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Brandon Burton (00:01.484)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your chamber members and your community. And you’re joining us today for a special episode in our 2026 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finals series. And our guest for this episode is Ryan Tarrant. Ryan is the President and CEO of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce and Experience Jackson.
Ryan Tarrant (00:05.23)
Thank
Brandon Burton (00:31.448)
Jackson County’s Destination Marketing Organization. In this role, Ryan leads efforts to strengthen the region’s quality of life for businesses, residents, and visitors through advocacy, collaboration, and destination development. Ryan brings a deep experience in business leadership, public policy, and community development. Before coming to Jackson County, he served as Chief Operating Officer of Business Leaders for Michigan, the state’s business roundtable, where he helped guide public policy strategy and organizational execution.
Around making Michigan a top state for jobs, education, prosperity, and economic health. His background also includes significant chamber leadership experience, where he helps secure more than $1 million in public funding for an award-winning talent attraction and retention initiative. He’s also led advocacy efforts, supporting infrastructure, placemaking, and engagement with local, state, and federal officials. Early in his career, Ryan worked in government and politics, serving as chief of staff to U.S.
Ryan Tarrant (01:29.029)
it.
Brandon Burton (01:31.28)
Representative John Mul Mullinar, District District Director for U.S. Representative Dave Camp, and leading numerous federal campaigns. Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree in public science from Saginaw Valley State University. But Ryan, I’m excited to have you back on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity again 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 even better.
Ryan Tarrant (01:57.946)
Yeah.
Hello everybody. You know, it’s great to be back and it feels a little bit like a follow-up from our previous conversation 18 months ago because we’re going to talk a lot about the program that we were just kicking off at that time and now, you know, really was the program that we submitted this year for Chamber of the Year. So, exciting time, but you know, it’s always interesting. I think I finally reached the point as you were reading my bio where, you know, you read it and the longer it gets, all of a sudden it was like I’ve become the old man.
Brandon Burton (02:29.736)
Right. How did that happen?
Ryan Tarrant (02:30.628)
because I know I’ve been around the block a time or two apparently. know, something I’d like to share, mean, as we talk about.
our program, is called Drive Jackson. you know, part of as I present this locally and, know, we’ve had to go do presentations around the state on this, this new program. One of the slides that I have in there is a picture of a little baby and it happens to be my, first grandchild. So he’s about four and a half months old now. And he was about two weeks old when we first rolled out this program. And so it was that, that initial newborn picture where, you know, the head’s a little bit off and you know, still.
Brandon Burton (03:08.11)
yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (03:08.88)
And so now he’s starting to get a personality, but I think it holds true and it really comes down to sort of the why of why I’m so passionate about the work that we’re doing here in Jackson County.
Brandon Burton (03:20.13)
That’s awesome. I love it. Well, first of all, huge congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a Chamber of Year finalist. It’s a great testament to the work and impact you guys are making there in your community. but tell us tell us a little bit about the Jackson County Chamber to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget to kind of set the stage for our discussion.
Ryan Tarrant (03:32.72)
Thank you.
Ryan Tarrant (03:42.478)
Sure, so for us we’re…
know, Chamberside, a couple of years ago, we were at about a $600,000 a year budget. You know, last year was about $900,000. But then we also have Experience Jackson, which is the destination marketing organization for Jackson County or convention and visitors bureau. And so their budget this year is about $1.3 million. So, you know, between the two organizations, we’re a little bit north of $2 million and, you know, being housed in the same place, sharing an executive also allows us to sort of…
hire for different skill sets and talents. And so, you know, we’re blessed to be able to have a overall team of 10. You know, I split my time 50-50 between the two organizations. We have a number of other employees that do that. Some are 90-10. And so, you know, we were able to house a research and data director, for example, who does a lot of our economic impact reports. And, you know, he started out on the DMO side, but we’ve pulled him into a lot of the work that we’re doing here in the chamber because of
the economic impact that we’re having here in our community. As far as scope of work, we do all the normal chamber things, right? This morning we wrapped up our final monthly breakfast before the summer break here in Michigan. So I’m fresh off of that, had our biggest crowd yet. And so we’re doing those types of things. But I think a big part of where we’ve really doubled down is in this community and economic development, but then also the advocacy work. And we’re not gonna talk a lot about the advocacy
Brandon Burton (04:47.18)
Yeah. That that makes a lot of sense.
