Tag: Opelika Chamber

Opelika Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Ali Rauch

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Brandon Burton 0:00
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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series. And our guests for this episode is Ali Rauch. Ali is the President and CEO of the Opelika Chamber of Commerce. And she was a recent guest back in episode 266. So not too long ago. So if you wanted to go back and listen to what we talked about back then she’s kind of a firecracker and has a lot of energy coming into the chamber. So she’s been in a Opelika for I guess about three and a half going on four years now. Yeah, four years, four years and in that time of have earned a five star accreditation through the US Chamber of Commerce and really making a big impact there in Opelika. Prior to her role at the Chamber, she served in a wide array of industry including software manufacturing, higher education, and most notably, franchising and food services where she served eight years as director of marketing for Chicken Salad Chick. I remember stumbling on that last time as well. But Allie, we’re excited to have you back with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I want to start by saying congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a chamber the year finalists what an accomplishment. But good and saying hello to everyone listening. And if you’ve got another interesting tidbit about yourself to share, we’d love to hear it.

Ali Rauch 2:39
Thank you. I don’t remember what I shared last time, which was funny. I should have listened back to remember but thank you for having us. We are so thrilled I remember setting like watching the West Alabama chamber who was you know, a major leader in our state and in the country, watching them win and I had this little inkling like, I’m a competitive person, but I was like, Man, I really want I want to do that Sunday, and I thought it was going to take like a really long time. Like and honestly, it just, you know, I went on a walk with one of my board members last night and he told me he’s like Alec No, you have just gotten into hyperdrive it’s not that it doesn’t take that long to do great things you’ve just somehow you know gotten your the right people around you and have been able to make a major impact very quickly so we’re thrilled we’re excited we’re grateful can’t wait for Dallas but yeah, I guess let’s see. Little known fact about me is I am also I’m a shareholder of the Green Bay Packers wait I heard that was

Brandon Burton 3:39
my last I was

Ali Rauch 3:40
discussing okay different one. I used to drag race cars I drag race to 1973 Camaro nice all throughout high school I’ve won a Wally which is a the official trophy of the National Hot Rod Association.

Brandon Burton 3:57
Awesome. I’ve got a six random string. Yeah, so we do the cruise together someday.

Ali Rauch 4:06
Okay, that sound that sounded just love

Brandon Burton 4:09
it. Love it. Yeah. Awesome. Good deal. Well tell us a little bit about the the Opa Locka chamber your team your wonderful team that with you to to make this achievement and just give us an idea of size staff Scope of Work budget just to set the stage. I’m

Ali Rauch 4:28
so open like it is a smaller, I would consider to be a rural community in Alabama. We’re in East Central Alabama and we are the sister city to Auburn, which is home of Auburn University. So we have that like super cool college town adjacency but up like it is a tip older sister that has a really special and unique downtown area. We have a massive number of entrepreneurs and businesses in the area. It’s a very prosperous area that tends to be Knock on wood be a little bit recession proof, because between the university and the hospital, and we’re very much on a transportation kind of hub that we tend to still continue to do well, and we’ve got a lot of growth happening in our community. We’re the third fastest growing city in the state of Alabama. So very, very proud of kind of our growth. But our chamber is, you know, we are the Opalite chamber. So we represent the city of Oberliga. However, because we are in a larger MSA area of about 170,000 people, through Alberto Blanca and the county, we have a lot of businesses who fall outside of that actual city of OPA Leica. And so we’re kind of, we’re kind of in this in between where yes, we have, we have a town of 33,000. But we’re serving a larger region as well. So we have about 1000 Members, we’re 13 shy of 1000 members right now. And we are very excited to break 1000 and stay broken, stay over that 1000 home. In 2024, we’re almost there. We’ve got a budget of under a million dollars, we have a team of currently a team of seven. And then of course, we utilize some interns for help as well. But we have a really great partnership with our city where we have a contract for services where we’re responsible for entrepreneurship, we’re responsible for kind of business development, we do not do economic development, we do not do tourism, we have great partners for that. So we really stay hyper focused on making sure our business community has what it needs. And we do that and stay focused on our mission of strengthen our community as the champion for business. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 6:42
Awesome. Yeah. So you guys are kind of in a weird, not weird, but it’s a interesting situation. I mean, you’re not just the typical, you know, hometown chamber, right. It’s kind of a quasi Regional Chamber as well. So and

Ali Rauch 6:57
we have a fellow chamber right across the street, across the street, but you know, seven miles up the road in our other sister city who’s just as large and doing the right thing. So it’s really interesting.

Brandon Burton 7:08
Yeah, that is cool. Well, on these chamber the year finalist episodes, I like to spend the majority of our time really diving into the the two programs that you submitted on your synopsis and the application for chamber the year and we’ll get much deeper into those details and what those programs are as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Ali we are back. So as I mentioned before the break we’re going to be diving into the two programs synopsis that were included on your chamber that your application I understand the first one has to do with food trucks or something like that. Yeah, dive into that and tell us what that program is about and the impact it’s made in the community.

