Running your chamber like a business

Brad Lacy: We operate much more like our members in that we operate much more like a business. What I like to say is we are not a charity and we are not asking for contributions. We are a business organization. So if we cannot drive value to members, if we cannot give them something they want or need, then we probably don't need to be in business. And I think that is the the difference between a lot of chambers that are very successful and the ones who aren't because I like to say chambers end up being the dumping ground of bad ideas that someone in the community had. And so we took a very hard look at everything we did and continue to and try to determine if it drives value to anyone and and if it doesn't then we're not going to do it anymore.

Ted Wind: Hi, I'm Ted and I build software for Chambers of Commerce. For the past decade, chamber tools were all built the same way. One clunky system for every chamber. But if I've learned one thing, it's that no two chambers are alike. That's why on this show, we go beyond the ribbon cut with top chamber leaders to share the unique programs, processes, and what makes their chamber work, and to give you new ideas you can take back to your chamber. This is Beyond the Ribbon Cut.

Hello and welcome back to Beyond the Ribbon Cut, the podcast for chamber leaders. I'm your host, Ted Wind from Diagonal for Chambers, and this is our season 1 finale. Now, for those who don't know, the way we find so many of our incredible chambers for the show is solely through nominations, whether that's from our previous guests or chamber listeners at home writing in.

And today's season 1 finale guest is someone who's received more nominations than anyone else since we first launched the show. So we are so excited to have him on board today. That guest is Brad Lacy, president and CEO of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce and the Conway Development Corporation in Arkansas. Brad, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Brad Lacy: Yeah, thanks for the invite.

Ted Wind: We're stoked to have you on board. So let's kick things off here. Brad, set the scene for us. What is the Conway Area Chamber? Tell us a little bit more about the business community in Conway.

Brad Lacy: Sure. So, the Conway Area Chamber was founded in 1890. And much like other chambers across the country, it was a group of local business leaders that were trying to solve a problem. And for them, it was about economic diversification. And in 1890 in rural Arkansas, the solution to economic diversification was higher ed. And so this group of leaders came together and raised $50,000, which was a pretty big feat at the time. I mean, the community had 1,200 people at the time. So they raised $50,000 of private money to go out and recruit our first college, which was Hendrix College. They did that in 1891. And then they did it two more times by 1907. So this group of business leaders had used the Conway Board of Trade, which is what it was called then, to recruit three institutions of higher ed into the community by 1907.

And so when you follow the history of the organization, they just always stepped up and did whatever needed to be done. And I think when you set the stage, they sort of filled a role that city government fills a lot today. And that was because city government probably wasn't really a thing. I mean, you probably had a mayor, but he was more ceremonial.

So in 1911, the same group of business leaders decided to form an improvement district and put in the first municipal sewer system in the community. They built a hotel in the 1920s. They rechartered the first bank in Conway after the Great Depression. So there is just a history of the business community solving problems that I think most people think government does. And I think that chambers across America historically have done more than most citizens understand that they've done.

So if you fast forward to today, the city is consistently ranked among the top 100 fastest growing cities in America, over 50,000. The business community is very diverse. No place is sort of recession proof, but we might be as close to that as you could get. We have a very diverse local economy from tech to natural gas extraction to health care to manufacturing to retail. So it's just a very diverse economy that is really a part of a larger metropolitan economy for Little Rock. We're a principal city in that MSA. We're the second largest city in the MSA. So, central Arkansas is really a diverse economic region that tends not to have really high highs or really low lows. It's just been sort of consistent growth decade after decade and we're just sort of a reflection of that.

Ted Wind: That's incredible. And I think another piece that's really interesting about the chamber as well, I mean, not only has it been around for a long time, but also kind of the makeup of Conway as well. It's a, you know, college town, commuter town, 21,000 people driving in and out every day. What does that mix mean for who your members actually are?