Ryan Tarrant (05:13.292)
work today, but you know we partner with our state chamber, with our regional chambers on a lot of those business issues, but we also feel like for us we’re actually our community’s advocate.
And so it’s not just those business issues, which we’re strong on on the advocacy front, but also as we’re going through these pieces and looking at what projects are out there in our community that we can we can impact and push forward. You know, over the last couple of budget cycles, we’ve secured a little over eight million dollars in state funding and direct appropriations for different projects in the community. Not a single dime has come to the chamber. You know, a lot of it goes to the city, the county, local nonprofits, but
Brandon Burton (05:52.93)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (05:54.518)
But they’re really incredibly important work that’s happening in the quality of life space, the tail and attraction, destination development. so where there’s those opportunities, we really want to be the ones who are seen as the go-to in our community and really have become that.
Brandon Burton (06:11.212)
Yeah, and if you can help be the driver of those funds into the community, even if it doesn’t hit the chamber directly, it helps foster those relationships that really show the impact we have in the community.
Ryan Tarrant (06:14.502)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I mean, a great, great example right now is we’ve got a hundred year old. turns a hundred, this building turns a hundred years old, called the Hayes Hotel. this year it was a hotel for about 50 years closed down in the late seventies, early eighties, became the annex for a fortune 500 companies headquarters. And then they left it 25 years ago. And so it’s been sitting vacant for 25 years. right now we’re in the process that the chain link fence just went up the shoots and the crane are coming for the roof, this week.
Brandon Burton (06:41.592)
Okay.
Ryan Tarrant (06:51.048)
But we ended up securing four and a half million dollars toward a 32 million dollar redevelopment project that’ll be a couple of floors of mixed use and then 109 downtown market rate apartments that, you really with a Fortune 500 company on one end of downtown and then this new building housing over 100 market rate apartments and some new life sort of will anchor our downtown for, you know, the next generation.
Brandon Burton (07:18.254)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love hearing that. Well, with these Chamber of the Year episodes, I like to spend the majority of our time discussing the programs that get submitted on these applications. So we’ll dive in deep on that and and learn more about these programs. And like you said, a follow-up from your previous episode, which is back in episode 310, as soon as we get back from this quick break.
Brandon Burton (07:44.879)
All right, Ryan, we were back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll dive into the the program submitted on the Chamber of the Year application. And you teased at the beginning, this is kind of a follow-up from your previous appearance on the podcast. So if you will just dive into that and tell us about the program and kind of the the origins and how it’s evolved.
Ryan Tarrant (08:05.67)
Yeah, sure. So, you know, I think the origins for us, we really started with a problem statement, you know, that that wasn’t a shock to anybody in our community. know, Jackson County and the city specifically have been losing population for the city. It’s been 40 percent over the last 60 plus years of their population down to about 30, 31000. The county over the last couple of decades has has started to stagnate and even shrink a little bit. And so, you know, as we look at that, it’s it’s not unique around the country to Midwest communities.
especially those with a of a manufacturing heritage. And I took trips to Bentonville, Arkansas, and I’ve been to Grand Rapids, which is like the North Star for Michigan, and seeing just the incredible growth and the things that they’re doing in those communities, but also recognizing that here in Jackson, we don’t necessarily have the Walmart.
headquarters and we don’t have the Walton Family Foundation and those types of things. Or if you’re in Grand Rapids, it’s the DeVos family and Amway and so many others. But what we found even with those was there’s a consistency to what they’re doing. For Bentonville, it’s been over 20 or 25 years. For Grand Rapids, even longer. I it goes back to the 70s, the redevelopment that they’ve seen and the consistency that they’ve implemented that with. so, looking around the country at other growth communities, kind of our size in the Midwest,
We can’t compete with you down there in Texas on weather in the winter, you know, or Georgia or Florida, but, know, rapid city, South, South Dakota is growing and Elkhart, Indiana is growing. And those are places like I actually would have never thought of, of wanting to move to, but people are moving there and they’re growing and thriving communities. And so, you know, it really all comes down to this consistency. And so, we kind of took a look at how do we, how do we do a project and implement something in our community? You know, when you, when you look at the.
