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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 2025 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist Series. And our guest for this episode is Scott Harper, representing the Conroe/Lake Conroe Chamber of Commerce in Texas as a 2025 Chamber of the Year Finalist. But Scott is currently the president of the Conroe/Lake Conroe Chamber of Commerce, bringing over 26 years of non profit experience to the role. He’s worked with various organizations, including the YMCA in Tampa and Houston, where he held positions such as executive director district, Vice President and Vice President of major gifts. A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi with a degree in sports management and recreation, Scott is known for his relationship building skills and as a strong community leader, passionate about supporting others outside of work, he’s actively involved in volunteering with non profit boards and community organizations. He’s married to his college sweetheart, Jennifer, and together, they have two children, and when they’re when he’s not working, they run a horse boarding facility rebel ranch in Montgomery, Texas, where they live with their rescue dogs, cats and horses. But Scott, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. First of all, congratulations to you and your team as being selected as chamber of the year finalists. Love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Scott Harper 2:39
Yeah, thanks, Brandon, thanks for having me. We are excited to be a finalist. We had an amazing year, and we’re excited on the next steps, and excited to go to Philadelphia to see if we can, you know, bring it home to the to the Conroe area. Lot of hard work with the team and the board to make that happen. Interesting fact with me. You know, when we do the two, two truths and a lie, one of them, the truths have been that I was in a bridal magazine back in the day, and I’ve got to play Augusta National nine times. So that’s a pretty, pretty good thing, if you like, if you like golf,
Brandon Burton 3:22
yeah, hopefully people are taking notes, in case they’re in a room with you at the conference, and then you guys end up playing two truths and a lie, they can call you out. That’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Conroe Lake Conroe chamber, just to kind of set the stage for our conversation today. It always helps to know, you know, what type of work you guys are involved with, what kind of staff, size and budget, that sort of thing, to set the stage for us?
Scott Harper 3:49
Yeah, sure. So I’ve been with the chamber here going on, just hit my eighth year. I’ve actually done that in two different two different stages. Came to the chamber, you know, for four years, went back to the Y for about six, then came back to the chamber for the next four. You know, we’ve grown substantially. So this finished last year 2024 of $1.6 million budget, which is more than double than what it was in 2021 so we’ve had a great, great surge. We have a staff of eight full time staff. We currently have three part time staff as well. And part of that staff increase was we had a merger last year. We took on the operations of the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce, which were some neighbors of ours, very close. You had mentioned, I live in Montgomery, and my kids went to Montgomery High School, and so we had a lot of ties. They were very, very close area to Conroe. So that really was a strategic opportunity for us, but we were able to absorb their staff, keep them on staff, realign their. Uh, their responsibilities, and so that’s kind of where we are. We opened a welcome center out there as kind of a pseudo, a chamber presence, but it’s really about Montgomery, and we’re still kind of navigating that opportunity, but that’s been, it’s been a great, a great segue to keep a relationship in that in that area, even though we operate from the Conroe area as their chamber. But do number of events? There 27 board members, and then we have about 10 ex officios that come in that are different representations of the school districts. We serve three different school districts. Count, you know, county seat. So our county judge and their representatives are there as well, along with our elected officials have representation as well. So it’s a, you know, we’ve gone through a lot and lot of change and a lot of growth. Montgomery county is always one of the largest, fastest growing counties, and Conroe has been one of the fastest growing cities. If it’s not the top, it’s in the top 10 each year. So we, our chamber is finally starting to mirror that growth when it comes to our membership, and then that’s able, you know, allows us to do a lot of other things, to really focus on the initiatives that I’m know, we’ll talk about here in a little bit more than being in an event chamber, you know, we do an event called lobster fest, where we’ll see the 1000 people for steak and lobster dinner play a golf tournament. It’s our biggest fundraiser. And when I say, hey, you know about the Conroe chamber, yeah, you do lobster fest, we do a lot more than and that shift really started last year after the merger, and being able to put some of the new staff in some other roles to really start focusing on our initiatives. And that was elevated is, again, while we were redoing our strategic plan. So we’re halfway through the first year of our new three year strategic plan, so a lot of things came together this last year, and I think that’s why it aligned us to have a have a pretty good shot at going to and, you know, getting invited to Philly, I think that’s positioned as well.
