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| | Chamber Made Column
June 23, 2012
The Importance of Meeting with Chamber Members
For the first time in a long time, we are down a person at the Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce. And while we are hoping to welcome a new employee to our ranks the first week of July, being down that one person has meant I have not been able to do something that I love to do, and that is going out and visiting our members at their own businesses.
There is something very special about getting into your car and traveling to chamber members near and far, not just within the confines of our chamber office, but to actually go to the place where they turn a key in the lock every day. Depending on the day, that might mean heading to a busy restaurant in Lyndonville, a charming bed and breakfast in Westmore or a place that bottles spring water up in Beebe Plain.
The fact is that our 375-member organization is pretty diverse, not only in location but in what our many members do. The Northeast Kingdom Chamber has to be the only chamber in the state that features a circus and Buddhist Shambhala Meditation Center among its ranks, as well as a myriad of hospitality and service businesses. This impressive range of businesses not only makes our region special but our chamber, something that is not lost on me each and every time I drive out to check in with a member.
Now that I am inching back out to visit my members more, I have noticed something I didn’t notice as much in my previous visits out in the past, and that is a more profound sense of resilience and perseverance in these business owners, no doubt formed during the most challenging days of the three-year recession. These folks are not only extremely tough but are also very proud of their businesses and what they have had to endure these past challenging months and years to survive and succeed.
Anyone who has taken a gander at our membership directory or perused our online member guide can attest to the diversity of our business environment here in the Northeast Kingdom. On any given day that I venture out to visit our members, I may say hello to someone in a crisp business suit in the morning and chat with someone in a dusty, torn t-shirt toiling in a garage in the afternoon, each of those business people working their level best to help out their businesses, their own families and communities.
Many are not aware that our chamber offers such a wide selection of business categories, but a full 50 percent of our membership comes from the service sector, so on any given day, a staid banker and a suntanned farmer may brush by each other as they leave our Green Mountain Mall office. We, in fact, have nine farmers in our membership right now, something that would make my own ancestors, all farmers in Danville, quite proud. In fact, I learned from one member yesterday that the quality of this season’s first hay was one of the best he has had in years, something I am proud to recount as a member observation.
While any chamber director can speak about the membership benefits we offer to our members until the cows come home, the important point to be made here is that the cows do come home within the wide and extensive breadth of our membership. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think I would be happy at any other chamber besides my own, because the membership so reflects this region, that the weary trucker has as much say within our organization as the large property owner. And isn’t that the way it should be?!
As I ease my car, purchased locally by the way, onto the highways, byways and backroads of our Kingdom this summer and fall, I will take extra time to take that tour of member businesses, sit down and hear what is needed from our members and then take back these suggestions and recommendations to my chamber trustees. Some of the best ideas ever undertaken by this chamber have come from the ranks of our members.
Don’t be surprised if you see me out and about these warm days of summer, as visiting with my members is as much a part of my job as the mountains of papers that I push around each day on my desk… and a heck of a lot more satisfying. And if you want me to come out and visit you, no matter what corner of the Kingdom you live and work in, I am only a phone call or e-mail away (802-748-3678 or director@nekchamber.com). Chamber memberships, you see, should never just be the membership plaque you see attached on the walls of the business. It needs to come about from a long and sincere relationship with that business, that they are never just a single listing in your membership directory, but truly a reason why this region succeeds.
(Darcie McCann is the executive director of the Northeast Kingdom Chamber. She was a member before she was the director of the chamber.)
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