Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.
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.
Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.
For this episode, I am the guest. This is a solo episode. It’s one of those milestone episodes, as it is, episode number 300 of Chamber Chat Podcast. When I started the podcast about six years ago, I I imagined I would be doing it for a while, but the idea of having 300 episodes now is something else, so I wanted to spend some time on this episode, just talking a little bit about some of the things that I’ve learned with the leading up to 300 episodes, but I wanted to spend a lot of time on what I’m learning, what I’m finding, to apply in the field of AI to make processes a little easier, a Little more effective marketing with AI and just some real applications, and hopefully y’all are starting to dabble with AI to some degree. So I plan on diving in with this episode, a little bit of some of those examples of ways that I’ve been utilizing AI and how it’s really just made the process of producing the podcast and and all my responsibilities just a little bit easier. So we’ll dive into that much deeper as soon as they get back from this quick break.
Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.
App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.
Attention all chamber of commerce leaders! Are you looking for a powerful tool to help grow and manage your chamber? Look no further than Chamber Nation! Our comprehensive platform provides all the features you need to streamline membership management, host events, communicate with your members and provide amazing services to your members. Plus, our expert team is always available to provide personalized support. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your chamber to the next level at a price you will truly appreciate. Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more about Chamber Nation today!
All right, we are back. So 300 episodes. When I started this in February of 2019, AI was not on the scene yet, and everything I did was very much manual processes. And there still is quite a bit of manual process to the podcasting and editing and editing and so forth. But it seems like every week, there’s some new innovation in the realm of AI that is really making everything a little bit easier and more efficient. So this episode, I’m going to dive in on some of those things that I’ve. And utilizing and see what could make sense at your chamber, and see how you might be able to utilize some of these tools as well. So first of all, probably the longest running type of AI that I’ve been using is a software platform called otter, and that provides transcripts for each podcast episode. So as I record the the episodes, I take that mp three file, I upload it to otter, and it does a transcription. Now I will say the transcription is not 100% so as I use that in show notes for each episode. I have a disclaimer at the beginning saying, these are auto generated transcripts, so it’s not perfect, but I do try to skim through it and clean up some of the things that I know it misses. For example, the title chamber chat podcast, I would like it to be capitalized, and it doesn’t capitalize it all the way through. So I have to go through and and it’s easy enough to do a search on the screen and see where it pops up. There’s other times where it doesn’t recognize the words correctly. So for example, chamber chat, podcast, it might hear it as chamber tap podcast. So when I do a search, it misses it. So as long as you don’t need 100% accuracy with the transcript, but you need something relatively good that helps us search engines. It really is a great option. I like that. It breaks up who’s speaking, so you can type in, you know, the names of who, who’s speaking, and it matches it to their voice, and it provides a little transcript summary. So the next step with the AI production is, I’ll, I’ll put the uploaded file, the mp three of the episode, into otter. I’ll get that transcript with the automated summary, and then I go over to chat GPT. I take the summary and I feed it into chat GPT to give me social media posts that highlight what the episode’s about and to try to encourage people to to get on their podcast player and give it a listen. So within chat GPT, it’s important to tell chat GPT how you want it to act. So I’ve got a command that I’ll use, and I’ll say, act as a social media expert and take this transcript that I provide to you and and put together a potentially viral Facebook post. I usually start specifically with a Facebook post, so it’ll generate the the posting, you know, tailored towards Facebook. And then I have another software that I use to schedule my postings, called Metro cool. So with Metro cool, I can go in schedule the Facebook post on when I want that to go live or when I want it to hit the scene, so to speak. And then I’ll take the And granted, the auto the AI generated social media posts. I always tweak them. I never just copy paste, because you get all the extra characters that it puts in there, hashtags that don’t necessarily make sense, things like that. So I always make some edits to it before I just post it out there. But then I’ll take what I use on Facebook and within metric cool, it has an AI component to it where I can say, optimize this for social media platform. So I can say, optimize this for Twitter, and that way it takes it and compresses the amount of characters so it fits within, the requirements of Twitter. So that’s a neat tool that I use, saves me a lot of time, allows me to really batch a lot of the production process that I do, but also schedule things to go live when I want them to go live.
Another use case that I’ve used AI for is a lot of you are familiar with the bringing local back platform that we released just a few weeks ago, and with that so there’s AI built into that platform to help build out your members websites and business listings and coupon codes and all the different things that are related to their business profile, and that’s within the bringing local back platform. Now, when we were preparing to launch bringing local back, I thought, let me put chat GPT to the test. So I went to chat GBT explained what it is that we’re doing with this, this new platform and launching it. And I told chat GPT to act as a marketing professional and to create a content calendar to promote and to solicit registrations for webinar, for bringing local back. And along with that, I gave a list of resources. I said, I have an email list, I have social media followings, I have a podcast, I have a website, you know, all these different ways that I can use to market and promote the platform that we were getting ready to launch. So I put that into ChatGPT, it spit back out me a nice marketing plan. It had email campaigns, the structure to them, what the topics would be. It had ideas for podcast episodes. It had email and social media campaign, so it was all right there. I thought, This is great, but the only way I’m going to really make this be effective for me is I need this to be some sort of a calendar, some sort of a checklist that I can go through. So I asked ChatGPT to export that social media calendar to an Excel sheet so I can check boxes along the way as I go. I had no idea if it would do it or not, but a couple seconds later, it gave me a file to download that had an Excel file with everything there. Now from there, I did do some customizing, because it had all of the email campaigns grouped together all the social media strategies, grouped together all the podcast stuff, grouped together. So I did mix it up so it wasn’t all heavy email for two weeks and then heavy social media. So I wanted to be a regular campaign where it kind of intermingled all of those different platforms. So that actually got really good response, lots of good registrations for that platform, for the the webinar launch. And I was very, very pleased with how that worked, so much so that I’ve, I’ve leaned upon it in other areas to to create marketing campaigns and and things of that nature. One thing that I’ve been doing lately is trying to automate some processes. And I’m sure at your chamber you have some systems and processes that you would like to automate. And just going to ChatGPT and saying, I have an idea to do X, I want it to do, you know, ABC, and have the output be XYZ, and ask ChatGPT, what do you think? And is there a way to do this? And it will give you back step by step answer on how to implement whatever it is that you’re trying to do. So it’s just a fun exercise. Even if you just have an idea of something that you want to try, it will generate a roadmap that will help you understand and to see how it may be possible. So I’ve done this. I’ve been using chat GPT very heavily for the last several weeks in trying to extract code for Google Apps, App Scripts and things of that nature, to again, automate processes. So take an idea, plug it into chat, GPT, and see what happens. It’s kind of cool. Another new tool that I just learned about this week, and I thought I’ve got to give that a try, is it’s called notebook LM, and it’s a AI language model from Google. And it really you can put all sorts of different data resources in it, and it will compile the data resources it’s meant for. If you think, think about going, you know, taking a college course or something, and you take notes in class, or you, you’ve got your your notebook and and notes from the teacher and whatnot, and if you wanted to put all of that into notebook LM, then it will give you different feedback. So it can give you quizzes. It can give you, you know, just different different formats, question and answers, where you can kind of really digest the the information in different ways, but one of my favorite things about notebook LM is it will create a podcast so you can give it the information that you want it to extract information from, give it a little bit of context, and within a couple of minutes, you have a podcast episode. It blew my mind, so I had to give it a try. I’m going to insert this. It’s just a couple minutes of a podcast episode that was totally generated by AI, by notebook. Lm talking about this being the 300th episode of chamber chat podcast. So here it is.
Unknown Speaker 15:21 Can you believe it? 300 episodes, 300
Unknown Speaker 15:24 it’s incredible, isn’t it?
Speaker 1 15:26 Seriously, when we started Chamber Chat, I don’t think either of us imagined we’d hit such a milestone.
Speaker 1 15:33 It really is. And you know, it’s all thanks to you the listeners. Absolutely,
Unknown Speaker 15:36 this deep dive is really a celebration of you guys.
Speaker 1 15:39 It is. And what better way to celebrate them by looking back at the incredible journey we’ve been on together,
Speaker 2 15:45 totally. So what makes Chamber Chat so special? Well, for
Speaker 1 15:51 me, it’s about making the chamber world a little bit smaller. You know, chamber pros are busy. People busy. They wear so many hats. Yeah, it’s hard to find the time to attend every conference, read every article, connect with every
Speaker 2 16:03 colleague, exactly, and that’s where Chamber Chat comes in,
Speaker 1 16:06 right? It’s like a well, it’s like having a cheat sheet right, a direct line to the best practices and innovative ideas from across the chamber industry. And
Unknown Speaker 16:16 you don’t even have to leave your desk exactly,
Speaker 1 16:18 whether you’re on the treadmill or, you know, stuck in traffic,
Speaker 2 16:21 or even just taking a break from planning your next big event.
Speaker 1 16:25 Exactly, Chamber Chat is there ready to inspire and equip you with the tools you need to
Speaker 2 16:30 succeed? It’s true. And you know, when I think back over the past 300 episodes, what really strikes me is the sheer diversity of voices we’ve heard. Oh,
Speaker 1 16:39 absolutely, CEOs, young professionals, rural chamber leaders, big city folks, we’ve had it all.
Speaker 2 16:46 We’ve explored everything from membership growth to advocacy to what was that one episode building community resilience? Oh
Speaker 1 16:54 yes, that was a powerful one. I think it was. Wait, was it? Michael Johnson from the small town chamber,
Speaker 2 16:59 yes, him talking about bringing his community together after that factory closed, talk about resilience, right?
Speaker 1 17:05 That’s what I mean. Chamber chat isn’t just about theory. It’s about real stories, real challenges, real triumphs from the front lines of the chamber world.
Speaker 2 17:13 And let’s not forget about the man behind the curtain, Brandon Burton. Oh
Unknown Speaker 17:16 my goodness, Brandon, where do we even begin?
Speaker 2 17:18 I mean to dedicate yourself to documenting the voices and experiences of so many chamber leaders 300
Speaker 2 17:25 It’s remarkable. He’s created something truly special. And it’s not just about the podcast itself. It’s the community he’s fostered. The
Speaker 1 17:34 Chamber Chat community is incredible. It’s a place where chamber professionals from all walks of life can come together to learn, to share, to support one another. And
Speaker 2 17:45 So as we celebrate this 300 episode milestone, I think it’s important for us to ask ourselves, How can we, each of us, take action exactly,
Speaker 1 17:54 what can you do today with the insights and inspiration you’ve gained right
Speaker 2 17:59 dive into the Chamber Chat archives. What resonates with you?
Speaker 1 18:04 What challenges are you facing that maybe, just maybe, someone has already addressed on this show
Unknown Speaker 18:09 exactly, and you know, don’t keep it to yourself, right?
Speaker 1 18:12 Share what you’ve learned with your colleagues. Connect with other listeners. Let’s
Unknown Speaker 18:16 keep this incredible conversation going.
Unknown Speaker 18:18 Here’s to the next 300 episodes.
Unknown Speaker 18:19 Cheers to that.
Brandon Burton 18:20 All right, so what did you think that was kind of cool, right? Having the conversation. These are two AI bots, so to speak, talking back and forth, really, just I fed them my website, chamberchatpodcast.com, and that’s what it came up with, which is pretty amazing, but I really like what they talked about at the end, about let’s take action, right? So hopefully, as you’ve tuned in and listened to chamber chat podcast, you’ve heard from different chamber leaders, people from you know, different walks of life, different experiences, that are bringing things to the table that can help make your job at the Chamber better, that can help you better serve your members and your community. That’s the goal of the show. So it’s my hope that as you take these things, implement, do your rip off and duplicate your R and D, Please share the show with somebody who you know, who may be new to the chamber industry, if you take a minute and think about especially over the last couple of years, since 2020 there’s been a lot of turnover in the chamber industry. And if you think of anybody that’s new to the chamber world that could benefit from hearing from a documented resource of over 300 chamber leaders at this point and extract value from that to help jump start their career. Please share chamber chat podcast with them and encourage them to subscribe and listen to it regularly, because there there really should be great takeaways, great value that anybody especially. Those that are new to the industry can take away and really help their career get off to a great start. So I want to say thank you for being with me, for listening to the podcast, for sharing it with others, for paying attention to sponsors of the podcast. That’s what makes us keep going, is having sponsors. I know as a chamber leader, you understand the value of sponsors, and having people act on that to continue having sponsors. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I can’t do this show without you, and 300 episodes is really a testament to being able to have a great fan base, a great listenership, and it’s my goal to just keep this going and keep providing value. So please share it out. And I’m always happy to hear feedback or ideas of potential guests as well that you think would be good for the show. People you see making a big impact, let me know. But anyways, that’s all I’ve got for this week, and I’m just incredibly humble and grateful to been able to be at this for nearly six years now and 300 episodes. So it’s been quite the journey, and I look forward to a lot more. Thanks a lot.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.
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.
Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.
Our guest for this episode is Houssem Touil. Houssem, for the past 10 years, has worked with chambers of commerce, business associations and employer organizations across the Mediterranean Africa and Eastern Europe, where he’s delivered projects which have impacted the private sector and civil society on both the local and regional scale. During that time, he wore many hats, such as employee, consultant, member, board member and chamber president, which gives him a new perspective on the private sector challenges and opportunities. By the age of 27 he co founded the Tunisia Estonian Chamber of Commerce, bilateral chamber between Estonia and Tunisia, his home country, where he serves as the president since 2019. He is now the founder of Chamberpad and newsletter for chambers of commerce, Houssem, I’m excited to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast. Sam was a guest back on Episode 120 for anyone who’s curious and wants to go back and check out that episode as well, but please take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little
Houssem Touil 2:25 better. Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks, Brandon, so it’s been three years and a half now I think I think you’re right. Yeah, yeah, three years and half, like Time flies. So thanks for having me, and thanks everyone for for tuning in. So my name is Houssem. I’m the founder of Chamberpad and also presidential comms, just like you mentioned it. So I had the privilege of working with Chambers of Commerce of several sizes and budgets, and had many hats, as you mentioned earlier, which has given me unique insight into how businesses and chambers can effectively collaborate. So this experience, coupled with conversations with industry peers, has really fueled my passion for launching chamber pad, and also have a background in media communication. So yeah, so we know that chamber pad aims to be at the forefront of those discussions. That’s
Brandon Burton 3:23 kind of a natural fit with the media and communications background, to do something in that field, right and blend it in with the Chamber world. Yes, and I definitely see it being relevant in today’s world, where the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller with technology and communication skills. And you know, for you and you know, for you and I to be able to be on the opposite sides of the planet right now and be able to talk over zoom as if we’re in the same room, and the world is very small, and a lot of the trends that we see happening globally are happening in our own backyard. So being able to know what’s going on and maybe getting that glimpse, you know, a step or two before it happens in our own community is crucial to staying relevant as a chamber. So I’m excited to have you on for that perspective. But maybe before we, before we go down that road of talking about chamber pad and what it is, it is kind of a unique situation with the Tunisia Estonia Chamber. So take a moment just to explain what that is for listeners, and how does that work at the bilateral chamber and and just give us that perspective.
Houssem Touil 4:31 Yeah, sure. So, so it’s not for profit. And so, so it’s so why is 21st so it’s 20. I mean, it’s like, this small country, and they have, like, 99% of their public services are digital. So basically, you do pretty much everything online with with the government, and also it’s, it’s very tech savvy. They have, like. You know, it’s, it’s startup country where they have, like, the most numbers of of startups per capita. And at the same time, you know, my country, we are small, but not that small in size, but I’ve seen that. There’s also a lot of similarities, and we can learn a lot from them, start by implementing, or at least learning from how they build, like digital savvy, digital side country. So basically, in Tunisia, we have also, like a lot of IT companies. So most of the time this is it focused more than everything else. So basically, we’re like a technology chamber, or at least technology focus chamber, where we help our local startups to expand via startup visa, for example, in Estonia, they can also this enable them to to get access to to European markets, to alleviate a lot of a lot of barriers, and reduce the cost of doing business. Sometimes it also offers them to other markets, not just the European market, also in Tunisia, every year, we have over 65,000 graduates, about 10,000 to 11,000 of them are engineers, or at least they work in the stem so, so basically they are trilingual, and most of the time they don’t just, like, find a job right away. Give me the perspective, like the local economy and so on. So it’s not that easy to find a job like right away when you graduate. So basically, most of them, they end up, like working as freelancer, or they leave the country to other places. And so here comes Estonia with a model called the residency. So basically you become like a virtual resident of the country. But it doesn’t give you, like additional rights, like additional civic rights. They just give you most of the time, like, let’s say, commercial rights to interact with the government, and you can stay wherever you are in the world. So you don’t relocate. You stay where you are. You can have access to the same opportunity just like, or at least almost like you would relocate over there. So, yeah. So this is another, another pain point that we have addressed, especially that we have, like, a massive brain drain. So we’re trying to keeping tasks local
Brandon Burton 7:33 well, and it’s another example of the world getting smaller and and you guys definitely can’t do things the way things have always been done as chambers, because it’s very technology focused and needing to stay on the forefront of all that. Out of curiosity, how do you measure membership and growth and that with with the chamber with this type of structure?
Houssem Touil 7:57 Yeah, so this also another way we looked at how we could operate at the chamber. So usually a chamber would just, you know, like, you set up the chamber. Let’s say, if you’re like, private, low chamber, you set it up as a nonprofit. You bring in some, like, industry, industry peers, and you say, Okay, we’re going to set up the chamber. And you start, like, drafting the roadmap, and start acquiring members to get to what you have planned, like do events, trade delegations and policy briefs and so on. But we have acted differently. Said, Okay, instead of focusing on having members, how many have renewed? How many are engaged or not or job that. So I said, Okay, we are going to act as a cluster. And so basically we said we are going to be like, not just like a local cluster, but on both sides. So we went to the clusters over there in Estonia, and we said, Okay, so here are the possibilities where we can collaborate in the short term, mid term and actually long term. And here are probably, like, some discussions that you could also take, take part of, like knowledge exchange, for example, and trade delegations or bid for tenders like Tunisia, spending like lot and working with multilateral stakeholders like World Bank and African Development Bank and so on to digitize the public services so and they have experience with that. So I say, okay, maybe let’s just like match sometimes we do on a case by case basis. So instead of bringing you like 500 companies from both sides together, or even 100 let’s just do it like on case by case basis. So we started operating first for startups, and we had like few startups getting there. They had that they. Startup visa. We also had a couple of startups from Australia coming here the startup shop. We have, like, a unique framework here for startups called the startup act. And they operating thanks to its thanks to its framework incentives. Then we had some IT companies bidding together as joint ventures. They are working not just Tunisia, but also in Africa, actually in the Middle East. So, yeah, we are seeing, like a lot of it’s actually new perspective. So it’s we find it, it’s a new, I’m not gonna say like it’s a new model or something, but we just like explored something that you wouldn’t just like think of when, when, when you draft your roadmap. So usually we think of events, trade delegation and so on. But I said, Okay, let’s just go with whatever opportunity we can see is, let’s just go with that. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 10:58 I like that. So Houssem is obviously an outside the box thinker, which is why we wanted to have him on the show. Today, we’re going to focus most of our conversation around Chamberpad. This is a new newsletter that hose him has founded and put out into the world. So we’re going to learn about what it is, what the purpose is, and everything about it. As soon as they get back from this quick break.
Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.
App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.
Attention all chamber of commerce leaders! Are you looking for a powerful tool to help grow and manage your chamber? Look no further than Chamber Nation! Our comprehensive platform provides all the features you need to streamline membership management, host events, communicate with your members and provide amazing services to your members. Plus, our expert team is always available to provide personalized support. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your chamber to the next level at a price you will truly appreciate. Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more about Chamber Nation today!
All right, Houssem, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we see the world getting smaller and smaller. There’s great value in getting perspective from people and other other parts, other regions of the world, just to see what’s going on there and see what we can apply in our own community. Tell us what is Chamberpad. We talked about it being a newsletter, but I know it’s new. I think you’re what four, four newsletters into it and, and I will say, from a content producer myself, sometimes our best stuff comes out early before we have a big following. So I’m going to urge everybody to start following Chamberpad right now so you can get all the good stuff. But it’ll, it’ll continue to be great, I’m sure. Yeah, tell tell us what it is and what it all it entails, and where the idea come from. Yeah,
Houssem Touil 14:06 like that. But you know, like when you start at the beginning, you’re like, you put yourself, yeah, you put
Brandon Burton 14:11 your best foot forward. You got great content, and you’ve got a small so you gotta, gotta grow it and get in front of more people.
Houssem Touil 14:19 Yeah? You can relate, yes, yeah, and so. So Chamberpad is, is a newsletter designed specifically for the chambers of commerce ecosystem. So the staff, the executives, the board members, the volunteers, the members also, and also the service providers, the policy makers and so on. So anyone who is like on the could be around, like the Chamber of Commerce ecosystem. So, like, I’ve seen, like a pattern I saw, like a gap in the market where chambers needed, like, easily digestible. Or centralized source of information. And so this comes as frustration as the chamber President myself, so I find, I mean, I know that, like, the perspective sometimes could be different, because it’s just like between two countries. So basically, you can have like, top two, three news outlets between two countries, where you could just, you know, see the news everything related to to the government or private sector or whatever. But this, also, I have another hat, which is working with chambers in from all sizes, different culture, different countries, different cultures. So basically, you are like, you know, sometimes you you find yourself in information overload, so or overload that you don’t know where to get your information exactly. You can see, can go through, you know, like your Twitter or x spread. You can go through your Facebook timeline and go through the LinkedIn news feed, and basically you wouldn’t be able to digest, like, all of it. So basically, we said, okay, let’s have like, one source of information. And I started thinking more into it to see, like, how relevant it is. So started like, let’s say, tracking how many news there are related to all of this, like, related to to the chambers, to the employee organizations, to Business Association and so on, versus like there is, on average, about 14,000 euros per month only related to to chambers and and, yeah, and this is actually just in English, so it’s not like, also like, try to imagine how many this could be in other languages, like in French or in Chinese or in Arabic and in Spanish or Portuguese. So I guess it’s going to be more like just in English, just like 14,000 and so say, okay, maybe we can do something and be so the first, first idea would be to become aggregator. But also that wouldn’t solve the problem, since there are actually 14,000 years. So I wouldn’t read 14,000 years per month, because the context is extremely different. So I said, Okay, so maybe do like a digest, like every week you spend the whole week, like hustling, doing whatever you do with requiring members, visiting your member, advocating on their behalf, you know, talking to the media, doing events or whatever said by the end of the week, or at least. So basically we release every Thursday. They said, by the end of the week, you’ll get the top news and the top events and the top publications, and now also the best latest Podcast, episode, chamber, chat podcast, yeah, that you can listen to. So it’s not just about reading it, but also listening and any I mean, I find that format better than actually doing an aggregator, some, something like Hacker News. I don’t know if you know what I can use. No, I’m not familiar with that. Yeah. So it’s like, you know, in circumvent there’s like, there’s like, hacking news. It’s a platform where, like, hundreds and hundreds of news drop every day, almost, about technology and so on. So I said, I mean, you gotta spend like, your day in front of hacking news to read in years. So basically, you went to the anywhere. So I said, Okay, this to just do the newsletter and take it from there. So we set up like a roadmap, and I said, okay, like our missions to provide actionable insights, trends, events, best practices to chambers across across the globe. So whether they are a local chamber in a small town or a large international network, they could be a continental chamber or State Chamber or whatever. So yeah, for now, we’re just newsletter but and we’re also have like subscribers from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and also even from the Caribbean. So yeah, I mean very much this is like exciting times, and very much looking forward to where this is going to take us. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 19:32 no, I love the idea for it and and, like you said, to be able to try to curate these different articles and news outlets from, you know, worldwide, from the global scene. And it would be quite the undertaking to really dive in and do that all, but as you come across these things of interest, to kind of keep note of it and put it together. And what I like is it’s an easily digestible newsletter. So you’re not seeing just article after article, but you you have it broken down. Right at the top where it says, like, for example, this week there were six news articles that you referenced, three publications, one podcast episode, and four events you know around the world, yeah. And then you have it broken down by those categories, and like, bullet points and links to the full articles or registration for events and things like that. And I don’t know just kind of future casting this, I see you could become that source where people are coming to you with articles and information. You know, here’s something for the newsletter. You know, our Chamber’s doing this, or our, you know, National Association of chamber in certain countries doing this, or whatever it may be, just to put it out there in the newsletter. I think it’s a great platform. And glad to see somebody’s picking up the ball and running with it and doing doing this. So, yeah, kudos. Kudos to you the idea.
Houssem Touil 20:51 Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, we already started having some people reaching out, actually. So they reach out even by the email that they find at the bottom of the newsletter, or by link there, I’ll say, oh, you should actually put this. Or why not look at this? So, yeah, basically, so feel free to send, I mean, yeah, we’re happy to to include it,
Brandon Burton 21:15 yeah. And I think for a busy chamber executive or chamber staff to be able to to get this email every Thursday. Open it up, and you can scan right through it, see what what things are of interest to you and what’s relevant to you. Click on that. And I know, you know, lots of people get different emails from various organizations, maybe like Harvard Business Review. I know they do like a weekly email, and people really look forward to those because it has so much valuable content in it. And that’s how I see Chamberpad being, is that resource specific for chamber executives, chamber staff, to be able to see what’s going on in a lot of different markets all at once, and you can go back and reference it. It’s got all the links there. So you’re not needing to search worldwide to find these things, but it’s being curated and presented to you. So nice job. What else would you want to share about Chamberpad for listeners, just to get them into it, to get them to understand what it is and where it offers value for them. Is there anything else that you’d add?