Ali Rauch 10:09
Yeah, absolutely. A few years ago, it was actually in response to COVID. We had numerous restaurants closed in our historic downtown and our historic downtown. It’s beautiful. It’s, it’s very cool. We have a courthouse square, we’ve got a railroad tracks, and then we’ve got downtown merchants. And, you know, we had some businesses, specifically restaurants closed during COVID. And we are also home of the very first legal distillery for bourbon and vodka and everything in the state of Alabama, since prohibition is made right there in our downtown. And so we’ve got a distillery, we have two breweries, we’ve got a brew shop. So it’s a very eclectic, cool space. And people weren’t coming downtown, because they there were such few restaurants that they couldn’t get into them. They’re great, but they’re busy. And so they couldn’t get into those restaurants. And those brew shops and such were like, how can we get people downtown, we’re struggling. And so the idea came to maybe bring one food truck down. And then I thought, well, instead of just one want to, I don’t do anything small. So why don’t we do more and make it kind of like an event. And it started by almost by force, because our city ordinances do not allow food trucks in our downtown, that were a special event. So I had, I had to create a special event for the food trucks to get approved. But then on top of that, I had to go to our city council, there was a lot of advocacy efforts put into this because we had to convince the city council to allow us to create this event and bring these food trucks in. And it didn’t just stop with Okay, let us do it once we had to prove ourselves. So we came back every three months and reported on results and said, This is good for business, this is bringing people down. And so what we do is we bring about 20 to 25 food trucks to our downtown, we do not close all of the streets, because we’ve got a lot of street parking. And so it’s important that people can get down and be convenient. So we block off some parking spots, and we put the food trucks in place. And they’re right up against the sidewalk. So all that pedestrian traffic stays right there on the sidewalks next to the businesses. And it’s on the third Friday, every month from five to 9pm. We’ve got about 30 trucks down there. And we’re seeing an average of 3600 people every Friday night that come down for this, which is amazing. We have grown from having I think 11 Food Trucks registered to do business in OPA Leica to nearly 60. And so that’s sales tax revenue for our businesses. That’s, you know, permits for our city government. But then, of course, that also has driven membership for us. So we have a good number of food trucks who choose to be a member, you actually don’t have to be a member to be a part of food truck Friday. But you know, we charge a fee to every truck that participates. They’re required to be licensed and health department and pay their taxes and all of those things. And so it’s a really great partnership for us that has just built so much community for our for our citizens, we have, we have a very good community that’s about 5050 When it comes to African Americans and white people and and then we’ve got a growing Hispanic population. And I was always told that, you know, a lot of African Americans didn’t feel comfortable coming downtown, and it just didn’t feel like their place. And it could not be more different now, because of food truck Friday, it has been just life changing. Because again, a lot of the food trucks that we’re bringing, these are businesses, you aren’t ready, they maybe they don’t have their finances in order to have a brick and mortar store. But they can get themselves together for a food truck. And they’re traveling around. And so we also have, we have a ton of African American food truck owners, which then bring the African American citizens to come down and get that food. And it has just created this true melting pot that our community on future Fridays looks like our community in downtown and it’s just really special. That’s

Brandon Burton 14:27
awesome. I think it was just this past week, I had seen a meme if I remember right, I think it was put out by the 13 ways organization, you know, 13 ways. And it said something to the effect of show me a vital downtown and I’ll show you a vital community, right. So essentially, downtown is going to be a reflection of your community as a whole. So being able to put that focus on it, I see a huge value and I love being able to see that representation of your community in the downtown. You mentioned it started Did through the pandemic? And I’m sure restaurants shut downs and things like that. Are any of those restaurants? Did they go from a brick and mortar to a food truck? Do they still operate that way? Or how? What’s that dynamic look like today?

Ali Rauch 15:15
It has been so cool on to watch the growth. So we had, one of the ways that we really made this work was a few in the early days, we didn’t have that many food trucks. So we had some caterers that really wanted to grow. So we would let the caterers prepare their food in their Commissary Kitchen and then set up in the brewery. And then they would serve their plates from the brewery. And so we have had, let’s see, I think one caterer that became a food truck, we’ve had another caterer who now has one brick and mortar restaurant, she was just nominated for Business of the Year for our annual awards. She’s working on her second location. We’ve had trucks, we’ve had another truck that was just so popular, called last Latinas. They have now opened up their own Commissary Kitchen, for catering services and for takeout but are still operating their truck as well. So there’s been a lot of growth and success as a result of open like a having a hub for food trucks. And now it’s turned into brick and mortar and just expanded service in the area. That’s

Brandon Burton 16:21
awesome. So you had also mentioned you had to go back to city council, like every three months to state your case, and really show the evidence of why this works. What are some of those more compelling pieces that made them decide? Yeah, this is a good thing to have on a regular basis?

Ali Rauch 16:38
Well, you know, what we showed them is that when you’re when food trucks are parked, closest, like close to a restaurant, you might think, oh, that’s bad. We can’t do that, because it’s going to take business away from the restaurant. But what we were doing is that we were driving such an influx of people, the food trucks couldn’t handle the demand. So what we saw was that people would be hungry and decide, oh, I’m not waiting in that line. And they’d go into the restaurants. And so we provided photos of our restaurants being packed to the brim at seven o’clock on a Friday night. While there are still 1000s of people out and about downtown. So we proved that. I think there just was such a high number of people downtown, like the mayor would come out and get his Friday Night Dinner every Friday night. We had asked restaurants if they could provide reports if they were up or down. And the vast majority of them were up. Interestingly enough, the the restaurants who refused to have a truck anywhere near their restaurant, did not see success. They didn’t, they decided I don’t want to be a part of it. So we respected their wishes and kept the trucks farther away from them. And they’re the ones that aren’t experiencing that influx. My one of my biggest wins is there’s a brewery that was pretty against it. They didn’t like the idea. And so we respected them for the first couple of months. And then I went to them and I said, Will you just trust me? Will you let me try this for two months, let me close this street right in front of you. Let me put a truck right in front of your doors. And if you don’t see an increase, then we’ll go back. And now they’re our biggest advocate because their restaurants back or their breweries back doesn’t