Brandon Burton 7:02
Yeah, absolutely, man, as you’re talking about the chamber and they can, you know, we could do probably four or five other, you know, topics of a podcast episode, from, you know, working with the large board to multiple school districts to growth with revenue, to mergers, you know, acquiring other like, we can go down all sorts of rabbit holes. But for the for the sake of our conversation today, we’ll, we’ll stick with the two topics that you the two programs, rather that you guys submitted on your chamber of the year application, and we’ll dive in deep on those as soon as we get bit, as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 10:26
All right, Scott, we are back, as I mentioned before the break, on these chamber of the year finalist episodes. I’d like to dive in on the programs that you guys submitted on your chamber of the year application. I don’t know if you have a preference on which of the two programs you want to address first, and to kind of target first, but I’ll let you make the call on which of those two programs you want to cover first. Yeah, I
Scott Harper 10:49
think, well, I mean, they’re both very, very important and serve two different, two different huge needs in our community. But I think we’ll start with the youth to Career Fair first, and then we’ll shift to the other one that we’re going to actually highlight at the showcase in Philadelphia, a youth to career fair, was actually a model that was done by an area Chamber over in the college, college station Bryan area. And it’s really as we work with different school districts, we have a Workforce Committee, and that was being driven by Dr Rebecca Riley, who was the president of Lone Star College Montgomery, and really got some great, great synergy going. But what with all the data that they do and to get back, we just really identified gaps, soft skills, all the different things that the workforce was not getting through the process, and so our team got together and with the end result of trying to create and improve the relationships we have with our manufacturers and our big distribution centers and different things we have in our area, to get internships and get these kids, when in there in high school, into Some practicum hours that they can, that they can really lean on before they go into college. Well, we also figured that if you’re going to try to fix the the paradigm shift, you have to go earlier. And so we started working on this model, like I said, with another another chamber was doing, and it’s called youth to career fair, and it’s to focus on seventh and eighth graders that are before they have to pick the tracks that they’re going to go into in the high school. And once they pick those tracks, they’re kind of stuck. And we have some communities are very highly economically disadvantaged, and we’re trying to also, you know, one of the terms we used in the why is, how do we break the generational poverty cycle? Some of these kids, they don’t have the resources. They might be seeing grandmother and granddad doing a certain thing, and then their parents did the same thing, and then they figure, well, I have to do that, because that’s what my you know, all my family is doing, and we’re trying to just dangle a different carrot of motivation, that there are different things out there. So we host a job fair every every January, and bring all of our vendors in, and they’re there looking for their employees. And so in the fall, it’s still a job fair, but we call it youth to career fair. And what they do, instead of interviewing, they are actually bringing all their tools and all the different things that they use in their jobs. So the robot, the robotic welding mechanism, the all the EMS, brings out, you know, they bring out the motorcycles, the horses, the SWAT stuff, the firefighters bring out the training gear, and the kids are able to replicate how heavy a hose gets at the further it goes. And so they’re able to do those things, cut locks off of gates, hospitality, How to Fold Napkins, how to set a place, setting, those type of things. And then we partner with our our Chamber members that are either some non profits or our Workforce Solutions, or spherions, our talent development groups, they’re doing soft skills. And so the kids have a passport, and they have to go around and get of the eight tracks. They have to go around and visit one of the those booths that are in those tracks. And then they at the soft skills. They have to look somebody in the eye and talk to them. They have to shake their hand. They have to talk about appropriate dress, where they have little cutouts laying on the table. And you, you build a professional look, if you’re, you know, and like, you put the suit on if you’re going to this type of interview, what you should wear. And they like, they put the suit on them and did different things. And it’s really interactive. It’s really cool. The feedback from the teachers, once the kids get back and what they