Brad Lacy: Yeah. So, that's a good point. You've done a lot of research. You're hitting all the points. So, yeah, we are a little bit of three things, I would say. So, we are very much a college town. We do have about 20 to 21,000 people who leave the county every day to go to work primarily in Little Rock, which is south of us. But there's a part of us that's very commuter-based.

But then we replace those 20,000 people every day with people from around the region who come to work here. So we're very much an employment center. The majority of our residents stay here to work, which is a really big difference than what you see in most sort of classic suburbs around urban areas. you don't have the outflow of people here that you do even in other cities around Little Rock.

So, I like to remind people that means that your lunch crowds are bigger. It means that you are more likely to have a physician here. It means you are more likely to have business relationships here, whether it's a pharmacist or an accountant or whatever. I mean, you sort of miss some of those business opportunities if you're commuting a lot. So, it very much feels like a center of business more than it feels like a suburb.

Ted Wind: Mhm. I love that. And I think that's a really important distinction. I mean, we've had a wide range of chambers on the show, obviously, from across the country, and you get communities, everything from a tourist town where there's only people there in the summer, all the way down to at least more commuter-based towns to major cities. Super, super interesting kind of how that dynamic plays out in the chamber world. Now, I want to switch gears here a little bit and just briefly talk a little bit about you, Brad. So, we have chambers on all the time, chamber leaders. And a classic response when I asked the question about how did you get here was the chamber world. It was never something I never wanted to do. I had no idea what it was. I kind of just stumbled in it into it and fell in love with it. Your story, I think, is pretty interesting cuz you started on the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and then kind of made your way to the chamber and you described, you know, being on the chamber as your dream job. Can you kind of paint the road of how you got there and why being involved with the chamber was something that was on your mind for a while?

Brad Lacy: Yeah, so I think the economic development space is really where by the end of my college career I had sort of figured out that economic development was a career and I wanted to do that and that is rare. You don't see a lot of people come straight out of college knowing that this is even a profession.

I was very driven to get into an economic development role. It did not happen for me right out of college. I went to work for Acxiom, who is one of our largest private sector employers. They're a technology company that started here. And a lot of people went to work for Acxiom. That's just kind of what you did when you graduated from college. And so I did that for about a year and a half. And the whole time I was trying to get to AEDC. And I did that.

And so I spent three years working projects all over the state of Arkansas. So I was working with companies that wanted to relocate here. I was working with existing business and industry that wanted to expand. And so I got a really good base level education of what economic development really looks like and what those primary jobs mean to a community. And so the Conway I had always lived in Conway. So I had never moved to Little Rock. I just continued to live here cuz I went to college here. My friends were here. I shared a house with three of my fraternity brothers and probably paid 200 bucks a month or 150 bucks a month. So why would I move?

And so the Conway Development Corporation job came open after 40 years. So the CDC is a sister organization to the chamber. The chamber helped create the CDC in 1959 and that happened because of some enabling legislation in Arkansas that allowed local communities to form tax-exempt economic development organizations that could basically own and develop property for the purposes of economic development. Conway did that in 1959 with the CDC and the man who helped start it ran it until he passed away in 1999. So he was there 40 years. For a number of those years he had dual roles. He ran the chamber and the CDC, but that changed in about 1990 and they sort of split responsibilities and had a chamber exec and an economic development exec.

So when I came on board after Mr. Murphy passed in 2000, the organizations had different leaders. They had just finished a capital campaign on the chamber side to build a new facility. The CDC put money into that and that guaranteed me a spot in the building. So I was a tenant really and sort of did my own thing and sort of watched what was going on on the chamber side.

And so really, I think for me, the Conway job was the dream job for me. Like doing this work locally in a community that I had really grown to love and really see the potential in was exciting for me, but I never thought it would involve the chamber piece. I just thought I would be the economic development guy.

And so I did that solely until 2006. In those first seven years, the chamber had three different CEOs. So there was a lot of leadership turn there. The CDC had actually added on to the chamber building. We put our own kind of wing on it. And so we were in the process of moving back here and we had our own entrance and we were just sort of going to be self-sufficient.