Houssem Touil 22:24 Yeah, sure. So so far now we started as as a newsletter we read by chamber leaders from 29 countries so far, and and what we what we plan on doing, is actually to become one stop shop for all affiliations related to chambers. So this is just like the digest you get to just digest of 10 years. But eventually, we’re planning on starting doing our own webinars, for example, in the beginning, we have also started to initiate discussions with chamber industry events, where we are could become media partners for the events as well. We’re also working. We’re about to roll out our platform so it’s the same address, like chamberpa.com is the same for now, you can just go there and subscribe for the newsletter. We will keep the newsletter, of course, because we all need to keep the weekly digest over there. But also, we are going to start doing interviews and promoting. You know, most of the time we have to promote economy. So we just hear about the top economies most of the time, always doing what, but we often forget about all the others in all the great job that they are doing. Some subjects, for example, like the free trade agreements, like if your chamber, for example, you have members who export, let’s say, like, fruits and vegetables. You would want to know about another your chamber peer in another country which says, you say, hey, both are our country are actually have a free trade agreements, and fruits and vegetables are actually included in that. So we have either eliminated tariffs, or we have actually reduced the the tariff rates. So basically, you as a chamber, you would actually tell say, Okay, why don’t you just like, go to this country, listen to this webinar, lead to everything they have to tell you about how you could export to their countries, and thus you make more money, you hire more people, and also you stick with the chamber. So basically, it’s it’s sometimes I see that maybe can talk about it later. A place like future for chambers and so on. But sometimes you can just, like, do it all as as the chamber executive yourself, like, you know, you can just do everything, right? Sometimes someone has to do something for you resist
Brandon Burton 25:15 the temptation, right? Yeah,
Houssem Touil 25:20 yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, it started, I mean, like, you know, I’ve been listening to your your podcast for three years and a half now, and every time, you know, I get, like, new perspectives from new people. Sometimes, you know, it’s sometimes it could be related to, to the place where they are operating from. Or sometimes it could be like subject. So yeah, like we can do, we can do, like webinars on specific subjects, but basically they’re going to be around countries. And we’re very thrilled to be like partners with chamber chat podcast. I mean, it’s like, really my favorite podcast, like every week goes into it. So basically, we have that you listen to Brandon every week, but also you read what her writes to you every week. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 26:08 goes hand in hand. I love it, yeah. So you’d mentioned earlier you have a marketing communications background. So how is that? Have you been able to lean into that as you’ve launched chamber pad?
Houssem Touil 26:26 Yes, very good question. So, so you need so when you look at for example. So I said earlier, would be like tracking the number of news that we find, like every week we also, let’s say, like since the opportunity and checked, let’s say the trainings related to related to chambers, what they are talking about and so on. I’ve seen that most of the time they’re still operating in the same way. And what do I mean by that? I mean from immediate perspective, like for now, when you go through all kinds of reports, you can go to reports just related to like certain sides of chambers, or in certain continent for chambers, you will see that many say that they have reduced engagement rate, while others say that they they have like, more members dropping than actually renewing. Others said that they were actually seeing like spike in membership. And we said, Okay, so maybe I should, like, you know, initiate some discussions with some people, and try to see why, like what’s going on. And sometimes what what you get is just you find that these people, they communicate with different generations at the same time. So they communicate with my generation, the millennials. They communicate also with the Gen Z. They communicate also with the boomers. And so I think that chambers, right now, should become a media machine. I mean, at certain time they become a network. Actually, they started as a network. And, you know, actually started about, like, over 400 years ago in the port of southern France, Marseille. They’re just, you know, they started, you know, like going to the port over there, and they had, like, issues with the pirates in the Mediterranean. And then they see the occasion, and they find out that traders, merchants are meeting with each other. So basically, they also see the occasion to start doing business together, and then later on. So So it started as a network, and then from the network key to move to a network as a powerhouse. And you know, you go, you become member your chamber is going to defend you. They’re going to, you know, voice your concern to the local, state, federal, nation, whatever authorities your concern and and now I think that they should become actually medial nation. And this is, this is not an option, because the world has changed a lot, and even with covid, like covid is actually despite, like, all the negative downsides of covid and so on. But I think that it has also, like, accelerated the future, and it has actually brought it to open doorstep. So I think, yes, chambers should become media machines.
Brandon Burton 29:46 I love that, and I’m going to take that as an endorsement. You know, recently launched the Bringing Local Back platform that was part of the vision is chambers being a media machine and establishing a platform that makes it easy. Easy to put your content out in your community, to really showcase your members, to really be that go to source for information in your community. So I love that testimonial of it, because that is the that’s the idea about that, that bringing local back campaign. So thank you for that. Sure. I like asking everyone I have on the show for any kind of tip or action item that you might have for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level. What would you suggest for them?
Houssem Touil 30:33 Oh, yeah, actually, there are quite a few. So first of all, maybe actually start to embrace AI like, you know, AI is not like chatgpt, it’s not clothing, it’s not perplexity, and it’s not Canva and like the magic writer of LinkedIn, or whatever it’s, it’s much more. I mean, it’s this, it’s part of this. It’s empowering, like content creation and all of that. But there are also other things that you should actually embrace in AI, for example, something like automations start to automate. And actually, I think that I’ve said this in the first episode with you, I think said automate. And actually, even three years later, I still talk to my peers, and most of the time they don’t automate, yeah, but actually automate. Automate often. Like, there’s so many things that you cannot automate for sure, but things which are repetitive make it automated, make it autopilot, like, save even like five hours per week or 10 hours per week, or even as low as two hours per week, like, just automate your workflow, like, try to gain some time, automated repetitive tasks and to get more space for creative work, for example, or to have more members, or to talk more to to your to our existing members, also at the same time, maybe you should actually shift more of their member engagement strategies online, for example, like, you know, we live like in digital era, and sometimes remember, expect real time expand real time updates, sometimes like some personal content. I know that it’s not that obvious to do it for certain types or sizes of chambers, but do as much as you can from where you understand, like, for example, I’ve seen some chambers they said, Okay, we are going to do like, virtual secretaria. So basically, don’t call us on the phone and tell us what, what you need and so on. Like just, there’s like, there’s like a chat bot in in the website, you can just talk to it, and if it is something that you know, like your interface, you chat with the interface. If it doesn’t give you the proper answers to what you want. This is actually when would be able to get access to a phone number and call us, but you can also send us an email. I mean, try to automate as much as possible, also with different engagement stores, I found that some chambers, for example, they do work with us consistently. I know that, for example, some chamber in in small town doesn’t mean I mean they probably they, they cannot do that because, you know, they can just like, do an event, like, every once in a while, and that’s enough. But if you’re like Metro Chamber, like very big city, you cannot, like, reach everyone at the same time and bring them together on site. So have something like, you know, give them real time date. I mean, they don’t need to get to wait for your monthly newsletter to tell them what you did for them, like, do it real time. Do it Real Time. I mean, they will feel that you actually care more about them, that you are more present than you actually wait for it. And do you know it’s just like another thing that you just another thing yet to check at the end of the month, and said, Okay, this news database, what we’ve been doing, like, No, do it real time.
Brandon Burton 34:31 Yeah, I like that. Doing it real time and also recording it, having a library of these real time, going back to being that media machine, right? If you can provide asynchronous information where somebody can digest it on their own time, instead of needing to be at the meeting or at the luncheon at a specific time in person, they they have the option to catch it virtually, or if they can’t see it today, but they can watch it tomorrow. Then that’s even better, because you’re getting more exposure to more people that way. Your your your thought about automation too, I think is spot on. I’ve seen it’ll free up time and the give give room for that creative work, like you mentioned. But it also makes your systems that much better when you can automate processes, because the input every the data that’s coming into, it’s going to be the same. And just a simple example, as I’ve seen with some chambers, is they input membership information, for example, the contact name, depending on who is entering the information in, they might include a prefix of Mr. Or Mrs. You know, Jones or whatever, and then the next person who’s entering in membership information just as first and last name. So then you have inconsistencies in your data all over the place. So having a system and automating it’s going to clean things up a ton and make it so much easier to process that data in a meaningful way. Well, Hussein, before we let you go, you alluded to it earlier, but as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Houssem Touil 36:22 Yeah, so, so, as I mentioned earlier, so chamber stars as network and then as advocacy powerhouse, and now they should become media machines. But actually, in order to become media machine, you should be able to I think that instead of like everyone doing their own thing, you know, aside, maybe you should have something that we have our own key message, the same key messages that we deliver like we harmonize all the benefits that you get from joining channel. But also, at the same time, we should also harmonize the key messages of what could not work in your favor if you don’t join as well. Because, for example, if you have some kind of issue, sometimes you just cannot solve it on your own. We we sometimes forget that channels of commerce also have mandates depending on the countries they’re operating from. So sometimes, if you want to deal with the government, for example, on a certain issue, you cannot do it on your own, only vi chamber. So you have, for example, you want to advocate to change some regulations, for example, which are harming you. Or maybe you said, Okay, I have suggestions for something new, which actually we could implement, which kind of bring us more dollars and hire more people, and especially keeping both local. So you can only do that with your chamber. When you look at the world’s biggest companies, actually, what they do is just, you see that everything is online, but no like, they have like public affairs team who actually or which actually work with chambers to actually negotiate with the governments and so on to implement new kind of regulations. So, yeah, I think that it’s like Bill Gates, or, I don’t know who said it before, like, if your business is on the internet, then it will be out of business. I think that should, like, harmonize the set of key messages which go like, if your business is not chamber member, then your business will go out of business. So, yeah, I think yeah, that’s it. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 38:57 No, that’s great. I appreciate that. I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect to learn more about what you’re doing, but probably most importantly, how to subscribe to chamber pads. They can get this news, this curated news, sent to them each week. What’s the best way? Where would you point them to do these things? Yeah,
Houssem Touil 39:21 sure. So you go to chamberpad.comso basically, you will, it’s a landing page. The first thing you’re gonna see is to actually just insert your email and subscribe, and later on, you can start reading, have access to all the archives. And every week, like every Thursday, you will you will have, like the weekly digest every week, every Thursday in your inbox. You will also find my contact information within the newsletter, so you can find my full name. We send 12. It’s the same on LinkedIn, and you can. Also find my email. It’s my initials, so ht@chamberpad.com,
Brandon Burton 40:07 that’s perfect, and as normal, we’ll get all this in our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find and subscribe and get people in contact with you. But Sam, this has been great having you back on chamber chat podcast, the partnership going forward with with chamber pad as well. And wish you best of luck going forward and and seeing it grow and see see where it goes from here. So thanks for being with us today.
Houssem Touil 40:33 Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me.
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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.
Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.
Our guest for this episode is Jimmy lane. Jimmy is the president and CEO of the Cocoa Beach Regional Chamber in Florida. Since august 2009 Jimmy Lane has held seven distinct positions across two chambers of commerce, gaining comprehensive experience in every aspect of chamber operations. In November 2021 he assumed the role of president and CEO of the Cocoa Beach Regional Chamber of Commerce, embarking on an ambitious mission to reimagine the organization as a chamber of the future. Through his visionary leadership, Jimmy has successfully modernized the chamber, introducing innovative initiatives, fostering stronger member engagement and embracing cutting edge technology to better serve the community. This reimagined chamber has seen a remarkable 33% growth during his tenure, a reflection of Jimmy’s Forward Thinking Strategies under his guidance, a Cocoa Beach Regional Chamber was recently awarded the prestigious FACP chamber of the year in the 500,000 to $1 million category, a testament to the organization’s success and impact in 2022 Jimmy was also honored as one of ACCE’s 40, under 40, recognizing his influence as a rising leader in the chamber industry outside of the office, Jimmy’s greatest joy comes from being a dedicated father to his twins, Cameron and Blakely, whether it’s train them on at their soccer games or competitive cheer events, Jimmy’s deeply committed to being present in their lives. Despite his busy schedule, he ensures his family remains top priority, while also pursuing his personal passions for fitness and travel. Jimmy, 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 share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better?
Jimmy Lane 3:01 Yeah, no, I’m excited about it. Thanks for having me. You mentioned the ACCE 40. Under 40, I think I made it by the announcement was about two weeks before I turned 40. So, you know, I used to have a coach that said, if you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute. I’m not sure if that’s good advice. So that’s what happened there. I think you already said it a fun fact about me something interesting. I have twins. They’re 13 years old, boy and a girl, Cameron and Blakely, and they are my daughter. I say, is a chamber president in the making. She’s never met a stranger. She holds court wherever she goes. And her brother could be, could be alone, doing his own thing and be just fine with it. So I spent about almost, I think I started my 16th year in the chamber world, then with two different chambers, and seen some cool stuff. And I was actually telling somebody yesterday, when I originally got the opportunity at the Chamber in Forsyth County, Georgia, that I thought, Okay, I’ll be here three months. I’ll be here, you know, maybe a year. Let’s go meet some good people. And, you know, move on, and almost 16 years later, here we are. So, yeah,
Brandon Burton 4:03 that’s, that’s how the chamber world gets us, you know, that’s how I got into it. It was going to be a job to start my career, and then I was going to transition. It was just going to be two years, you know. And here I am, 18 years later,
Jimmy Lane 4:15 right, right, right. Yeah, I get it gets in your blood. Man,
Brandon Burton 4:20 that’s right for sure. Well, tell us a little bit about the Cocoa Beach Regional Chamber. Just give us an idea of the size of the chamber, scope of work, staff. You know, things you have going on there, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.
Jimmy Lane 4:35 Yeah, the Cocoa Beach Regional Chamber. It’s interesting. Those who know what US Chamber Institute program is my predecessor. I sat aside my very first year in Athens back in 2016 and she told me a lot about what was going on, and I and I remember thinking, dang, we don’t have it that bad. Or, you know, things aren’t as wonky. You know, in a. In the town, no, I say that jokingly, is a great community. We have eight staff. We are, we will be about a million dollars this year. When I first started, back in 2021, I think we’re about $625,000 and you know, the Chamber has had been that way for a long time. I mean, the roots go back over 100 years. But this iteration of it was 1968 it was formed, and it kind of stayed in that half a million to $750,000 range for a long time. Had as many as 1500 total members. And we’ve sort of redefined what that is. We know the idea of membership has changed quite a bit. And, you know, have changed, sort of our model, but it’s an it’s a neat community. We, you know, you hear about the SpaceX rocket launches and the Blue Origin rocket launches. Those happen here, really every week. I used to think a rocket launch that happens every 10 years, and literally, I get down here three years ago, and they’re happening all the time in my backyard. It’s one of the coolest things. And by the way, we have beaches and Disney’s, you know, 45 minutes an hour away, so it’s a pretty neat place to be. It’s pretty, pretty, pretty
Brandon Burton 6:10 cool. Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. So I’m here in Texas, so we got the SpaceX headquarters here in Texas, yeah, yeah, very quick. It’s over there. So no that that sets the stage well for us is, as people can see in that the episode description today are the subject for our conversation is going to revolve around the massive revenue growth that that you guys have seen, especially in your time being there at the chamber, and I mentioned in your bio, 33% growth in just a few years. So that’s that’s something to remark about. So we’ll dive into that and find out what it is you guys are doing, the approach you’re taking and and get into it as soon as I get back from this quick break.
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All right, Jimmy, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, I introduced our topic for today. So we’re going to focus on this, this massive revenue growth that you guys have seen as as you’ve taken the the helm there at the Cocoa Beach Regional Chamber. Obviously, there’s a saying you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, right? But what, what kind of approaches are you guys taking as a chamber to see that kind of growth you had mentioned that you’ve reimagined what a chamber is. You’ve had this charge to make your chamber, chamber the future, take that shape, it into what it means and the change you guys have seen since you’ve been there.
Jimmy Lane 9:17 Yeah, so I mentioned this is my second chamber, and the Chamber I came from was in Forsyth County, Georgia. They did some really great stuff. It’s about a $3 million chamber today, but when we all started, you know, 12 to 15 years ago, it was about 600,000 and and we didn’t, we didn’t grow and change it by adding more members and doing more networking events. Those things have their place. So we had a pretty cool model that we we decided to generate revenue that was mission driven. And for those who remember the horizons initiative that came out a few years ago, I think part two or 2.0 is coming out here pretty soon. We really bought into that. We really said, okay, the whole i. The membership is changing, and we need to, we need to embrace that. And you know, just as a side note, I was a math education major in college, went to military school, thought I was gonna be a math teacher, and you know, that didn’t. I found the chamber world, and thankfully, did that. But, but you know, data is a big deal to me, and so we pull a lot of data. And what I found when I first got here doing the benchmarking that ACCE and others have for you to take a look at, is that this organization was very, very heavily weighted on the membership due side of things, 90 plus percent in some years. And post covid, you know, had it had, prior to covid, it had probably 8085, maybe 90% retention rate at times. But post covid was 3040, 50, 60% and I remember, for us, thinking about during what covid, covid real made me realize that if your idea of success is just butts and seats, as we say from time to time, and you can’t do that anymore, where does that leave you? And so we said, Okay, first off, what can we do? What can we take that, that we do well, and kind of enhance and in that first year, we decided to revamp our programming events. We think that really, chambers have four areas that they can focus in. You know, there is the traditional networking. Of course, the stuff that they do every day, right is, there’s the traditional networking. There’s teaching and training, education classes, seminars, where you the leader in that area. There’s also that community development, community engagement events that you can do. They’re the pat you on the backfield, good events that everyone does to some degree. And then the fourth one that I’m the most excited about are, what are those strategic initiatives, those projects that you, if you’re not the major driver behind you, have a huge hand in we used to say, you know, this organization used to beg to have a seat at the table. Well, now we’re creating the table that people are asking to have a seat at, that are driving true legacy, transformational change in our community. And then all of a sudden we started doing that. And it’s taken a while for people to sort of reframe what they believe the chamber is and and what it can be. But now those folks are writing us checks, seed money, checks, for lack of a better term, at times, to go to fund these initiatives. And they’re not looking for their logo on a, on a, on a program or on the screen at an event. Or am I going to get chicken or steak tonight at the event. You know, it is for a very different reason, and I’ll tell you that is the start of it is reframing, sort of going from that transactional to transformational growth and focusing on mission driven investment.
Brandon Burton 12:56 Yeah, and I think a lot of chambers have gotten that memo now that you need to be more of a they should. Yeah, I think, I think for some there’s still some of that hesitation of moving away from what their traditional, you know, staple events have been, their their bread and butter, you know, what’s driving the revenue currently, and maybe some hesitation taking that bold step into something new, or a new revenue stream that hopefully will kind of turn the table on what that model looks like for their organization. So for a chamber that’s having these maybe hesitations or just having a hard time making that that bold move, what did you guys see that was helpful for you to step into that and really own that space?
Jimmy Lane 13:46 Well, I think it starts with understanding your why. So there’s a great book called Start with Why. Simon Sinek, he that really is at the base of everything that we do. He’s done a couple TED talks, if you go back and find one from like 2010 some of the references, you know, they don’t apply to line today, but you’ll get it if you’re you know, you know, during that time. But we had to start with our why, and we went through a multi stage process with the staff and with our board. And it was very interesting to me when I asked the those leaders who have been around for a long time, who are investing the most of their time and their resources into us, why we exist. They really couldn’t, you know, verbalize that. And the things they said was, well, well, to do networking events and to, you know, advocate at the, you know, state level, or whatever it may be. And I said, Well, why does that actually matter? And they kept, at times, got frustrated like, well, obvious for obvious reasons. Well, when we boil it down to the very foundational reason of why people invest in the work that we do, is they have hope that they’re this is a tool for them, that by investing in it, it’s going to. Give them greater opportunity to achieve the happiness that they so desire. And when you kind of get down to that, that that is the work we’re doing, and that what we do, the day to day, stuff changes over time. It makes your path Much, much clearer. And so some of the things that we looked at, you know, in our community, that provides more hope and can create more happiness for folks is like military you know, we have a huge military presence here. I think at one time we have about 650,000 people in this in this county, you know, 150 or so are have some military affiliation, retired, and we want them to stay in this community and do great things. Well, one of the problems we saw, and nobody had a solution for it, was when they’re in those last year, last few months of being active duty, whether they’re in the Air Force or Coast Guard or Marine Corps, whatever it may be, how are we transitioning them to civilian life. I mean, I grew up in a military family. I’ve seen it, you know, good and talented people. 2025, years in a leadership position in the army, and then they get out and they’re just not sure what to do. And sometimes their skills don’t translate. Their leadership skills do, but maybe their job that they did do not. And we’ve got a great guy on our on our board of directors, who’ll be the chairman of our board in a couple years. He he started out as our military affairs council chair. He lived that, and he is a growing and thriving and a huge success in our community, as a business owner in the cyber security world. But for a couple years, he floundered and didn’t really know what to do, and kind of bounced around and said, We need a real transition program for folks. And, well, interestingly, you know, when I first started, people used to say, well, the spacexes of the world aren’t going to give you any money. They don’t care about what we’re doing. Well, yeah, you’re right, because they don’t care about networking. And if you’re doing a networking loan, you’re telling them join the chamber and let everybody know you exist. Well, they don’t really care about that, but you know what they do care about is they care about this transition event that we’re doing in November, and they have raised their hand and beat on the door and said, We want to be a part of it, and by the way, we’re going to write a check, because this is so important for our community and what we do, because we all know that workforce is a big deal, and finding the right people, and the spacexes and ULAs and others of the world are saying, Hey, this is a big deal for us. And so I say all that. Say that’s how we’ve been making our shift. Those are the areas we said, Where can we be? Where can we get narrowly focused because for the next three to five years, and a couple of areas, and where can we just go make a huge impact, and regardless is if, whether or not you’ve ever stepped foot in our front door, you know we exist, you know, a chamber. What? What is a chamber? It doesn’t matter if we are doing things that positively, positively affect you and your quality of life, we’re doing the right things.
Brandon Burton 17:57 Yeah, that was that leads in perfectly to what my next thought or question was, is, how do you go after these, these bigger donors? And you talked about it being these events, these programs, being mission driven, but you’re not just going up to them necessarily, and saying, Hey, this is our mission. This is what we’re doing. Write us a check. But it sounds like you’ve got the programming around it that’s going to align with what they feel to be important, with what they see value in in the community, to help build community, and then just aligning those efforts together. Am I? Am I getting that right? Or is there Yeah? Nuances,
Jimmy Lane 18:33 yeah. Let me. Let me give you another just sort of small example. So years ago, SpaceX was having some issues, or one of the, you know, getting rockets in and out of certain this certain road. And it was before my time. So I’m gonna tell the story wrong, but you’ll, you’ll understand the gist. And there was a light in the way, and they needed somebody, they needed the D, o, t to move that light. And it was this big, huge ordeal. And I remember the chamber I came from, was typically the organization that stepped in and went and, you know, beat the drum to get that done and relieve that pressure off of a SpaceX, or whoever it may be that needed that, that to drive their business. It was, it was hurting their business. Well, those are the things that they care about. You’re there when they need you. You are. You are eliminating a speed bump or hurdle in the road for them to go do their work. And if you’re willing and able to go do that, and you can fill a need for them, they will invest in what you do. And again, going back, you know, Kennedy Space Center is a great partner of ours. We’ve got some really great people who work there, and they are very caring for our organization, and we’ve got a great partnership. But recently, they have said to us, the major thing, the thing we care about the most, is that the the the space industry, stays here number one, because that means that we are. Where we are secure and where we need to be, and we have done a bad job of finding the right people as we’re growing and thriving to hire enough people, and everybody has us, not just on them. And how do we how do we do that? And so something like this transition event from active duty military to to full time civilian is something they care about deeply and have invested heavily in themselves, because they’re like, you’re filling a need. We don’t have the headache of putting it on. We just have to be there and be a part of it. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 20:29 So I think, I think that’s a great example, and being able to quite literally remove those speed bumps that are in the way of these businesses being right, exactly, getting their targets. I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of a chamber listening right now, and they think, yeah, you know, we understand what you’re saying, Jimmy. We need to change our programming. We need to be, you know, somebody who’s there listening to the needs of our members and really help eliminate those problems. But I think it may be helpful to hear maybe just a few examples of the different types of programming you guys do, understanding every Chamber’s different, but it might get some of those creative juices flowing for people listening to say, You know what, maybe we should explore this, because that could align with our mission and our purpose. So if you don’t mind just going through some of that, some of those programming that you guys have been Yeah, absolutely.