Horizon initiative and you talk about the disruptions and building out this resiliency in your community, what can we do as our part of that? And I think what we found was this long-term vision of, and for us it’s 20 years and a planning process that took nine months. We brought in a planning consultant out of Columbus, Ohio called Planning Next. They did a phenomenal job for us, but they really sort of helped to organize this whole process
Ryan Tarrant (10:26.76)
for us over nine months where we brought in a key leadership committee of 24 people that looked like our community. When you look at the census data, we had a CEO and we had a server at a local restaurant who served on this. We had a retiree and we had a high school student and sort of everything in between. And they sort of led this charge in our community to go out and engage members and residents through pop-up.
Brandon Burton (10:49.486)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (10:53.286)
pop-ups and table talks in their homes and all of these things. And over the course of two rounds of engagement, we engaged over 1,300 residents. They provided more than almost 6,000 pieces of data for us to sort of input into this that the key leadership committee could then look at and say, we now know what every corner of our community is saying the needs are, what it is that they love about our community, but what we can do better. We got, in some cases, the unvarnished truth.
Brandon Burton (11:23.138)
Yeah,
Ryan Tarrant (11:23.381)
which is a good thing and a great place to start. I I’d love to highlight when we talk about those different engagements.
that even with that second round, we actually went back and looked and we said, okay, we’re really light on our Hispanic population in that first round. So how do we get that up and meet that number for the census numbers in our community? And we actually took these engagement boards and translated them into Spanish. And we had a couple of our key leadership committee members who spoke Spanish. They went through a Sunday mass, Spanish speaking mass and engaged with the person who was afterwards.
And so, you know, from that you look at it and it’s, you know, it’s really tough to engage young people. We over-sampled young people.
And so, you know, we felt really good about the process and what came out of it that we were hearing from our entire community. And so since then, we rolled out this, you know, 72 page plan in March that has four goals around quality of life and the perception of our community, housing and economic development, know, K-12 education and lifelong learning, and then health and public safety. And within sort of these four buckets, you’ve got 54 strategies that are going to lead our community through the next 20 years.
to make sure that we were implementing with some fidelity. We early on in this process started to create a vision council. And so that’s sort of our CEO leadership group, which is exactly what you would think of it as, right? mean, generally in the community, you get these CEOs in a group and they’re going to put together the plan and it’s done in this ivory tower. And then they come out and say, this is the plan and what we’re gonna do and where we’re gonna go. In our case, it came from all of Jackson County
Brandon Burton (12:54.744)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (13:09.032)
and the people. And now it’s up to this group to really be the engine that drives it because they’re the funders. We’ve got philanthropic CEOs and chairs at this table. And so it really becomes in a community our size about aligning resources, making sure everybody’s on the same page and prioritizing these 54 strategies. Because for us, it’s not a chamber plan. It is entirely a community-based plan, even if we’re the ones that maintain ownership
and know, the administrative functions. And so, you know, we’re working in a process of aligning funders for projects in addition to now going back and going out to the legislature for appropriations because, you know, the phrase we use is 40 and 20. It’s a 20 year plan. We want 40 transformational projects in that first 20 years. And we think we can get there between that local funding and then that state level funding.
funding through grants and appropriations. we’re really excited about it. Implementation has rolled out really well. We can talk a little bit about that as we go through, but that’s kind of the crux of the program, I guess, if you will, that we submitted.
Brandon Burton (14:20.142)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (14:24.558)
That’s awesome. So it’s funny you mentioned Bentonville. I was actually in Bentonville, Arkansas last week and I thought of you before the the finalists are announced because of our previous conversation and you know the the efforts you guys are making with placemaking and everything there in Jackson County. but I I’m fascinated by the the idea of getting, you know, putting together this twenty year plan and
Ryan Tarrant (14:31.014)
Yep.
Ryan Tarrant (14:38.907)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Burton (14:46.9)
and getting the input of citizens throughout the community. So do they do these individuals have a formal role? Is it a matter of just polling them? Do they sit on some sort of a committee? How does that I don’t know if that plays into the implementation part that you talked about or or not?