And we had a newspaper publisher at the time who was not from here. um who was on the chamber board and he walked into this office that I'm sitting in, sat in that chair and said, "Why don't you do both jobs? This doesn't make sense. I don't understand why these things are separate. He doesn't have any of the history. He doesn't have anything other than as a business leader, it did not make sense for him for us to have all of these separate organizations literally sitting in the same building, but they're all doing their own thing.

And so I thought, well, one, I don't know if I want to do both jobs. Um, two, I don't know if the CDC board would want me to do both jobs. And it seems that in most places where this sort of coming together happens, it's a process. There's a lot of studying that goes on. There's a lot of time that has to take place in order to get everyone lined up. And like that was not the case. Like this was like September of 2006. We had put the deal together by October of 2006. and then I took over the dual role in December of 2006. So, it was just not a typical story of how you pull these organizations together.

And now, to be clear, those organizations are still separate to this day. So, separate boards, separate budgets, as is our downtown organization, as is our CVB. They are different. They have different boards, different funding streams, but through a series of management agreements among the organizations, we manage the staff as a single staff. But I would say to the outside world, it's the chamber. Like everyone works for the chamber. The average person knows me as the chamber guy. Even though the chamber doesn't pay my salary, the CDC pays my salary. But the forward face I think of the community, the business community is the chamber.

Ted Wind: Yeah, 100%. And actually a few episodes back we had Matt Pivarnik from the Myrtle Beach Chamber. And we really went in depth on the combination of running a chamber economic development and the CVB all under one roof. As you mentioned there, you guys kind of separated out a little bit. So, separate boards, one core kind of staff that's shared. When you have all these groups under one shared roof and kind of a shared vision, how do you keep all those pieces from falling apart?

Brad Lacy: That's a good question. I think it's relationships. I mean, the most important job I have is to maintain those relationships with these investors because the people who invest in the chamber are usually the people that invest in the downtown organization are usually the people that invest in the economic development organization.

But I think what we were able to show them is that we could become much better at doing the work by merging the staffs because instead of having three administrative assistants, we have one. Instead of having three copy machines, we have one. There's an efficiency that comes from sharing resources. And this whole sort of idea of shared services where you have a centralized accounting function and a centralized HR function that serves everyone really allows us to use our resources in a smarter way.

And frankly, what we saw is when we pulled all of that together, we raised more money, we grew faster. And so I would say looking back at 2006 when I took both roles, there were probably six of us total and now there's 20. So I think the business community has responded in a very positive way.

Ted Wind: 100%. And I I love that way you structured it in a way that allows for those efficiency gains while still keeping somewhat independent identities of these organizations and still allowing them to function and and do their pursue their mission. But obviously recognizing exactly like you said the shared investors that make these groups possible and when you pull those resources together especially from an investor's perspective it's more you can do more with the money that they're giving you. So I think that's really really incredible there that you're doing that.

One thing I want to kind of structure today's episode around, especially with it being our season 1 finale, is something on every single episode of this season has been a conversation with a chamber leader where we talk about one program at a time. Whether that's something like workforce, advocacy, a ballot campaign, some of these massive community events, a foundation, etc., etc. Not only does your chamber do so many of those, but you've also been named chamber of the year because of it. You've said about the chamber, we expect more from ourselves and we compare ourselves to the very best. What does that actually look like on a random Tuesday? What are the best chambers doing that the average chamber can take inspiration from?

Brad Lacy: Yeah, so I think the chamber of the year process has been really good for us. So, we've applied three times, we won twice, and we're runner up once. The funny thing is the year we were runner up, I think our staff would tell you was probably, in our opinion, our best application. So, the two times we won, we didn't think we were as strong as the year we didn't win.

