8.25.19

Ep. 34: The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce

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Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, Rick Baker.

We’re on location at the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce with the President and CEO, Rick Baker. Discover the wonder of the business community in Grand Rapids and learn about why your Grand Rapids based business should be involved. Money, I’m Home!

 

Transcript

00:06 Lynne Jarman Johnson: Money, I’m home, from finance to fitness. Hi everyone, I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union, and I’ll tell you what, you are hearing us from the Grand Rapid’s Chamber. And if you have never been, you need to stop down. It’s right on Monroe; it’s a beautiful new building. And joining us today is Rick Baker, he’s the President and CEO of the Chamber. Thanks so much for being with us today.

 

00:29 Rick Baker: Oh, my pleasure, glad to be here.

 

00:31 LJJ: I’m overlooking Monroe, I’m overlooking DeVos Place, the restaurant, what an awesome space.

 

00:35 RB: We are really pleased with the space, about a year-and-a-half in this space designed for our members. We wanted our space to not be an overhead cost for the organization, but be a benefit for our members, and this has really worked out really well for us.

 

00:49 LJJ: Well, we’re really pleased; we have a small room that’s a gathering room in the coffee center. If you’ve not experienced the Grand Rapid’s chamber lately you’ve got to come down and as a business owner for your employees, what an asset to our community.

 

01:06 RB: We’ve been working for the last couple of years to really make ourselves a business imperative, and I think we’re getting there; we’ve made a dramatic change in our space, in our programming, and our staff to make sure that we’re providing real value to the Grand Rapids in the West Michigan business community.

 

01:25 LJJ: Now Rick, tell us a little bit about yourself. And how did you come to Grand Rapids? When did you arrive? What you thinking?

 

01:31 RB: I arrived here because of this job. I was recruited out of Western Illinois, started April 1st of 2011.

 

01:41 LJJ: That’s not April fools.

 

01:43 RB: No, I know it. I’m like, “Is this job real? Do I really have a job when I get there?” When I came in for the interview, it was January 26th of 2011, and as soon as I drove into the community, I was like, “Wow, this town has got something going on,” and was very excited to be offered the role. And my colleagues around the country when we gather as a profession, every time they’re like, “Well, you guys are just killing it up there in Grand Rapids. Everybody sees what’s happening up here.

 

02:14 LJJ: There really is such a vibe to not only the city, but to what you’re bringing to the city for business partnerships, Rick.

 

02:22 RB: Yeah, there’s… I try to explain to people, unless you’ve worked in different business communities in different regions, everyone does has its own personality, every community has a vibe. This one is just high energy, very positive energy, and you can sense it. I could sense it when I came in to visit for a weekend. Before being offered the job as I explored the community, you could just feel the positive energy of the community.

 

02:51 LJJ: You really, though, have taken the helm and changed quite a bit of what I think people think the normal Chamber experience is.

 

03:00 RB: I yeah, I think whatever normal is. There are some kind of patterns through the chamber industry, but there is a saying in our industry, if you’ve seen one Chamber you’ve seen one Chamber, because we are quite different, but we’ve really focused on the vibrancy and the energy, the positive energy of this community to harness it. We have a very sophisticated business community, so we feel like we need to be equally sophisticated as an organization. Just a little ahead on the horizon… Seeing what’s on the horizon coming that our businesspeople will be facing, so that we can help them equip for that change.

 

03:42 LJJ: So, the membership… Consumers is a very proud member of the Grand Rapid’s Chamber. One of the ways that we utilize the membership is truly the space. You have a space here that we feel very welcoming in. I’ll give you an example if you’re listening, when you walk through the coffee area, just today only, pretty much every booth is being used in a really cool business way. And the neat part about it is it’s all different businesses coming together, and they may not even know each other yet.

 

04:14 RB: Exactly, I love seeing the connections and the clashes that happen in the space just purely by accident because people are working next to each other, and it’s an environment where if you come down, you mentioned the booths… If someone’s in the booth on one side, you can ask, “Can I join you? And I do that too because I like working next to our members, too. I get some energy and learn about different companies in our community, and so it’s really designed to be a place to be able to focus and work, but yet still network at the same time.

 

04:48 LJJ: Collaboration and education. There is a tremendous amount of education for members, for employees that are learning new leadership skills. Do you plan that out in advance for the year? How is it that people can get involved?

 

05:06 RB: We do plan it out. Our team really starts in July, really thinking about the next year, and then we use August and September to build out the plan in our budget, and we actually begin planning those events in the fall of this year. And so, we have 2020, fairly close to… We know what we’re going to do in 2020, and then the next couple of months be getting the locations, the dates, and everything scheduled. As you mentioned, we have a lot of what we call capacity building programming to the capacity of the business owner themselves or their employees to be able to continue to grow and add value to the company and be successful in this industry.

 

05:50 LJJ: When you look at businesses today, what do you think are the biggest challenges that you help them overcome?

 

06:00 RB: So, one of the biggest challenges we hear constantly just to… And we do an annual survey of our members and we ask those questions like, “What are your biggest hurdles?” The last two years finding talent has been at the top. And we’re not in employee recruitment, but we do help our companies with diversity, equity, inclusion planning and how do we help make sure that they have an environment that will be attractive to a broader audience, so we do help companies that way. And then we really help with retention programming. So, I’m again back to, how do I build capacity of the existing employees? How do I help them engage in the community so that perhaps they might be able to retain them on their team?