Ryan Tarrant (14:59.332)
you
So you’re talking about the 1,300 people who engaged in this process? Yep.
Brandon Burton (15:06.286)
Yeah, so I guess yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (15:08.294)
So we had the leadership committee that was really the ones that sort of looked through that feedback and helped to shape the plan. But as far as the 13 heart, what we tell everybody every time we present is this is not a chamber plan, this is a community plan. You should see yourself in this. mean, just this morning I was talking to our breakfast group about over the summer as we’re on our break, thinking about where it is they fit, whether you’re an organization, a business, an individual, there is a strategy in there that you can
you can help to move the needle on and you need to find that place so that we’re all working together.
Since we’ve rolled it out, we actually have a fellow who was provided to us by the state of Michigan that we had to apply for and it was competitive. She came to us. She was the director of policy and research at our state’s population growth office actually for the last year and a half. And so now she’s embedded here. She’s a Jackson native. And so she and I have been kind of going out and doing what we call coffee chats. And so every corner of the community, know, the small towns and villages here in the city and being able
to engage with those people who engaged in the process early on, but maybe aren’t necessarily coming to chamber events. And it might be a retiree in a village called Concord on the west side, or it may be folks in a lake community called Brooklyn, the southern end of the county, and going to a coffee shop and gathering people to be able to say, OK, so you’ve had a chance to review it. Now, what are these actions that we can take to actually implement a strategy, move the needle,
and feel like we’re accomplishing some of these goals. And so I think it’s important to keep those people engaged and even to expand it out past that group that had engaged in the first part of the process.
Brandon Burton (16:58.114)
Yeah. Okay. So you talked about the twenty and forty, so or the forty and twenty, I I can’t remember the the order, but forty projects in those in those twenty years. can you give us an idea of what the range of those projects could entail? I mean, an average of two projects, depending on the scale of could be pretty intimidating, but just help help give us an idea of what what the size of these projects might entail, what they might look like.
Ryan Tarrant (17:02.822)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (17:23.546)
Yeah, so we rolled this out at our annual meeting on February 11th and in the first 90 days, we’ve actually had three projects that have been rolled out. So when you talk about two a year, we’ve got three that are essentially privately funded, have nothing to do with state appropriations. We’ve got a number of those pieces out there right now as our legislators work through that process this year.
Brandon Burton (17:34.988)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (17:45.378)
The first one was called RX Kids, and so this is something that started in Flint, and it’s a program that regardless of a woman’s income, any woman in the city of Jackson and Blackman Township, and there’s other communities around the state that are participating, any pregnant woman in those two communities here in Jackson will receive $1,500 regardless of income during pregnancy. And then for the first six months of the baby’s life, they also receive $500.
And this is one of those things, like I said, this isn’t a chamber plan. It was spearheaded by our community foundation, but it comes directly out of drive Jackson and the 20 year plan. You have our fortune 500 foundation. You’ve got other company foundations and individuals who raised over $300,000 in a matter of six weeks to be able to match the state funding for this. And that’s a program that during the three year pilot is gonna have about $11 and a half million of economic impact in our community. And it’s really about,
that health and wellness and some of that financial security that we all see it when we go to the gas pump right now. Like I said, I’m old, I’m beyond having children, but imagine having a kid and being pregnant and all of sudden gas is jumping to five bucks a gallon and the cost of beef is up to $7 a pound and all of those things. And it’s just an opportunity and we’ve seen in some of the early stages of this that there’s been some impressive health outcomes and it helps reduce
some of that stress on the mother and baby. so, you know, so that’s an incredible one that came out right out of the shoe. You know, fast forward another month. I mean, it feels like we’re rolling something out every month, right? We have a nonprofit in town.
Brandon Burton (19:20.846)
Yeah. Yeah, fast forward.