But, I think it's just it's kind of internal to the people who work here that we want to punch above our weight class. But, it's really kind of who the community is. This community makes bold moves and always has. We were one of the first 10 cities in North America to deploy broadband to every home. I mean, that took place in like 1996. So, I think a little of it is the DNA of who this place is and what the expectation is. And so like I took the job assuming that the expectation was that we would be a nationally competitive organization that this community expected us to be that. And so we don't hire people who don't have that drive or that vision really.

And so we operate much more like our members in that we operate much more like a business than I like to call it like Aunt Bee's chamber where you're just like handing out maps and stuff. I mean like what I like to say is we are not a charity. We are a business organization and we are not asking for contributions. We are a business organization. So if we cannot drive value to members, if we cannot give them something they want or need, then we probably don't need to be in business.

And I think that that is the difference between a lot of chambers that are very successful and the ones who aren't because it is very likely that I like to say chambers end up being the dumping ground of bad ideas that someone in the community had. And it's like, here is this thing that I think someone should do. Well, I'm going to give it to the chamber. That's what they're there for is to do the Christmas parade. And I'm not saying you shouldn't do the Christmas parade. But if the Christmas parade doesn't make money, and if the Christmas parade, you can't tie it back to what your mission is, then you probably shouldn't do the Christmas parade. And so we took a very hard look at everything we did and continue to try to determine if it drives value to anyone. And if it doesn't, then we're not going to do it anymore.

And then this comparing ourselves to the best, we spend a lot of money on benchmarking. So we do benchmarking trips for the community as a whole where we pick places that we think we can learn something from and then we put a trip together and take 20 to 40 business leaders for 3 days and just kind of immerse ourselves in those places. And so for us, those places have been Fort Collins, Colorado, Carmel, Indiana, Franklin, Tennessee, Greenville, South Carolina. And those are very, very valuable trips.

On the organizational side, we do a retreat every year in January for the staff where we shut the building down for 3 days. I mean, we have a temp in here. They answer the phone, but we leave. I try to find a chamber that I think we can learn something from and kind of do a peer-to-peer experience with my colleague there. And that is also very valuable because you find out you're doing some things really well and then you find out that you're not doing some things very well. And so we come back from that and we change things up every year. And so I just think that keeps it fresh and it keeps it relevant. And I think chambers can be and should be very relevant in their communities. And if you're not, it means you're probably not doing the right things.

Ted Wind: 100%. 100%. I I couldn't agree more. And it's something we've also seen from kind of our view is building software from chambers. We get a bit of a bird's eye look at the industry and get to see as well that those chambers that treat it like a business and that aren't afraid to innovate. I mean, these are exactly the things that we see in the chambers that thrive. So I I mean some really incredible nuggets there. I want to also touch a little bit on some of the kind of products and offerings that Chamber provides because that's also major piece of your value proposition as you said you know not wanting to be Aunt is it Aunt Bee's Chamber or Aunt what was the uh

Brad Lacy: I said Aunt Bee like from uh from the Andy Griffith show like that's that's what I that's what I picture a lot of chambers sort of devolve to you know where they're they're just kind of stuck doing the thing they've always done and they're good people. They just can't get off of this. It's almost like this hamster wheel. It's like we're going to do just enough to get enough money to pay ourselves and keep the doors open. And they work really hard. I mean, that's the thing. Like they work really hard to do these four or five things and hand the pamphlets out and answer the phone and do all this, but like they can't ever get out of it. They just can't ever get out of it.

And one thing I failed to mention that I do think is a difference maker for us is we do not take public money. And so a lot of chambers, and I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying this is where we're different. Outside of the contract we get to manage the convention and visitors bureau, which is about $225,000 a year of what could be a $5 to 7 million budget every year. All of the rest of the money is private. Like we do not have a contract with our city to do economic development. We don't have a contract for whatever.

And I think that forces us to be innovative. It forces us to hustle. It forces us to learn how to sell. It forces us to develop products that someone actually wants because we don't have $500,000 coming from taxpayers every year. It's just not there. So on January 1st, we're at zero. And I mean, there's just no easy path to what we do. And so I think all of that tied up with kind of the expectations of the community have made us who we are.