Brandon Burton 18:29
say that, that seems like such a perfect match, you know, at the food truck so

Ali Rauch 18:34
well, they serve food. And so they serve pizza and pretzels. So they were like kind of standoffish about it. But again, now they’ve seen such an influx. And now we put this really great milkshake shake shop right in front of them. That’s beautiful. That’s, you know, got great LED lights on top. So it draws a crowd. It’s just like a, you know, a beacon of light to send them over.

Brandon Burton 18:56
I love it. That’s awesome. So our time goes quick in these chamber, the your interviews. So let’s let’s shift gears into the second program, if you want to introduce it. The second program was submitted on your application.

Ali Rauch 19:09
Yes, our second public. Our second program was the public policy program that we have put in place. And, you know, the world today has a lot of political fragmentation that we have to overcome. And it was really important for us to be that unified champion for public policy. And so we started by creating an issue focused public policy agenda to engage our public sector. We host candidate forums. We supported our school system by being the main voice and advocate for the five miltax referendum renewal. And then we also started distributing regular public policy newsletters to ensure our members understood that big picture impact of federal and state legislation on their actual business.

Brandon Burton 19:56
Awesome. I’m taking notes as you’re going you guys covered a lot of things lot of issues there from the candidate forums, the school district and the newsletters. Are you able to see like engagement with the newsletters as far as informing the community and any feedback you’re receiving as providing that information? You

Ali Rauch 20:13
know, funny enough, it’s quiet, always quiet and quiet is okay. Because

Brandon Burton 20:18
there’s something of buzzworthy right, then then everybody’s

Ali Rauch 20:23
quiet is okay, we’ve really taken that stance of trying to make sure that informing is the goal, we’re not taking opinion. And we’re not, you know, advocating one way or the other, we are simply informing and so our public policy emails, I think, have at least a 45%, open rates. And we do send them on a regular basis just throughout the year, we will send them no more often than once a month. But when our state is in session, for those two and a half months, we try and do it every other week, so that we’re updating people on Friday afternoons for what’s happened in the past week and or so. And so, it is, it’s a segment of our membership that’s interested, but they’re not really loud and vocal, but that’s okay. Our goal isn’t to create this movement, we’re simply trying to inform people and make them better educated. Right?

Brandon Burton 21:14
Yeah, I think in in so many communities across the country, there’s local newspapers or local radio that used to cover these things that now maybe they don’t have the bandwidth, they don’t have the reporters, some of them don’t exist anymore. And chambers perfect to fill that void to be able to keep the citizens informed of policies and things going on in the community and from the public policy arena. And it’s a it’s a perfect alignment. And I’m actually kind of surprised more chambers weren’t involved with it before there was that kind of need, where there was those local news outlets.

Ali Rauch 21:47
It’s kind of scary, you know, like, you don’t want to get involved. But at the end of the day, I think Sherry Ann has shared this in the past, there’s that I think it’s the Edelman barometer of trust. The community trust the business community more than they trust the government more than they trust the media. So why not us to be that communicating force. And so, you know, we do, we do a lot of intentional efforts. So we connect with our legislators through our leadership programs, we do a 20 under 40 leadership program where we bring our legislators into connect with them. We do our Lee County Young Leaders program for high school juniors, where we go to see them at the state capitol and visit with the governor and lieutenant governor. And so we’re doing all these little things that are getting just informational, just trying to create those relationships and connections. We also host our annual State of the City event, which is kind of like an inaugural address, but for our mayor, and that is a great way for him to celebrate what’s been happening at the city. It’s a way for us to really establish our foothold as the voice for business and our community on all things advocacy. And it’s really been, it’s been exciting to see us take that elevated approach. And there was nothing more prominent in that elevation than us leading the charge for the tax mill increase, or the tax mill renewal for our schools. We you know, we put out yard signs, and we did text messages and email reminders to people to vote, and we had a 92% voting approval rate for the tax bill. So like, Hey, it works.

Brandon Burton 23:24
That’s awesome. And I think I’ve shared it before but our, in our community, we had a recent bond being proposed for the school district and my wife works for the school district. So she had a little bit of insider knowledge as far as the conversations going on about the number of participants voters coming out to vote on this bond. And we’re talking obviously, millions of dollars for this bond. And there was such a tiny percentage of the community that is making big decisions for the entire community and, and committing the community and the school district to huge debt. I mean, it’s a it can be a good thing and good purpose and everything but when it’s such a small percentage of the overall community that participates, it’s so important for a chamber to take ownership of that to drive voter turnout and to just get the general public involved with sharing their voice and, and their values in the community. So kudos to you.

Ali Rauch 24:24
Thank you. And I will say I’m just going to pull out a little brag because I realized that 45% open rate was actually 57% which i Hey, wow.

