Typically, in a 12 month period, YCC will facilitate between 29 and 32 Membership Events. So when we were asked by a potential new Chamber client what our total stats were over a year’s worth of work, even we were surprised with the totals. In the last year’s work year, Your Chamber Connection brought in almost 5,000 new members and just over one million dollars revenue at an average of $229 per new member to Chambers of Commerce across these United States. Even we are impressed!

If you ask us to tell you why our Events are so successful, we will tell you two things. We will tell you that our Events are refreshing not boring, and we will tell you to call our Chamber clients. We can blow our horn until Gabriel says “enough.” But the best answers will come from your peers. Pull up our web page at www.chamberconnect.com, the Clients’ page, and call Chambers who have used us in the last couple of years. They will make you believe we have something no other membership recruiting company has. We are refreshing, exciting, funny, original, and sincere. Our retention factor is as high as our enthusiasm. But don’t wait forever! We are already booking 2003 Events! Call us at 800/678-6241 after you have checked us out.

RECORD SETTING EVENT!

BEAUMONT, TX March 12-14, 2002: When Jimmy and Lorraine stopped counting and announced the totals, the Beaumont (Texas) Chamber of Commerce set a state (maybe even a national) record for a 3 day Event. They welcomed 433 new members at an average of $251 plus, with more new members coming in even as the cheers were echoing through the building. Membership Director Virtue Alexander and President Jim Rich were speechless, which was OK as this gave Jimmy more time to roast everybody.

BOARD NOTES: Chambers Marketing Themselves: (part one in a series by Lorraine Deitchman.)

Two important points: 1. Most Chambers are their communities’ best kept secret.

2. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Let’s start with point 2, first impressions.

Walk outside; then re-enter your offices and look at them as though it is the first time you have ever entered that Chamber entry door. Does this Chamber office tell the Chamber story? Is it cluttered? Is the information display outdated? (Wasn’t that Casino Night about 11 months ago?) Is there information on display for CURRENT upcoming events? If you sell publications, are they displayed so that visitors can see all publications you have available?

Are the furniture and the carpets in good repair, or is the broken leg on the front desk propped up using phone books? Do you have someone manning that front desk? Do you have a display of member companies that is neat, orderly, and current?

In order to set a good first impression, your lobby/entrance foyer should look professional as well as inviting. Handout information should be readily available and the display area user friendly. If there are interesting products manufactured in the community, they should be proudly displayed. A large number of Chambers are also visitor information centers where they sell and distribute locally produced products and services.

Whichever you are, set the impression of a strong business orientated organization quickly and effectively. If you want to be a respected business in your community, look the part and play the part.

Next topic; Your Story in Print.

NON-DUES INCOME: FESTIVALS: Every successful festival has a local theme. Pumpkin festivals, Garlic festivals, Ice Festivals, Grape festivals and any other local item you can cash in on. Grapevine, Texas has only one vineyard, but every year they put together a huge grape and wine festival. As a matter of fact, they are extending it one more day to attract even more visitors. Luckenbach, Texas has only a few permanent residents, but thanks to Waylon Jennings and his song (Luckenbach, Texas) and Willie Nelson and his annual 4th of July picnic, they have a huge Chili festival every year. Even small (pop. 1500) Nederland Colorado and the Nederland Area Chamber of Commerce found a hook to put on a very successful festival. It seems a few years back, (and forgive me if I haven’t got all the facts,) a transplanted Norwegian man had his favorite uncle cryogenically preserved upon his death and moved to Nederland. Unfortunately for him (fortunately for the Chamber of Commerce), his visa was revoked, and he was sent home by the INS. This happened very quickly, so quickly that he was unable to pack up his freeze-dried uncle to go back with him. So Uncle (or Granpa, as the locals call him) stayed in Nederland, plugged in with nobody to watch him. Somehow the community got involved and maintained his lifestyle (checking the electric plug every now and then) and wondered what to do with him. One day (I’m sure in the cold of winter with nothing else to do) someone had the bright idea to create a festival honoring the poor soul. Thus was born the “Frozen Dead Guy Days” in Nederland. It’s been running annually for several years and has put the town on the map.