Ted Wind: Yeah. Yeah. I really love that. And I think another thing too is especially for small businesses when they see a chamber that operates the same way they do that runs itself like a business that isn't reliant on a lot of the things you said there. I think that is just something that obviously they can resonate a lot more with and is another reason why they'd want to get more involved with the chamber too. So I think that's a really great point there as well. Brad, another piece that I I want to touch on, it's going back to this products and offerings idea that chambers can provide. A big thing through both the pod and the stuff that we build at Diagonal has always been reinvigorating the products and offerings that chambers can give out to your members. You describe this concept of quality of place as one of the major products that a chamber can provide. Can you explain more about this idea of quality of place and how you've gone about building it?

Brad Lacy: Yep. So, it really goes back to what our economic development philosophy has been for 25 years. And that is we believe that in order to be really competitive for economic development, we have to be really competitive for people. And if we're going to be competitive for people, we have to build a community that people want to live in. We have to build a community that college students want to stay in once they graduate. We have to build a community that our large employers can attract talent to.

And so we very quickly started focusing in on that quality of place, like how do we build a better place? And in some cases what it meant was aligning with the city when some of our members probably wanted us to be adversarial.

When I look I think back to like 2005 6 and 7 when we as a community well city passed a series of ordinances that would control how we develop. So we are now going to build complete streets which means that you take pedestrians and cyclists into account as well as cars. That means it's more expensive. We are going to focus on trails. We are going to put stricter development guidelines in place both in landscaping and architectural facades. We're going to put a wide overlay district in place over our downtown and old residential areas. Well, like those weren't sign ordinance. Like you're going to build monument signs now and not pylon signs. And so like there was this series of ordinances that the city passed that I think some people really wanted us to fight because it would make it more expensive. Like it's more expensive to build masonry than metal. But I would argue it's a better investment long term and your city looks better and the product is better and over time rents are better. And so we aligned with the city on those things and it made some people mad and we lost some members over it, but we were taking a long view at what Conway should be. And so some of it was us not fighting city government. And then other parts of it are just we're stepping in and using that private money we raise to help push that forward.

And so an example would be we knew that within a period of time there would likely be three new bridges built through in the city limits crossing Interstate 40. And so we used our money to do a master plan for the interstate corridor. Settled upon a new design for the bridges. went to the city council, asked them to formally adopt this as the way we build bridges in Conway. And so now when you drive through Conway on I-40, three of those bridges look very different than probably any bridge I've driven under on I-40 between Nashville and Oklahoma City. And so we are making strategic investments that build place in a way that a lot of people don't.

And so like last week for instance, the kind of the culmination of a project we started 2 years ago, we're a big roundabout city. So our city builds roundabouts instead of signalized intersections. And so we have probably 40 of them. In fact, we as a city really take those signalized intersections out and replace them with roundabouts. So, there's a lot of that kind of construction that happens.

Well, we were doing a complete rebuild on a major thoroughfare that runs in front of one of our universities, building a complete street with dedicated cycling lanes and wide sidewalks and burying power lines and doing the whole thing. And then there were three roundabouts that were constructed. So we decided we wanted to raise money and do public art in all three of them. And so we found two other partners. We raised $75,000. The other two private sector partners each raised $75,000 and we commissioned these art pieces.

So $225,000 public art installation pieces were finished. They were put in place last week and like the response is insane. I mean people love it. You have a few people that are like, you know, how much did this cost taxpayers? Well, zero. Now what? Like, so we are going to do that. We very much see that that is part of our mission. We very much believe that our members will invest in us over and above the cost of a business expo booth or whatever. I think they understand that business expo and annual meeting and the festival and all these other things we do, these are just ways that we raise enough revenue to do these big projects. I think we've done it long enough and well enough that they understand that that's just part of what their money goes for.