Brandon Burton 24:35
That’s awesome. Yeah, and as far as email open rates go, that’s a that’s huge. Wow. That is awesome. So, as you know, recently being on the show, I like having my guests on the show talk about any tips or action items for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level. especially as a chamber, the year finalist, you guys are kind of top of the game right now. So for those listening who would like to elevate their chamber, what kind of tip or advice would you offer for them?

Ali Rauch 25:12
I would say start small. You, you eat the elephant, one bite at a time. You know, it is not something where, you know, you go to sleep one day, you wake up the next day, and all of a sudden, you are this, you know, legendary public policy person on behalf of your community. It’s those little steps what our first step was to build a public policy agenda. We’ve never done that before we leaned on each other to do that. We connected with other communities that have done it before, to get a good baseline. We surveyed our membership, we built a partnership with other chambers in the area and said, Let’s do this together. So start small, what does that what’s that top priority and start there? And then we realized, okay, we need to do more. How do we update that our members on what’s happening every week in the legislation later, so then we started our newsletter. And then before we know it, we get asked to be the leading voice for the tax mail. And so it just kind of snowballs but start small, don’t be afraid to start small and it will grow and grow and grow as as you’re ready for it to grow.

Brandon Burton 26:16
I think great advice. I think the especially the point about partnering, partnering with other chambers, especially when a when you’re talking about public policy and advocacy efforts, work with other chambers work with your State Chamber, they provide so many great resources, that they’re doing a lot of the legwork and you’re able to pass along the information and and share it locally, right? Yes.

Ali Rauch 26:38
Well, that’s the important thing to note about our public policy newsletter, we are not writing anything from scratch in that newsletter, every single thing that we are sharing. It is it’s a press release from the governor’s office, it’s articles from the US chambers email or from ACCE easy now that it’s talking about specific policy that’s happening. We are simply copying, pasting it sort of shortening it for our format, from an informational prospective, and that’s it. And so you can absolutely do that. And they actually encourage it, which is really nice.

Brandon Burton 27:13
Yeah, yeah, it’s great having partnerships with these organizations that say, We’re doing this for you, please take this uses, your communities. They want you to do it. So. So the other question I like asking is, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ali Rauch 27:35
I think you know, what I said last time still applies. I think we’re going to have an even bigger role and space to be those catalytic leaders for the future. How do we be I think, Sherry and says it, how do we continue to be the same center that makes sure that we are helping our business community in ways that matter? Let’s I think the future means that we’re not just going to do what we’ve always done. The the chambers that are going to be successful, that are going to make waves and do great work for many, many years to come. are the ones that are adapting and trying to do bigger things versus sticking to what has been traditionally considered what a chamber does.

Brandon Burton 28:16
Yeah, absolutely the same senators that it resonates very well. So especially in this crazy world,

Unknown Speaker 28:23
crazy world.

Brandon Burton 28:27
Well, Ali, I wanted to give you a chance again, to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more about these programs that you guys are highlighting that are definitely making an impact in the open like a community what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you. You

Ali Rauch 28:43
can find us at OpelikaChamber.com or on any of the social channels at Opelika Chamber and we are of course you can find me as well my email addresses listed on the website and you can find me on LinkedIn and Ali Vice Rouch but I’m really excited, grateful and appreciative and looking forward to July

Brandon Burton 29:06
Yes, and I can I can say your your social media, your LinkedIn stuff you like eat, eat, drink, breathe everything chamber so great, great person to find you

Unknown Speaker 29:21
nothing halfway Brandon.

Brandon Burton 29:24
That’s right. We’ll get all of that in the show notes to make it easy for people to reach out and connect with you. But again, congratulations to you and your team. What an honor to be selected as a finalist and I wish you guys the best of luck in Dallas.

Ali Rauch 29:37
Thank you so much, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 29:40
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New CEO & Change Agent with Ali Rauch

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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.

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Ali Rauch. Ali is the President and CEO of the Opelika Chamber of Commerce. While she’s celebrating just three and a half years in this role, she is not new to serving in the Opelika Chamber. She has served many years on the OPA like is 20 Under 40 leadership program board of directors as well as the Women’s Business Council and total resource campaign. In just three short years, she’s led her team to at best of the best five star accreditation to the US Chamber of Commerce raised two and a half million dollars for the Chamber’s forward Opelika good Strategic Community Economic Development Initiative and with the support from her team led a record breaking reach sponsorship campaign in 2022. She also spearheaded a comprehensive brand refresh. Additionally, she was selected to the US chambers business leads fellowship program, and is in the midst of her IOM certification all while changing the landscape and scope of services they open like a chamber offers to their community. Prior to her role at the Chamber, she worked in a wide array of industries including software manufacturing, higher education and most notably franchising and food services, where she served eight years as the director of marketing for Chicken Salad Chick vs had a hand in helping the brand grow from just three stores to 160. She brings a unique perspective to her leadership role at the chamber. Ali is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and earned a Bachelors of Science in speech communications. She also holds an associate’s degree in communications from Lakeland College. She followed loved hope like it were her future husband, Todd chose to attend Auburn University following his military career and they’ve called up like their home ever since an Ali, I’m super 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 share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better. Well,