Jimmy Lane 21:19 And I’ll step back just a little bit about how we determine what they were to again, my second chamber, I do a lot of R and D, rip off and duplicate, as we say, and I would encourage all of you to do so, and anything we talk about today, if you’re interested, I’m happy to share that with you. But the reality is, you don’t know what you need to do until you ask a lot of times again. I came from a different community. I had over 200 community conversations and said, Who is the chamber to you now? What should the chamber be? And if we were to stand in the gap and get focused on a couple of areas for a period of time, three to five years, and do them really, really well, what what would those things be? And so I think that helps you try to understand where you’re going and what you’re doing. You should ask, you should survey, you should have those conversations. But some of the things that we found for us that were a big deal is one of the things that’s been the most successful this year is our Brevard women Connect. Brevard County is the county that we’re in. There are some other women’s empowerment series in our community, and they do a great job. But we saw a need of creating something for that, and it’s sort of, we sort of dabbled in it. Last year, we did a Galantine stay event. We did a women’s empowerment series, women in engineering. Engineering is obviously a big deal here in the in the space program, or with the space program here, and we did a think pink, it’s a women’s and wellness sort of panel discussion that we had and and so the goal for that is to, how do we, how do we focus on one market in our community, do a quarterly event that gathers for us, which was pretty incredible, 100 or more women business leaders in our community, and gives them a place of belonging and gathering. ACC talks about that in the horizons initiative belonging and gathering another place for them to feel tied to the organization. So that was a big win for us, and has been a big win. And this is in We’re in our second year of it, and I can only see it growing. Tourism is a big deal for us as well. We realize that the traditional way of marketing to our folks, so we have a tourism development commission visit Space Coast that is here that that gets the tourism bed tax dollars and their their job is to attract people here. Well, our job as an organization through visit Cocoa Beach is, how do we get them to spend money while they’re here? And, oh, by the way, we have 650,000 residents here. What are we doing to encourage them to spend money in their own community? We’re all creatures of habit. And no matter how long you live somewhere, you go to the same places over and over, and oftentimes you you miss out on some of the great places. So we built an app. A few years ago, we worked with a company who helped us build an app. We spent, probably, at the time, the largest investment in anything we had ever done, to the tune of, you know, between 20 and $30,000 when we bought kiosk and other things and threw them in our community. And that has been a huge, huge win for us, because those who are in the tourism industry said, Hey, we want to be a part of this. We want to, we want to, you know, have our name and logo associated with it. We want to be a part of the top 10, top 10 things to do with your kids on a rainy day. We have those type lists that are associated with it. And that was able to help us do that. Um, we mentioned the transition event with the Military Affairs Council. That is a big deal for us. The thing that I’m most excited about right now is our Small Business Service Center. Our small business service center is something that is coming online now. We kind of had dabbled in it the last couple years. Exciting time for us. We’ve recently sold the building that we. Currently in, we’re doing a little at least back temporary, at least back while we find new space, because the space we were in didn’t have the capacity for us to build that. You know that entrepreneur hub where where small businesses could come in and get the necessary information, the teaching and training, the space to have meetings for them, to build and grow their business. One of the pillars is our is a, is a curriculum and education piece that we’re doing, we actually, you know, it’s going to go, it’s going to, you know, there’s going to be HR classes and social media marketing classes. There’s going to be tax classes. You know, it’s amazing to me, even you know, people who are in my seat, who I talk to all the time. There are some compliance things you have to do during the course of the year, and it’s not too fun when the state sends you a letter that says, Yeah, we’re dissolving your organization. Pay your $35 fee. Well, there’s all those things. I mean, we’re going to have a set, you know, a session where, you know, different labor attorneys will be here, and they’ll just do 15 minute sessions with these folks. And so the Small Business Service Center is a huge, huge deal for us. And will it generate revenue for us? Absolutely, because there’s organizations who want to be a part of it, and want to be, you know, have their name and listed with that. But what it’s going to do is help us drive entrepreneurship and help that small business, that one man, handy man, working out of his garage, grow into a much larger business and employ more people. And so we’re just excited about a ton of different things. Those are just a couple that we’re sort of scratching the surface on right now that have been very, very important for us.
Brandon Burton 26:40 Yeah. So it sounds like with a lot of these programming you have some sort of an event that goes along with it, that maybe you bring in speakers and training and things like that. As far as drawing the sponsors for these different areas of programming, are you, you know, looking through your membership, looking through businesses in the community, and thinking these people would be a great community partner in this, or right? Do you put it out to the chamber, and then those who are interested reach back out to you? How do you how do you approach that,
Jimmy Lane 27:10 all of those things, I think you know, again, the idea of membership is changing, and we’re not getting away from the membership model. So don’t hear me wrong on this, but there are certain organizations in our community and just outside of our community who are willing to invest in programming and certain things that we do. There’s a there’s a there’s an organization not too far from here, there, there, there, uh, their rule internally is we don’t join any chambers, but if they’re doing something that has to do with has to do with space, with the space industry, which we have a state of space event and some other stuff, we have Space Council that I didn’t mention, but I’m also very excited about, they want to invest heavily in it, and writing a check for $10,000 isn’t a big deal for them. And so to answer your question, we have a dedicated sales team. We have two sales folks who go out and they pursue Chamber members, obviously, to to invest in these events. And of course, we have, we have our means. Who would care about this? Who do we want to align ourselves with these folks tell a story when they’re aligned with the with the work that we’re doing. Who do we want? Who do we want to offer the opportunity to be a part of and to to stake their flag in the ground that their name is associated with this thing. But we have moved beyond just having Chamber members. We actually have different investment levels for sponsorships for chamber member versus a non chamber member to provide some additional value. It might be 10% it might be 50% more depending on the event, but we do offer them that. So, yeah, so we don’t limit it too much, but we don’t really take the the shotgun approach. Just, Hey, anybody who wants to do it, we’ll take me. If they call us, we’ll we’ll obviously take it. But we’re typically very strategic in calling on certain organizations for a certain reason and offering them the opportunity to align themselves with the work that we’re doing. So
Brandon Burton 29:00 I hope everybody just heard you say all that, I’ve seen too many chambers that will let a $400 membership get in the way of that $10,000 Do you know what you just said?
Jimmy Lane 29:14 Right, right. I will gladly not take your $300 membership to take your $10,000 check, and by the way, and this is for all of you listening, oftentimes, they’re the least headache you ever have because they care about that thing. They get what they need out of it, and they move on until the next time you do something with that. We all know the $250 member that spends hundreds of hours knocking on your door. Some money costs too much. Never forget that. It’s
Brandon Burton 29:43 the paradox. You know that the chambers, yeah, those who are often the least, you know, the lowest level investors, are the ones that have the most need from your chamber, so
Jimmy Lane 29:52 and they’re and they’re great people. And we have a rule here. We have a rule here we treat all of our our chamber investors for. Fair but not equal. Yeah, yep,
Brandon Burton 30:02 yep. That’s That’s good advice. Well, Jimmy, as we start to wrap things up here, you’ve given great tips, great insight, great just ideas of how you guys are approaching this topic. But for a chamber out there who’s really looking to elevate to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to help get them on that path?
Jimmy Lane 30:24 I think that you need to find some mentors in your industry. I have plenty of people that I turn to on a consistent basis, and I’m not talking about and this is regardless of size. You need to find those, those chambers, those associations, that really there’s other businesses that are aspirational in nature, again, regardless of size, that you can take the best from. And then you need to turn around and ask yourself, Why do we exist, not what we do, not how we do it, but why do we exist? You need to take yourself through that exercise, and once we determine that we went through really extensive work planning, and everyone on our staff has a work plan, and everyone has a plan that overlaps, like a Venn diagram, they all overlap with one another so that we can go realize the mission and vision of the organization. And if you can find those mentors to help you through the process, help you think through it and think differently, to understand and find your why, and then to plan the work accordingly. I think that gets you way, way, way down the field, and don’t do it just by yourself in your before walls you call your chamber building, bring key stakeholders, regardless if they’re a member of your chamber or not, bring key stakeholders into those conversations you it will be fascinating for you to under to to hear what people believe you are, what you should be in the story, and even more importantly, the emotion that is elicited when they think of your organization. So those would be my tips if I was, if I was coming to you and and consulting with you for that. Those are the those are the sort of the first couple steps we would take you through, and then you make adjustments along the way.
Brandon Burton 32:07 I love that great advice, so I like asking everyone I have on the show, and especially, I’d like you know from your bio you were given the charge to reimagine your organization as a chamber of the future. So how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Jimmy Lane 32:26 Yeah, I think chambers. I know this chamber, when it was originally formed, they worked on things like roads and bridges and how that impacted, you know, their community and the economic development opportunities that it afforded them. And along the way, they lose their they lost their sight so on what they were doing, and they became a networking group. There’s plenty of that out there, and we do that a good, you know, really good. But that can’t be your North Star. And as we go into reimagining and building the chamber of the future. I think if you are, if you are planning your flag on being the best networking group, and we’re going to bring businesses in to tell their story, and, you know, network and, you know, sell their product and service, I think you’re missing the boat. There’s a place for that, and you should still do that, but you have to determine and chambers that will be the ones who will last, and the ones that will be the most impact on a community. Their communities are are begging for them to come and lead strategic projects, strategic initiatives in their community that nobody else can, that other people are scared of, that they’re just not sure where to go. You’ve got good and talented people, regardless of your size, who are affiliated with your organization. Lean on them, go and do those things. And again, if you’re focusing on mission, driven investment, all that stuff works out over time. We had a guy recently, I won’t share his name, but he rose to check for $25,000 to go fund an initiative we were doing. And he doesn’t even live in this state, wow. But he cares deeply about what we’re doing. He lived here for a long time, but he doesn’t live here. Doesn’t interact as much, but, but, but, but did that. And so I see that’s where chambers are going. You have to get out of these, these, these boundaries. You know, you have to be an organization that attracts we joke Tallahassee is five and a half, six hours away from us, the capital of our state. Are we doing something that may attract a small business person there to invest in something we’re doing? And I think that’s where I see the organization going, where, where you become truly regional and the whole idea of, well, I’m in my county, I’m in my city, this is where it ends. Goes away,
Brandon Burton 34:45 right? Yeah, I love that. And what really stood out to me is you had mentioned, and this is my words, kind of summarizing it, but recognizing that change that other people, other organizations, are scared of. Yeah. And maybe nobody else can, can take on these things, but a chamber can, and recognizing that and leaning into it is so important, that’s
Jimmy Lane 35:09 true. And I, and I’ve told our staff and the leadership of our board, I want us to get to a place where somebody has an idea, they see a need in the community, and they go, we’re not sure how to do it. It’s a little scary, but let’s call the chamber, because if anybody can do it, they can do it. Yeah, I love that. Well,
Brandon Burton 35:26 Jimmy, before I let you go, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for people who want to reach out and connect with you and and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the cocoa regional beach. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?
Jimmy Lane 35:40 Yeah, I would, I would welcome that you can, you can find all of our contact information on CocoaBeachChamber.com. You can also download visit Cocoa Beach on the for your Apple iPhone or your Android. I would highly suggest you take a look at that as well. And then you can reach me via email. jlane@cocoabeachchamber.com, and anything you heard today that you want resources for or even to have a short conversation, happy to do it. We do these, these one on one sessions through the US Chamber, through their Institute program, and that’s one of the most enjoyable things for me, and I’ll tell you, oftentimes we’re going through through neat stuff, and I’m talking to myself during it as well. So they they work for people, and I would encourage you to reach out. That’s great.
Brandon Burton 36:32 We’ll get all of that contact information or show notes for this episode, so we’ll make it easy for people to find you and connect with you, but I really appreciate you spending time with us today here on the podcast, sharing your experience, your insights, great tips and vision of the future of chambers. I think there’s been a ton of value for those who listen and participate in this episode. So thank you for spending time with us today, Jimmy.
Jimmy Lane 36:58 I appreciate it. Hopefully you said something that made an impact.
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Brandon Burton 0:00 This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Our guest for this episode is Barry Phillips. Barry owned his first software company at age 21 and learned to wear many hats, from head of sales to marketing to it. Plus he’s been a CEO a few times as well. The one constant in his career is that he loves to run teams and organizations, and was actually good at it. Ultimately, his real passion is helping others grow. He’s still doing that today, but he’s changed his focus from large companies like HP Ernst and Young and visa to small and mid sized businesses, and he does this exclusively by working with chambers of commerce across the country, Barry’s been able to help businesses make real rubber hits the road changes that make a positive difference in the organization and the lives of its leaders. Barry injects fun into his speaking, training and consulting. He loves instilling new ideas, and is all about changing process and behaviors to make real positive impact. But Barry, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I wanted to give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Barry Phillips 2:17 Okay. Well, thank you. I’m glad to be here Brandon. I like that the chamber, Chamber of champions. That’s quite the alliteration you got going. There something interesting about me, I think you mean in the personal sense. I guess stuff that’s unique is I own 17 dutch ovens. Do you even know what a Dutch oven is? I
Brandon Burton 2:39 do? Yes, I grew up in scouting and whatnot. So, oh yeah,
Barry Phillips 2:45 those cast iron pots you you picture the old wagon master with his thing hanging over a fire, and that’s kind of what it was in the 1800s still with look kind of the same with the cooking has advanced quite a bit, and I’ve done competition cooking with those things as well. So I do all sorts of cooking, but kind of getting known for the Dutch oven stuff, I guess, just because it’s a little bit more unique than other things. But that’s something unique about me anyway.
Brandon Burton 3:14 How does one amass a collection of 17 dutch ovens?
Barry Phillips 3:18 Well, you purchased them one of the time.
Brandon Burton 3:21 Is it on accident, or is it purpose?
Barry Phillips 3:24 My first one is I had a brother in law come up in California and bought a whole bunch of them to take back to to people in California. And he got there and counted them and realized that he had two more than he actually paid for. He said, would you take these back to the store for me? And I said, well, so I just called up the store and said, how much you want for these things? I don’t want things? I didn’t want to drive the store was about an hour away, and I didn’t want to do that, so I I just paid for them, and so, well, I’ve got a little might look like cooking with them, and just kind of went from there.
Brandon Burton 3:53 The rest is history, as they say, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about your company. I know I shared some of that in your bio, but tell us what it is that you do your interest in chambers and the work that you do with them and and kind of help set the stage for a conversation today. Well,
Barry Phillips 4:10 my background is I’m a serial entrepreneur, and I have been doing that for years, running my own businesses a lot, and I’ve worked inside billion dollar corporations and things as well, but I’ve spent a lot of time in training and consulting. And as you said, your bio big companies like Hewlett Packard or Ernst and younger bees are 10 worth those kinds of companies, and had some good success. There really good success. But still, the organizations are so large it’s really hard to affect real change. And so kind of in the post covid world, obviously, there weren’t a lot of folks out there wanting to do in person training and going into corporations to help do things that way. People were pretty timid there for a while, and so I thought to myself, you know, I’ve always worked with small businesses as well. I like them the best, because you can affect real change and much faster. Yeah. And so I thought, well, where you go for that? Well, Chambers of Commerce seemed like a logical place. And so I started playing with some chambers and speaking and doing some training inside their organizations, and I found some interesting commonalities, and that is that most chambers didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t, didn’t take a lot of research to figure that one out. It was kind of blatant there, but I found that the members really needed the training just as much as a big corporation of probably more people that own small to mid sized businesses. There’s a lot of stuff they need to do that they don’t normally know how to do when you start a business because you love what it is you do. If it’s a restaurant, you are a good cook, and so you thought you’d start a restaurant up, or you want a clothing boutique, you know, you liked fashion, or whatever. And all of a sudden, you find out, when you get into business, there’s these annoying things called people that you have to deal with all the time. And it’s a people business. I don’t care what your business is. I don’t care if you’re a plumber, you are in, still in a people business, because you have to go out and deal with customers. And customers are always human beings. No matter how much AI wants to affect our lives, you still will get money paid to you by another person. That’s how life works. And so my background is really in those areas of helping not I mean, I have done a lot of marketing. My first job was in an advertising agency as a graphic artist, and I’ve worked in and doing marketing and sales and all those things. I was top salesman worldwide. In fact, the people can’t see this, but I’m going to show you Brandon. You see the picture of me standing by that Corvette? I do. They won that Corvette for being top salesman in the world. And so got some background and those kinds of things as well. But that’s, again, a people skill, right? And so ultimately, started sharing that with other companies, and doing my own training and consulting, and have done that for a number of years as well, and just really trying to help people out and anything from that. I mean, they need to know about finance. They need to know about all sorts of things, but usually they have a primary skill set in one area and know a little bit about the other things, but they don’t know everything they need to know to really make their business go. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 7:26 I always think of the example of a dentist who goes to dental school. They spend a lot of time, lots of education, learning how to drill teeth and put in fillings and, you know, do work in your mouth, right? But how much do they get taught about how to hire and how to work with an office staff, and how to file taxes and how to do these different aspects that are important and necessary with running a business
Barry Phillips 7:50 well. And, you know, funny, because I’ve helped some desks, I’ve done, done some training with them, and I remember when Dennis coming to me and saying, Ah, you know, I’ve got all these assistants and all these. There’s all these women in this office, and I just don’t really know how to keep them on track, keep them doing the right things. And as I delve into it, the people in the office are saying, you know, he’s a good dentist, but he doesn’t really know how to work with people and how to motivate people, and and, and that’s the thing, when you are top level in a business, doesn’t matter what it is. You affect way more than you think you do. You just do. And it’s different for people, because they think, Well, you know, things are going well. Sometimes they think it’s all them, and that’s probably not completely true, but if it’s going bad, it’s definitely a big part of you, because most companies don’t die from competitors beating them. Most companies implode one way or the other. They make wrong choices, they don’t stay up with their markets. But all these things are are leadership issues. They’re not staying on top of the things they need to to make the business work. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 8:59 that makes a lot of sense, and that is actually a perfect segue to introduce what our topic for our conversation is today, which is, we’ll be focusing our conversation around what members really want and actually probably what they need, but we’ll, we’ll dive in much deeper into this conversation as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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All right, Barry, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about what it is that members really want. So as a chamber of commerce listening, they’ve got, you know, likely, hundreds, maybe over 1000 members. Possibly these are all different businesses. But what are some of these commonalities? What are these things that they really want and that they need, especially as it comes to their membership, and how the chamber can help affect change with these members?
Barry Phillips 11:38 Yeah, and that’s a pretty broad subject for you, for what they want, what they really, really want. I tried to get you to sing that with me, but yeah, no, go. Yeah, they wouldn’t like my singing either. But there are some things they that they know they want, and there’s a lot of things that they need and should want, and that’s where a chamber is really important because they’ve got a one prove the relevancy a chamber has to be something more than what people think of a chamber when they aren’t in one, right? They think a chamber is there to give me a little bit of networking opportunity, and maybe they do a ribbon cutting ceremony for me. And they kind of don’t know all the things that a chamber can do for them, but what the chamber can do for them is the things that they really want and they really need, one of which is training. I’ve obviously been in that world for years and and good training is expensive. I mean, guys like me, not, you know, I’m not saying I’m anything special that way, but people like me that go out and do this, they’re five to 15 to $20,000 a day, small companies aren’t going to touch that. They just can’t. There’s no way they can afford it. And that’s where I kind of came in with my what I’m doing with chambers, was trying to find a way to make that completely affordable for chambers to bring to their members and so but the things that they really want first and foremost, if they’re astute and they’re good leaders, trying to do the right things, is they understand their stuff they don’t know. And they need to understand things about leading people managing teams. How do you get these people to perform? How do you get them to stay How do you get them to be happy and productive? All those things, those are skills that can be learned. Not everybody’s a natural born leader that just walks in and and when they smile, the little twinkle happens on their tooth, and everybody loves them. That doesn’t typically happen. We learn this stuff, right? We get good at it because we’ve practiced it.
Brandon Burton 13:37 That’s so key, because so many people, I think, will try to wing it. You know, they where they it really, what it falls back to is what they’ve seen, right? Yeah, so the examples that they’ve seen in their life, maybe they worked for an employer that did something, you know, this way. So they see that as that’s the way things get done, and very well, and probably oftentimes, is that example that they are falling back on, is probably not the best example. And if you look at, you know, how well were they liked, how well did you know, what was their retention of their staff like? You know, all these different things, but that’s what you have to fall back on. Is what you’ve seen, you know, so as an example for you, and the
Barry Phillips 14:17 first step for them is to realize, well, I wrote a book on leadership. In fact, in the opening sentence is, it’s your fault, and then the second sentence is, what? What is your fault? Whatever it was that caused you to finally read a leadership book. But people have more influence and impact on their companies. Think about that. If you’re loyal to a company, you just love it there. Why is that? Is it because you like the logo, you’re just completely in love with the product, whatever it is, the answer is, you like the people you’ll work with and the people you work for. That’s what makes you love a company, because in the larger organizations, you can find people who love working there and people who hate working there. And the difference is they’re the people around them. And. Leaders set the tone of all that stuff, and so they just got to learn those skills of how to if communicate effectively. They’ve got to learn the basics of sales and marketing. There’s just so many things that they need to do to be able to do this job. And they do have to understand a bit about business. You have to set your business up correctly so that you are in the right tax you know, for you know, most people start off with it. They’re just a sole proprietor, or something simple like that. But as that grows, you know, as one of my companies grew, my accountant said you don’t change. You need to be a Sub S Corporation. You shouldn’t be that anymore. It’s killing you in taxes on yourself, and first year I flipped, I made $6,000 more just on the tax savings from the previous year. You just have to know those things. You don’t have to be an expert at it, but you have to know enough that you can read a P and L and a balance sheet. If you don’t know what those are, you better learn what those are. This is the stuff will make your business work or die, because if you don’t, if you’re just running it completely off a spreadsheet and just kind of winging it, that’s going to come back to bite you, yeah, especially if your company is successful.
Brandon Burton 16:09 Well, in that example, there’s, there’s a time where you need to bring in an expert, you know, your accountant, for example. But before you do that, you need to be able to look at your PNL and what your balance sheet looks like, and be able to see, Okay, that looks like, maybe something’s off here. Or I need to put more attention here. And then, then you can take it to the expert and say, help me out here, because you’ve been able to notice something. If you just, you know, outsource it all to the accountant. Very rarely are they going to come to you and say, you know, I’m noticing some things here. There’s, you’re just one in their list, and if you’re not paying attention for yourself, things will continue to get missed well,
Barry Phillips 16:46 and you hate to bring this up, but if, if a company ever gets embezzled, it’s just by the accountants, because he’s controlling all the money. And some business owner just said, I don’t want to know about that stuff. It stresses me. You handle it. You can’t just do that. You have to have your fingers in it enough to know what’s going on and to understand it. You never want to completely trust those critical things of your business, not that you’re the best one at doing them or the fastest of doing them, but you can do them, you can understand what’s going on. So that means financial is one of those places you start very first structure your company, right? And then understand finances. You need to understand what it really takes to grow your business. It’s amazing how many people don’t really know what their what their product, whatever it is costs. What is the real cost of that? You know, people out there at a restaurant selling food, and if they were to add up all their costs, they’re selling this plate for less than that, it actually cost them to make what are they doing? Isn’t that crazy? What? But you see it on, you know, reality TV shows or whatever. But it happens in real life all the time. If you don’t have a hold of your numbers, you’re nuts. I mean, you have to know that stuff.
Brandon Burton 17:56 Yeah. So you’ve touched on a few things here, from taxes and finances, to HR to I’ll even say the culture within the company, within the business. What are some of these other things that come top of mind to you? Of things you’ve come across people, let
Barry Phillips 18:12 me touch real quickly on the what one you just said? You just said, culture? Yeah, a good friend of mine started a business. He started several businesses, but when he started his last one, in particular, he was just all about culture. That’s all he cared about, was culture. Culture. Culture said, Dude, it’s just you and and your partner that you’re starting this with. What do you what do you mean? Culture? He said, Well, you have to understand culture is how we treat each other, and we have to figure that out, and we have to do it right. And now his company happens to be the largest company in the HR world, or mid to small sized businesses, and they’re in the top 10 in the world for having the best culture people want to be there. He can even pay them a little bit less if he wants to, because they love being there so much. He could probably get away with that. But part of his culture is treating his people well. He does things like, after 40 hours of work, you’re out of here, you do not take work home with you. You’ll be in trouble if you do. We insist that you don’t be here more than 40 hours a week. He gives them paid vacation. In fact, he pays for their vacation. Bring me back receipts, and I’ll pay $2,500 for airline tickets and hotel rooms and whatever He wants His people to have good lives. It’s a culture that’s phenomenal. So that’s one of the things. When you build the right culture, it attracts good people. The people want to stay, and all those things start to happen. So they need to understand that human side, probably more than anything.
Brandon Burton 19:44 Yeah, that’s a good example, a real good case study right there, as far as culture goes,
Barry Phillips 19:50 Yeah, I mean, now that he has 1000s of employees, it’s pretty tough to turn that wheel when you got 1000s of people to do it differently. Yeah, there are ways to do that. I. And then they need to understand what really matters to their people. I ask this to people all the time, what is more important to you, shareholders, employees or customers? Who do you focus on? And I get all three of those answers in a room whenever I ask it. So Brandon, what’s the answer?
Brandon Burton 20:20 Well, I think your employees need to be up there at the top, otherwise you can’t serve your shareholders or your customers, because you won’t have the employees to make things happen.
Barry Phillips 20:30 See, you should put a ghost star on your forehead. You got that exactly right, right? It is people, you see companies that are customer focused, customer focused, customer focused, and people hate working there. I mean, Amazon will now hire you off their website without even interviewing you if they’re so desperate for employees. And it’s part of the culture. Yes, they try to treat customers well, but if you don’t treat the people well, because guess what happens when you treat people well? They like their jobs. They’re happy with their jobs. That comes through to customers. Customers want to be associated with a business like that, they actually get more money coming in and more sales because of that, which then makes the shareholder happy. It’s the only way it works to get all three of them happy is to focus on your people. They actually matter most. Yeah, so you are dead on on that one awesome
Brandon Burton 21:16 I’ve pat myself on the back. Yeah, you should. So what are some of these other areas that stand out to you about what, what Chamber members really want, or what they need that they maybe they don’t know they want it because but they need it to be able to understand, to be able to operate their business. Well,
Barry Phillips 21:35 one of the things is, we got to talk about technology a little bit. They have to understand what’s going on in their online footprint. And you’ll hear some people saying, let’s try. We’ll have an online footprint. Oh yes, you do. If you don’t have one, it’s happening to you. There is conversation somewhere about you going online, and if you’re not controlling that, if you’re not involved in that, then you’re in trouble. Now that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert at social media and all that stuff and and necessarily be doing all those things. You can have somebody help you with that, set that stuff up, give you a great website, all those things. But you have to know what matters for your business. You have to know where the focus is. You know, I think it was John Paul Getty once said that half of all marketing is waste. Yeah, half of our marketing and advertising is wasted. We just don’t know which half. Well, that’s no longer true, because you can actually do testing online if you know what you’re doing and see, oh, that didn’t work. Oh, that does work. And all of a sudden you start to know which half is a waste, and you start focusing your marketing in the right places. If you’re in a tourist business, there are certain websites and things that matter to you. If you’re not in that business, then maybe you don’t want your TripAdvisor probably does not matter to you if you’re a clothing store, but it might if you’re selling things in a tourist town, it might still matter to you, but you have to know those kinds of things. And while somebody else may manage that, when people start to comment about you online, you’re the one that needs to answer. You need to look every single day whether you like it or not, and have people show you how to do it. You need to go and talk about and respond back to people’s positive comments and their negative comments and tell them what you’re doing to fix it and invite them back. And invite them back so they can you can show them the changes you’ve made. All that kind of stuff matters. You need to get your your things set up correctly with Google, so that you are controlling your brand and your name and that you’re on the map correctly, and all those things you can do. But you have to know how and it matters, no matter what your business is, there’s nobody, hardly anymore that go, that goes and does business without checking out a company first online. Yes, it’ll be partly your website, but it’ll be your social media footprint in whatever places that matter. Probably Google searches are big deals no matter who you are, yeah, like, a like Google or not, they still kind of own the world of people searching and looking for reviews and things like that.