Ted Wind: Another big project I want to bring up on the episode is some of the massive events you put on. We had John Nyhan from the Hampton Area Chamber in New Hampshire on the show a while back and they run this seafood festival. It's 150,000 guests coming to attend. Massive event. You have a similar sized event with a great name by the way. I'd love if you could explain the name first. Toad Suck Daze. Um could you tell us a little bit more about that event, how that got started and maybe how that ties into this idea of quality of place as well?

Brad Lacy: Sure. No, great question. So yeah, the festival. So prior I'm going to give you the name first so we can get that part out of the way and everyone can understand what it is. But prior to Conway, Conway started in 1875 as the railroad came through. But prior to Conway, there was a community on the Arkansas River a few miles away from Conway called Cadron. Um it was started in the 1700s. The Arkansas River was somewhat navigable then, but there is a bend in the river where Cadron sat and so often locals said steamboat captains would get stuck when the river was low. They they couldn't make it around the bend.

So they would literally get stuck and they would just have to stay in Cadron until the river rose and then they could continue on up or down. And so the locals said that those steamboat captains would come to the local tavern where they would suck down ale until they swelled like toads.

So 1875 the railroad bypasses Cadron. Conway is created. Cadron dies. Except that little community out there, what was left of it, at some point they kind of called themselves Toad Suck. And so it became this name that had a history attached to it.

So before there was a bridge crossing the Arkansas River, the chamber actually ran a ferry called the Toad Suck Ferry that ushered people from Perry County into Conway to shop so that they wouldn't go somewhere else. So we ran the Toad Suck Ferry. And in the 1960s when this massive navigation project occurred on the Arkansas River between the Mississippi River and Tulsa, the lock and dam at Cadron was named the Toad Suck Lock and Dam.

So, so there was this name out there and then in the early 1980s a group of then young professionals decided that we needed a festival in Conway and they decided to capitalize on the name because it's so crazy and they came up with Toad Suck Daze, D-A-Z-E and they started this little festival on the river. It grew but from the very beginning it was its own 501c3. So it was a charitable organization and their mission in the beginning in the very beginning was that they would hope to raise a little bit of money where they could provide scholarships to students in Faulkner County who chose to attend one of the three colleges here. So that's kind of what they did.

In 1990, the Arkansas River flooded and so they had to move the festival downtown and so it continued on. It grew. At some point, it outgrew its volunteer base and the chamber inherited it and it is its own thing. It's uh as you said, it's large, so over 100,000 people come. It's a three-day event. I always tell our staff, some chambers only do this for the year. This is what we do the first weekend in May and then we just move on and do something else. But like we do this gigantic, complicated, crazy festival the first three days in May and then we just like move on and do the next thing.

So the beauty of the festival is really that it allows us to raise money to the level that we're able to really make a difference. So from the beginning, the festival has contributed over $3 million to education and community development projects. When Arkansas voters passed a lottery several years back that would fund scholarships, we took a look at what we were doing and decided that our money would be better used for pre-K literacy and some other things than scholarships.

Now, over the years, we created endowments at all three of the schools and then we put $400,000 in our community foundation and that has grown. And so there is an element of the festival that will always give scholarships. So we always give scholarships every year based off those endowments. But then the active giving that we do now is much more targeted. So it's Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. It's ACT and National Merit Prep in the Public School System. It is a summer food program for underprivileged children. It's public art and murals. It's hanging baskets for downtown. And so in any given year, we're going to give out somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 to those kind of targeted things.

Regionally, we started looking regionally because our guests come from all over the region. And so we made a $100,000 commitment to the Little Rock Zoo to do a permanent amphibian exhibit. I like to say we've made a lot of money off amphibians and we've never done anything for them. So, we gave a $100,000 to the Little Rock Zoo to do a permanent exhibit that featured I don't think it's maybe like 25 or 30 different kinds of amphibians from around the world just to teach school children about the importance of amphibians in the ecosystem and um that they're sort of early indicators of problems with pollution and climate change. And so we're able to do a lot of really cool stuff that we couldn't do if 100,000 people didn't come here and have fun for a weekend.