Ali Rauch 4:09
thank you so much, Brandon, it is an honor to join you today. My bio is quite comprehensive. So some of my little facts are certainly in there. But I think what I’ll do since I’m looking at your San Francisco helmet, my fun fact is going to be that I’m a shareholder for the Green Bay Packers and I am a massive fan grew up on grew up in the Midwest, actually in Illinois in the middle of bear country. But we were the one Packer family in our town. And so I’m a very, very passionate fan and very much looking forward to our opportunity to win and get into the playoffs this weekend. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 4:50
Yeah. And I’ve been I’ve been impressed with Jordan love and him stepping right into that role and they’ve done a great job. So yeah, awesome. Well tell us a little bit about the scope like a chamber, just give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work. You guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion today. Yeah,

Ali Rauch 5:12
you bet. So Opelika is in the Auburn Opelika MSA. And so what that means is, if you’re not familiar with Auburn, or Auburn, or Leica, it’s in the southeast in the kind of east central portion of Alabama. So Auburn is home to Auburn University, that college town, and we are that sister city, that has long since been the kind of hub for business in the area. They’re kind of the hub for education, and we’ve been the hub for business, we’ve got a community college in our town, we have a massive amount of industry. And over the past, you know, 20 years, our city has really focused they manage our economic development. So they have focused a lot on diversifying our industry. So we’ve just got a really healthy business community in our town, we have a population of about 33,000. But if you look at the overall surrounding community, we’re between 120 and 180, depending how far you go out in terms of total population, and our chamber, although 33,000 is our town, and if we were to just really cover that, I think we would be considered to be pretty large, we have a membership of just under 1000. In fact, we are looking forward to breaking that 1000 In the next couple of months, we’ve been very, very close. And we have an annual budget of just under a million dollars. And that has almost doubled since I took on took over about three and a half years ago. And so when we talk about kind of the the massive amount of change that we have undergone, that has been part of it. And let’s see, we’ve got a staff of eight, just became a staff of eight, we started as a staff of four, now staff of eight with our most recent hire, which is a business and Workforce Development Director, which we’ll get to when you talk about some of the projects we’ve worked on. And yeah, I think I think that about sums it up.

Brandon Burton 7:17
Very good. That is exciting kind of teaser, you know at that membership growth, and then just about doubling the budget. And so hopefully everyone’s ears are perking up about what what did these changes that you brought into the chamber. And we’ve we’ve titled this episode as new CEO and change agents. So as Ali’s come into this role as we went through her bio and everything, she’s brought a unique perspective to the chamber world, and taking what she knew and working with the chamber and being able to take what she heard knowledge from the outside chamber world and kind of marrying these two together has really been a great change agent. And I’m excited to get into what some of these changes are and how you’ve been able to introduce them and just the experience that you’ve had. But I also want to just put it out there for listeners that it always can feel maybe a little overwhelming when you hear about all the change or things that you need to be doing. And so for those listening, you don’t need to do at all, you know, just listen and see what makes sense for your community. And maybe none of it is things that you need to apply right now maybe you’re already doing a lot of these things. But as we know change is inevitable. So we need to always be looking for what changes and adjustments we do need to make within our organizations to continue staying relevant. So we’ll dive much deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 11:25
All right, Ali, we’re back. I’d love to just hand you the microphone. Tell us what are some of these changes, I’m sure you’ve got a long list there that you can just barely rattle off some of these changes that you’ve helped drive since you’ve come in this role as CEO. But what are some of those more notable changes, and what has been kind of the the impetus for that?

Ali Rauch 11:47
I think the biggest change that we have really undergone at the Opelika Chamber has been just the overall direction of who we are as an organization. The chamber has been around for 82 years. So it is long standing, it is trusted. It has been very well taken care of for many, many years. But it was very much in a state of complacency. Everything was fine. But it wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t I don’t know, it just it was just there, you know, and I loved it, I was involved. So it wasn’t bad. It was all good things. It just, I come in with a lot of energy. I don’t know if you can feel that for me. But I am a very energetic, very positive. And so one of the first things that I did was to dive in, of course, you got to look at your bylaws truly understand those. But the first thing that we did was we we changed our mission or vision or core values. I rewrote our personnel manual, a ton of policies about the overall direction is what was that first major thing. And honestly, the thing that forced my hand to do that was our accreditation was due with the US Chamber of Commerce. And so this was nine months into my first year as CEO, I’ve got all this paperwork to do. And I’ve done it in my life. And so I was able to take a look at the last 15 years worth of like you do accreditation every five years. And so I was able to look at the last three applications and really get an understanding of where we’ve been. And then I took that as an opportunity and gave myself a deadline and said, Well, you know, we need a new personnel manual, when we need new HR policies. We’ve got to make sure our branding is on point. All those things were kind of sparked by that accreditation change. And so I did not ever think we could possibly get to a five star accreditation and for us to have jumped in my first time to go from four to five star was just I celebrated a lot.

Brandon Burton 13:58
That is awesome. Yeah, it

Ali Rauch 14:00
was huge. But so kind of the core foundation was a big initial change. And we change our vision to be a leading catalyst for a better Opelika. So it really widened our umbrella of what we can do on behalf of our community. While our mission actually changed to be strengthening our community as the champion for business, because we really found that people have no idea what a chamber is literally no clue. Most of the time they think we just do business after hours or cocktail parties or ribbon cuttings. And we wanted our team, our board, our volunteers, everybody to be able to have a simple, singular line that says what is the chamber, we strengthen our community as the champion for business. And so changing that was was a big moment for us and making sure that business was the leading edge element of that. It’s very, very easy to try and serve everybody. But you have to remember, we’re here to serve the business community.