Ryan Tarrant (19:29.734)
called Grow Jackson that started a few years ago working on food insecurity. And they signed a lease with our county government who owns the Michigan’s oldest prison, was in Jackson in the city. And the county owns the property now. It’s no longer a prison, but the historic walls are there. And they have an old armory within these walls. And so they’ve signed this lease to create a food hub.
and a farm stop. And so they’re now managing our county’s farm market inside the prison walls. They’re in process of building out this food hub farmers market where it’s something that happens not just on Saturday for our farmers, but they can bring their produce directly to this food hub and food stop. And they’re capturing 80 % of the profits off of it versus the 15 % when you go and buy it, a Kroger, a Hy-Vee, a Meyer,
whatever the grocery store is, wherever you live in the country. And so it benefits that local economy. Well, fast forward, the executive director is 27 years old. Experience Jackson was in talks to create a beer garden as part of our destination development and placemaking. And so we were going to be running this beer garden and we had a budget for it. And what I realized was with him having this space over there, we got to talking one day and it’s to the
Brandon Burton (20:25.228)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (20:52.686)
that you have to not care who gets credit for stuff. So what I recognized was, number one, I don’t want to run a beer garden. don’t have the capacity for it. Number two, it’s probably going to be cooler if a 27-year-old builds it out versus the 50-year-old. Right?
Brandon Burton (20:55.938)
Yeah, absolutely.
Brandon Burton (21:03.554)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (21:08.862)
Maybe, yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (21:12.39)
Right. And number three, he moves with such rapid pace that we were never going to get something off the ground this summer. He now has a beer garden opening this summer where we’re doing this farm stop food hub, this build out of the farmers market. And it’s just kind of building on itself. And that’s a program when you look at that three year economic impact, it’s over $25 million.
And then the third one is something the chamber’s directly running, is called Build in Jackson. The New York Post actually ran an article about a city program that we have here called 100 Homes, which was offering $25,000 in down payment assistance that you could couple with $10,000 in state assistance toward a down payment on a brand new three bedroom, one and a half story build in the city of Jackson. And the cost of the home was $178,000. So you do the math, 35K off of 178 for a brand new
built with the basement. Well, it’s ARPA dollars. so fast forward to this year and come, you when we got to March, the city came to the chamber and said, we’ve only sold half of the homes and we have to spend the money by the end of the year. And so what we did was in in about a 48 hour window, with partners put together a package that includes, you know, a bike or a kayak because we’re leaning into our outdoor amenities.
know, sort of those downtown experiences, whether it’s our symphony orchestra and restaurants, restaurant gift cards, but then also those wraparound pieces, you know, dinner with the mayor and engaging them as an 18 to 35 year old cohort to, you know, get out to meet people, to get embedded into the community, to get them on, get them serving on non-profit boards. And so we’re running a cohort of 10. We’ve just approved this week our first three. We have two in the next
next four in the queue that are from out of state. So we’ve got one moving from Tennessee. Can’t tell you the last time somebody moved from Tennessee to Michigan, so we’re pretty excited about that.
Brandon Burton (23:10.742)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (23:12.612)
You know, but that one when you look at that three-year economic impact is about seven and a half million. And so, you you look at those things that have been rolled out in the first 90 days that, you know, are getting threaded throughout the community, and you’re talking about $42 million in economic impact just in the first three months over the next three years. And so, you know, and every time I talk to somebody, we’ve got a local manufacturer in a rural community who’s partnering with their local school district because the school district, because of Drive Jackson, wants to create a tech hub for their students.
company wants to be involved in moving the needle for Drive Jackson and so they’ve offered the match money. And so now we’re playing matchmaker for the manufacturer and the school district with some of the potentially interested philanthropic groups in the community to make sure that this gets funded and gets up and running for the next school year. And so, you know, everything that’s happening in our community is being touched by the chamber. You know, and we’re sort of viewed as that when you want something to happen,
Brandon Burton (24:00.151)
Well.
Ryan Tarrant (24:10.628)
you know, it starts here, we’re the hub.
Brandon Burton (24:13.228)
Yeah, that is those are some great examples and I couldn’t help but think with Gro Jackson that there’s gotta be a curiosity factor too for people to wanna come in and check out the the market to be able to get inside the walls of the prison and and check it out a little bit.