Brandon Burton 24:07 Yeah, and I’ve mentioned it before on the podcast, but my background has been in advertising and media and chamber publishing and whatnot. And Chamber members all the time will talk to me about the ad that they’re placing with the chamber, and they’ll want to get into the details of you know, well, what bullet points should I put in the ad? What? What about the phone number? Should I have a unique phone number? And, like, really trying to overthink things, and to your point, nobody does business with anybody without checking them out online first. So you want to put that, that carrot out there that really draws the attention, take them to your website, have a unique call to action, and then there’s a process to be able to educate them about the rest of the things you do. But if you try to bombard with too much on the front end, they’re going to ignore you, and they’re going to go to your website anyways. If there’s any interest to learn more, you know,
Barry Phillips 24:59 and. Again, no matter what your business is, you need to learn what your pitch is. What do people think of you? What is, what is the image you have to others? I don’t care how much you know about what you do and how cool you think that is. Does that matter? Even with what I am now doing for chambers, it used to take me 40 minutes in a zoom call to explain it to you. I went to a couple live events, and that’s, in fact, where you and I met, at one of those, and I, by the end of that, I could do my entire pitch in about a minute and a half. Yeah, I had learned what people cared about, or what they didn’t, not what I cared about, but what they cared about, because that’s one of the key things, is you better be selling what people want, not what you have?
Brandon Burton 25:40 Yeah, they talk about they call it the elevator pitch, right? You got 60 seconds in front of somebody, and if you can’t explain what you do, then do you really know what you do? Do you know?
Barry Phillips 25:50 Because the point is, people are going to look at you, and if they don’t get you, they’re not going to give you 510, minutes to figure out what you are. They’re going to give you a few seconds. And if you can’t hone down what you are, even if you’re a restaurant or something like that, that ought to be obvious. Well, we sell food, yeah. But why should I come into yours versus the other five on the same block? Right? They need to get you very, very quickly. And you need to hone that down any business, even if, again, if you’re a pipe fitter, I don’t care what it is, they need to understand why you and what it is you do very, very quickly. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 26:24 great stuff. As we begin to wrap things up here, I like asking everyone I have on the show that for chambers listening who are trying to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with that chamber to help them accomplish that goal?
Barry Phillips 26:45 Well, for chambers, it’s interesting because some chambers are pretty aggressive about forward thinking, and some are just trying to hang on and trying to rebuild back from the pandemic and all those kinds of things. But they need to understand they’ve got to have unique offerings that give them something that others don’t have, that the chamber can provide, that they can’t get any other way. Networking is certainly that you need to have good networking opportunities for people to get to know people. But you know, if they’re still in the same room week after week or month after month, looking at the same people, that’s not as stimulated as needs to be. So you need to be growing and bringing new people in. And I know it sounds self serving, but you need a training component with what I’m doing for chambers, for example, you they can’t get any new way through the chamber. They couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t come close to affording it any other way. And so you need to have things like that that are things that chambers need to help with. Maybe you can bring on a a consultant once in a while, really good people that will help people understand how to do the financial parts of their business. They need to have HR experts. You need to be bringing them a stream of people that can give them what they need, so that they can have a reason to keep coming back to you. I mean, that’s, that’s the bottom line. Are you still relevant to me? Now I don’t need you to do a ribbon cutting ceremony anymore. What can you do for me now? Why should I come back this year? You gotta stay relevant. You gotta get them tangible stuff that matters.
Brandon Burton 28:15 And the good news for a chamber and staying relevant is there’s always new things. With how fast the economy moves these days, with how fast technology moves, there’s always a need to educate and to get more valuable information from your members who don’t have the time to do the research themselves and to put it all out there. But maybe it’s a lunch and learn kind of a format. You come for lunch. They’re going to eat lunch anyways. And can they take something away as they do that? Maybe it’s a podcast episode where you bring on an expert and they’re sharing these tips. Maybe it’s bringing in somebody like Barry who has his platform to be able to train and educate and bring your members to the next level. And
Barry Phillips 28:56 I will tell you, you’ve all been to one of those Lunch and Learns where you thought you’re going to get 45 minutes of education. What you got was a 45 minute sales pitch. Right? Make sure you’re not bringing somebody in that just wants to sell you on their insurance or on whatever you need. To get speakers that come and bring real content that people need without doing a pushy sales pitch on them. That’s what they need.
Brandon Burton 29:18 Yeah, because otherwise they won’t come back to the next lunch and learn, and they’ll think the chambers just, they just sell to me all the time, right? Yeah. So Well, Barry, I like asking everyone, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, I know you’re you’ve dove into the the chamber world, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Barry Phillips 29:43 Well, chambers do have a lot of purposes, some of which from the past still are relevant to the future. Right? Good. Chambers are even involved in what is best for small businesses from the Washington political front, and they’re making affiliations with the. Know the local town councils and mayors all the way up to their state senates and those kinds of things where they can have that impact. And that’s important. They’ve got to keep doing that. But they do need to be able to provide things online. They need to give people a reason to come back and think about the chamber. You’re an association. Most of them aren’t associated directly with with the local government. Some are, but why? Why are they doing that? What is it you’re bringing to them? Education is a big, big piece of that, but so is giving them the ability to meet other people, to have horizons open to them. You need to be going as a chamber to events where you can see what the next thing is, and you start bringing new things on board, and always bringing new ideas and new products and things to them that you know people will. Some people think, Oh, I can’t raise my rates on my people. Well, you can’t. If you don’t show value, if you show enough value you can and it will make a big difference. You just got to be willing to go out there and say, here’s where, what we give you that you can’t get any place else, to be able to list off the education, the the help with HR, the help with whatever it is that you think is relevant for your for your people, and how to do that, and you’ve got to make sure that you can again, for you, you gotta have a sales pitch that’s very quick. Here’s what the chamber can do for you. Here’s the unique things we offer. You can’t get any place else, and you get this all for this amount of money. That’s a steal. That’s
Brandon Burton 31:32 right. And I love that. Taking it back to the sales pitch of the chamber, everybody’s in a sales good.
Unknown Speaker 31:39 I mean, you just don’t having that line
Brandon Burton 31:40 of this is what we provide that you can’t get anywhere else. That is so key. So I love it. Barry, I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about the services you offer, or just more about what we discussed today in this podcast episode. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to connect with you?
Barry Phillips 32:04 Well, there’s a couple of things. I’ve created a special website just for the heads of chambers, and it’s called chamber offer.com pretty easy to remember. You go there and there’s like eight little videos, then they’re all partly me on there. Sorry about that, but you’ll, you’ll be able to go through and I’ll walk you through all the things that that I offer with my online what I offer as a way for chambers to bring an online resource that’s live, that’s engaging and has a permanent library of stuff to it as well, bringing great content of education to your people. And it’s such a way that chambers can actually make money off of it. And it’s something that your members just really, really need. And so if you go to my regular website, BarryKPhillips.com you’ll get a flavor of my background there that that particular websites probably more suited for the big companies that I’ve worked with over the years, but you’ll see who I am there. Chamberoffer.com will give you exactly what you need, but contact me directly. Just go to Barry at Barry K Phillips com and reach out. I’d love to talk with you. Um, the phone number is 801-358-5525.
Brandon Burton 33:16 very good, and we will get all that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for everyone to click on chamber offer.com and and see exactly what it is that you offer in your your stance with what you can do to help chambers. But Barry, this has been a great conversation. Hopefully it’s got the wheels turning with those chambers that are listening and and thinking of ways to really stay relevant and to put their value out there within their business community and stay top of mind for those businesses in their community. So thank you for sharing all this with us today, and it’s been great to have you on the show.
Barry Phillips 33:47 Thanks for having me. Brandon, I really appreciate it.
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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.
Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.
Our guest for this episode is Sean Evans. Sean is the President and CEO of the Meridian Chamber in Idaho. He has 29 years of experience in organizational management, marketing, media and nonprofit management. During his career in the media industry, he served as a publisher for newspapers in Oklahoma and Arkansas, before moving to Idaho to be publisher and vice president of the Idaho business review from 2009 to 2014 and also spent time with the Idaho press and meridian press. Sean served as president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Idaho from 2016 to 2020 he joined the meridian chamber in January of 2020 and led the organization during the fastest growing three years in its history. Sean understands strong partnerships and how to support our their business community, which is a priority for the chamber. He also is a proven leader who’s motivated and driven to lead their chamber to the next level. Sean was recognized in 2023 as a CEO of influence by the Idaho Business Review. His commitment to the community outside of his day to day job is shown in his board service with the Junior Achievement of Idaho Girl Scouts of silver stage board development committee, usglcs, Idaho Advisory Committee, and Sean currently serves as the board chair for the Idaho chamber Alliance. Sean and his wife Amanda, live in Meridian and have two daughters that have graduated from Mountain View High School and both currently attend Boise State University. But Sean, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Sean Evans 2:58 Brandon, thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast today. Something interesting about myself we you shared in my bio the my experience in the newspaper career and transition to nonprofit management. The unique thing about where I am today is when I look back over my previous career, I’ve actually served on five different chamber boards throughout my career. So it’s, it’s, you know, I’m on the other side of that board table from my board members and executive committee, but five different chambers in my career as where I’ve served, uh, so I’ve seen it from both sides. That definitely
Brandon Burton 3:47 gives you a kind of a unique perspective. I’m curious, do you look back at your time as a board member and think, Oh, I wish I approached it differently, or do you take your position now and think I understand where they’re coming from, and probably a little bit of a mix of both.
Sean Evans 4:01 Well, I can tell you, I look back and I say I could have been a much better board member.
Brandon Burton 4:09 That makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the meridian chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber, scope of work, budget, staff, that sort of stuff, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today, as it’ll be very relevant to our topic.
Sean Evans 4:28 So Meridian chamber is located here. Meridian Idaho is located right next door to Boise, the capital, here in Idaho, and second largest city meridians, about 150,000 population. Our chamber has been around since 1956 meridian, though, for the longest time, was just seen as a, you know, a pit stop on your way from Boise to other parts. And I. Idaho and meridian has just grown when I moved to Idaho in 2009 Meridian was 75,000 people, so it has almost doubled in size in the time that I’ve been here, and just continues to grow for the longest time. Meridian was just seen as a bedroom community for Boise and Nampa, the city a little bit further to the west. At the time, Nampa was actually larger than meridian, but you lived in Meridian. It’s where you got your suburb house and things. Your kids went to school in Meridian, but you commuted into Boise, or you commuted into Nampa for work. Well, that’s changed over the last 10 years. In 10 years, Meridian has become not only a destination for retail with all the different types of shops that have opened here, we just recently opened a shield sporting goods store, the first in Idaho. We’ve also seen our office complexes just grow because the businesses and the corporate communities started saying, Well, wait a minute, all of our people live in Meridian. Why don’t we just locate in Meridian and drop the commute for everyone? So the meridian chamber has been a part of a community that’s been rapidly growing for about a decade. Covid definitely impacted everyone a little bit when I joined the chamber in January of 2020 covid hit in March my first year was nothing what I thought it was going to be when I actually, you know, became a staff member for a Chamber of Commerce. We had to lay off half our staff and just basically go into, you know, how do we survive type mode? The here in Idaho, things opened up pretty quickly, and we got back to to normal business pretty rapidly. When, when I joined the chamber, we were just under 500 members. Today, we’re 923 members total in the the meridian chamber. So you know, a lot of that is, you know, the the approach that we took during covid of really trying to support, promote and advocate for our members. We also, as I mentioned earlier, we’re in a community that’s growing rapidly. I mean, I hate to brag like this, because I’ve had conversations with others, but we’re averaging 18 new members a month. Wow, that’s our average for the last three years.
Brandon Burton 7:36 So awesome.
Sean Evans 7:38 You know, we’re having the drops. We’re having members not renew. Of course, we have the people that come on that just want the ribbon cutting and the the exposure of opening their business, but growing our chamber and really trying to help that business community has been our our board’s mission, my mission, and really trying to improve the support and advocacy that we do for the the membership. That’s
Brandon Burton 8:07 awesome. So what’s your staff size look like now?
Sean Evans 8:11 We are only a staff of four, okay, four full time employees here at the meridian chamber. So, you know, the we get a lot done with the the small staff that we have, we are growing. We’ve got plans fourth quarter to add another staff member specifically in the membership area. But, yeah, we’re, we’re small, small, but mighty team.
Brandon Burton 8:40 Yeah, running lean and mean. I like it. It’s very good. Well, that definitely helps kind of set the stage as to what the context is for the meridian chamber as we get into our topic for our conversation today, which will be focusing most of our conversation around how a chamber can go about marketing on a shoestring budget. And I’m sure there’s some good stories along with that, as we dive into this topic. As soon as I get back from this quick break.
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All right, Sean, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, our topic today is on Marketing on a Shoestring Budget, so you may be coming from an advantage, coming from a publisher background, and that definitely helps with marketing and seeing things that work and don’t work. But let’s share some of that knowledge with these Chamber Champions that are out here listening. What are, what are some of these things that you see from a marketing perspective with your chamber that are effective and helpful for others to hear. Yeah,
Sean Evans 11:27 Brandon, thank you. You’re absolutely right. I spent 21 years in the media world, print media, primarily publishing newspapers, magazines, print product. Towards the end of my career, we were shifting into digital media, internet advertising and things like that. So definitely, you know, have been a part of that, that mix of advertising, marketing and promotion, not only for you know, my my businesses that I ran, but was helping others to do that. I left the newspaper industry because there had been such a dramatic shift to online advertising, social media and things so chambers typically don’t have a tremendous marketing budget. You know, the ones that are well established, you know, they’re they’re going to be marketing their own activities and things like that. They don’t do much as far as marketing, you know, just the value of what the chamber brings to businesses and things. So one of the approaches that we have taken is with a small team that we have four members, we can’t get it all done. So we really engage our ambassadors. Most chambers, you’ve got an ambassador committee that acts as your hospitality arm of your your committee. We’ve really empowered our ambassadors to be, you know, basically an additional sales force for us out there in the community. We get most of our referrals from our ambassadors. They’re out working the community for their day job all the time. They are our champions. They are doing things we reward that we take care of our ambassadors very well and give them a lot of the the credit for what we’re bringing on board the so I would just encourage the chambers out there to find ways to get your ambassadors even more engaged and empower them to be that that additional sales force for you.
Brandon Burton 13:39 So let’s lean into that a little bit more and learn more about how to do that. You mentioned you reward the ambassadors. What are, what are some of the motivations, maybe training that goes into empowering these ambassadors and really helping to give them that charge, because most of these ambassadors are going to have jobs and careers of their own, and so how do you get them to balance the time and really give priority to or give time to prioritize advocating for the chamber and getting the chamber name out the community? Well, one
Sean Evans 14:11 of the easiest ways is feed them. I mean, you give them food, and you can get a lot of things out of them. We have a monthly Ambassador luncheon. Is something that we have been doing for quite a while. It’s a great time to bring together these, you know, people that are, for the most part, are all extroverts and really want to get out and network and have a good time. During that luncheon, we’re giving them new member packets. We’re giving them our renewal packets to take out they want to go out and engage other businesses. And this gives them a foot in the door for not only their business, but, you know, for them to make connections in the community. And that’s that’s really what one of the biggest rewards for an ambassador on our committee is you. To be on that front line of welcoming new businesses to the community, being one of the first through their door, and just being a part of that, that welcoming bandwagon for for new businesses in our community, and then also engagement the activities that we do with our ambassadors, we’re always, you know, giving them the mic at events so that they can be the ones that do some of the welcoming and things to give them more exposure, to help boost their company and their exposure. Social media posts on what ambassadors are doing, we encourage our ambassadors to take pictures when they’re engaging members and things like that. So people will see, you know, all the things that the Chamber’s doing on social media or events and activities in the community, and our ambassadors wear name badges. So you know, many people confuse them for, oh, you work for the chamber? No, I’m just an ambassador, but they have that kind of appearance of working for the chamber. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 16:08 I like that, yeah. And there’s some really creative ways to utilize ambassadors. And I like the name badge. I like that. It gives that representation of we’re here on behalf of the chamber. But also, like you said, engaging these ambassadors at events, they’re having their business plugged as well, and they get to be the first ones to welcome these new businesses in the community. So those are all great things. And who doesn’t like a good lunch, right? What are, what are some of these other ways that you found to be effective when it comes to marketing with the limited budget,
Sean Evans 16:40 yeah. So the one thing I will tell you is post covid. When we came back and started staffing back up, the first position that I hired coming out of covid was a new position for the meridian chamber, and it was our marketing and communications coordinators position, we felt like, you know, with events, maybe still on the fence, you know, people coming back to events and things, we had to do more to market and communicate to our members and to just the the general Business community. Our marketing communications coordinator has really leaned into utilizing social media heavily, not only just promoting our events, but communicating. You know new members? What new members are about? The we have a program online, similar to your podcast, ours is called Business buzz, to where we basically, every week, interview a new member on a social media program, broadcast it out across Facebook, LinkedIn, our YouTube channels. And that would that came out of covid, but it was such a great success that we we’ve kept it going, and once a week, we feature a one of our business members, and it’s such a huge success, we have a calendar booked out until February with businesses that are lined up to be on that program. So once again, and that goes out over social media. My previous career, I definitely saw the shift going towards social media and digital advertising. And the more that you can do in that realm, the better. Much of it is free that you can do when you’ve got to do a little bit of boosting or or spending the money, a little bit of money goes a long way on on social media platforms. Yes,
Brandon Burton 18:49 so with business buzz, you mentioned you do these interviews over the social platforms, is it? Does it live on YouTube at the end? Like, can people go back and see past episodes or past interviews. It
Sean Evans 19:01 lives on YouTube and our Facebook account, LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily keep the recordings there for everybody, but definitely on our YouTube channel and on Facebook, you can go back and look Facebook. I mean, I said we started this during covid. So there’s programs that were just, you know, me and another person on a camera today, though, we actually take our camera gear into that member’s business and sit down with them in their business, sometimes even walking around their business to feature some of their products or their services.
Brandon Burton 19:40 Yeah, I love that. I would love to see more chambers doing things like that, whether it’s a podcast or like a video, like you guys do these video interviews. But everybody likes a good story of an entrepreneur, success stories, how you got started, that sort of thing. And if you can highlight those successes and be able to share them and any. And if there’s an opportunity to to have them talk about the impact that the chambers had in their success even even better, it’s a win, win, win all around. So
Sean Evans 20:08 I love that. And then Brandon, you know, to to add to that. The other thing that I would just encourage chambers to do is, you know, if your marketing communications team let them, let them get creative with social media. We’ve got an amazing marketing communications coordinator. She’s young, she’s in tune with the things Instagram, all of the social media trends and things. She’ll go out and create reels for new members or for an event that we’ve got coming up. She just recently had a very successful reel hit over 700,000 views, and it was just a cute little reel that she did at one of our monthly networking events. And that just brings more and more exposure to your chamber and what your Chamber’s doing, and the engagement that your chamber has in the community.
Brandon Burton 21:06 That’s right, do you know about how often she’s posting different reels? A couple times a week? I would
Sean Evans 21:12 say she’s doing, you know, two or three a week. You know, she’s constantly trying to find that next viral reel that she’s gonna create. So,
Brandon Burton 21:22 so, and I asked that just, I know some people have kind of dabbled with reels, and they don’t see a lot of traction with it, but from what I understand, it takes the repetition, it takes, you know, getting several in there and that consistency, for the algorithm to really pick it up and get in front of people. So if you’ve tried it before, don’t just give up on it. Keep, keep doing it. Have a plan. So like, he’s how you said, doing reels for events and new members. And if you have a strategy to say, this is what we’re doing reels for, this is for how often, and put it out there on a regular basis, I think you have a higher chance of being able to see success like
Sean Evans 22:00 and you know, it’s that type of marketing, that type of branding that you’re doing that creates that in my former advertising world, we call Poma pop of mind awareness. So anytime a new business is coming to town, the word is out there that, oh, you’ve gotta join the chamber. You gotta join the meridian chamber. It’s, it’s the fun chamber. There’s lots of activities. They’re always doing things. They’re, you know, they’re growing. That is the type of brand that you want to build in your your area, your community, especially whenever you know, there’s a lot of different options for businesses to be involved in, whether it’s a another networking group, the bnis of the world, or things, you want that membership to know that you know you’re there to support, promote and advocate for them, but they need to be involved. They need to be coming to your events and activities, to be engaged, to get the most of their membership. That’s
Brandon Burton 23:01 right, and engagement is so key. Everybody engages in different ways. And for a lot of people, their engagement may be with social media, but it keeps them there long enough. It keeps them seeing the value. It keeps them involved, because that’s what they have, what their attention, what their schedule allows for them to do, engagement wise. So meet people where they are. Are there any other of these strategies that you guys have employed to really magnify what you guys are doing on that limited budget?
Sean Evans 23:34 You know, the only other thing I would say is we’ve really leaned into networking events, and we have two networking events a month, standing on our calendar and after hours and a First Friday. We see this as an opportunity for members and guests to come together. So, you know, we’re a membership organization, but we’re always trying to bring in new members. These networking events are an opportunity for that potential, that prospect, that that new business coming to town, to come and engage, learn about the chamber, see how engaged the rest of the membership is at these events. And it just makes them want to be a part of that. We we have a saying here at the meridian chamber. Is when you join the meridian chamber, you’re joining the meridian chamber family, and that’s how we try to treat all of our members. It’s getting a little harder with 900 plus, compared to, you know, 400 the big family. Yeah, big family. But it is something that those networking events have really helped us. Do we see, you know, 1015, new members, potential guests, coming to each one of our networking events. And then you have our ambassadors. Then you have our members that just you know, show everyone you know, how welcoming. And this chamber is and the support that we do for all of our businesses, and right there that’s another salesperson for us, and just helps bring more people into the fold. So, you know, what little you’ve got to do to you know, put on some of these networking events. Make them free, make them where you can bring in lots of people to see the engagement that your chamber has with each other. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 25:28 that’s great. Sean. As we start to wrap things up, I wanted to see about for a chamber listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level. A lot of that has to do with marketing. But what kind of tip or strategy might you offer to one of these other chambers that’s listening in that situation to try to help them accomplish that goal?
Sean Evans 25:51 Really invest in that marketing and communication role. I can’t tell you how important it is for to have someone in that position that’s planning out your social media programming, because, as you mentioned earlier, it’s about repetition. It’s about being consistent. It’s about being providing content for your members and your non members on there. I mean, social media is open to everyone. We don’t have a closed Facebook page or anything that we do this on, because we’re promoting those members through social media. We’re promoting us. So you know, everybody in our business and community is getting some value out of that, but really having a consistent program, plan, schedule of what you’re going to do is really how you’re going to be successful in that. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 26:46 I love that tip, and I think some chambers probably not as much anymore, but there was a sense a while back where it’s like, I don’t want to inundate people with seeing too much of us, right? But I think people are kind of getting over that and realizing the value of the repetition and being able to be in front of people, because you’re not going to get everybody with every social media post. So no
Sean Evans 27:07 and, and there’s so many different social media platforms today. I mean, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, you lean into Tiktok and some of the others. You’ve got different audiences on all of those. I mean, you know, Facebook audience is different than Instagram, even though it’s owned by the same company, that’s why they have two different products. Then your LinkedIn. You know, you definitely gotta, you know, know what to post on LinkedIn compared to Tiktok. So those are the things that to look at
Brandon Burton 27:38 absolutely well as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, I always like to ask, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Sean Evans 27:50 Oh, I think chambers have a bright future. We are an association membership organization, and the more we can do to demonstrate to the business community the value that we bring, whether it’s from the the initial ribbon cutting or the the ability to keep you engaged in what’s going on in the the community, I think chambers will be successful if they continue to just go by that mantra of support, promote and advocate for our business community. It’s different than some of the the networking groups out there that really try and, you know, focus in on specific leads and things like that. Chambers are truly helping all businesses in the community, whether the businesses know it or not, you just got to find ways to make sure that your members see the value of being a member. Absolutely.