Brandon Burton 15:07
Yeah. I love that just that little tagline that slogan, you can say to we strengthen businesses a champion. We’re busy for our business community. Is that right? Is that how you said it

Ali Rauch 15:18
strengthen, strengthen our community as a champion for business? Yeah, yes,

Brandon Burton 15:22
yes, I had the essence there. So that’s something that every chamber can take, though, you know, do your R&D, you know, take that simplified phrase, that’s something that your board that your volunteers that your staff that new members should be able to understand as a part of your organization. This is what the chamber does. And then from there, obviously gets into mission and vision, things like that. But I love that just having that simple phrase of what is the chamber do, this is who we are, you got that simple response. It’s true.

Ali Rauch 15:53
And one thing that was really great about that, too, is not only did we update our mission to say that, but then our work reflected that. For me, I came from the private business sector, my whole career had been in business. And I also was a marketer. And so I had this unique perspective about what businesses want. And they they are joining the chamber most of the time, to help build awareness and to build relationships on behalf of their business. So because I had that marketing perspective, and understood what they are looking for, from an ROI perspective, we changed a lot of what we offered and what we focused on, so that we could deliver what the businesses need, you know, sometimes you gotta kill those sacred cows and do things they Oh, well, we’ve always done them. But is that what your business community needs? That’s a good question to ask. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:47
I was gonna ask you about that, with your marketing background coming into the chamber world, I know that there’s a there’s some overlap, but there’s also you come into it with eyes wide open of this is what businesses are looking for. And here’s an organization you’re coming into that has been doing, I’m guessing a lot of the same things for a long time, and maybe needed a refresh. So being able to take that, that vision that you’ve had that experience and being able to apply it to the chamber, or there may be some other areas where you’re able to apply your marketing background into creating the identity for your chamber and, and phrases like that, that you just shared? Where else have you seen that background and marketing come in handy in this role,

Ali Rauch 17:30
literally everywhere. So you mentioned in my bio, that we did a a brand refresh, that was huge, you know, I had had been a part of brand refreshes for two different years, I built a brand from the ground up at Chicken Salad Chick. So coming in, I knew we needed that fresh face. And I had high expectations and kind of I want I mean, it needs to be relevant and modern. And today. And so redoing all of our email newsletters, all of our communication, we launched a brand new website last year, we refreshed our magazine, and that one, an ACC e communication and excellence award last year ACC which was amazing. But I think one area that is probably out there that I’ve been able to use it that is unexpected is that we created a conference, it’s actually coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s called the All Things marketing conference. It is just literally a baby that I have created, that my team has come on board and helped and we have made it happen. And and so it’s a one day JAM PACKED conference that people can attend from all over, you’re welcome to if anybody wants to check it out, go to a black chamber.com. But so, you know, like, like a regular conference, you’re gonna pay a fee to attend and include your meals, but you’re gonna listen to a lineup of speakers. And for me, I was getting questions from businesses, especially restaurants, all the time asking for my marketing expertise. And I realized I can’t teach everybody one on one. What if we were to actually teach everybody at once and this became an annual thing. And so I, you know, grabbed grabbed a few of my members who I consider to be really great marketing experts for their specific fields, pulled them together, created a committee and said, This is what I want to do, what would it look like? And so the one we have coming up on January 19 has, we’ve got two keynote speakers, six different breakout sessions, plus a bonus section session, and we’re going to teach everything from traditional marketing to digital advertising to content creation. And numerous people are not only active chamber volunteers, but also former chamber employees like we get it and our keynote speaker is a lady named Lena Trivedi. And if you haven’t heard her story, I encourage you to go to Apple TV and watch the beat The bubble starring Elizabeth Banks. It is essentially the story of how Beanie Babies became what they were. And Lena was an employee at PTI at the time and was really a pioneer of E commerce. And so she’s going to come down and speak and share her story. And, but we created that from the ground up. And now, you know, that’s the opportunity for us to serve 200 to 220. Businesses, if not more, we’ve got the room to grow. But we have an opportunity to teach our business community what they need to know to be better marketers, which is, I would say, 75% of what the businesses need our help from is marketing, because they just most of the time, don’t know what they’re doing. And, and they are an entrepreneur, so they’re passionate about what they’re passionate about, but not necessarily marketing. And so my skill set has just really come in here to create this conference from the ground up. And it’s awesome. It was just this moment of pure, like, Joy. And like, I just, I couldn’t believe it. We did it last year. And now we’re on our second year, and it’s gonna be