start talking about was amazing. And just one quick example that changed the first year to the second year was the welding, the robotic welding group that came out, and it was all guys standing there, and that’s who he brought now. Of the girls in the in the class, and we were running about 1300 kids through this in one day. And so none of the girls stopped. And so the next year, he brought two female welders that he has, he it just didn’t work out schedule wise. And that was an amazing shift, because then girls were going to talk to them. And he’s like, she’s she’s my best welder, and so she was out there recruiting these young girls say, Hey, this is what I do. These are the things I made. And it really changed the concept in the field there. And then in the hospitality side, one of our local hotels actually put the list of their names. Of how many graduates from that high school now work there professionally. So we had Willis High School and Conroe High School represented, and they listed those kids names, and some of them were like, I know that guy. I know that person. And it was just a great way to connect. Every year it’s going to get better. We’re trying to figure out transportation is a huge deal, because all the schools, you know, they use the same busses, and they can’t take so many busses out of the sequence. It screws up the entire district. So we’re actually looking for this year transportation sponsors so we don’t have to deal with the school busses, and we can have our own busses and keep the kids there a little bit longer, and bring more kids in with that number of 1300 students, that’s only three junior highs, and that we have multiple more. So we’re looking at ways, how can we replicate that and get it to different parts of our of our county. But that’s it’s been a huge success for us, and it’s really a part of our workforce development pipeline, because these kids, as we relate to ACC ease horizon 2035, plan, these kids are still going to be within that 10 year window after they graduate from college. And so it’s really cool and very impactful. So we’re looking for that to continue to grow, and our job fair participants really enjoy it because they, you know, I told them treat this as an interview for, you know, you know, eight years from now, you know, finding that person and then to and it’s really opening those doors, as I alluded to before, about creating possible internships And practicum hours for these kids later on.
Brandon Burton 17:21
Yeah, did, did you mention where the what you use is a venue for
Scott Harper 17:25
this? Yeah, we use the Montgomery County Convention Center, so we’re able to partner with them. And then really, the only sheer expense we get that donated, which is really nice, but the only really expenses for us to feed the volunteers the CTE group Conroe high school actually designed their the T shirts. They have printing presses within the school. So they made T shirts for all the students that got their passport stamped. And so every kid got their passport stamped, so every kid got a t shirt. So as a way for us. You know, them not asking us, or you’re going through the philanthropic side of, how do we recognize sponsors the right way? So we had, we had all these T shirts with no sponsors on them, because they did it in house and didn’t really tell us that they were doing it. So they now know we’re going to have all the sponsors next year. But that’s a learning, you know, that’s a learning that they’re trying to do a great thing for the students, but they didn’t think through what it could have been. And, you know, to put the sponsors names on it, you know, the kids designed the design themselves. They printed them themselves. So that was, that was cool. But there’s one other level of, you know, execution that could have given that
Brandon Burton 18:41
absolutely, I love the example you shared with the robotic welding and not having any of the girls of the youth, you know, stopping at their booth, and then next year bringing two female employees they have and, you know, dei, depending on the context of when it’s brought in, Sometimes we’ll get, you know, some negative connotation with it, but that’s what I see, is as Dei, you know, if as these students pass by, they’re not giving any attention to the businesses where they can’t picture themselves working at because they don’t see anybody like them working there. So even just, you know, bringing in a couple female employees, you saw that difference of these, you know, young women stopping to learn about that as a career. That’s a great example. It was
Scott Harper 19:26
a game changer. The manager is like, I will never not bring a, you know, a female with me again, because he’s like, that really opened up the entire conversation for everyone in the room versus half the room. Yeah, there’s a learning for all of us. It’s very impactful.
Brandon Burton 19:43
Yeah, well, let’s shift gears to the other program that you highlighted on your application.
