted to see for for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tips or action items might you have to offer to help them accomplish that?

Ron Bunch 27:45
Yes. Now, when I read the Horizon Report, I think the focus on catalytic leadership is really that the thing while it may be risk, to be out front, and actually lead change that your community needs, and then finding a way for it to connect with your business plan, we’ve found that when we take that role, which we do quite a bit, in a lot of different activities, it’s really paid dividends for our community. And it’s changed the way the committee looks at the chamber and looks to the chamber. And then we’ve been able to find ways to make that work for us financially to so that we can have a growing prospering organization, and it’s, for me, personally, it’s very rewarding to be able to do those kinds of things to do things that have not yet been created that do in fact, solve a problem for groups of people and groups of businesses.

Brandon Burton 28:43
Step in there and be a leader for change for sure. How to use as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ron Bunch 28:55
I think the core of what we just talked about is that the you know, for us the thing we’ve started using, because I wanted to have more of a specific approach for both chamber activities and non development activities. We use spin situation problem. And so when you interact with GE with each investor, and you’re really probing to understand, what drives your business, what do you need? What keeps you up at night? What things can we help solve, when you do it on an individual basis annually, and then you begin to aggregate those things. It’ll point out some opportunities for you. And so I think the more we do those sorts of things with our business communities in our area, then you apply that catalytic leadership to bring things to market that haven’t existed before. I think there’ll be a natural evolution to chambers and what we deliver how we look at programs and events, and that sort of thing, and it’s changed with us to our programs and events are shifting. The affinity program that we bring on are shifting and we’re getting More and more value to the investor so that they get a good return. So it’s it’s increased engagement, and it’s decreased appreciation because they know they’re gonna get something back in relation to what they’re investing in. They know that we’re going to be responsive.

Brandon Burton 30:14
Right? I think that I think that’s great. Ron, I wanted to to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to learn more about the things you guys do in there and the bowling green area Chamber or anything else you touched on today, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Ron Bunch 30:36
They’re sure the either myself or my executive vice president Meredith Rozanski. It will be ron@bgchamber.com or meredith@bgchamber.com. Anything that anybody liked to discuss that would help their organization we’d love to engage with them. So just shoot us an email. Our main line is 270-781-3200 if you want to call us, we love engaging. We’ve got some upcoming visits by other communities to look at different facets of what we’re doing here.

Brandon Burton 31:11
I’m sure you do. I’m sure that’s a you’d be a great location for a leadership trip, for sure.

Ron Bunch 31:17
Pretty nice, too. We got some Corvettes here and you can get on a track and make sure you don’t forget the visit. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 31:25
Well, Ron, I appreciate that. We’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. But one I wish you and your team best of luck with chamber the year and congratulate you for all the great work that you guys were doing and really making an impact in your community. So appreciate all that.

Ron Bunch 31:42
Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing all these things so that we can all benefit from one another.

Brandon Burton 31:47
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