Brandon Burton 21:06
awesome. That is awesome. And I think that, you know, strikes a resonance with, with businesses, small businesses, especially where we had talked before we hit record, that the reason that I started the podcast is really to help small businesses that ultimately, that’s what it comes down to my whole career. And chamber publishing has been about helping small businesses and, and there’s some chambers frankly, it becomes more of a membership organization that it kind of stops there and the help, it’s hard to see that connection of where that help and support is for small businesses. And the businesses recognize that I mean, just the honest truth, as I’ve met with Chamber members in a wide variety of different chambers over the years, a lot of them have a hard time making that connection. So having a conference like this, it really offers that direct support for marketing, which is it’s a tangible thing that they can take back to their business and see positive results, see an increase in sales, see that that needle move from efforts at the Chamber is putting out there and making available these opportunities for. I also know in my background with with chamber publishing, I’m talking to businesses about advertising. So I’m seeing what their strategy will call it. And or lack thereof, or lack thereof, most of them don’t have a strategy and any advertising they do. It’s more maybe branding, you know, they’re they’re putting a branding ad out there. But there’s no call to action, there’s no way to collect any information and remarket it like there’s so many different layers that you can put on to marketing and advertising that the small businesses either they don’t know, or they don’t have the bandwidth, or they don’t know the tools that are available. And I just love that you guys are doing this. This is a this is what chambers should be doing to help small businesses be successful. So kudos,

Ali Rauch 23:04
and meanwhile, thank you, I appreciate it. Meanwhile, it’s also an opportunity for us to feature a few of our businesses that will then gain clients as a result of this conference. We sell sponsorships for this conference through our annual reach or total resource campaign. And and then we have ticket sales. So like, this is also like a revenue generating opportunity. And it’s just bigger than what chambers have traditionally done in the past. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:32
yeah, for sure. So, as you have helped to introduce a lot of these changes the brand refresh this marketing campaign, that magazine, there’s been a lot of things. I’m sure there’s other things we haven’t even touched on yet. As you go to introduce these changes, do you find that you have some autonomy just within the organization, you and your staff, or our most of these things? Indeed get Board approval? Or where does that threshold come at your organization?

Ali Rauch 24:05
We, I am very blessed to have a board that trusts me. Pretty implicitly, it’s wonderful. So I have a very supportive board. Typically what will happen is that myself and my team, we do a lot of things together. So this is not like the, hey, Ally’s done all this now. I couldn’t do it without them. So we, we will come up with our ideas and we’ll say this is what we want to do. New programs, all things marketing, Summit, things like that. That was just us. We decided to do that no board approval or anything like that. But with you know, the mission and the vision and things like that. That was something that our staff decided on and the set and then presented it to our board for approval. And so that was certainly a big honestly, it was very easy discussion. It was a unanimous vote. So that made it because we’re being Very thoughtful and doing our homework in advance. They trust us and support those decisions. You know, one of the biggest things that we decided to do that was very involved for the board of directors was our forward over like a campaign, which was our strategic economic development initiative to raise money. Because we are, you can’t tell I’m I’m actually sitting in my office, which was a home that was built in 1895. And I’ve got, I have turned two closets into what we now call co offices, because you just got to make it work. And we’re at max capacity. And, and honestly, we also don’t have a space that our businesses can actually use the way they need it. And so what started out as a need for more meeting space or business space, but also kind of transformed into, hey, let’s start tackling bigger challenges in our community. And so our Florida Blanca initiative raised were actually 3.1 million right now. And that’s going to enable us to work on workforce development for our region, build out some more entrepreneurship training programs, and then also move into a renovated building that will host not only event space for us to be able to host most of our own events, but there will be a visitor center, a boardroom and a business incubator and other things. And so that was very much a, I hired a consultant, we worked with power 10 to do that. But all of that the board was very involved with because I needed them to actually execute it. Because you know, you think about a lot of your board members are going to invest in something like that. But they also have to be willing to put their name and face on it. To say, Yes, we support this. So that was one that was very, very high, highly involved from our board of directors.

Brandon Burton 26:55
Yeah. And it’s awesome to have such a supportive board of directors. And I know a lot of listeners out there do have very supportive boards. So hopefully those relationships are good and cohesive and allow for that autonomy that I’ve set. I was going to ask you about the capital campaigns that you kind of alluded to there, as well as your total resource campaign. So are both of those newer things implemented since you’ve taken the role of as CEO? Or is there have had those been part of the organization before? So

Ali Rauch 27:28
our total resource campaign had actually been a part of the organization for quite a long time, I think we were in year nine, when I started, and I was a volunteer for our total resource campaign for two years prior to joining the job or joining the chamber as the CEO. So that one was long standing. However, we learned, you know, I inherited a team that had had been there for quite a few, I mean, 1415 years, they they were tenured and experienced, and also a little bit tired. And and so when some of the changes that I made, encouraged the retirement or moving on other people, you know, I’m I’m young, I’m aggressive, energetic. So I just kind of changed things quickly. And that became uncomfortable for some some people. And so when they decided to move on to other things, that was the first one, I actually got on a conversation with Jason from YG, MCRC. And he just straight up told me he’s like, I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not what I recommend. And I was like, Oh,

Brandon Burton 28:42
I love that. Jason. Yeah.