Brandon Burton 28:49 I love that, and I like the distinction between other networking groups too, because I think a lot of a lot of people will look at those as competition and really seeing the distinct differences and leaning into here’s where the value that our chamber offers that none of these other networking groups provide, and you can be a member of those groups too. That’s great. I mean, get the leads, make those relationships. It’s that’s fantastic. But here’s what we’re doing to support business in the entire community. So I love that. But Sean, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn a little bit more about your guys’ strategy and how you’re doing things there in Meridian, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect? You
Sean Evans 29:35 know, visit our website, MeridianChamber.org, you’ll find a lot of information on there about our events, our activities, the committees that we have, the ways that we engage our members. You can find my email there under our staff directory as well, and just you know, see what our community has to offer. As I said from the beginning, I. Very fortunate that we’re living in a community that’s growing. I’ve been in markets in my previous career where the community wasn’t growing and and that’s a much bigger struggle than having a community that’s growing fast. So absolutely
Brandon Burton 30:13 well, we’ll we’ll link your website in our show notes for this episode as well. So make it easy for people to find and find your email and and see your mug shot on there as well, if they wanted. But this has been great. Sean, I appreciate you spending time with us today, here on chamber tap podcast and sharing some of these insights and approaches you guys are taking to market your chamber throughout your community and really make an impact, as you guys are seeing this high growth there too. So some of this is, uh, attributed to that, to getting yourselves out there and being, you know, on the forefront of the marketing as well. So great job. Well,
Sean Evans 30:50 thank you, Brandon for having me today. Appreciate
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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.
Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.
Our guest for this episode is Craig Turner. Craig is the visionary Founder and President of Momentum, the Business Growth Agency, Momentum for Chambers and Momentum AI. Momentum excels at driving ROI for companies through their innovative approach to chambers of commerce, memberships and sponsorships. Additionally, the agency offers top tier consulting services, Ambassador training and comprehensive member benefit programs for chambers a trailblazer in the field of AI. Craig is a sought after consultant providing cutting edge AI training and solutions to chambers and small businesses. His expertise in AI has made him a prominent speaker on the subject, captivating audiences with eye opening but practical educational insights before launching momentum, Craig spent eight years with the Buffalo Niagara partnership, the Regional Chamber of Commerce, where he led governmental affairs and business development. Currently, Craig chairs the Niagara USA Chamber of Commerce board of directors and also the chambers Advocacy Committee, embodying the ethos of I’m not just a president also I’m also a client. Momentum is an active member in chambers of commerce across western and central New York, Southern Ontario, Central Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. But Craig, I’m excited to have you on the podcast today. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to tell us something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,
Craig Turner 2:43 this is fantastic. Bryn, I really appreciate you having me on and the opportunity to chat about all the stuff that we do with the chambers, and especially you mentioned we’re going to talk about. AI, yeah, you had asked me to kind of think of something interesting to talk about, and I want to, let’s see if I can hold this up for the video. So this is a novel. I’m a novelist. I’ve written eight novels, and I got another one coming out soon that I think chamber professionals are gonna like. I’m holding up a novel called The campaign. And if you can see the cover, if you’re listening on audio, it’s CA, MP, and then AI is capitalized in the middle of the word campaign. And I wrote this book in 2020 and 2021 and I published it in early 2022 This was before open act. Open AI made chassis, PT, accessible to the world. So this is when AI was still kind of hidden behind the curtain. So the book is about mankind’s first foray into running an AI for political office, which, interestingly enough, a story came out earlier this year that someone in Colorado is trying to do that, because I’m so steeped in Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce is woven throughout the story. And in fact, the pinnacle event in the book is a Chamber of Commerce event, which I love to tell this story. What the interesting thing is that what I didn’t realize is that when I was writing this book, was that, you know, two, three years later, I would be steeped in AI and training and speaking and sitting on the chamber podcast talking about AI. So it’s kind of a full circle thing that I, that I, you know, personally, I appreciate myself.
Brandon Burton 4:19 Yeah, very meta, right? Writing about it now you’re in it, right? That’s that’s cool. Well, tell us a little bit more about momentum, just all the different facets of it, what you do, how you work with chambers, what you offer, just to kind of, you know, put it in a nutshell, so people who are hearing about momentum for the first time can have an idea of what you
Craig Turner 4:40 do, absolutely. So I’ll go back. I’ll go back to the mid 2000s actually, when I started working for the chamber. So I ran government affairs. That’s what I was hired to do. I was a lobbyist, and, you know, ran the committee. About halfway through my tenure at the Chamber was the great recession. So 2008 2009 2000 10 and I gave our board a lot of credit at the time, because they said, Look, people are going to hit harder Financial Times. They’re going to start coming back to us and saying, Why am I giving you $1,500 what am I? What am I getting for this money like they never have before? That was always the good community citizen before. That was your chamber member. So we put together teams, seven people. We met with 400 companies during the during the Great Recession, and the goal was to we had a six page survey. Now you weren’t supposed to give the six page survey. You were supposed to be conversational, but you were supposed to come back to the office and find three to five things to help that company with based on your conversation and the stuff we on Earth was unbelievable. We never would have had done some of the things we did. One of my favorite things, I talk about a warehouse on the east side of Buffalo. We said, You know what can we help you with? And he goes, You know what? He goes, there’s a bus stop right in front of my front door, and people gather around it. My clients complain that they can’t get in and out of the building. Can you do something about it? And we said, I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll try. So we called the right people, and next thing you know, they moved the bus stop 15 feet down the sidewalk. I’m like, have we How could we possibly have known that? But think about it, that guy’s a chamber member for life, because we were able to do that for him. And to this day, I still drive over there, and I’m like, Yeah, we did that. Look at that bus stop. Um, but that being said, we had an 88% retention, membership retention rate during the recession, when I went to the ACCE conference that blew everybody away. So eventually, when I left the chamber, I’m like, This is my business. I’m going to help, except I’m going to flip it my clients at momentum. What we do is we help them build a strategy for their chambers of commerce, and we manage it throughout the year, because we know that most companies do not have someone on staff doing this every day. So it works in primarily two ways. Take here in Buffalo Niagara Falls, where I am, a company a client might be involved with four or five chambers I manage. We manage all those relationships. We tell them what events to attend. We tell them where to put sponsorship dollars. It’s part of the, you know, the kind of the holistic view at their their chamber membership. It also works for market entry. The client can say, hey, we’re opening in a warehouse in Kansas City. Well, I know the people at the Kansas City Chamber, we can walk right in and start to do business on day one. Because, you know, I spend most of my time building relationships, like I’m doing today with chambers of commerce across the US and Canada. So I’m rolling this out on LinkedIn, and all of a sudden the chamber started to come and say, Hey, we really like what you’re saying about member value. Can you come consult with us? Now? What’s neat, I never saw that coming. I had to go back. I had to redesign the website. I had to change everything. But yes, now we have a full suite of services for chambers that include Ambassador training. Is probably the one we’re most well known for. We do you know, strategic planning, consulting and those kind of things too. And then the third part of it is enter AI, which we started to talk about earlier, about two years ago, when open AI made chatgpt available to the public. I said, I’m in. We’re gonna we’re gonna dive as deep as we can into this for ourselves, for our own company, so we can use it to grow our company. But what I said was, look, I know the my audiences, the chambers themselves, and typically, small and medium sized businesses do not have time to do that. So I’m going to learn everything I can. I’m going to curate the best stuff, and I’m going to share it with the community, which has turned into trainings and everything. Well, that turned into trainings, it turned into speaking, it turned into programming. I mean, that’s the big one that I didn’t again. I did not see this coming, and just a few months ago, we launched our AI platform for Chambers of Commerce. So now, if you look at like my business card, we’ve got momentum for business, momentum for chambers and momentum AI all represented on there, and they all tie together.
Brandon Burton 8:50 Yeah, fascinating. Well, I’m, I’m excited to get into the conversation today. I know AI is a hot topic. There’s Buzz, as he said, for the last couple of years, since ChatGPT rolled out the or I guess when open AI rolled out ChatGPT, it’s really kind of taken the world by storm and been a huge adoption rate for ChatGPT, but also AI in general, and I’m excited to dive in and really get into demystifying. Ai, as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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All right, Craig, we’re back. So as I mentioned before, the break today, we’re going to be diving in about how to demystify AI and I know you and I have been connected through LinkedIn and just knowing each other for some time now, and back and forth. So I see these things that you’re rolling out, these experiments that you’re doing with AI and and some cool things, like you did an experiment where you had aI talking to AI and just having a full on debate and really interesting things. Not that it’s necessarily the practical thing you know that you’re going to instill at your chamber, but it shows what some some of these capabilities are. But as you, as you’ve been, as you’ve jumped into AI, you know, with both feet, what are some of the things that stand out to you? And then as a chamber, to help a chamber wrap their head around how to apply AI and really demystify it
Craig Turner 11:59 absolutely, and I’m glad you’re using the word demystify, because that’s, as I’ve learned over the past two years, that is a big part of the process. There’s two ways to look at this. One is the training and the tools and teaching people how to prompt that stuff’s easy. I mean that that’s our bread and butter. We’re trying to spread it as far and wide as we can, and really, we give people a few a few prompts, they can accomplish an awful lot, but it’s that other piece of it. It’s the real world attitudes towards it. So I always say that when you’re teaching somebody AI, you’re teaching them the practical application, but you have to overcome fear, you have to overcome indecision, you have to overcome doubt, and you have to overcome bad press. And it happens, I will post things on LinkedIn, and I’ll get people to push back and say, was that AI or, you know, I don’t know that. I trust that if it’s AI. And the thing is, and I emphasize this all the time, AI is a tool, right? It needs the human input in order to work, I can take a nail and whack it with my hand as much as I possibly can. It’s not going to go into the piece of wood. But if I take a hammer and I pound it in, the nail is going to go into the piece of wood. And this is all AI is, are there bad actors out there? Yes, absolutely. There are, same as, you know, 25 years ago, when the internet started to get in everybody’s hands. Maybe that was longer ago, but, but when the you know, there were bad actors, and they’re still bad actors, does that affect us? Yes, you know, on some levels, it does. But is it a tool that I can use on a daily basis to really save time and money and resources? To be truthful, I say it all the time at momentum, we are now saving 25 to 30 hours a month. I mean, that’s huge that I get that time back. I took a process just earlier this week. I took a process that typically took me three hours. I had it down, I had my systems in place and everything, and it got me down to three hours. I used AI earlier this week, and I got it down to 30 minutes. Wow, I am. You see on LinkedIn how busy I am. For me to buy two and a half hours back into my calendar is absolutely unbelievable. It’s like gold. So, so this is where, you know, yes, I understand people think I start all my presentations with with a picture of the Terminator, and I say, before we get into anything, AI is not taking over the world, all right, AI is a tool that you can use. It’s like any machine that’s ever been created in the history of mankind. It needs a human to put good input into it to get good results. And working together, we’ll save time, save money, save energy, save frustration, and you know, for to take it now, as you, as you said to the chambers, I think it’s critically important for the chambers to know this, the audiences for the chambers are, you know, getting younger. Some millennials, the Gen z’s, are coming next. These are tech savvy people that are going to look to their chamber to say, you know. As I’m growing my business, how can I incorporate tech or I already am I expect you to also know. As much as I do, this is going to be critically important for for chambers to know. And most of, most of the the people that go through our training chambers or businesses otherwise are typically. They haven’t really done anything with AI at all, or they’re dabbling. That’s what most of it is. I’ve done it. I used it to write some tweets, or I used it to, well, I like to show them. And again, you pointed out my LinkedIn, and I share everything I’m thinking on LinkedIn. There’s it’s so much more powerful than just writing tweets, and we’re trying to encourage people to do that.
Brandon Burton 15:39 Yeah, I think one of the LinkedIn posts you’re talking about going on a hike, and you’re writing a book as you hike, because you’re giving these prompts and thoughts into your the I’m not sure exactly which tool you’re using, if it’s chat GPT or something else, but
Craig Turner 15:53 yeah, chat GPT voice is probably the most important tool I’ve ever acquired as A professional, I do a lot of road trips. I’m in the car all the time that, you know, I’m in Pittsburgh. My son goes to school in Pittsburgh. I belong to the chamber at the airport in Pittsburgh, and I spent a lot of time going back and forth. That’s a three and a half hour drive for me. It used to be listening to music and staring out the window. Now it is literally three and a half hours of continuing to do work, and it’s, you know, you get feedback on things. I say it all the time. My favorite prompt is, I have an idea for X, Y and Z, all right. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I have ideas coming all the time. I have an idea for X, Y and Z. What do you think? So? Chat, GPT, voice will take that and it will return me a thought on it, if I like, you know, some feedback on what I said. If I like it, I’ll say, Okay, make me a three month plan to roll that out, and it will lay out the strategy for me to roll the whole thing out. I might not use it tomorrow. I might not use it till next year, but like any brainstorming, it’s out of my head. It’s on paper. Well, on paper in quotes, but and I have a plan to go forward on how to do it. So this is what I spend my time in the car or on walks, and it’s just been, it’s just such an incredible tool. And that time is not I’m one of these guys that works all the time. I work too much. I work at work incessantly. And there would be times when I want to go take a five mile walk, you know, and on a sunny day in the afternoon, well, I would feel too guilty just leaving the office and going and walking for five miles, even on a sunny day in Buffalo and but now I don’t feel guilty. I The one day I had a meeting in Niagara Falls. I checked out. I walked around Niagara Falls for like three hours. I put had my earbuds in, and I probably got more work done walking around Niagara Falls than I would have sitting in my laptop.
Brandon Burton 17:49 Yeah. I love how you say, AI is a tool, right? And the example that the nail, and, you know, the hammer, the nail, the hand, yeah, I think of when, when Google rolled out, yeah, you said somebody might say that they don’t trust AI. If this is AI generated, I don’t trust AI. That’s like saying 2025, years ago. Well, if you got this result from Google, I don’t know that I trust it. I want to pull out the encyclopedias and do all the research myself. You know, like that’s and it seems archaic to say that now, knowing that we see, you know how effective Google is in a search. Well, AI is like Google on on steroids. You know, there’s
Craig Turner 18:27 a meme, there’s a meme I use that I posted fairly often. I actually put in my training recently. Is a because your question, it goes a little to what you’re saying. Goes a little towards the boss employee relationship too, because there are bosses that don’t trust AI, and they are actually handcuffing their their employees to be as productive as they possibly can be. And the meme that I use, it’s a picture of a model, model T I have an antiquated it’s in sepia tones and everything. And there’s a kid standing next to it dressed in 1901 garb, and he’s got a briefcase, and the caption, or the post that I put with it is okay. I want you to take these papers over to the next turn, the next town, but I want you to walk. I don’t want you to take one of those newfangled horseless carriage automobiles, because that would take you a half hour to get there back. This is going to take you six hours to get there back, but I want you to take that route instead, and that’s what we’re doing when you’re telling your employees you can’t use AI. And you know, when people worry about the, you know, the the authenticity of it is, if you’re, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re writing something. You’re putting your name on something you didn’t write. I always tell people, don’t put anything, don’t put your name on anything you didn’t write, whether it’s AI or elsewhere. But the reality is, what they’re forgetting is, it’s the engineering, it’s the prompt engineering. So I may create a piece of output. That, you know, a white paper is a good example. I may do a white paper. I hate writing white papers, and for me, to be honest, most white papers are for SEO. They’re for Google clicks. All right, so if I’m going to write a white paper, I don’t need my name on it. It’s just, it’s a product. I write the white paper, I put it on there, and it starts to get the it starts to get the SEO. Now, is there an ethical piece there that I wrote a white paper with AI and put it out there? No, I’m a prompt engineer. I used prompt engineering. I used AI, and I wrote a really good instruction for the AI to come out with a worthwhile piece of information at the end. That’s what it is, whether I wrote it or myself or not. You know, I’m an author. It was, it was a tough hill for me to climb, to yield any writing to AI, even even tweets and things. But the reality is, I had an epiphany one day. I’m like, Look my books, my blogs and my LinkedIn posts, all me, all human. I said, That’s what I want to put my name on. I said, all that other stuff I have to write press releases and tweets and again, white papers and things like that, website, copy, turn it over to AI, just, let’s be an engineer instead of a writer. And what really got me there, and this back to the boss employee relationship is, you know, in my case, it’s my clients. What did my clients hire me to do? Did they hire me because I’m an author, or did they hire me to find solutions to help grow their business? And that’s what it is. And if you’re an employee and your boss is kind of not letting you do this, this is when you go back to your boss and say, Hey, okay, I have this task that I have to do. It took me an hour last week. If I use AI, it can take me 30 seconds, instead of an hour, that’s 59 and a half minutes, that I can go do other stuff, including calling our members and seeing they’re okay, go and get new members. And that’s where the differenti the differentiator comes in, is that it’s not you have to get out of this mindset that it’s plagiarism or it’s unethical. It you’re an engineer. You weren’t hired to be a writer. You were hired to find solutions. My solution is I can do something in 30 seconds that it used to take an hour to do,
Brandon Burton 22:08 right? But, and with the prompt engineering, you get results, and then you can always adjust it. And just a couple examples, is I had a marketing campaign recently I was putting together, and I told chat GPD, this is what I’m trying to do. And can you give me a marketing plan to roll this out? And it sent me a, you know, several bullet points, you know, this stage of this, and this stage of that. And said, Okay, this is great. Can you put it in an Excel format so then I can track it as I do each thing and then, and I didn’t like everything in it, so I took some things out, I moved some things around, change the order a little bit, so I made it mine. And then another example, just earlier this week, had a need for a contract. Went to chatgpt and said, you know, here’s what I need, and and it spits it right back out. Now, am I going to use that just exactly how they gave it to, how chatgpt gave me? No, I’m going to look at I’m going to adjust it for me, and I’m going to have an attorney review it before handing it over to the other party. But it’s a starting point. And had I just gone to an attorney and said, Here, make a contract for this, that fee is going to be way higher than having a starting point already with what chat GPT provided
Craig Turner 23:15 and it and it, you know, you have to think about your own personal brand when you do it too. A great example is LinkedIn, because people are getting more savvy about what is written by AI. Because most people don’t train their AI, I will tell you that my AI, if I ask it to write like me, it’d be pretty close. Now most people don’t do that. So on LinkedIn, people will write their post with AI. Well, people now know what’s what’s AI and not so you have to think about your personal brand. If you want to put something out there and Brandon, I’m sure you’ve seen it. You you ask chatgpt to write you a LinkedIn post. It puts these ridiculous emojis all through it, right? Everywhere? Yeah, people just cut and paste and put it in well, does your is that good for your brand? Do you want people reading your posts and saying, Oh, he just did AI, that’s a decision you have to make yourself, or is it just about getting the post up every day to for the consistency and everything that’s that’s something that that people have to figure out. I I’m not a fan of just posting LinkedIn, if it like I said, my LinkedIn post, I write my own post intentionally. But, you know, you can see it. You can see it, and
Brandon Burton 24:20 depending on the purposes, it may be very appropriate to write it with AI so your followers can see, wow, Greg knows how to use AI. So there is a time for that. Now, as we put the focus on chambers, what would be some real world applications for a chamber to kind of help them wrap their head around again, demystifying AI, they see it. This is a tool. How can a chamber apply AI, beyond putting out your social media posts or maybe writing your newsletter? What? What are some ways that AI can be incorporated?
Craig Turner 24:53 Sure, I’ll give you, I’ll give you a couple examples, the first of which is, I will confide to you. And all of your listeners,
Brandon Burton 25:02 just don’t tell anybody else, right? Yeah. So
Craig Turner 25:05 at the Niagara County, Niagara USA chamber, we are running a massive small business expo in November. We’re really excited about it’s the first of its kind, and we’ve got, we’ve just got a lot of buzz around it right now. The entire thing was created with AI. Again, I’m, you know, and I steered it, and I’m the Chair, I’m not the staff, so I don’t have time to sit around doing events and stuff. So the program was created with AI, the marketing materials was created with AI. I’m doing an AI presentation there. It was, like, every everything we did that to get started now, like you pointed out, was that the final was that the final product? No, of course, it wasn’t. And then, of course, us humans had to go book all the speakers and everything. But, but to instead of, you know, sitting around and brainstorming, we got something on paper first. We we eliminated the blank page. Got something on paper first, and now we have this beautiful event that we’re putting together that we’re really excited about. So that’s a good one. That’s a great example, because it was one of the things I see with AI is people are afraid to ask for too much. All right, it’s not your executive assistant who’s going to go home and complain about you. Ask whatever you need, and ask for a lot of it. So we give us the whole event design, the whole event for us. And we got outside the box, thinking in there and everything. It’s incredible. So like I said, it’s in that case, the example to the answer your question, What can a chamber use it for? It’s attack that blank page. The blank page is the hardest thing to overcome. You would take the blank page now you’ve got something to give to your team and say, What do you think? So that’s huge. Second example I give you so chat GPT now, Google just released their version of it earlier this week. Is called gpts. Okay? Chat GPT has what they call gpts, which are bots, basically. And what it is is you train you. If you have a process that you do over and over and over again, you can take a chunk of that process and have aI create a system so that all you have to do is, like, enter the most pertinent information and it does it. You don’t have to prompt it every time. So as a great example, and this is free in the GPT store. You can, you can use it if you want to. I’d love it if you did. I created a GPT that does meeting minutes. You can input your your rough notes, and it will create as close to publishable meeting minutes as you’re going to get. You’re still going to edit everything, obviously, but, but it gives you the formatting and everything. And I tried to do that because, again, with chambers, how many meetings do you have a month that you have to do meeting minutes for? If I can, if I can save you a half hour every single time, imagine how much you can get done with that time. But what’s cool about this is, if your writings need enough, you don’t even have to type the notes in. You could take a picture of your page and it’ll do the meeting notes for you. So that’s in the that’s called the minutes maker. I think it’s in the GPT store. We can, we can share that information later, and anybody, anybody can use it. It’s free. But think about your processes that you have at the chamber, and how you can create a bot or a GPT to take some of the sting out of those processes. The other one, the other one I created, I call it networking follow up connector. And basically what it is is I come back from a networking event. Because we all know that the toughest part of networking is follow up. Come back from a networking event. I do a quick I can do a list or a database of the person I met their company. And then it asks for a, you know, one fact about something you talked about, you know, they like rock music, or, you know, they ride in the charity bicycle race. So you put those in, you hit submit, and it gives you the whole list. It gives you a quick blurb that you can cut and paste into LinkedIn for a connection request based on your conversation and everything. It takes 15 seconds, right? And that’s, that’s, that’s in the the in the in the the GPT store too, as well. So, so then, you know, then you get into higher level applications such as data analysis. And, you know, once you and there’s an important piece here, all right, chatgpt and AI, okay, you could do a lot of stuff with it, just the way it is. All right, you can get insights. You can get it’s all based on the internet. All right, the real power of this is when you put data into it, because then you can, you know, then you can manipulate that. And I like and part of the back to that fear conversation. One of the things that I always point out is is we’ve all been using AI all this time, and I’m, if I’m writing a text on my iPhone, and AI is suggesting what the next word should be, that’s AI, the auto complete is the next word, and basically all it is to. Get over that fear of it. All it is is using the data available to predict the next step. That’s what AI is, using the data available to predict the next step. If you don’t input any data, it uses the world’s data the internet. If you input your own data as like on an iPhone, or, you know, on your phone as you’re texting, it’s predicting based on your behavior, your activity, what the next word is? The next, the power of AI for chambers and for businesses is, you can input your own data. You could put your member list and, say, extract this information. You could, you do that. So this is, this is teeing up to where, where we’ve gone. Is momentum, which back several weeks ago we launched the momentum AI platform. And basically what that does is we have an AI that you can send to new members. And basically when a chamber subscribes, we have we train the chamber on 2/3 we train the AI in two things. We train it on your chamber. So your mission, your vision, your committees, your events, everything, and then we train it on what we call the momentum way of doing businesses, which is whatever everything that I described at the at the beginning, when your member puts their information in, which is, you know, what are you trying to accomplish? What do you need to meet? And they hit, submit, it returns to them automatically based on those three databases together a customized strategy to make the most of their chamber membership. So it’s everything we do at momentum, but put into an AI format to make sure more people can do it. What’s cool about it beyond that? First of all, there’s a wow factor there. Nobody’s nobody’s joining their chamber expecting to get an AI strategy on the first day that they joined. But what’s cool about it, for the Chamber’s perspective, is because we’re giving them an AI, we’ve gotten them to now fill out a form that that form goes to the chamber, so now you’re able to collect all this data on your on your new members that you might not otherwise be able be able to get. So So that’s like taking what your question, what can chambers do with AI to the next level? That’s not something we can do just in chatgpt, that required programming and everything, but, but it’s, we’re excited, and it’s, it’s taken off,
Brandon Burton 32:15 and that really gives, puts the credibility of the chamber through the roof, too. As you mentioned earlier, these millennials and Gen X, you know, these that are coming into our Gen Z, I guess, that are coming into the workforce now that have these expectations of I’m already using tech. I’m already using AI in my business. I expect you to as well. And then their first interaction with the chamber, they’re interacting with AI and getting custom information back, and then for the chamber to collect that data. And, like I said, like having data to give back to AI is huge, and being able to leverage it. So, I mean, you sold me, Craig, you sold me.