Ted Wind: 100%. Yeah, that really really incredible there. We talked about a lot today from visioning obviously the big festival, a lot of these incredible programs and ideas that I know chambers listening in are thinking in the back of their head, wow, this this all sounds really great, but we're a small team, maybe three or four people. Where do we start? If a small chamber wants to move from just the everyday ribbon cuttings, your Aunt Bee's chamber toward the Conway model, what's the first thing they should do? And also maybe what should they try not to copy?

Brad Lacy: It's a good question. I think what I would say is we ask ourselves basically three questions is like what's the purpose of blank? like whether it's an advertising opportunity or an event or whatever, like what is the purpose? Is it profitable? And what does the customer receive if they do this? If we can't answer those three questions, then we have something we don't need to be doing.

Cuz if you can't articulate the value or the purpose of this thing, why are you doing it? And so I think just regardless of your size, you need to just have this honest conversation with yourself about what you're doing and is it valuable? And guess what? If people aren't buying it, it means it's not valuable.

I mean, that's the people will always say, "Well, how do you know if what you're doing is relevant? And how do you know?" I'm like, "Do you do surveys? Do you do this? Do you do do that?" And I'm like, "Hey, the ultimate guide on whether what we're doing is valuable is if people continue to buy it." That's the ultimate survey for me. When something starts doing this, we have a problem. When it's going down, we have a problem. But if we sell out, if we're close to a sellout, then we're probably doing something right. So, I think that you have to do this really hard but important assessment.

And then I think you pick like on the event space. I think you pick one thing that you really want to try to move the needle on. For us, it was annual meeting. Like that was my baby. That was the thing I wanted us to do well because I knew that if we did it well, it would be this rallying point for the business community prior to me taking my role. I had gone a few times just to support them. I always like to say it was two hours of my life I could never get back. It was excruciating. The food was terrible. The speaker wasn't great. It was a lunch. It was a buffet. It was just all these things.

And so we took that and we flipped it. And oh, by the way, that last year that they did it, they grossed like $7,000 and netted $497. So it's like with every ticket you sold, you were going further into the hole. So that was an easy one to start with and just say, "Hey, we're going to transform this."

And so in 2007, we moved it to a nighttime event. We had no budget. I went to a group of women that I had served on a couple of nonprofit boards with, hat in hand, and said, "I need your help. I need you to decorate this thing for me. We're going to try to sell 700 seats. How much money do you have for us?" I was like, "$100." Like literally nothing. And so like this group of women saved me the first year. I mean like we're taking things out of their home and putting it on tables and doing all this and that.

I reached out to the then governor and asked him to come be a keynote because I knew that he wouldn't charge us anything and I knew he would draw a crowd. And so in one year we went from losing $497 to netting like $40,000. And so that event really started to transition the whole organization.

And so if you fast forward to today, 20 years later, same community, it's bigger, but it's not like there's a bunch of billionaires that live here who are writing checks. I mean, these are just normal business people that live here. That event this year grossed $360,000. Same town, same organization, but we decided that we wanted to be better. and we decided that we wanted to give something better to the community and it is an event that nobody wants to miss. I mean, it sells out quickly. It's obviously a big revenue generator for us, but the more important thing is what I said very early in the conversation is it's a rallying point. So this is the time when we gather all of these people in a room and we remind them what we have done, why their investment in us matters, what we can do together if we continue moving in this direction.

I always say we're making people drink the Kool-Aid again. and you get about a year out of that and then it's time for you to set the stage, build the show, kind of razzle-dazzle people, and remind them why this place is important and why we're important as an organization.

So, I think that's where you start. I think you find one thing that you think you could do better and you focus all your effort and then you'll learn from that and then you'll take what you learned and do it on a second thing and a third thing and a fourth thing and then it just becomes your culture. And I've seen plenty of small chambers in Arkansas do this. I've seen plenty of them. There are some exceptional small chambers in Arkansas with incredible leaders that are doing really relevant things and there's just really makes me feel good to see that like the model that we use works in other places.