Ali Rauch 28:45
Well, I have to be right there with it. But it was true. We we had just been, you know, Hey, turn on our website. And that was it. And there was not strategy, there was not thought and so we are conducting a capital campaign, which is brand new, very aggressive, we need to raise $3 million happening right over here. And we started asking for money in March of 2021. That year, September of 2021. We did a brand new refresh of our reach campaign. So first, wait, no, wait, I think we maybe it might have been a year apart. But either way, we had a total resource campaign going on and our capital campaign going on simultaneously, which was stressful. But it’s doable, because typically that money comes from different buckets, you know, a total resource campaign, those dollars are typically going to be coming from your business’s marketing budget, whereas a capital campaign those dollars are going to be coming from a higher level investment perspective and you’re talking to different people to sell those things. But the capital campaign was certainly new but that reach campaign we saw We now call it reach not a TRC. But thinking of all the branding changes that we do, but we did a brand refresh of our reach campaign, which means that we not only renamed it, but we took away every like week started as if we were brand new client with Jason. And YGM. Because we realized we needed to think more strategically about what we offer and what our price points were, what the benefits were. And so although it’s been around for 12 years now, it was new brand new two years ago, because of that refresh that we did. And that’s really where we went from averaging about $175,000 in sales for the last five to six years or so, to. Let’s see, I think we got up to Oh, 368,000 that’s where we ended. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:56
Yeah, that’s awesome. That is awesome. Wow. So you’ve touched on a lot of things here. I can see for for listener out there, maybe that the overwhelm sitting a little bit, but hopefully, they’re taking notes and just seeing some things that might they might want to revisit at their, their chamber. But I wanted to ask you, for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, maybe give them a little bit of a refresh, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to try to implement and try to maybe reinvigorate life in their organization?

Ali Rauch 31:36
I’m gonna make two recommendations. And the first one we talked about before we pressed record, read Horseshoes vs. Chess by Dave Adkisson. That was, I was a brand new CEO just a couple months into my job when that book came out. And I read it. And it made me think big. It may he outlines the future of chambers, which, you know, we’re not going to be those if we’re going to be doing what we should be doing for the future. We’re going to be working on meaningful things, not just ribbon cuttings and after hours, and so read his book, and process and think, What does your community need? So that would be recommendation number one. And then my second recommendation, I actually is firsthand advice that I was given by Jim Page, who was the longtime CEO of the West Alabama Chamber of Commerce in Tuscaloosa. Because the first conference I went to, I just, I had so many pages of notes. And it was like drinking through a firehose, and I was like, I have so much work to do, what am I going to do? And he literally sat me down and he said, Pick 123 things. That’s it. 123 things that you want to try and work on. Nothing more, because you can, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, you got to you got to pace yourself? You’ve got to prioritize and tackle

Brandon Burton 33:01
three bytes at a time, right?

Ali Rauch 33:03
123? Yeah. No, that doesn’t help ask you to you know,

Brandon Burton 33:09
that’s right. That’s right. Now Jen has excellent, excellent mentor and to take advice from him that that’s very wise. And, and Dave’s book, Horseshoes vs. Chess. For those listening, you know, for a long time he was on an episode and 111 when the book first came out, kind of gave a synopsis of the book and how it came to be. But it really is that book, I think, is the definition of what a chamber is or should be. And as your role as a chamber CEO or Executive Director, whatever the title is, leading a chamber really gives a great definition for what your role should be what your work should look like, and what the future of chambers looks like. So that kind of leads right into the next question, actually, is I’d like to ask and everyone I have on the show that how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ali Rauch 34:04
I think the future of the chamber is really about doing bigger, more meaningful work. You know, for us, we have never in a million years had the responsibility of making sure our businesses have the people resources that they need to be successful. And we just a few months ago, were, you know, given the reins to lead our region for workforce development. That’s a huge job. And that’s a big deal. But there’s also opportunity for funding that comes from both state and federal levels that can help grow our organization significantly, not just as an organization, but the impact that we’re making. So I think the future is just very doing more meaningful work and thinking about that meaningful work. I think that the Chamber of Commerce And I’ve learned in this role, we have a significant amount of influence and prominence in our community. You know, I have great relationships with the mayors in the area with our state representatives and our senators, you know, our, our kickoff for our Florida like a campaign after we had raised just over $2 million was Katie Britt, who at the time was the president of the Business Council of Alabama and running for Senate. And now she’s a state senator from the state of Alabama. And so we have great relationships from an advocacy perspective that we can contact and, and talk about those bigger challenges. So, advocacy is a key part of it. But I still think that although that might always be a part of what we do, doing the more meaningful work that achieves what your business community needs, which is going to vary for everyone. But that’s where I see the future of chambers.

Brandon Burton 35:59
Absolutely bigger and more meaningful work. I love that alley. This has been a fun conversation, energetic it’s full of life. I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and maybe learn more about some of these changes even from implemented and how you’ve gone about introducing them and getting buy in and all that good stuff that we didn’t get to touch on every aspect or in this conversation today. But what would be a good way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Ali Rauch 36:31
Yeah, I I certainly welcome this was. This was almost like draining a firehose of all the things and so please don’t get overwhelmed by that I am I am here as a resource. I would love to either chat with you chat with your chamber, whatever whatever it is that I can help with. You can find me my email address is Ali a li at OpelikaChamber.com. You can find me on all the social social channel channels. You can find me on all the social channels at Ali Vice Rauch. So a li v ice ra uch. But really, I mean I’m an I’m an open book and give me a call shoot me a text my cell is 334-737-9354. And all of this can be found on my website or on our chamber website. OpelikaChamber.com. Very

Brandon Burton 37:24
good. And we’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode too. So we’ll make it easy for people to find you. But Ali, this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate you setting aside some time to be with us today on chamber chat podcast and wish you the best with the future chambers that future changes that you have to implement. They’re at your chamber and and going forward into the future. Thanks a lot.

Ali Rauch 37:46
Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 37:49
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