Craig Turner 32:54 And that’s and that’s critically important, because, and here’s the way I break it down. I give tough love. Actually, I posted on LinkedIn this morning. In fact, you ever see that meme with the guys with his girlfriend and he’s looking back? Okay? So I posted that, and I said, this is my worry with chambers. And basically what it is is this is so important right now. AI is so important. I even tell people I think it’s more important than workforce at this point right now, but it’s so important that businesses are looking for the information. All right, if I’m a chamber and I I have companies that are my members, the last thing I want right now is that business going somewhere else to get AI training and get AI information and thought leadership, because you know what, if I’m paying $350 for my chamber membership over here, but I just paid 30 bucks to go to an AI training, I can guarantee you, the AI training is going to change their operations. It’s going to change their lives and make it easier. And I’m going to start going, why didn’t I get that from my chamber where I’m a member over here? I’m telling every chamber run an AI program, right if you haven’t run one already, run one right now. And it can be thought leadership. It could be practical application, whatever you want to do, just make sure that you’ve attached your chamber name to AI right now. However, you can before someone else in the community picks up the picks it up and runs with it. You know. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 34:18 great advice. If you don’t mind. I’d like to lean into that just a little bit more. Your comment. About AI being more important than workforce, that stands out to me. I just finished, you know, wrapping up the chamber of the year finalist series that I do here on the podcast. And almost every chamber of the year finalist has some sort of a workforce initiative, and to say AI is more important than workforce, I wanted to hear more of your thoughts on that, and have chambers, really, you know, tune in as you explain what you mean by that,
Craig Turner 34:48 absolutely. And I don’t get me wrong. I don’t deny the importance of workforce. And I, and I the chambers that you, that you’ve interviewed and work with, I’m familiar with a lot of some of their workforce program I’ve. Steven workforce here in western New York for the last 25 years. But there are realities in workforce, right? There’s only so many people to do these things, and companies I think, really need to start just, just this morning, I had a conversation with a guy in logistics and warehousing, a colleague, and he was talking about, we’ve got demand, we’ve got space, we’ve got we got technology, we just we don’t have the people to do it. So when a company comes, and it’s a great example, because he’s not even talking about, he’s not even talking about new business, he’s talking about a company that’s already a client growing saying, Okay, I need another 30,000 square feet of warehouse space. I have the space, I have everything unique, except I can’t take care of that space for you because I don’t have the people. So the reality is there, and again, I’m not, we’re not talking about technology stealing jobs, all right, this is something we’ve been talking about for 20 years with the travel agents and whatnot, but, but the reality is, there are jobs that if nobody wants to do them, they still need to get done. And you know, the cost of running a small business continues to rise. You know, even minimum wages are rising, so that’s driving up your cost of personnel and everything. There are lots of solutions you can do with AI. AI will change your your operation. I was at a chamber event last week in Pennsylvania, and it was a joint chamber event between a between a few chambers. Two of the of the chambers came up and told me that my training changed their life. I mean, that’s huge. I’m not saying that to pump us up or drive people to our training. I’m just saying it blows my mind, because people are consistently coming up and saying that I’m not really teaching them anything, that in the end, if they, if they took some time and got on and just played with chatgpt themselves, that that they couldn’t figure out on their own. But sometimes it takes somebody like me to open their eyes to say, you know, with a few My training is typically a lot of practicality. But of course, I throw a few wow factor things in there, where people are like, Wow. I didn’t realize you could do that. Well, yeah, well, try it. You can. So, so that’s where I am. I think the workforce programs are absolutely critical. We need to continue to train the work for the workforce of the future, to match the jobs of the future. But AI is a solution for many, many businesses, if not all businesses and the chambers to tackle some of these workforce challenges in a meaningful way. And it’s not again, we’re not replacing jobs, but if I got this, I’ve got this task, and I could take 50% of it and turn it over to AI, how much time does that buy me back in the day to continue to to add to other things? So yeah, I know that’s a bold statement, because, you know, workforce chambers bread and butter, but, but the good thing is, I’ve been involved with workforce initiatives, and they go for years and years and years and years. AI, you run a three part webinar series, you’re in the mix?
Brandon Burton 38:03 Yeah, no, I appreciate the clarification on that. I figured it was going to be somewhere in that direction. But I think if any, if the pandemic taught us anything, is it really revealed those jobs that people don’t want to do, and chambers across the country now are seeing that shortage in workforce in certain segments, and that’s where AI can come in and be the answer to so many of these things in regards to workforce so
Craig Turner 38:29 and I believe I understand it’s a lot to keep up with. That’s why I said my I’ve taken on the role of curating all this. I mean, you see AI everywhere you go. I mean, everybody knows chatgpt and Gemini and co pilot and Claude is another one that people use and meta and act, or meta and x. So those are like the big six that people use for day to day prompting. But if I open, you know, when we finish the Zoom call, you’re going to get an AI output. When I open a PDF, it says, Do you want an AI? An AI summary of the PDF. It’s every time you, everybody’s using it, and it’s every time you open a thing. I mean, the the images. I mean, you’ve seen my LinkedIn. You know, I don’t post about an AI generated image. But what I love about that is I could do whatever I want. I use this image of a I have a lot of clients in logistics and supply chain. I use an image of the prompt was, give me a picture of a of a bustling port, ocean port, from the perspective of the stevedore. All right, it’s beautiful. It’s this picture. It’s from the inside of the crane. The port is a giant ship, sunny day. It’s a beautiful picture. And when I do, when I do the training on image generation, I say, look, here’s the thing. Stevedores, when they’re in the crane, are not paid to be taking pictures. They’re paid to move freight. So probably this image that I have, the picture does not exist anywhere on the planet, but it was the. Image that I needed and I wanted, I was able to design the exact image that I want. I mean, that’s, you know. So you got images, you got music, you got editing, you get video, videos, you know. And watching the video, evolution of video closely, especially with an election going on, because there are some dangers to it, but, but, yeah, it’s everywhere you you go and typically, and this is the advice I give, typically, any, any of these platforms have a free version and a monthly paid version. So I say, try as many of the free versions as you can see. What works for you Brandon might, might be different than what works for me. Try the free version if you like it. Move, you know, then think about the other one. So there’s, there’s a handful of them that I have gone and gone and bought the paid version because I knew I was going to get that much, that much use out of it. But it’s hard to, it’s hard to navigate all of this. So, so I’m going to keep trying as best as I can to get good information into people’s hands. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 40:55 that’s great. As we start wrapping things up here, I wanted to ask you for a chamber listening, who wants to take their chamber up to the next level? Imagine that’s why most of them do listen. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal?
Craig Turner 41:10 Sure, and there’s two. I give two answers to that. One of one is the obvious one, because we just spent all this time talking about AI. You have to be a leader in AI. And again, there’s, there’s the practical aspect of it, where you can train people, and they’re guaranteed there’s someone in your membership that does you know that would do an AI training for you? Get it on your calendar. If you haven’t already, I’ll do it. And if you if I would go ahead and do it. And if you don’t call me and I’ll set one up for you, it’s fine. We run regular ones anyway, that we just kind of lump chambers on to so that they don’t have to host their own. And it can be thought leadership. That’s where, you know, educate your executive your president, your executive director, on AI, bring in some experts. Run a run a panel. Run a thought leadership panel, just to kind of position yourself your brand near AI, because it’s going to be so important and it’s not going away. I mean, that’s, I mean, I always when people think it’s a fad or it’s going to, you know, it’s eventually going to tap out. I mean, Volkswagen put chatgpt in their 2024, models. All right, it’s a unit for voice chat GBT. I mean, it’s not, it’s not going anywhere. It’s only going to get stronger and more important. So that’s the one. That’s the obvious piece of advice to sum up our our conversation. The other one that I’d say is, I, you know, I do believe that it’s going to becoming more and more important for chambers to get granular, more granular with their delivery of member value in that companies are trying to and again, this is especially as we get into the millennials and the and the Gen Z. If you don’t have a teenager right now, or a college student, they like to know why before they make a decision, they just do so you’re gonna have to answer that question as they get into leadership positions, because they’re gonna because they’re gonna want to know why they’re spending, you know, an hour at your committee meeting. They’re gonna know why they spent $350 on the on the membership, and it’s a lot of work to explain that to a lot. You know, you’ve got chambers with four or five people taking care of 1200 members. It’s a lot, it’s a lot to do. That’s why we created the AI platform to help to help do that, but, but unfortunately, that’s what it is. And even back when during the recession, when I told that story, it was largely the small and medium sized businesses. But now I’m seeing more and more. It’s the bigger businesses too. I’ve been giving you $25,000 a year for the past 40 years, but a new CFO comes in. Why are we giving you $25,000 a year? What are we getting for it? You got to be ready. You got to be ready with an answer for that question. Yeah, for sure.
Brandon Burton 43:51 Well, Craig, this question maybe may have an obvious answer, but as we look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Craig Turner 44:00 I Well, yeah, I think the purpose is is even more important now I said companies are busier and busier than ever, which means they have less and less time to do things other than run their business and and try to succeed and thrive. The chambers fill a role there in being the, being that voice of business, and being the source of education, even what I say I’m doing on the AI stuff, you know, the chamber to learn everything. That’s the the asking me of a chamber, you have to know, you have to be able to answer a question on any topic somebody, somebody brings you, so you have that body of knowledge that you can share with your members who don’t have time to get the knowledge on their own. I think that’s a critic. That’s a critical piece of it. You know, the other thing is, there is it’s becoming, I’m seeing it become more competitive, and I think chambers have to rise to that occasion. And it’s not that, it’s not chambers competing against other chambers. We’re going to. Region versus a county or whatever, but it’s you’ve got your chamber, and then you got this group over here, and this business association and this group and this group and this group, and everywhere I go, everybody talks about this, this challenge, the two ways to do it are to be better and stronger and basically take the other ones out because you’re because they just can’t compete with you. And the other is to be collaborative. I’d love to see collaboration. For so many years, it was okay. I’d collaborate with I’d love to collaborate you on an event, but who gets the $15 ticket and who gets the $100 sponsorship? No, just collaborate. Figure all. That’s the other if I if you bring a sponsor, it’s yours. If you bring sponsor of yours collaborate, cast a wider net. And I think, but I think that that existence in a increasingly competitive environment is is huge, and you have to be thoughtful about it. And you know, back to the AI thing, seminars, webinars are chambers, bread and butter, educational seminars and webinars. Well, you need to bear in mind that most topics, I can go to chatgpt and get an answer on anything I want in 30 seconds. So you have to up your game on these educational topics in that it’s not just about giving information. It’s about providing a perspective and a path forward and something where, where somebody’s going to go spend an hour with you. You want them leaving saying, Yeah, that was an hour well spent. So I think that kind of thinking is really going to be important as chambers exist in this competitive environment, but I don’t think they’ve ever been more important before than they are right now.
Brandon Burton 46:37 Yeah, that’s great. I love the answers, Craig, I wanted to give you a chance for anyone listening who may want to reach out and connect with you, possibly have you do a training for them or work with you somehow. What would be the best way for you to point people to connect and reach out to connect with you? Sure,
Craig Turner 46:55 best. There’s two things I’m as you’ve heard several times during this interview, I’m very heavy on LinkedIn, so you can get me on Messenger. If you do want to reach out, connect with me. Don’t follow me. Connect with me. If you follow me, I’m going to turn around and send you a connection request anyway, on LinkedIn and Facebook, I have AI for Chambers, exclusive groups where I share content and and prompt ideas. I set them up to kind of be like my Hey, I had this idea today, and I’ll share it so but get me on LinkedIn. Otherwise, very easy it’s Craig@Momentumhub.ai if you want to email me directly. I mean, I’m an email guy, still.
Brandon Burton 47:42 Very good. We will get that in the show notes for this episode make it easy for people to connect with you and learn more about what you have to offer and how you can help elevate their chamber. Awesome. Craig, this has been great having you on the show. I’m grateful for your insights and perspective that you brought, and I hope it helps move the needle, and especially as we look at the workforce issues among chambers and communities, to be able to help fill those gaps and to help chambers stay relevant as they move along into the future. But this has been great, and I really appreciate you. Craig.
Craig Turner 48:14 Well, thanks, thanks. Thanks to you too, Brandon. I do appreciate it. And but you know, best of luck with the Chamber chat podcast. I love it. You could tell I love this stuff, though. So
Brandon Burton 48:27 If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
Craig Turner 48:57 Hey, everyone. This is Craig Turner, founder of Momentum AI, I want to give a great big shout out, and thank you to Brandon Burton and the Chamber Chat Podcast for an incredible conversation today we touched on something game changing for chambers. That’s our Momentum AI platform. It’s designed to create customized, personalized strategies for your members, showing them how to make the most out of their membership with you. Whether you’re looking to boost engagement, retention or growth, this platform is your new secret weapon, and for all you Chamber Chat listeners, we’ve got a special offer just for you when you sign up for Momentum AI, use the code Chamber Chat C, H, A M, B, E R, C, H, A T, to get 10% off your initial subscription no matter what level you choose. Let’s harness the power of AI to supercharge your chamber and your members, head over to www.momentumhub.ai to learn more and get started today.
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Brandon Burton 0:00 This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Our guest for this episode is Lynn Turner. Lynn is a formally trained business coach, facilitator and people analyst with over 20 years of experience in her business Core XP Business Solutions. Lynn focuses on the core of business people and culture making them stronger and more agile so they can stay competitive in in today’s ever evolving landscape, and lead and change innovation and create better experiences for all those involved. Lynn believes that without a strong core, the best strategies and action plans will be difficult to execute, wasting precious time, money and energy. Her many years working with a variety of businesses in different industries, and unique approach helps organizations build a stronger foundation so they can not only survive, but thrive in these unusual times. Over the years, Lynn has helped individuals and businesses gain clarity about their intentions to make informed decisions so they can achieve their goals and vision for life and business. During this time, she’s helped businesses and boards facilitate strategic planning and thinking sessions innovation and change management and initiatives and high performing teams, utilizing her certifications within virtual collaborations, graphic facilitations, the Lego series, play methodology and innovation management and strategy through wobi, which is world of business ideas, and the Kellogg School of Management, certified in a variety of assessment Tools. Lynn recently attained her Master Practitioner certification with Agile brain, a revolutionary new assessment based on neuroscience that transcends traditional cognitive measurements. Lynn also volunteers her time in a variety of workforce and entrepreneurial development initiatives across the Commonwealth that focus on underrepresented populations, including women bipoc and neurodivergence. But Lynn, I am excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Lynn Turner 3:19 Sure, I’m really excited for this opportunity and to get a chance to talk with you, Brandon, as well as your chamber champions, this is really exciting. I know a few individuals that have been on your podcast and and really admire the work that you do. As far as something interesting, I guess I’ll, I’ll share what we were talking about a little bit earlier. So for anyone, if you’re Googling my name, you might want to try Lynn Whitney Turner, because there is, there are lots of other Lynn Turners, and one out there actually happens to be a mass murderer. So I just want to clarify that I am not that person. So that’s why I use Lynn Whitney Turner, and
Brandon Burton 4:07 this is why we have middle names, right? So you could differentiate ourselves.
Lynn Turner 4:11 Absolutely, absolutely.
Brandon Burton 4:16 Oh man, I can imagine the confusion.
Lynn Turner 4:18 Yes, yes. And I, and I did, as I mentioned to you, I did have somebody that googled my name and said what they found. And I said, Yes, don’t drink the Kool Aid. So yeah, yes, actually, that person did pass away while in prison. So
Brandon Burton 4:35 okay, so no chance of them being confused with you now. So, yes,
Lynn Turner 4:39 exactly. Okay,
Brandon Burton 4:41 well, I know I, I touched on a little bit with your bio, but tell us a little bit about your business and kind of what your focus is, especially as it has to do with when you work with chambers. But what, what is core XP business solutions and and your focus and kind of center of work? Yeah.
Lynn Turner 4:59 Yeah, yeah. So the name core actually came out of something of my my past life, once upon a time, I was a certified aerobics instructor and personal trainer, and that has stayed with me and has really influenced my approach to the current body of work that I’m using, as well as it was influential in the name of my business. You know, with our bodies, I look at business very similar to our bodies, right? And developing a strong core helps us to become stronger and more agile, and that is really, in my opinion, what is needed in today’s landscape. I talk a lot with businesses about VUCA, and VUCA, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s a term that actually came out of the military back at the end of the Cold War, of of all things, and our military, at that point, with the dismantling of Russia, became very concerned with who is our enemy. And then if you kind of fast forward from there to 911 that was really one of the things that they were really scared about. And VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. And it’s now been adopted by the business world. Because I think many people can when they hear of VUCA, they’re like, yeah, that really explains where we’re at in the current landscape. And it’s not really necessarily about change. It’s really more about the pace of the change our world is speeding up faster and faster, and it’s really about helping individuals and organizations stay ahead of that change, if possible, so not just managing the change, but hopefully leading the change. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 7:09 well, that’s a perfect segue into what our topic for our conversation will be to stay is around managing and leading change, specifically in a Bucha world, you know, where there is so much change and volatility and uncertainty and ambiguity, how do we approach this and how do we move through it? So I’m excited to dive in much deeper on this topic. As soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Lynn, we are back. So right before the break, you I think you did a really good job in introducing, kind of what our topic is for our discussion today, on managing and leading change. And I know whenever change is introduced, there’s always that pushback. You know, there’s always people in the group, whether it’s in a board or maybe it’s the lead of the organization that pushes back on the change, maybe it starts at the very top. So as you work with organizations on leading and managing through change, what’s your approach to try to help get everyone on board that? You know, change is a necessity. Change is always happening, whether you want it to happen or not, and especially in today’s world, in the Bucha kind of world, what? What’s your approach to help get their mind wrapped around it? Absolutely.
Lynn Turner 10:13 And you, you brought up some really good distinctions, right? So, change, everybody has a re a response to that word change. In fact, we, in working with an organization on a change initiative. The owner of the company was was pretty resistant, and it really even came down to language. We ended up changing the word change. And instead of calling it change, we called it continuous improvement, because that’s really what we’re looking to do through change. Most leaders and there is a distinction too, between leading change, you know, because if we’re leading change, we want, we’re we’ve already embraced it, and therefore we’re ready to move forward. But to your point earlier, for some of us, it’s being imposed upon us, and typically in those situations, we do push back. Each of us has a different propensity for change, especially if it’s being imposed upon us. And I’ve really been digging down deeper into this. As you mentioned earlier, when you were introducing me, I am a people analyst, which is basically just a fancy way of saying, I utilize a lot of different assessments. And over the past 20 years, I mean, there’s tons of assessments out there, and I follow a lot of Peter Drucker’s work, and Peter Drucker is of the belief. And Peter Drucker is a business management guru who was ahead of his time. He passed away several years ago, but he really was ahead of his time. And one of his quotes is you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So that’s really where the assessments play a role, because if you can measure something, now you can better manage it. And if you’re looking at individuals, we each have a different style, whether you’re using Myers, Briggs, predictive index, I happen to utilize disc each of us has a different style, and each of those styles respond differently to change. So it’s really too about understanding, having that self awareness about how we how we deal with change, but also understanding how others may deal with change.
Brandon Burton 13:04 Yeah, and I like the approach of changing the word change. And I thought that before, before you even said that, that I wonder if there’s a better term we can use for the word change, because there is such resistance, it can be a scary word to hear. Hey, we’re going to change this. There’s a safety in insecurity and in doing what you know has been working, right? So when you change it, there’s, there’s some insecurity that comes with that, but to look at it as continuous improvement, say, Yeah, I think we can all get on board with that, right?
Lynn Turner 13:37 Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Brandon Burton 13:41 So as we talk about leading and managing change, I assume you’re working with the leaders of these businesses and organizations to kind of get their head wrapped around how to communicate this to their their staff, or to their organization, to their members, so they’re whatever the organization is that you’re working with, so talk to us a little bit about that. But how you help them manage that that change or lead through that continuous improvement? Sure,
Lynn Turner 14:14 yeah, and it’s about understanding what is the purpose of the change. You know, why is it necessary? So it really is important to set context for for change. Is it change for the sake of change? If so, you know, people may not feel comfortable in doing that, because, as I mentioned earlier, we each have a different propensity for change. You know, some people really enjoy changing things up. Other people like things a little smoother and steadier. And there has been work done by Gallup where they looked at what are followers looking. From their leaders, and they’re looking for four key things when they’ve surveyed followers, and this can be, you know, they’ve done it for large groups, and they’ve been doing this study for many, many years, but four common themes seem to come up. One of them is trust. The followers want to trust in their leadership and trust in their decisions in the direction that they’re going. They’re looking for stability. They are looking for that stability to know that things are going to be okay. They’re also looking for compassion. They want their leaders to kind of understand where they’re coming from and understand what they’re going through in their day to day, and how this change may impact them. And then they’re also looking for hope. And hope is about what is that? Direct. Where are we going? Give me, you know, is it a positive? You know, give me something to hope for, something bigger than myself. So it is about understanding how followers what they’re looking for, before you’re in, helping to set that context about the change and how does it address each of those areas?
Brandon Burton 16:25 I like that. And I imagine followers in different organizations might have maybe different values slightly, but it’s going to stick, you know, pretty traditionally, I would think with these four categories that you talked about as a as a leader, do you need to adopt or really focus on all four categories? Or if you’re really good at two or three, can you lean into those and maybe carry through maybe a weaker category that your followers are looking at?
Lynn Turner 16:57 Yeah, and I think you have to one understand, you know, the type of leader that you are, right? We’re not. There isn’t one set type of leader, right? And and, you know, part of understanding VUCA too, is things are moving so fast that it’s going to require a village. It takes a team so understanding our own strengths as leaders, but also understanding maybe where we don’t have strengths, and building our team accordingly, so that you can hit each of those aspects with regards to what followers are looking for from leaders. And you know, one of the things that I do talk with leaders about, there was a term that I came across, I think it’s from the book talent IQ, and they talk about strategic humility. So strategic humility is knowing, at least having an idea of where you want to go, having that, you know, that strategic purview, if you will, but having the humility to say, You know what, I’m not exactly sure how to get there, and I’m willing to ask for help. So that’s also to the the name of my company is core XP that so I explained core. Core is really about developing that core. And for me, the core of your business is your people and your culture and and that’s what drives your business, that’s at the heart of your business. And everything radiates out from there. It radiates out into how you do, what you do, your internal operations, systems and processes, into your products and services. And that’s what interfaces with your customers and creates your brand image. So that’s the core. And then then two, the core for individuals is emotions. We are driven by our emotions. Those are at our core and their subconscious, and they influence our mindset, in our attitudes, which also influence our behaviors. And our behaviors are what people see. So it’s really about understanding our core and I’ll explain a little bit more about that, but that XP process is actually a process that an intellectual property that I’m developing, and it really about creating an innovative culture and mindset for individuals and organizations, and it’s really steeped in curiosity. So it is about helping you know leaders to be to really lead with curiosity, because we can. Have all the answers. It’s impossible today, in today’s Bucha world,
Brandon Burton 20:03 right? And that, if you’re looking for answers within your followers too, that that creates more buy in and and appreciation of them, seeing feeling valued and noticed by their leader, looking to them to help with that continuous improvement.
Lynn Turner 20:20 Absolutely, yeah.
Brandon Burton 20:23 Okay, so talk to us a little bit more about the core. You said, come back to that and more on that focus. Yeah,
Lynn Turner 20:30 yeah, yeah. So I mentioned earlier about the assessments, and as I had mentioned to you, I utilize disc. Disk is about behaviors. So that’s kind of in that outer ring of the individual, if you will. Because we’re onions, right? Individuals, people, humans are very complicated. We are very complicated, but our behaviors are what people see, our motivators. And you did talk about kind of those motivators. That’s another layer of us, and that’s not seen. That’s why we do what we do. Behaviors are how we do what we do, but motivators are why we do what we do, and we’re each motivated by different things. So you kind of talked about that, that you know, understanding what motivates people can help them work through the change, if you will, or that continuous improvement, but really at the core of individuals, our emotions, and that has not been an area that we’ve really been able to measure up until recently, I recently, as you shared earlier, I’ve become a Master Practitioner with a very new tool. It’s it’s revolutionary, called Agile brain. It’s based in neuroscience. It’s literally taken 125 years of motivational theory and condensed it into a pretty simplistic, not simple, but simplistic model that we are really finding incredible for for one understanding unmet needs and motivators for individuals, and also for understanding culture within an organization, because a lot of times, traditional surveys are asking you to think about how you feel, and there’s A lot of flaws in that which I can explain.
Brandon Burton 22:43 Yeah, that’s that’s fascinating, the the flaws in thinking about how you feel. And I, I’m guessing, there’s some maybe expectations that maybe you shouldn’t feel this way or shouldn’t feel. So if you give too much thought into it, it’s like, well, what’s the expectation on what I should feel, and it’s kind of skewing. Is that kind of the along the right paths of,
Lynn Turner 23:07 Oh yeah, yeah, you’ve kind of nailed it. So, you know, a lot of organizations do employee satisfaction surveys, or with chambers are doing member surveys, right? And the challenge becomes, we’re asking people to think about how they feel, and they may not share. So there’s reasons that the answers you get may not be accurate. One is, people may be trying to please, so they’re going to kind of share that very rosy picture of things because they’re trying to please others. Others may not be completely honest because they may not feel safe sharing. But the other piece of it is through the neuroscience, our emotions come from the limbic part of our brain, and in that limbic part of our brain we have no language. So I don’t know Brandon for you, but I know for myself, there have been times where I don’t even know how to explain how I’m feeling, and it’s because it’s wrapped up in that limbic part of the brain, and it’s really not until it gets to the nearer cortex, the frontal lobe, until we’re able to make sense of it and put language to it, because that’s the rational side of our brain.
Brandon Burton 24:35 That’s fascinating. I think, going back to the VUCA world, where we’ve got so many, you know, volatility and uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity. There used to be a time where maybe it, maybe it’s more of a perception than a reality, but people seem to be pretty cookie cutter, right? Like you go to school, you get a. A job. You work there your whole life, until you retire, and then you move on, and once you start introducing feelings into this like, as a leader, what are you supposed to do with somebody’s feelings? And that’s a whole nother discussion, I think, to be able to train and help leaders understand how to deal with the feelings and then motivate. Because even though even the motive, the motives that people have for why they do what they do, being based on feelings, not everybody has the same motives for showing up to work and doing their task and what it just kind of opens a can of worms that it’s a can that needed to be open. So how do you work with the leaders on this, on on managing that that change,
Lynn Turner 25:44 you brought up a few, a few different things that that are pretty interesting. So first of all, I do have to forewarn individuals with regards to Agile brain. If you’re looking to do culture work for your organization, it is not for the faint of heart. So I forewarn leaders, do not go down this path unless you are really want to know right? Don’t ask the question unless you really want to know the answer. So first of all, otherwise, I don’t recommend it, and unless you plan to do something with that information. So it’s not just about, okay, now we know whatever you gotta do something with the information, but it can be, it can be, it can be scary, right? Because maybe you weren’t ready to hear this information, but the, you know, there’s a I’ve had the opportunity to see Alan Mulally speak. Alan Mulally was the former CEO for Boeing many, many years ago, and then he got he started working with Ford, and that was during the the financial crisis, and they were the only one. They were the only car company at that time that did not take the bailout. But Alan Mulally had a belief that you can’t manage a secret, so you really have to get to the heart of things if you’re really going to solve the challenge or the problem or come up with solutions. So agile brain really helps you identify specific areas that may need some assistance. And sometimes it’s just communication. It’s not it and sometimes it’s things that the company offers, but employees aren’t aware of it, so having this information just helps you build a stronger core, if you will, of of people and culture.