Scott Harper 19:49
Yeah, so the other one was called, it’s simply called chamber day, and it was actually brought to the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce prior to the merger. It was. From, from Brenham, from the Brenham area, and the Chamber of Commerce there, and the gentleman through the bank. And so he came on their board. He goes, Hey, I’d like to help lead this and champion this. And so they had it all Rolling and ready to go for the spring of 2024, we went through the merger. And there was some things that we wanted to make sure that we kept on the docket. Of just saying this, even at post merger, we’re still going to do these things. It’s very important. It’s and when she started announcing that, and we do a coalition meeting every quarter with all the chambers in our in our, in our in our county. And so we’re up to we keep everybody up to speed of what we’re doing. We share so many members, you know, and you know, so and so it’s a great time for us to share. And so I was like, that’s, that’s, that’s a great idea. I’m going to just watch this from the peripheral, see how it goes. And unbeknownst to me, when I was thinking that last the year before, then it ended up being one of our programs. And so she cascaded, essentially the Montgomery area. There’s two zip codes out there, and we had about 40 plus volunteers. They saw just around 200 different businesses all in the afternoon, and just really gathered a lot of great data. And it was called chamber day, just to let people know that the chamber was coming, to give you, just to ask you some basic questions of what your pain points were, and those type of things. And the information we came back was amazing. Just, you know, from some of it, we kind of knew of property taxes, different things that are really impacting our small businesses. But we had to, you know, just a lot of topics that came up, and we were able to move some of those topics into different committees that we did as well. And so that’s what we submitted as a part of that. And then during the application process, we actually had the second year rotation of this. And so when this comes up in our interview, I’m going to be able to highlight. This is what we incubated the first year, and then this is what it’s already turned into, and it just happened two months ago last month. So we doubled. We right at 100 went from 40 to 100 volunteers, over 400 different businesses were visited in the in Montgomery, Conroe and Willis. We partnered with the montgomery county Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to work the corridor of Frazier Street, which is predominantly the Hispanic corridor for for business, for the small businesses, and blew it out of the water. And so one of the things, and it’s flexible as we are, you know, we’re really trying to stay ahead of things. And one of our mottos is we lead from the front. We had the gentleman that led the Texas Workforce Commission. He was our monthly speaker right before this event, and he was talking about the soft skills, the skills gaps so quickly before we are Shannon are ready to go, just hadn’t made the copies. We changed a couple of the questions on our survey for for this event, and it really highlighted what those what those issues were. And it was those soft skills, the skills gaps and and, but also, with all the uncertainty in the economic world, everyone that we well, 67% of the businesses felt a positive trend, that they were going to be in a better place this next year than they were this past year. So they have a positive outlook, regardless of all the banter and the political positioning. Each side does that they they felt really good about the economy stabilizing and moving forward versus how they felt pre election. And so that was that was positive. And so we just see that continuing to grow. The gentleman who brought that over from the montgomery area Chamber helped us volunteer again. He’s like, it felt like we were 10 years ahead of this program doing it our first year, versus what the original concept was with the other chamber and the other location, and the fact that we took action with all our findings some chambers, unfortunately, if it’s resources or whatever, they do something in theory, to check a box to say, Yes, we did this to help the community. But if you don’t follow through with it and act on the information that you have, there’s it’s not really impactful. And so we, we don’t check boxes, we get things done. And now this taking this information and putting giving it to another committee we have with our professional business development group, and that we do monthly educational seminars, and so now we’re looking at these skills gaps, and what are the ones leading, the leading ones that we need to bring some more specialized speakers in to talk about. And there are actually, which is, I think one of the biggest takeaways is our workforce development committee is going to create a kind of an. Academy for soft skills. So anyone going through, if they’re already a chamber member and they’ve got new employees, we’re going to develop an academy for soft skills and different things to where, when they come through, that they get some sort of certificate of completion or whatever, that the basics have been covered. And then also, as it as this grows, when they go to our job fair in January, all of the all of the vendors there will know, if they have this on their resume, that they’ve gone through the chambers. We’re going to call it sore. And I totally blanked on the acronym. I’ll get it. I’ll get it to you. But it is just based off of, you know, for them to go through job fairs have something on their resume already that has already tackled one of the biggest issues our businesses are saying it is, is soft skills and communication skills, those type of things, and that they’ve gone through a training shows that they have initiative, but it really shows that the Chamber has responded to a community need. And I think that’s something that we’re going to start seeing in these next couple years, the focus and the power of us listening to some data and then having action on it within a couple of months already, of how we can move forward to try to try to make an impact?