 

06:47 LJJ: With all of the events that you have, you have advocacy roles that are being played out on many committees. Do you have any top favorites?

 

06:57 RB: Yeah, that’s a great question. We do probably just in events and programs probably over 100 in a year, and that doesn’t include committee meetings or anything like that. So, we do have a lot of logistics in our organization. I would probably say, if I’m forced to choose a favorite, I would probably say our Epic Awards, because it’s about celebrating businesses and their successes. And the way we do it is kind of the academy award kind of environment, where we have three nominees, we talk about each of the three nominees and then no one knows who the winner is until they open the envelope and announce it. And those people scream and yell and they… The band plays when they’ve talked too long. It’s just like the Academy Awards, so I always leave that event with a lot of energy because it’s all such positive stories of success in our region and the impact business has on our community.

 

08:00 LJJ: And that happens in the fall.

 

08:00 RB: It does, it’ll be coming up in October.

 

08:02 LJJ: Great, now if you’re not a member, why become a Chamber member?

 

08:10 RB: Well, I think there’s a number of reasons. And we tried to tailor it for the company, and where they are in their development and growth as an organization. We feel like we have something to offer anyone in our target market, which is West Michigan, broader West Michigan region. Every event has a networking component because if you attend, you’re going to meet someone. Most events have a capacity-building element to them, even if that’s not the purpose because you’re going to learn something. We have a lot of opportunities to engage in guiding our work through committee work, our board of directors and some of their board committees, and then the capacity building component of what I mentioned earlier. And then even if you don’t want to spend time investing in the work that we do to make sure that Grand Rapids is a successful business environment through public policy work that we do. We are watching everyday units of government, both local and at the state level, that are having conversations about policies that will affect business, every single day. And we either help advance or we stop some of these policies with a lot of fan fair. It happens every day, and a lot of times, it’s not a story to talk about, but it’s a lot of work that we do to make sure that we continue to have an environment where businesses can grow and prosper and be successful here.

 

09:49 LJJ: You mentioned when you think about the future and you mentioned the talent and the talent recruitment that is taking place. I don’t think there is a business that I haven’t talked to that hasn’t been impacted greatly. And then you look at the city itself and the growth, where is it that you think that we’re going in the next few years? Is it something that it’s not just about the amount of people but the level of talent that is needed that is so different today than it was even, say, five to ten years ago.

 

10:30 RB: Yeah, it’s… We are in a… We’re in a mode where people want to move here. None of that was by accident, this was all by design, and a lot of people working to build a community that people want to live in. And to be competitive as a community, it’s going to be all about talent, and so we have to have a community that talent wants to live in in order for the businesses to be there and be successful. We are seeing people move into our community every day. You feel it around the community and all of us here on the team have people reach out to us on a regular basis. I have a meeting at least once a week with someone that is just moved here because they’ve heard about Grand Rapids. They don’t have a job, but they’ve heard about it, read about it, whatever. So, often times people from Chicago that have said, “I’m fed up. I just can’t do this big city anymore here. Hear great things about Grand Rapids. I’m going to move there and then I’ll find a job when I get there.” And they come to us to network to help them engage in the community.

 

11:39 LJJ: When you look at those individuals, I know you actually have a special program specific for individuals who come here and are new to this city; maybe they’re not new to the area, even, but they’re new to the city.

 

11:50 RB: Yeah, Inside Grand Rapids is a program for those people to help them engage in the community, help them start learning the history of how we became who we are, finding those cool little spots in the community, but more importantly, engaging with the other people that are here that speak to the group in the program, the other new people. Because if you don’t start putting roots down that company has a risk of losing that employee, and so we want to help retain them in our community. We want to help that company retain that talent, and so helping them engage and make this feel like they belong here, and this is their home is really the key role for Inside Grand Rapids. And we run that a couple of times a year. We have a program right now where we are assembling a team of people… Or those people who are new to the community and it’s exciting opportunity for us to do that.

 

12:45 LJJ: So, you’ve been here for a few years now in West Michigan. What’s your favorite part?

 

12:50 RB: Oh my gosh, we love West Michigan; the City of Grand Rapids, is the downtown for the whole region, I think. This is a great, vibrant city, so I feel fortunate to be able to live downtown, but then the natural beauty of the surrounding region in the lake shore. What’s not to like? And I didn’t know anything about Michigan when I was recruited for this job.

 

13:24 LJJ: I’m always laughing about how many people when they get here, are “I just never knew.”

 

13:27 RB: It’s just amazing. Yeah. And I was in Illinois, it wasn’t that far away, and I used to have friends that said they were going on vacation in Michigan. I was like, “Why do you go on a vacation in Michigan?” Well, now I know, I mean this place is amazing. We have guests all the time from… My family is all in Minnesota; they come to visit us all the time and they’re like, “We love… ” Our son and his wife got married here last year because they loved West Michigan, even though they don’t live here, they love West Michigan too.

 

13:58 LJJ: Well, it is a pleasure to talk with you and have you lead this wonderful Chamber. For any of you who are in communities around Michigan, look to your Chamber because it really is a place where you can connect, where you can meet new business leaders, and also help your company grow. So, I really appreciate you helping us today help our companies grow.

 

14:23 RB: Oh, absolutely, thank you.

 

14:24 LJJ: Thank you. Rick. Hey, I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson. Money I’m home, from finance to fitness. Aaron, thank you so much for producing today. I hope you join us next week. Money, I’m home. Consumers Credit Union.

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