Ted Wind: I love that. I love that. And I think that's what's also so valuable about having all the leaders we've had on the show is that model. While every community looks different, there are pieces of that model that are repeatable and of these stories that are things you can apply into your chamber.

Now, last question for the show. Normally on every episode, we ask every single guest, what's one piece of advice you'd give to the other chamber leaders at home listening? Now, since today's a little bit of a special episode, season finale, want to do a little bit of a twist on that one. So every guest has made the case that chambers can do more than just the basics, more than just the networking. Going once again beyond the ribbon cut, right where our name comes from.

Looking out 10 years from now, what does a chamber have to become to still matter? And what's the one thing you'd want every chamber leader who listened to today's episode, who followed the season of the show to take away?

Brad Lacy: I think that chambers do one thing or have the potential to do one thing better than any other group I know and that is convening people. If we are really good at one thing here, it is that we know how to convene people.

That is harder today. The algorithm on your phone, I like to say, tells you you should hate your neighbor. That's not true. And I think for us, we had to learn quickly that we are a very purple city politically. So if you look at the last two presidential elections in the city of Conway, they were both almost 50/50 and how the community voted. So that paints a picture of who lives here. And those political ideologies are throughout the business community. though I have some very very liberal people, very very conservative people and everyone in the middle.

But most of the things we work on are things that both sides can agree on. Not 100%. But most of them are things people can agree on. I looked at the comments on my Facebook feed on the public art installation and the people that love it run the gamut and they're proud of it. They're proud that that exists in our community. They're proud that we did it. And I think it is really important and I think chambers are the organization that can do it to remind people what they have in common.

And I also think that your events have the opportunity to build social fabric in your community. We've been doing that really well for a long time, but I did not have a name for it. And we benchmarked our peers up in Fargo, North Dakota. And that Fargo chamber has kind of another organization that they work with called Folkways. And Folkways just helped me understand how to characterize what we were doing because they're unapologetic that they build social fabric in Fargo.

And it was like this epiphany for me like, wow, that's what Toad Suck Daze is. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, gay, straight, Republican, Democrat, black, white, Hispanic. Like, it doesn't matter. Everyone can come enjoy that.

When we have our big Christmas tree lighting, like I look around at the 3 or 4 thousand people that are down here riding the Ferris wheel, experiencing all this stuff, and like people describe it as like a Hallmark movie moment, and there is value in that. Like some people probably don't think that's valuable. It's very valuable because when we lose those connections as neighbors, we're not going anywhere.

I mean, gridlock is the norm in Washington DC. It shouldn't be the gridlock in your community. And I think that chambers are uniquely positioned to be that sort of middle ground at a time when we need to be the middle ground. I mean, that's what I would tell any chamber, regardless of their size, regardless of what their economy looks like. You can be that convenor of people.

Ted Wind: Really, really well said, Brad. I That is really, really incredible and I think something a lot of chambers can both take to heart, but also really use going forward as a reminder of why we got into this space in the first place.

Brad Lacy: For sure.

Ted Wind: And I think that is so beautiful and so well said. I just want to say thank you again for coming on the show. I really can't think of a better way to close out our first season of Beyond.

Brad Lacy: Thanks for the invitation.

Ted Wind: Of course. Of course. And you know, there's so much great stuff in today's episode. You can find links to Brad, the Conway Area Chamber, Toad Suck Daze. They'll all be in the description below. Check them out if you want to learn more there.

And to everyone who listened this season, I just want to say thank you so much. 15 episodes, 15 chamber leaders. But don't worry, we're taking a short break, but we'll be back with season two. And I'm really excited to share that we'll be kicking that one off with a bang with ACCE president and CEO Sheree Anne Kelly. So, super pumped for that episode. Make sure you tune in for that one. And until then, thanks for tuning in to Beyond the Ribbon Cut. We'll see you soon.