Brandon Burton 26:20
Yeah, I love those examples of being able to take that data and then do something with it, you know, move that trend. So maybe that 67% positive outlook will be 75% next year. And if you don’t do those things, and next time you go back on chamber day, next year, you’re going to hear about, you know, why am I telling you anything, if you’re not doing it
Scott Harper 26:39
right? We didn’t, we didn’t focus on it wasn’t about the chamber, like I said, But we asked, Would you like more information about the chamber? For those that weren’t members and those that were members, those volunteers do it, and thank them for being a member, but we were able to connect with all of them, follow up with our membership staff, and we’ve had a lot of conversions to new members as well, just because this was cool, thank you for doing this. We want to be a part of this more, and this is and so they’re being, they’re being, you know, onboarded as into a chamber relationship in a whole different way than what the traditional ones would be doing, because it’s specific to a need versus an event.
Brandon Burton 27:20
You’re not even talking about steak and lobster with them. Not yet. Yeah, not yet. So my mind just keeps going, you know, spinning around the logistics of this. So if you’ve got 100 volunteers, you know, how are you recruiting them? Where are they coming from? When they’ve got 400 plus businesses that are being visited, are they assign is each volunteer given three or four businesses to see, do they choose them? Like, how? How do the logistics of it all form to be able to make such an impact?
Scott Harper 27:49
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a huge endeavor. And Shannon Reed, who was the executive director of the montgomery area Chamber, is now in that role. And she takes care of that. She breaks it down by, like I said, either zip code, we had it down to shopping centers. We stayed away from the big box shopping centers because, you know, the the local, the local manager of of of a retail store is not going to have the pulse of the community like, you know, a business owner of a small business is, and so, because one corporate won’t let them say anything on anybody’s behalf, and two, so we, we were very strategic. And it was, it was a group of minimum of two people. Some had three, and they were, they were put out in just different geographical areas. We would pull a list she, you know, with, with AI and all this stuff, you can pretty much pinpoint everything she had Google Docs going on. So the app or the document that they were using was real time. So Shannon was back at a restaurant, one of our members, we did a kickoff lunch, and then they covered everything. The teams got together, and then they dispersed. And so as they’re doing each of the interviews, there’s a scribe and an interviewer, and the Scribe is just clicking yes, no, and then getting any of the information that they need to do it, and it’s automatically being embedded into Shannon’s master file. And then they, you know, they gave him a kind of a time limit, and they were able to go through that and get as many as they can during that time limit, somewhat longer, somewhat shorter, because some people like to talk. And a great example or and actually, the same is a great example. But a sad example is our friends for the montgomery county Hispanic Chamber. He’s like Scott, I couldn’t leave in my first I guess I was there. I was there 45 minutes, and he, she, he was telling me that the owner, Conroe PD, had just pulled somebody into the restaurant parking lot and pulled them over just because it was a speeding violation. Had nothing to do with the restaurant. Had. Do, but with this Mexican restaurant not saying they do or do not have undocumented workers for them, when they showed up to work, they thought they were being raided by ICE, yeah, so they didn’t come to work, and she didn’t have any workers, and she had to turn people away. And in the Hispanic community is very family oriented. And Miguel, the president of the montgomery county Hispanic Chambers, like, I had to sit there and talk to her, he goes. So I, you know, I cut, he goes. I said, that’s, that’s, that’s powerful stuff, man, you did the right thing. We’re not just there to sorry about your issue, answer our questions. Like, you really sat down with them. So it was very strategic. One thing that was kind of a funny learning, and like you know, is that we had 100 volunteers that represented their own businesses. We didn’t even survey them. And so that would have been, we’d have been 500 businesses versus the 400 something, if we would have just interviewed and asked the same questions to our volunteers. So we’re going to do that next year. You know, all this learning, right? Yeah, right in front of us. It was right in front of us. And then we didn’t even ask so, and then we had some other ones from the hospitals, doctors are not available. So can we get some? Can we do some subset special events to get their data, their