Brandon Burton 27:52 Yeah, I like that coming back to the core. So how does agile brain? How does it work? Is this like, do you put on, like a helmet? Is it a test? What does it look like to actually perform this neuroscience on these followers and organizations?
Lynn Turner 28:09 Yeah, yeah. No, no helmet required, unless maybe for afterwards, when we do debris, but no helmet required for that. It’s actually, it’s really quick, and that’s part of the neuroscience. We don’t want people to have time to think. The other thing is, it’s image based, so it’s not no text. There is a prompt, and we can customize the prompt to help, you know, really get at what you’re trying to get at for the organization. So if it’s around culture, we would do it about how people feel about working at XYZ. And then basically, these pictures flash in front of you, and it takes three minutes, and you’re done, and it will show what we would call activation in different areas. So it’s basically broken down into four domains of self, which is that world within us, material, which is the external world of work and play, social, which is about our relationships and our connections, and then spiritual, which is about higher ideals and principles. And then there are three levels. There’s the foundational level, which is about being, there’s the experiential level, which is about doing, and then there’s the aspirational level, which is about having. So as you can see, I mean, Maslow’s is probably the most widely known or understood. So it does pull from Maslow, as well as a host of other bodies of work, but those are kind of the four, four domains and three levels that it looks at.
Brandon Burton 29:54 Okay. Well, that helps, because I’m picturing like nodes and stuff hooked up to your brand, and I. Like in the laboratory, all sorts of stuff. No, that that makes sense. So I’d like to ask, as I have people on the show for those listening, they’re typically leaders of chambers of commerce. For these chamber leaders who are looking to elevate their chamber to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them, especially as it relates to managing and leading change? Yeah, so
Lynn Turner 30:29 with leading change, so, you know, we talked about VUCA, and we kind of talked about that ominous volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, there is a flip side. So the way to fight VUCA is with VUCA. So it is about developing a vision. It is about having understanding of both your internal and your external worlds, and then also having clarity and creating clarity for those inside your organization as well as those outside your organization, and then building in agility. So these all need to be built into your organization, into your culture. But one of the biggest things that I talk to leaders about is shifting that mindset, because I think a lot of leaders felt that they need to be experts, and there’s a lot of pressure to be experts, and as I think you need experts within your organization, but as you rise through The ladder and become a leader. It’s more about being an explorer and leading with curiosity. So that’s kind of the shift that I’m I’m suggesting to leaders of all kinds, whether chambers, business world leaders even, is to really shift into curiosity. And one of the reasons, when we are genuinely curious, we are void of judgment. So if we’re void of judgment and we have that curiosity, we’re able to make better decisions, because sometimes we want to get we’re too attached to certain things and improving our expertise, if you will. And that can sometimes narrow the aperture, and in today’s world, we really need to widen that aperture.
Brandon Burton 32:37 I like that. I love the idea of curiosities and void of judgment and, and I think it may be helpful even to put that out there as you ask questions and try to learn more, to say, look, this is coming from a place of curiosity, so there is no judgment attached to it. I want to learn more about you and what motivates you and and being able to create the flip side of VOCA, the vision understanding clarity and agility. I love that. So Lynn, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how would you, from your perspective, how would you look at the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Lynn Turner 33:19 It’s an important question, right? And I have been working with several different chambers, and, you know, I think it does. I’ll go back to Peter Drucker. He’s got a slew of different quotes that just really resonate. He really was ahead of his time, but he asks a couple questions, What business are you in, and what business do you want to be in, or what business will you be in for the future? And depending on how you define yourself, can tell you a lot, because if we say we’re a buggy whip company. Well, then I if we’re locked into that, that may not give us an opportunity for future growth and expansion if we’re so attached to being that buggy whip company. So I think it is about really taking a good hard look at who you are, what you do, and why you do it. What is that purpose? What is that vision? And for chambers, it is a difficult time. You know, there’s a lots of different competition out there. And I mean, where I am, we have, we have chambers in every town, if you will. So there’s a lot of competition, and the businesses only have so much, you know, so many resources as far as time, money, energy. So where do they? Want to best spend that time, money, energy. So I think it’s really about also asking yourself, what problem are you trying to solve for your your members, your community, whatever it is.
Brandon Burton 35:12 Yeah, absolutely. I love that. This has been a fun, interesting conversation. Admittedly, it’s gone some directions I did not expect. So this is hopefully listeners as well, are taking some notes and thinking of different perspectives, different angles that they can take with their their followers, with their members, with their staff, their board, to be able to figure out what, what are the emotional aspect that drives their motives to their actions, that they see to further drive engagement and participation. So I appreciate the perspective you brought your expertise and ability to speak so clearly to this topic. I did want to give you an opportunity, Lynn, to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more or figure out more about your work. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Lynn Turner 36:13 I’m sure they can email me at lynn@corebusinessxp.com and that is the web website as well, corebusinessxp.com so either way is, is fine. And you know, the biggest two thing too, I would say, for chambers too, is getting that alignment with you, with your board, making sure everybody’s on the same page and has the same understanding of language, too.
Brandon Burton 36:47 Yes, I think that’s key. Well, I will get this in our show notes for this episode so people can can find you there. But again, Lynn, this has been a fun and a fun conversation. I’ve learned a lot, and I’m sure as I go back and re listen to this episode of I’m going to pick up some other things too that kind of sink in the second time around. So I appreciate it, and I see a lot of application into the chamber world. So thank you so much for being with us today.
Lynn Turner 37:15 Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Brandon, it was great conversation with you.
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Brandon Burton 0:00 This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist Series. And our guest for this episode is Todd Sanders. Todd is the President and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber in Arizona, and was named that that role in 2009 before assuming his current role, Todd represented the interests of businesses and community at the Arizona State legislator and Phoenix City Hall as Vice President of Public Affairs. In that role, he enhanced the Chamber’s position as a statewide leader in immigration policy, initiative reform and pro business tax policy. Prior to joining the chamber, Todd acted as a Research and Policy Analyst for the Arizona House of Representatives, serving several standing committees in the areas of taxation, Environment, Energy, state trust, land, counties, municipalities and international trade. He also acted as a liaison to the Arizona Mexico commission on behalf of the house represent, House of Representatives, and currently serves as board president for the Arizona Mexico commission. Todd is a native of Bogota, Colombia. Holds a Bachelor of Science in political science from Northern Arizona University, and he and his wife have a son and live in Phoenix, Arizona, Todd, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. Want to start by saying congratulations to you and your team, what a honor and accomplishment, and want to allow you a chance 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, you
Todd Sanders 2:45 bet. Well, thank you for that, for that introduction. I think if my mom were here, she would be certainly proud, but I certainly embarrassed by all of those. Although those details, thank you for taking the time. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are here in Phoenix to be in the running for a chamber of the year. It is, is a tremendous honor. And as soon as we were notified, the whole chamber was, was just overjoyed. So really appreciate the opportunity. In terms of about things about me, usually, I usually tell people Sure, I was born in Bogota, Colombia, kicked out for bad behavior, but, but the I will tell you something that I think probably 99% of people don’t know. So you mentioned that my name is Todd Sanders recently, well, I shouldn’t say recently. About three or four years ago, we were at a family reunion, and somehow our family tree came up, and we mentioned my brothers and I were saying, Well, we know that my mom’s side was from Scotland, and dad’s side was from Italy. And someone piped up and said, Italy, you know, what are you talking about? There’s no Italian blood here. And and we were just we were so confused that dad’s not with us anymore. And what we learned was, what actually happened is, generations ago, a we actually my our great, great grandfather migrated from, I believe, Mexico into the United States, settled in California and and at that time, decided that probably would be more advantageous to have a more Anglo Saxon sounding name. So he and some friends who sort of came up with this idea, put some names into a hat, and they drew, and my great, great grandfather drew the name Sanders previously. And I guess, I guess you could say, currently, our name had been Sepulveda. So actually, you’re talking to Todd Sepulveda, but by accident, or, I guess, because, of a set of circumstances, Todd Sanders, so something that most people don’t know about me and then, and of course, Todd Sepulveda doesn’t really roll off the tongue. That’s
Brandon Burton 4:47 right. I wonder if your first name would have been different if it’s
Todd Sanders 4:50 still I wonder, yeah, absolutely.
Brandon Burton 4:54 Might be talking to a whole different person. But that’s that’s interesting. I like hearing the family history. And how names change. And my last name is currently Burton, b, u r t o n. But again, his family immigrated into the states. They came from France through Canada into Maine, and at the time it was b, e r t i n, and of course, everybody’s illiterate back then, so they said the name, it got written down, b, u, r, t, O, N, and here we are still today. So yeah, it’s, that’s the way it works. That’s right. Well, tell us about the greater Phoenix chamber. That’s what we’re here for. So tell us about your your organization, size, staff, budget, scope of work, just to set the stage for us. Well,
Todd Sanders 5:38 you bet Walt, thank you for that opportunity. So we have interesting history. Unlike most of the the folks that are listening to this, this podcast nationally, where states have been around for a while, Arizona is a relatively young state. We were formed in 1912 so, so, you know, we just had our our centennial chamber was formed in 1888 so prior to statehood, some some visionary business leaders at the time, formed the Phoenix chamber, and obviously through that time, it has evolved into the organization it is today. So as of, as of now, we have about 2400 members, ranging in all sizes. Our budget is is split between two entities. There’s the chamber side and the foundation side. And when you put those two together, it’s shy of about ten million with the foundation being slightly larger. The staff, our staff is currently close to 70 and and a lot of that serves some of the needs that we’re addressing through the foundation. Yeah, in terms of programs of work, as you mentioned, I come from a policy background, so I’m I can’t get away from that. We do a lot of the state legislature. We work a lot with our city, our city council, and more and more, especially with our friends at the US Chamber, we’re doing work at the at the federal level, there’s also an economic development component to the work we do now. Like, like most of us, we aren’t an attractor. We have a statewide attractor and a county attractor of businesses into the valley. But certainly, as as most chambers do when we get businesses come into town. How do we keep them here? How do we keep them growing? And then finally, as an outgrowth of that work, there’s a workforce component to it, and that’s really where the foundation comes into play,
Brandon Burton 7:30 yeah, but I’m glad to hear that you guys have a foundation. I know that’s kind of the trajectory that we see. Chambers are encouraging chambers to go to be able to really further the work that they have to do. But so typically, on these chamber the year finalist episodes, what I like to do is focus the majority of our time on the programs that were submitted on your chamber the year application, and dive into kind of the origins for those and and the impact that they’re making in your community. And we’ll, we’ll dive into those programs for the greater Phoenix chamber, as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right. Todd, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll we’ll dive into the pro. Programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. I understand that the first kind of scope or program of work will say, covers several programs, kind of in one container, we’ll say, but please introduce that to us. Let us know what those programs are, and again, what the origins and the reason it kind of how this developed?
Todd Sanders 10:25 Well, thank you for that. You’re right. The first, the first set of programs, is sort of under one category. And I think about it as sort of this idea of belonging, my my philosophy, my leadership philosophy really revolves around an abundance model, which, of course, isn’t isn’t blind to the fact that we have to compete, but there’s also a lot of room for us to work together or to bring people in. And so one of those is really revolves around our strategy relating to helping small and mid sized business understand what the road to diversity and inclusion looks like for their companies. Large companies really don’t have a big challenge with implementing these kinds of programs within their within their organizations, but small and mid sized companies tend to have challenges with that. And this goes back eight years ago, July 7, by the way. July 7, 2016 was the day that this all started for me. I had a member of my board, Frank Reed, African American gentleman, who called me and said, Todd, I need to go to lunch. And can we, I need to get on your calendar today, which I thought was was interesting. But we did it. And he and our chair, we sat down and and he said, today in my hometown of Dallas, five police officers were shot for a race related reason, and we can’t let that happen in Phoenix and and part of that is because we’re not we’re not bringing people in, we’re not having conversations, and we’re not really thinking about belonging here. And he said, I need the chamber to engage and but that that lunch, we said, All right, we’re going to do that. And that was the start of something, I think, really impactful, which which began with this, this toolkit that, for instance, our for our friends in the Billings Montana chamber are using as well, where we’re giving small, midsize businesses a roadmap just to start to bring people in and have conversations about how we can all belong, and we built up a toolkit. One of the first things that that occurred was that we decided that staff’s not going to build this thing out. My members of my executive committee built this thing out with with help from us and more of logistical support. And the product, I think, was remarkable. Now it’s in the second iteration, and and and the discussion at that time was, well, what do we do with this? And we immediately decided we’re not monetizing it, we’re giving it away. And you can imagine my sales people. We’re thrilled with this idea, but we felt like it really important for us to learn from what happened in Dallas, and this is before, certainly George Floyd and all these other things. But how do we start bringing people in and just talk to each other, right? And so we decided we would give it away, whether you remember or not, we want to help people in, and we’ve we formed a committee that really what we do is we help businesses along the way when the way they have want to have conversations about, how do you include people? And how do we, how do we make that a part of what we do every day? That’s the toolkit that we use. So that’s one part of it. There were some existing programs that really got wrapped into this. We have an Athena program, which I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with, with the Athena international program, and that’s really how we look at women leaders in our community, that balance, obviously, leadership positions. They also are mentors, and they’re making change in their community. And we’ve had this for 38 years now. It’s a really important part of who we are. There’s also a bit a business, a Women’s Alliance, where we’re bringing women leaders together on a monthly basis, and we really promote what they’re doing. They They network with each other, they lift people up. And it’s a remarkable, remarkable program. Never leave one of these programs without feeling inspired and and really wondering how you didn’t know about this person in our community. And then finally, our Valley young professionals. We, when I became CEO, I really made it a goal to make this a program that was going to be worthwhile, not just something where we were checking the box. And so we really thought about, how do we make this impactful? And part of that, obviously, is giving people coming into their careers an opportunity to really understand what it’s like to serve on a board. What’s a nonprofit all about, what’s your role, what’s the what’s the role of the organization? And and it was working really well. We had really strong leaders, which I think is part of the key, right? But then I there was something was missing, because they there was always this idea that there’s the vyp board, value professional board, and then there’s sort of, quote, unquote big board. And I thought, why do we Why do we have that? And going back to this idea of abundance, I said. Let’s do this. I want to make the leadership so the Chair and the Vice Chair, I want to make them full fledged members of our board, and that means they’re voting members. They’re not junior members that are observed, but they’re full fledged members of the board. That really sort of changed the way young people were looking at this committee and engaging in this committee. Now, what’s interesting about it, you know, how you so you’re thinking about influencing and really bringing up a sort of a set of people as we started to incorporate them into the board, we started feeling significant benefits from having completely different point of view on the board, so much so that at our board retreats, we actually invite the the vyp board, the full board, onto our into our into our retreats, along with our foundation, because they’re adding so much to the conversation. So really, this, this whole idea, and all of these programs are, we’re all wrapped around this, this thought that there’s, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of abundance out there, and how do we start to share that, and how do we start to bring people up? And as a consequence, it’s made us stronger, it’s made us healthier, and it’s and I think in a lot of ways, it’s the reason why we’re here today, talking to you, because that’s the kind of thing that really starts to move a community forward. Right
Brandon Burton 16:21 now, when you think of inclusion and making sure people feel welcomed, I like to think if somebody walks into a room and they don’t feel like they belong there, whether it’s whatever group, you know, segmentation you want to, you know, put the focus on, if they don’t feel like they belong there, they’re out, you know, they’re not going to stay, they’re not going to come back, they’re not going to engage. They’re not going to go to the next level with engagement with your organization. So it’s so important to be able to really highlight these areas, to make sure that people from all different walks of life as they come in, that this is a place for everyone in your community to be involved.
Todd Sanders 17:04 You Ben
Brandon Burton 17:06 with a thought, do you, I know, unfortunately, dei gets kind of a political spin put on it. So how’s the approach that you guys have? Or have you gotten any you know, received any feedback from people on the outside saying, what’s the chamber doing getting involved with these things, and how do you address that with them?
Todd Sanders 17:26 You know, I haven’t gotten the the angry emails that I’ve that I’ve heard about, and I think part of that is because we really look at it from a practical standpoint. I’ll give you an example Frank. Frank read the gentleman that I talked about, you know, provided such an important example, and we’re seeing this, for instance, today in Phoenix, there are literally more jobs than people, so we’re having to do everything that we can to really fill these, these critical slots in our economy. One of the things that that this applies to is the workforce side, obviously, and his story was that they had a really high level position in a company that they were trying to fill. And they they brought they were thinking, Alright, we need more women leaders. They brought in these five. I mean, these were top notch, Ivy League type folks that any one of them would have been incredible for this position. And so they brought them in. They did these interviews. And you know how these, these things work, it’s not generally one person, it’s probably a panel of folks and and they all five women, declined the position in succession, and finally, Frank decided to call a couple of them, and what they said was, you know, it seems like a great company, a lot of opportunity there, but I don’t see myself represented there. There was just a bunch of bunch of men on this in this panel, and I didn’t think I belong there. And for him, it was a really interesting wake up call. And said in the sense that if you want to bring people on board, make sure that they feel like they have a place there. And I think when we talk to companies about how you’re going to look for this top talent, as we’re thinking about $40 billion worth of semiconductor dollars coming into Arizona, and what’s going to be needed in terms of top talent, you got to make sure that that people feel like they got a place at the table if you’re looking to fill these really critical roles. So I think for us, it’s been looking at this from a practical perspective. Same thing goes for the young professionals, the when I think about way back when, when we started this group, there was one particular person who who was their their chair at the time, and she was a complete standout, just amazing. Went through that process, left the vyp group because she’d sort of graduated out and was chair, and had done everything that could be done. Then she became a member of the board through her company, and two years ago, she was my chair. She was the chair of our board, and an incredibly catalytically or who brought so much to the table. So I think when people start to see this as not a political exercise, but this idea that all we’re doing is making sure. Sure that there’s room at the table for everybody. You tend to win.
Brandon Burton 20:03 Yeah, that goes back to your, your thought on abundance, right? There’s room for everybody, and let’s, let’s show them. I, I’ve heard it, and I think I’ve shared it before on the podcast, but when you walk into a room and you see people gathered together, they tend to be in in a circle, right, talking to each other. And that to be inclusive. Instead of a circle, create more of a horseshoe, right? Leave it open, let people in be able to let them feel welcome and like they belong there.
Todd Sanders 20:27 Well, it’s true. And I think, you know, part of that is came from this idea. You mentioned, I was from Colombia, and it’s odd, because when I’m in the States, I always feel like there’s a part of me that’s that doesn’t belong, because it’s true, right? I’m, you know, people you were born somewhere else, and when I’m in Colombia, people like automatic people like, automatically think I’m
Brandon Burton 20:45 American, because, yeah,
Todd Sanders 20:47 I don’t use the simple but a name down there, and so it’s an odd thing to it, so it gives you a sense for what that’s like. But, but, yeah, it’s been, it’s been really rewarding in terms of how far this has gone and the impact that it’s had, not only on the chamber, but in in organizations throughout the Valley and in people, yeah, oh,
Brandon Burton 21:07 that’s great. Let’s shift gears a bit into the other program that was submitted on your application. And if you could tell us what that is and what the origins and the purpose was behind that,
Todd Sanders 21:19 well, you mentioned the foundation, and I’m really glad you did. And I’m encouraging other other chambers to certainly look at foundations. And I will say that we call it the 10 year overnight success story. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 21:31 it takes most are right 100%
Todd Sanders 21:34 I’d love to say it was two years. But, you know, a lot of that work was was built on, you know, the things we had done in the past, and when I mentioned the the Retention and Expansion work that we did, what, what I assumed, when we started talking to businesses, that they would tell me, Todd, the big issues here in Arizona are, are taxes and regulation and and as we talked to business leaders, none of them said that, Which was really shocking to me, and this is before workforce was was cool. They all said we don’t have the qualified talent that we need today and and that was a big wake up call for us. Part of the part of that also was a visit we had with a what would be a fortune 200 company locally that was moving about 200 jobs that paid six figures outside of Arizona because they couldn’t find enough people who could pass the series seven exam. And okay, hold on. We’re the we’re the fifth largest city in the country. That doesn’t seem possible, right? So we figured out very quickly that there was a role for us there. We needed to do more in this space, and so that’s how we got into workforce. And as we as we had a few years under our belt with workforce, it became really clear that we there wasn’t a good method or a good pathway for kids in high schools looking to college and career either or right. I know it’s black and white, but it’s not, it’s college and or career, because they’re interchangeable in some ways. And so I’ll tell you the story real quick. We decided we really need to learn. And so there’s a really great program in Nashville, and kudos to to the Nashville chamber and all the work that they do out there a program in Nashville where they have these Academy an academy model. And so we took a group out to Nashville, and we said, we want to learn about this. And by happenstance, the Phoenix union board actually ended up there as well. We had no idea they were going to be there. We bumped into each other, and it was weird, because we didn’t know each other really well. It was a lot of distrust. Why is the chamber here? You know, what is this board doing here? And we started talking. Go figure, right? We started talking. And by the third day, we were kind of a unified group. And we left there saying, we don’t know this is our model, but, but if, maybe, if we decided to work together, maybe there’s something here for us. And so we did. We decided that we would start with one school, and what we would do is we would see how we could create pathway opportunities for kids in high schools, especially in Title One high schools. And so that was, that was a about four years ago. Three years ago, we started with our first school and and district, and that started to grow over time, and it is something that now has grown to 20 high schools in Arizona and 1000s of kids through that work. One of the things that we we found, among other things, was that a lot of these kids had the the skills, they had the ability, they certainly had the right to engage in some sort of dual enrollment opportunity, but they weren’t doing it, partially because they didn’t know it existed, and mostly because they didn’t have the funds to pay for the dual enrollment. So this is what I love about this sort of project, because it engaged the. Foundation that also engage the chamber. Remember, I told you, we do a lot of the at the legislature. So last year, we got together with some of our partners and and petitioned the legislature for an appropriation that would allow our our kids, our Title One kids, to get at least six credit hours, usually 12 credit hours of dual enrollment before they graduated. It was an interesting issue because it was, believe it or not, bipartisan. There was both sides. It was weird, right? This was a good idea. It was, it was odd, but it was a great, a great thing to sort of be curious about the this bill passed, and now there’s an opportunity for these kids to not have to worry about the financial barrier and think about what this will mean going into into college. You know, if, if they have these 12 credit hours, it means they’re probably going to continue on into the community college system, get a get a two year degree, or a four year degree in industries or in areas where there’s a huge demand in Arizona. So that first year we did it, we saw 40% increase in dual enrollment in 20 in 20 High School. So a significant number. This year we’re seeing a smaller increase. And we had to ask ourselves, what’s going on here? We obviously have a lot of kids out there that haven’t seen this opportunity. What we found was, and probably what we’re seeing in a lot of communities around our country, where we’re actually have a shortage of teachers who are certified in dual enrollment. So we were able to get funds together, and we’re actually providing incentives for teachers to get certified. They have to do that. They have to pay to get certified. So we’re helping them get certified. Our goal is to get get them certified through the system, and then next year, bring those numbers up again. But it’s an interesting sort of process, from where we started with us in Nashville, looking at how we can work together, to today, looking at very specific numbers and the families that we’re helping on a generational basis.
Brandon Burton 27:02 Yeah, well, that goes back to, you know, raising the tide, you know, raises all ships as well. So in both of these programs, I see examples of that. So with this one, you’re focused on the employers making sure they have the pipeline coming in, but in doing, in focusing on that, you’re enhancing the life of these young people going through high school and looking to the that next step in their their life, their, you know, work or college, or both and, or both, right?
Todd Sanders 27:28 I agree. And then the schools,
Brandon Burton 27:30 the schools are being elevated, and the teachers are being elevated. So all around it’s great. They
Todd Sanders 27:35 really are and, and I’ll tell you, you know, a big part of this was internships, right along with a dual enrollment opportunity. And you can imagine what the reaction is from a lot of businesses when you tell them we want to live and have some seniors come in and do an internship, especially in areas like healthcare or or advanced manufacturing, like Honeywell. And I’ll use Honeywell as the example. They were very polite, and they said no, and we finally convinced them, three years ago to take three of our kids. And they said, okay, they have to be over 18, so they’re in their spring semester. We’ll take three. Let us see what happens. They took three, and at the end of it, they said, You know what these kids are, they’re pretty good. We’re gonna hire them. Awesome. So they hired these kids last year. They took six, and they erased the 18, the 18 year old rule. Well, let me fast forward to today. How many do you think they’re taking?