Don’t believe me? Check the Chamber web site at www.nederlandchamber.org. Now if Nederland can create Famous Dead Guy Days, what can you do?

LIVING HEALTHY DEPT: According to a news report, a private school in Victoria, Australia recently was faced with a unique problem. A number of girls from the 12th grade were gathering in the school's ladies’ room to apply lipstick. .
After putting on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirror, thereby leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. The principal explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror. .
There are teachers, and then there are educators!

BOARD MANAGEMENT DEPT: RETREATS, (by Lorraine Deitchman, President of Your Chamber Connection, with additions from Phil Neighbors, President, San Marcos (TX) Chamber.) Board Retreats are like high definition road maps for your Chamber. If you don’t know where you are going, how can your get there safely? First, you should have a planning session with your Executive Committee to plan the right road maps for your destination before you plan your Retreat. You and your Executive Committee will have to make the decision on what you want to accomplish with your Retreat. You will also have to decide on whether or not you should bring in someone to help you facilitate the Retreat or if you need to extend an invitation to others in the community to participate in a particular session. For example, if the purpose of your Retreat is to build a five or ten-year plan, you had better know what the City’s Long Range Plan is. You may need someone from the City to explain their plan in order to see where your road map needs to go.

As stated in previous YCC newsletters, a successful Retreat should include in the budget provisions for an outside source to provide leadership for the accomplishment of your goals. If you don’t have a budget, get your Retreat sponsored.

If the purpose of your Retreat is a planning session covering Chamber policies and dollars, check with your peers on who they have used and how effective he or she was.

Most Chambers use a Retreat to evaluate existing programs and brainstorm new goals and projects. These may be accomplished in large and small group settings using local or outside facilitators, held either in, or outside your community.

If the purpose of your Retreat is to get your Board of Directors excited about their Chamber, their community, the role they play in the community, their responsibilities, and their Program of Work, the perfect person is YCC’s Vice President, Jimmy Cusano.

Holding Retreats builds teamwork among Board members and bridges understanding among sometimes competing interests. Whatever your reason, start your fiscal year with focus and enthusiasm by RETREATing with your Board of Directors.

BOARD MANAGEMENT II DEPT: A COMMERCIAL; Tired of retreats that make your board of directors wonder why they ever agreed to be on the board? You know, the retreats that put even you to sleep!

It’s time to bring in the New York “Mouth of the South”. Jimmy Cusano puts on a half-day program that is guaranteed to keep everybody awake and, even more important, make the Board believers in their Chamber. Jimmy even has a short version of this topic for keynote addresses. One board member was heard to say, “I haven’t been this motivated since I heard (the late NC State) Coach Jim Valvono”. Check Connie Ware int Marshall, Texas, Gina Riedel in Hays, Kansas, or Chris Alonso in Menlo Park, California for the reactions they got from their board members and volunteers. If you would like more information and an abbreviated copy of Jimmy’s work book, call us at 800/678-6241 for dates and rates.

MARKETING 101 DEPT: Understanding ENRON -- a Socioeconomic Perspective: FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbor helps take care of them and you all share the milk.

APPLIED COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You must take care of them, but the government takes the milk.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them both and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITAL: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholders, who sell the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows with an option on one more. It's all really very simple.

(Ed. Note: They left out the part of using derivatives tied to the short term commodities price of dairy products to hedge against future drops in the price of milk and interest rate swaps to hedge against the future financing costs of the nonexistent 8th cow. Oh yeah, and spending millions to set up an online trading system for milk and using it to sell the rights to buy overpriced long term contracts for milk that does not exist.

Who says there's no money in farming? And what ever happened to Billie Sol Estes?) .