feedback, and then an industrial park in the tech park, you could get past the security guard. So could we get the HR directors in a room prior to this or directly after that, and do that? And then everybody, after they were done by a certain time, they had a 30 minute window to get back to the same restaurant. We had a social hour, we talked about the results, since they were real time. And then she extracted all that, put a report together, and then we have that ready to go to kind of show the before and after, first year, second year. Impact of this event all coming from a merger. And, you know, and in the biggest takeaway too, is the other chambers in our community want to do this as well, and so we’re going to do literally chamber day of montgomery county in the next year or two, and have all that information, and we’ll break it down by precincts for the different commissioners we have. We can break it down by service area, by a chamber, by school district, whatever. But what a powerful tool to give our elected officials and say, Hey, these are the pain points for the entire county, and these are the ones specific to the district that are a little bit different than somebody else’s. And this is what the chambers are doing to combat that issue. And that’s that’s some that’s some synergy there, when you can start doing that. And so having us incubate that first. We’re very proud of that, and that’s why we submitted that. But as it continues to grow, it’s going to be a county wide and hopefully, maybe other chambers would want to get on board as well, because it’s so impactful. It’s part of the cultivation tool for our current members, but also a recruitment tool for future members.
Brandon Burton 32:57
Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s going to be a great presentation at head ACC, as you dive into that even more with the details and, and I imagine at the kickoff lunch, there’s maybe some, you know, base level of training, or some sort of, you know, here’s how the the Google doc works and, and, like you said, the interviewer and recorder and doing all that. So that’s a great program that that drives huge impact. So that’s awesome. As we start to wrap things up. Scott, I wanted to ask on behalf of listeners who are wanting to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you suggest for them as they work towards that goal?
Scott Harper 33:40
Yeah, I had the the opportunity of presenting at TCC this last, last week, and was one of the last presenters on Monday. And, you know, the focus and what I gave the audience there, and they so much positive feedback of people like, oh my gosh, it’s, it’s so easy, you know, it’s right in front of and it just really goes back to the relationships. How are you developing your relationships? How are you nurturing the relationships, and how do you cultivate those and steward those to move forward, to make them stronger? I gave the example of of all the area chambers in our area, in our immediate area, north of us and then also southeast of us, every one of those chambers had leadership changes, and ours didn’t. In the fact that I think there was just a different level of relationship understanding what our priorities are, nothing’s personal. We’re working together to do those things. But you know, our membership growth, the upgrade trend that we have, and just you know, the credibility that we continue to gain when it comes to being a finalist of ACCE, being an accredited chamber, a five star accredited chamber, being going through the IOM program, those things create. Create credibility and and then if you follow up that with the credibility, with just being genuine and talking to people and learning who they are and about them. And you know, we don’t sell memberships anymore. We invite people to be a part of who we are, and we don’t list all of our benefits up front, because I think we can become very heavy on this is how we do it, what we do, but we never ask them, How can we help you? And so that’s our first out of the box, once we get to know a little bit, how can we help you and your business grow? And if you can answer that question and get them passed through that magical first year to second year that third year of chamber membership, the retention goes up to, you know, 90 or something percent, and you’ve got them, and we talk about the investment, and we’ve got a number of people that make investments in our chamber, but we’re never having to talk about their membership anymore, because that’s never in question. It’s what, how, what’s a new program you’d like to be a part of? And, and we’re seeing some of our members shift their sponsorship levels, and we’re not, we’re not, we’re not cannibalizing. We’re aligning. And there’s a huge difference, if you have them, because a lot of people are pulling back, and really, not necessarily sponsoring at the same level. And if we count keeping them at the same level as a win, because I know they’re pulling back in other areas, and if we can maintain that level, and then sometimes they go, hey, I want to be a part of that chamber day. Here’s another $1,500 make sure this or, you know, we’ve got get back to work day for the teachers we do within the school district. So that’s a whole nother laundry list of things, but it’s, it’s relationships. 