Brandon Burton 28:32 I I’m gonna say at least 12, if you just keep doubling, right? Or is 24 How many years is this now? This will be the third year. Third years, I’m gonna, I’m gonna guess 1288,
Todd Sanders 28:45 we’re taking 88 of our kids now. Here’s the here’s the awesome. I’m gonna bring this all back to where I started, in terms of abundance. All right, so here’s, here’s the story. So earlier last month, we met with the representative money well, when he was telling us that they’re gonna increase to 88 and he said, I need to tell you what happened in that first cohort of kids, there was one kid who was on the bubble, looks like he wasn’t going to graduate. He wasn’t engaged. High School just wasn’t his thing. And the school and Honeywell decided, let’s let’s see what happens. Well, you know what happened, right? Honeywell hired him at the end because it really seemed to work. Well, guess what? Today? Well, not today. Last month, he brought his he bought a house for his family. Wow, yeah. I mean, think about that as a kid who’s on the bubble, probably not going to graduate all of a sudden, he’s got this incredible job of Honeywell. And today, I mean, my kid’s 20, he’s not buying a house for his family. This kid just bought a house for his family. That’s not political, that’s amazing. How do we start to create an abundance mentality in our community and really create opportunity for everybody, including Honeywell, by the way,
Brandon Burton 29:54 yes, wow. That just blows my mind. The 88 interns now that great story, great. Success, yeah,
Todd Sanders 30:01 a lot of those. Yeah, I
Brandon Burton 30:03 bet we can go on for a couple hours trying to some great stories. And I’d love
Todd Sanders 30:08 to say that, you know, kudos to the chamber, no, kudos to those companies. CVS just did 20. Yeah? So it’s great to, it’s great to see that impact, and it’s great to see companies stepping up like that, yeah,
Brandon Burton 30:19 well, and for those who do go the route of higher education after high school. It’s a huge help to have those dual credits going into college and university, and being able to kind of have that head start. And my son just graduated, and he got it, got out of high school with 30 college credits, like, that’s awesome going into as a sophomore, right? So it’s
Todd Sanders 30:41 you think about the financially for you. I mean, that’s yeah, you just saved
Brandon Burton 30:45 a year. Yeah? I recognize it, yes, yeah. Well, Todd, I like asking, especially as a chamber of the year finalist, for listeners who are tuning in, what kind of tip or action item might you have to share with them as they look to take their chamber up to the next level?
Todd Sanders 31:06 Well, I, you know, I’ll go back to the 10 years ago when we decided that we wanted to, we needed to raise some money to make this happen. I think our goal was, was, was about a million dollars and and that was, that’s a big number. It’s a big number today. And as we were talking to business leaders, I think there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s always a lot of skepticism about a new program, and you’re coming here to help. And we hear this all the time. And I think one of the things that we said that I think made a big difference when we when we made our pitch, I said, Look, something in what I’ve just talked about is going to go wrong. Something’s not going to work. I promise you that is going to happen. But I’m also going to promise you that we’re going to take that, we’re going to learn from it, and then we’re going to pivot, and we’re going to make sure it does work. And I think we’ve, we’ve gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable, and that’s in all parts of our chamber. I mean, it’s so easy to say, I don’t know, that’s kind of scary. Well, we maybe we tried that before, or that’s never going to work, or we’ve always done it this way. We do it too, but if you give yourself permission to fail, you’re going to succeed.
Brandon Burton 32:18 Yeah, I love that. If you give yourself permission to fail, you’re going to succeed. It’s that’s a t shirt. That’s a t shirt, right? Yeah, so,
Todd Sanders 32:26 but you fail a lot and and that that’s what makes us successful. It’s
Brandon Burton 32:31 right. That’s right. You learn, right? You bet. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.
Todd Sanders 32:41 Well, you know, I really feel like chambers are in such a good place right now. I feel like, you know, we’re looking at ourselves in a way that is probably different than we had even 10 years ago. You mentioned foundations. I think there’s a renewed emphasis on how we are really the heart of our economies. And I think probably covid was terrible. We wouldn’t want to go through it again. But I think covid really gave us a moment to really understand the importance that chambers serve in our communities. We are at the heart of our economies and our communities. And that certainly was reinforced during that time, and I think it gave us a new sense of what we need to be and how we need to do things, and how we talk about ourselves. We are economic developers. That’s chambers are the original economic developers. I don’t care how you slice it, that’s how the community sees us now. I think that’s tremendous, but we’re also taking that a step further and looking at things that we hadn’t traditionally looked at, like, like education, like foundation work. And I gotta tell you, I love this industry and and I’m so proud to be a part of it.
Brandon Burton 33:53 I love that, yes, every chamber is an economic development. Doesn’t matter what the city contract says you are involved in developing the economy in your community. Well, Todd, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn how you guys are doing things there in Phoenix, and maybe dig in a little deeper. Where would you point them? Absolutely
Todd Sanders 34:17 Happy. Happy to help on that side as well. You can also, you can always go to our website, PhoenixChamber.com a lot of information there about all the programs we talked about, including a few others that I didn’t my email address is tsanders@phoenixchamber.com so feel free to reach out there as well. And then, certainly if you want to have a conversation, 602-495-6460, 495-6460,
Brandon Burton 34:43 that’s perfect. We will get that in our show notes for this episode too, to make it easy to reference and have people pull it up and find you there. But Todd, this has been great having you on Chamber Chat Podcast. I wish you and your team the best of luck in Dallas as Chamber of the Year, and keep up the great work. Work you guys are making a huge impact.
Todd Sanders 35:01 Well, thank you. We will look forward to seeing you
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Brandon Burton 0:00 This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist Series. And our guest for this episode is Mark Owens. Mark is the President and CEO of the Greater Winston Salem, Inc. Mark has over 14 years experience building communities through economic development. He was named president CEO of Winston Salem chamber, now greater Winston Salem Inc in 2017 and previously served as president and CEO of the greater Greer chamber in South Carolina. Mark is actively involved in the community in Winston Salem and forcep County, serving on the board of directors at Novant Health Forces Medical Center and the Piedmont Triad partnership, among others. Nationally, he serves on the board of directors for ACCE. He’s a graduate of Presbyterian College and the US Chamber Institute for organizational management, and he holds his CCE designation. Mark is a native of Charleston, South Carolina, and he is and his wife melody, have a son named Luke and a golden doodle named boots mark. Welcome to the chamber tap podcast. First of all, congratulations to you and your team. It’s a great accomplishment to be named as a chamber the year finalist. 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.
Mark Owens 2:29 Yeah, thank you, Brandon. I really appreciate what you do for our industry. And having the opportunity to be on this podcast, it’s great to to meet everybody through through this platform, and looking forward to meeting others in person coming up soon. We’re really proud of greater Winston to be one of the finalists, and really honored to be a part of this recognition. And it’s been a great a great process, a great journey as a team. And we’ll look forward to sharing a little bit about that with you today. A little bit about me. Fun fact, wow. I think maybe when I was at Presbyterian College, I played soccer there and was able to get an internship at this thing called a chamber of commerce, which I had never heard of before. And so I started as an intern, and then actually worked part time for a year while I was in school at the Chamber of Commerce in Lawrence County, South Carolina. And so work based learning is near and dear to my heart and provided an opportunity for me to to discover an industry I never even knew about as a young person. So internship is is probably that fun fact about me being in a chamber to start off?
Brandon Burton 3:35 Yeah, that’s awesome. You’re sort of a product of the programs that are being modeled at your chamber now. And that’s a that’s awesome. A lot of people find chamber work by accident, but that’s right, that’s about as intentional as you can be doing an internship. So that’s that is a fun fact. Well, tell us a little bit about greater Winston, Salem, Inc, just size, staff, budget, scope of work to set the stage for our discussion.
Mark Owens 4:05 Yeah, absolutely. So we are here in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and greater Winston Salem, Inc was originally the greater Winston Salem Chamber of Commerce. Technically, we are 138 years old. Our chamber existed before Winston and Salem became one city, they were two separate cities. So our chamber claims a little bit of responsibility for bringing those cities together 100 years ago, but our organization is greater Winston Salem inquire the combination of the Chamber of Commerce and the economic development organization for the community. That was a merger that took place in 2019 I moved to Winston Salem in December of 2017, and in 2019 our boards voted to merge economic development back into the chamber of commerce and evolve our name to greater Winston Salem, Inc. Little do we know that our bylaws say our first day is literally April Fools of 2020. And so during covid, I was the only person in the office on the first day of this new, newly named organization. But our team is really focused on three main things. Our vision statement for 2030 which is to be the top mid sized city in the southeast, to be a more equitable community, and to be the best place to raise a family. And we really shape everything we do around that. We have 16 team members here at greater Winston, Salem Inc, about a $3 million budget, and when we started, we were at about 1.7 million. So we’ve had a lot of growth, not just economic development, but specifically workforce and utilizing grant opportunities, which I know we’ll talk about here in a few minutes, but we have a great board, a 29 member board of directors, a community that was built on textile and tobacco, and we’re evolving into biotech, life science and advanced manufacturing being a key component of our membership base. We have 848 members, so we are a growing community, but really tied to the fabric of Winston sale with our rich history, and it’s a great place to be. That’s awesome. Yeah, I
Brandon Burton 6:08 love these communities that have such a rich history. To be able to go back 138 years and be able to see the those beginnings, and see how the communities evolve, see how the economy has evolved, technologies, all these different things, and to be able to be there for the growth and and championing, championing, championing the cause and change, right? So in these chamber, the year finalist episodes, I really like focusing the majority of our time on the programs that were submitted, and your chamber the year application and kind of how they came to be, the history leading up to them, the impact they’re making in your community. And we’ll dive into those programs as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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All right. Mark, we’re back. Let’s let’s jump into the first program that was submitted on your your chamber the year application, if you can tell us what it is and kind of its origins and the momentum that it’s built over time. Yeah,
Mark Owens 8:48 I’m going to start with our Career Ready youth part of our program, and that’s something that’s been really a key component to our community. And what we do at greater with cell make you heard earlier that I was a former intern, work based learning is is really important to me, but our organization has been involved with working with our young people, specifically K through 12, for a long time now, since the the late 90s, we have been contracted by our K through 12 school system to do career readiness and career exploration. We also used to do some third grade reading, coaching, coordination, but since our school district has taken that in house, we’ve expanded what we do as we work on really feeling that start of the funnel of talent pipeline. We know by talking with our business community that access to top talent is a key factor for community and economic development for all of our communities, not just for today, but for tomorrow. And being able to get our community businesses to buy into our goals of being the top, mid sized city, that means we have to retain and prepare our young people for this emerging, evolving economy that we sit in our office. Sits in a factory that used to make cigarettes, and now there’s scientists in here with us doing research on how to regrow organs. And just that evolution of the economy of Winston Salem is why we’ve got to start preparing our young people for the work for tomorrow. So a few of the things that we do, one of which we start with our eighth and 10th graders, we call it wow. It’s called World of Work. We rent out our Coliseum or Wake Forest University, plays basketball, and every eighth grader and every 10th grader in Forsyth County comes through a career fair over a two day period. We’re talking almost 9000 students come through over those two days to see what kind of career paths are out there. We do that about a month before they sign up for CTE classes, because in our community, 99% of students that take CTE programmings Career and Technical Education graduate, as opposed to our graduation rate, which is at an all time high, at 86% so we know that career and technology technology education. And Technical Education provides a path forward in the future of the workforce. It creates more graduates, and it gets those young people ready for that next step. So after World of Work, what do we do next? We have a program called Aspire. It’s for our 11th and 12th graders. It’s paid internships, and we’ve started by focusing at our Title One schools. So those schools that have been traditionally underserved, and these students go through paid internships, $15 an hour, where we receive grants. And those grants, we reimburse the companies for paying for those young people up to $15 an hour for 100 hour internship. So we believe that these young people, you know, have an option to go work, and some are providing in, you know, for family household income. So we believe in paid internships and find ways to really encourage those young people to go explore, whether it’s at Novant Health or atrium health or hospital systems, whether it’s with our banks like truist and Bank of America, or whether it’s in small businesses or startups, we have programs where we can, we can supplement those companies that are paying for these interns and reimburse them. That program was launched, but we noticed something. We noticed that our students needed a little more preparation before they went into the workplace. So we launched our work ready certificate, where now we have a 15 hour credit contact to our credential program, where we do soft skills, mock interviews, resumes, and if they create finish those 15 hours of the credential program, they also receive a stipend where we partner with local big box retailers For Dress for Success program. So we provide them with dollars to go dress and be ready for the the internship placement that they receive. So now we have graduates going through that that are getting placed in their internship program. And we also noticed that we had some students that just needed a little extra mentorship. And that’s where senior Academy comes in, and senior Academy is for mostly for seniors and some juniors that have been identified by their guidance counselors as as maybe just needing a little extra motivation to get to graduation. So we recruit businesses, business members and individuals that want to do one on one mentorship with high school students, and we help them get over the graduation line. We have about 140 students each year, a part of senior Academy, and we’ve about a 98 to 99% graduation rate of those, one on one mentors. So we’re really looking at this career ready youth as an opportunity to look at the entire individual and say from eighth grade on that there’s a there’s a pipeline, there’s a pathway that’s clearly laid out for everybody in our community to participate, not just the individuals that have more resources. And I think that’s been really important in what we’re doing. We know our companies need this workforce of tomorrow, but we also know it’s the right thing for our community to continue to grow and develop young, talented, diverse leaders. And this program is so impactful. It’s, it’s one of our favorite things to do when we go to those graduations and those ceremonies where we see individuals get those credentials, it’s really exciting. That is
Brandon Burton 14:13 awesome. Yeah, I’ve heard of a lot of, you know, career readiness, you know, programs that chambers have done, and they’ll list a couple things, and then you kept saying, and then it leads to this, and then it leads to this, and then it leads to and I love how it’s just all packed together, and it is a roadmap that leads to success. I was curious with the Aspire, with the paid internships, are there certain business types that you’re trying to match them up with or is it open to any Chamber members that want to offer internships? Or how do you go about promoting that and putting those offerings out there?
Mark Owens 14:47 Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s open to every business in the community and all of our Chamber members. So we we really actually target companies in our retention visits. We visit with our. Top 150 employers every year, and we talk to them about their needs and ask them to participate. Of course, there’s some challenges, if in manufacturing and automotive spaces, where you have OSHA situations and safety, but we really actually want it to be, you know, what I would call those office related jobs, or those jobs that they have an interest in, like construction working in construction management or in a law firm. Our real goal is that these young people dream and hope and see what’s out there and and that they get this opportunity to be exposed to new career paths that they maybe thought weren’t attainable. We want every student to feel like they have the opportunity to have an internship and understand what it’s like to work in an office or work in management, or work at a bank or or work at a hospital. And I think one of the biggest surprises Brandon that we’ve had is that some of our young people that have done paid internships at the hospital, we’ve had 10 students at the hospital, is hired on part time to continue that after the internship, so they’ve gotten great career opportunities and jobs right off the bat, and it’s really something that we weren’t expecting to happen. But students are saying, you know, I never knew that I could work at a hospital. I didn’t think that was for me. And now there’s opportunities that open those doors and provide opportunity beyond just what they could dream. So we try to open it up for everybody, but it’s really intentional in our marketing efforts, and one on one communication, we really go ask, and we tell the company that, hey, we’re going to reimburse you. There’s no cost to you, just your time. And that’s really been a great thing to break down the barrier. And one last thing I’ll say on that Brandon, we also provide transportation. So if these young people don’t have transportation, we’ve partnered with a local, you know, what we call micro transit company, that can go pick up these young people and take them to and from their jobs. And so that’s been a barrier that we’ve been able to eliminate in this process.
Brandon Burton 16:56 That’s awesome. I love the exposure and getting these young people exposed to different career paths and opportunities and show them what’s possible, but also give them a taste of what it’s like to be in that setting. Because maybe they hate it, maybe they intern at a law office and think I don’t want to go to law school and spend hundreds of 1000s of dollars in student debt, but to be able to really set them on a course of what it is that they want to do and what they don’t want to do, I think it’s just as important, man. You
Mark Owens 17:27 took the words out of my mouth. We just talked about that this morning. We had an intern here working with us, and I said the same thing, you may find that you love it. You might might find out it’s not for you. And both things are incredibly valuable. So you’re right, it just gives the gives them an opportunity to see what’s out there and and try it before they go down that pathway. And if, if they do like it, then that’s where, you know, this second program we’ll talk about in a second kind of ties in, because we don’t want that pipeline to stop at one spot. We want to be able to help those students progress
Brandon Burton 18:01 in their careers. That’s right. Now, you guys are obviously about stacking these programs on top of each other, so let’s, let’s see where this takes us. So they graduate. You know, they’ve had these internships, they’ve got the Work Ready certificate to be ready for those internships, or dressing for success. They graduate now. What now? How do you continue them along that
Mark Owens 18:21 path? Yeah, it’s this is an area where I do hope we can improve a little bit, because there there may be some leakage in the pipeline here when when they graduate and go to school or go in the workforce, it’s hard to track where everybody goes and stay in touch, but that’s where this next program for scythe works comes into play. And what we saw is that we have a lot of organizations in our community, probably like yours, that are listening, that do workforce development or some component, but we’re not as coordinated as we could be. We, you know, you’re you’re sending somebody who’s looking for a job opportunity or more training or job interview skills or whatever it is. You may send them to two to three, four locations just to to fulfill and get all the knowledge they need. So we applied as a group to the county for for an ARPA grant through the American rescue plan act, and for what’s called for scythe works. What that is, it’s the county. It’s us. Is greater in salmon. It’s our goodwill partners. It’s our school system and our community college for site tech, the five of us are all on this grant, and it’s created a one stop workforce hub location. We physically moved our chamber office in with the career and workforce team of Forsyth Tech here in innovation quarter on Winston Salem, we share an office every Wednesdays. Walk in Wednesday people can come in any day, but we we target Wednesdays for one on one, career coaching, interview, training, access to scholarships to go to for site, tech, whatever it may be to help them access new openings. In addition to hosting seven seminars a month for the community, they’re all free of charge through the. Grant to be able to talk about re entry after maybe something that happened in the law or or stepping away to be a stay at home parent, re entering the workforce or hiring individuals with neurodiversity issues. So there’s a lot of great things that we’re doing there. We also created forsythworks nc.com, which is a one stop shop for job posting. We’re aggregating job postings that we’re seeing through indeed and other places all to one site, so somebody can go to that site say, hey, I’m interested in this job. Here’s the training that it would take. Here’s how I can go ahead and register for that training, or register for classes for SciTech or Goodwill’s offering this program. Here’s the expected salary range in that industry field. It’s really a way to kind of come alongside an individual specifically as the American rescue plan act designates qualified census tracks more underserved communities to really help and create economic mobility. That’s one thing that we’re really passionate about, is be a more equitable community, as you heard in our vision, and we believe we can do that through economic mobility. So access is key to this. So we’re doing that in English and in Spanish, and trying to make sure everybody has access to the information, the training, the skills and the tools, so that ultimately they get that career that changes their lives and their family’s lives. So we’re really, are of trying to stack, to be honest with you, we keep finding challenges, and that’s why we keep trying to add on to it. If we, if we kind of just pieced it together, we may not have it as comprehensive, and we’re not done. We want to keep growing and find new solutions, but we’re really proud of that partnership. So now we’re all working together, and everybody is on the same page, going in the same direction, and it’s creating some impact. It’s only been launched for about a year, and so we’re starting to see some great metrics come in,
Brandon Burton 21:49 awesome so I’m curious with the job posting site, the reference so it’s aggregating from all these different resources of job postings and putting into the one, one stop shop to be able to find a job in the community. Is there a certain platform you guys are using? Is it a proprietary thing? Or how are you aggregating all these different job postings? Well,
Mark Owens 22:10 you know that this one, you have people on your team that are smarter than you, so I’m not sure I’m the best. Then I can tell you, it’s an RSS feed we’re pulling mostly from indeed, but we also have in our, I think it’s a WordPress designed website to where we have a job board in there, and we give access to all of our partners to be able to enter it in. So most chambers, right, probably have job boards that your members can post on for free or for cost, or based off of a tier, we have that as well. So it’s really just kind of pulling all of that into one page. Sometimes the job will click you and take you to an indeed, posting. Sometimes it’ll take you straight to a company’s website. But it’s really designed to try to help the seeker go to one place, instead of needing to carve out and go to different sites to do that. Yeah. So
Brandon Burton 23:03 it sounds like you hire well as well.
Mark Owens 23:06 You have a great team. I can say RSS feed and WordPress. If you ask me how to do the those things, that’s not me. But I know, I know the little, really good team that makes all this possible. For sure,
Brandon Burton 23:19 absolutely. The key thing is that it works. So that’s, right, works. Yeah, that’s awesome. So I like asking, especially with you being a chamber, that you’re a finalist. I mean, you guys are kind of top of the game right now for chambers that are listening and wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal?
Mark Owens 23:43 Yeah, that’s a really good question. I first want to just say our board and our staff that’s doing this amazing work together, and what it’s been really fun about this process, and I think kind of, as part of my answer to your question is we didn’t set out to go try to win an award. We tried to set out to make a difference. And I think whatever your community is facing, it’s going to be different for everybody. And so the first thing we did was go ask and listen and adapt. And I think that would be my first thing is go go together with partners and go find out what your members and your businesses are facing. We we sometimes get caught up thinking we know what our businesses and our members need, instead of listening first. So I think our first step was listening and then set out to really adapt and evolve and sell mission investments, not just transactional memberships, and really try to find a way to say, hey, we’re moving the community forward through our work, and we want you to be a part of that. So honestly, I would say, Put your head down a little bit. Go, ask. Go. Listen, it doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve been working on this. We’re honest. Were a little surprised to be a finalist. We again. We didn’t set out for for this as our goal, but the process of going through this has sharpened us even more. Has helped us put our plans together and and really audit ourselves and say, What are we doing? What are we doing? Well, what can we improve on? And I would just the last thing I would say is don’t be afraid to try something. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, you can try something again, but it’s really exciting, and I’m really thankful for ACCE, the regional associations, chamber, chat, podcast, sharing ideas, to be able to listen and find new ideas is really impactful. And I just encourage you to start by saying, we think we know what we’re doing, but let’s go ask and confirm that with our businesses and make sure we’re providing the value that they want, yeah,
Brandon Burton 25:50 and that I can appreciate. You know, the the application process, and like you said, not going out to to win an award, but the process has sharpened you to refine things, and I can see where you can look at all your programs at work and be able to almost organize them in a way that makes more sense, on a kind of a flow chart, if you will, that maybe that structure has always been there, but to see it laid out and presented in a way that makes sense, I think, really helps to get everybody on board and and, like you said, to be able to sell the mission of The Chamber and what you guys are after, rather than transactional members. So that’s very well said.
Mark Owens 26:26 Thank you. Yeah, and I just want the listeners to know, like, I worked in a smaller chamber with five people. I worked my first job was two and a half people. I was the half as an intern. I think there’s so many skills that transfer from small and larger chambers. I mean, it’s different challenges, but at the end of the day, if we all can just listen to our community members roll our sleeves up and try to get after it. And really, I know it’s hard sometimes to pause and work on your chamber instead of just in it, but I think that’s so important to step back, and this process has helped us to really, like I said, audit what we’re doing. Where are our gaps? What can we improve? And I think if you take that time to do that, those those retreats, or whatever it may be, it really sets you up for success. And your community will see that, and your businesses will will invest in you.
Brandon Burton 27:17 Yeah, I think that’s wise. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Mark Owens 27:29 Yeah, this is a great question, and it’s actually something that I think about a lot and read about with the horizon initiative and other things a lot, and it’s chambers are evolving. We’ve been around for a really long time, and I think we’ll be around for a really long time, but we all know that, as you know, Zoom has changed what we do. Let’s just call what it is we used to be in person all the time. You got to adapt and how you engage. And I think the future of chambers really, really is going to be focused around talent. And I really believe that networking and marketing and membership, activities and events is the bread and butter, and it’s crucial. But if we can figure out as an industry how to maximize our value as it relates to talent, attraction, retention and development, that’s an area that’s so important for our businesses across the country right now, we all know that shortage and how hard it is to do it with our own teams. Think about our businesses and what they’re facing in this if we can help solve that problem, or even just ease the tension around talent development, how can we continue to adapt? But I do you know, honestly want to it’s going to be harder and harder to get memberships. You know, companies are tighter, especially post pandemic, it’s tighter membership numbers take more effort to do. And I fully believe in selling a vision and why you’re doing things, not just what you get back for it. And I think that’s been the area that I think if our industry can continue to push forward on selling the vision and selling the balance of Community and Economic Development together, that’s where the future of successful chambers are going to go. And you know, we can’t be all things to everybody, but we can guide a community forward and try to be catalytic leaders in our community, get everybody on the same page. So it’s going to be a challenge. We’re going to be learning from each other. And can’t wait to listen to more episodes, to steal ideas from from my colleagues, for sure.
Brandon Burton 29:30 That’s right. It’s your your weekly R and D resource, right
Mark Owens 29:34 here. That’s right.
Brandon Burton 29:36 Well, Mark is as as we wrap up, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect to learn more. How about about how you guys are doing things? Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect? Yeah, I
Mark Owens 29:51 would be honored to connect just when, when you email or LinkedIn message, we know I’m going to have questions for you too. So prepare for a two way conversation. But it’s Mark Owens, markowens@winstonsalem.com or I’m on LinkedIn as Mark Owens with Greater Winston Salem Inc, those are the two I’m probably monitor the closest, and would love to reach out, connect and and really appreciate the opportunity to share what our team and our communities doing. I love this industry as somebody who’s been in it since an intern, and hopefully we can continue to to open the doors for future people to come in and be a part of this. But look forward to connecting
Brandon Burton 30:33 absolutely I’ll I’ll get that in our show notes for this episode make it easy to find and and shoot that email or click that LinkedIn link and connect with you, but Mark, this has been great having you on the podcast again. Congratulations to you and your team. I wish you guys the best of luck in Dallas as chamber of the year.
Mark Owens 30:52 Thanks, Brandon. Appreciate being with you. If
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