Ryan Tarrant (24:27.015)
it
You know, and I’ve got to tell you, I went to their grand opening farmers market, you know, this spring. And when I pulled inside the prison walls and you think about, mean, we’ve still got the biggest prison in Michigan now, but you know, it’s not there anymore. It’s newer and nicer. But inside these old historic walls that make you feel a little bit like you’re looking at the Shawshank Redemption Walls. And it felt like the entire area was full of cars the first day because, you know, it was just
Brandon Burton (24:44.002)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (24:49.804)
Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (24:57.736)
is so enormous compared to what we had had before. And so we’re really excited about the opportunities there.
Brandon Burton (25:04.374)
That is really cool. I love those examples. I love the the impact that those programs are gonna make in the community. And that’s only three of the forty in the first twenty years. So
Ryan Tarrant (25:07.354)
here.
Ryan Tarrant (25:15.362)
And I think that’s the piece that’s so important for chambers now is as we shift and, know, I think what some of us have struggled with over the years and, you know, I certainly have been guilty of this as well, is understanding the data, understanding how to tell the story that that data tells, but then also measuring that economic impact because more and more our members, you know, especially the larger the business, you know, the more they want to see that data and return on investment. And so how do we as chambers tell that story?
show our impact and I think that’s where this is one of those things with some of the partnerships with those.
Brandon Burton (25:46.765)
Yes.
Ryan Tarrant (25:53.106)
having a data and research director being able to pull down. Every time there’s one of these projects, we run an economic impact report because we want to know what the economic impact is. initially it was, OK, can we impact $10 million in the first year? Well, here we are 90 days in, and it’s like, OK, we know we’re measuring $42 million. And so now we’re starting to look at it and thinking, how quick can we get to $1 billion in economic impact for our community? And with everybody on board, every CEO, every company,
Brandon Burton (26:16.502)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Tarrant (26:22.92)
them aligning instead of being in silos. I think it becomes, the longer you do it, the more you embed it in the culture. I think the easier it is. mean, you we talked about the rise in report and sort of, you know, the speed that things move and, you know, how things happen. And we talk about dealing with disruptions and yes, we have to build that resiliency, which we feel like we’re doing with this. But I think in some sense, it’s also being the disruptor.
a little bit in your community. mean, you know, the community of Jackson sort of has, I think, for a long time felt like we have Ann Arbor to the east and Detroit, you know, so you have University of Michigan and then to the north you have Michigan State University and here people sort of think of us as prison city. And I think this has given them, you know, sort of that hope of hope and optimism of, you know, we are going places and we’re the example for the state now.
Brandon Burton (26:53.134)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Burton (27:18.402)
Yeah. that is awesome. And that my thoughts were going there next with how do you get the story out there? You get the the the reports of the economic impact and be able to share those stories. ’cause nothing, you know, gets at me more when you hear somebody say, Well, what does a chamber even do? And if you’ve got a whole catalog of all these things that you’re doing and the impact it’s making in the community, it’s like, what would the community look like without the chamber, right? Exactly.
Ryan Tarrant (27:43.185)
Exactly. Yeah. And to those stories, mean, you one of the other things we do, because again, we’ve sort of got this combined resource, is we’re able to bring in a storyteller who comes in and does eight interviews a week. And so we’re not just sort of telling, saying, hey, you know, come to this store because it’s got a sale. He’ll go in and meet with the owner and talk to the owner and sort of tell the story of the person behind the sale, right? Who’s started this from scratch or who bought a boutique in a small
community and why they’re there, why they have the passion for the community because whether you’re a resident, a visitor, you’re looking at a community to move to, you you want to feel that connection. I mean, part of social media, working remotely so much, you know, I think when people travel, when they’re in their community, they really want to feel connected to it these days. And so that’s really been a great opportunity for us. And it’s really kind of cool and exciting to see it sometimes because, you know, we ran one in a small village on a boutique owner and
And one of the neighboring stores down the street actually put up a billboard that said, put the little billboard up congratulating her on this story that was written about her and shared on social media. And they get hundreds of thousands of views because people are so passionate about their community and it reaches outside of your community too. And so it starts to sort of feed back to that, people think of us as prison city, but there’s so much more. And so it’s really something that we’ve taken on.
Brandon Burton (28:55.96)
That’s really cool.
Brandon Burton (29:03.927)
Yes.