99% of everything do it goes back to how we do it. And I asked the question, I’ll leave you leave it with this is like anything we do in the chamber, proprietary, and that’s zero, right? How you do it is proprietary, how you treat people. How do you cultivate those relationships? Because I’m doing it better than most people around me, because people are not me my chamber, because that’s the expectation set, and that’s what people are telling us, that we’re a relational chamber, not a transactional chamber. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 37:19
makes a lot of sense. I always like asking, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Scott Harper 37:30
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. You know, prepping for the interview, there’s a lot of emphasis on horizon, 2035 through ACCE, and I really see a lot of different variables here of how people can really interpret it as well. There’s gotta be shift. There’s gotta be more embracement of technology. But at the end of the day, and how our approach is, how we’re gonna answer the questions that we’re not gonna change who we are. It’s maybe how we do it. But it all goes back to knowing your customer, knowing your member, and having that relationship to know what they like and don’t like. So, you know, this big push for AI, you know, and I’ve had my staff turn stuff in. I’m like, I want your words, because I can tell it’s just not, this is not us. We need to humanize that now. It gives you a good, you know, starting point. But how do we get it down to where it doesn’t sound so AI, ish, if you want a robotic Yeah, but you know, there’s got to be a shift and and it really goes back to, what are you going to focus on? And the questions are, one of the questions we’re asked is, you know, with the shift toward non dues revenue, how are you going to make that? You know, how you going to align your chamber for that? And I think we’re not going to change what we’re doing. We’re going to focus on the member and bring things to the table that help the members. And we did that in 2024 and by default, there were more opportunities for non dues revenue. Yeah, but we weren’t just going to focus on non dues revenue, because a lot of people in smaller chambers get stuck and become handcuffed to a special event, yeah. And if that special event doesn’t happen, then your whole budget’s messed up. And so our ultimate goal is never to keep our take our eye off the off the ball, and the ball is membership as a whole, and the membership relationship. So how do you use all these cool tools but not take away the sincerity and the personalization of what we’re doing? Is, I think it’s a balance and keeping, keeping staff, you know, keeping one of my biggest accomplishments, I think, two years ago, on my reviews like, what’s something you’re really proud of? I said, I’ve had my entire team for over a year and a half in one area, right? That’s huge. When you go into the second year of an event person, then they don’t have, you know, they’ve been through our events before. It gets easier. Focus on some other things, but you know which it’s going to evolve. But I also think when you go when you blow everything down, boil everything down, people still like to get handwritten letters, people still like to have conversations versus texts or emails, and it’s just, how do you balance that, and you know, and how do you create the culture throughout your entire organization to make sure everybody has that as a priority? So yes, it’s shifting, it’s changing, but that relationship is still the core, and how do you manage that, and without taking the personal touch off of it,
Brandon Burton 40:39
I like that. Going back to the relationships. Can’t, can’t preach it enough. So, right, yeah, well, Scott, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the Conroe Lake Conroe chamber, specific to the programs, or in general, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? Yeah, so any of
Scott Harper 41:08
our, all of our information is on our website, and that’s www.conroe.org or they can simply reach out to my my email. I’d be happy to answer any emails and get them any information that they would like, and that’s simply scotth@conroe.org that’s perfect both ways.
Brandon Burton 41:30
Well, we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well, to make it easy. But Scott, this has been great having you here on Chamber Chat Podcast with us. I wish you and your great team, the best of luck is chamber of the year, and good luck in Philadelphia.
Scott Harper 41:46
Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Thanks for this platform, and thanks for what you do for the chamber community.
Brandon Burton 41:52
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