Ryan Tarrant (29:12.53)
is what does that public perception look like, not only internal to Jackson, but externally around the state for us. And so it feels like we’re starting to make headway as we get out and talk about Drive Jackson and the things that we’re doing.
Brandon Burton (29:25.89)
Yeah, that’s awesome. well John Ryan, as we start to wrap things up, I always like asking on behalf of those listening, yeah, especially right now as a chamber the year finalist, what kind of tip or action item might you leave for the listener who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level? Well
Ryan Tarrant (29:44.868)
Well, I mean, I think what I would say is, you know, having grown up in and now living in a community where I’ve heard a lot of, well, you know, this is just kind of what we have and we should be happy with it. I think there’s nothing that’s impossible in your community.
it’s aligning the right partners, it’s determining where it is you wanna go. think having sort of a vision of where your community wants to go, but engaging the entirety of your community. I mean, it’s really, really tough. Our friend Bob Thomas, who’s the COO at the Michigan Chamber, early on, I think in my first couple of months running a chamber a decade ago, said it’s really challenging to build consensus now and perhaps all we can hope for is grudging consent. And it’s okay to get to
Brandon Burton (30:17.484)
Yes.
Ryan Tarrant (30:31.076)
and consent because over time if you’re consistent you implement with fidelity you start to build consensus around things and so I think it’s really rewarding when you see that stuff happen. You know I’m always happy to help help other chambers and to talk through the things that we’re doing. I mean it’s such a great industry to be able to lean on those people who are doing the things you know. I know we’ve got a lot of a lot of great finalists out there. Janelle Smith from Howell Area Chamber of Commerce who will be on at some point as a good friend.
mine and about 50 miles away so you know we were excited to see each other both as finalists and so you know look look forward to sharing that and you know just just kind of kind of keep at it we can we can transform our communities and shape them into the things that we want as as residents of our own communities and the things that businesses need so.
Brandon Burton (31:07.0)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (31:21.432)
Yeah, that’s great. I w I also like to ask about the future of Chambers. You’ve mentioned the Horizon Report a couple of times, in our conversation, but how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?
Ryan Tarrant (31:27.952)
Okay.
Ryan Tarrant (31:33.37)
Well, I think it’s always going to be critical to be able to make those connections.
between business owners, those networking opportunities, those advertising opportunities, they’re always going to be a piece of what we’re doing as chambers of commerce. But I think when we look at sort of the holistic, think it’s what are these bigger programs and projects that impact our entire community? Because people are so transient and can move with remote work, with changing jobs, that what is it that we do to keep populations where they are or to attract new population? And so for us, we’re working on building
out our model where, you know, those events and sponsorships are about a quarter and membership is only a quarter.
But the other half comes from grant funding for programs and projects and then capital campaigns. You know, we’re just kicking off this week a quarter million dollar capital campaign for our new foundation, which incidentally is called Drive Jackson. It makes it a little bit easier to fund drive days when you name it right. But I think having that diversity in your revenue mix and being able to impact your entire community versus
Brandon Burton (32:32.16)
Right. That’s right.
Ryan Tarrant (32:45.352)
thinking more narrowly as to just our members is really where those growth opportunities come in for chambers going forward in the future.
Brandon Burton (32:54.69)
Yeah, that’s great. well I wanted to give you a chance, Ryan, to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about these programs you’re implementing there in Jackson County Chamber. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?
Ryan Tarrant (33:10.48)
So I’ll give you two ways. You can reach out to me on my cell phone. That is 989-708-7683 or my email, ryan@JacksonChamber.org. And if you want to learn more about the Drive Jackson plan, it can be found at drivejacksoncounty.com. And our entire team is happy to help and share. We’ve got incredible staff here. Our leadership team’s amazing.
So happy to help anyone if they think we can.
Brandon Burton (33:43.788)
Very good. Well we’ll make sure that’s in our show notes and make it easy to connect. But this has been great to have you back on the podcast and especially under these circumstances. And I wish you and your team the best of luck as Chamber of the Year.
Ryan Tarrant (33:56.41)
Thank you. It was great to come back on and be able to talk about, you know, from the plan and where we started the idea to actually now implementing it. So thank you very much. Full circle.
Brandon Burton (34:05.987)
Full circle moment, you bet.
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