Ed Burzminski
Welcome to More Non-Dues Revenue, a semi monthly webinar Podcast Series sponsored by Chamber Marketing Partners, where we interview Chamber of Commerce leaders and visionaries to share their creative entrepreneurial strategies for generating non dues revenue. catch us live twice a month, or see prior zoom in ours at www.morenonduesrevenue.com. In this episode, we’re covering three topics, our industry roundtables, replacing networking events, how one chamber in Missoula, Montana chamber was able to retain a high percentage of its membership and add new members all during the pandemic. And the third will be effective selling and closing strategies from a successful membership development expert. What you’ll take away from this is how to identify and create industry roundtables, best practices for retaining members through conversation, and down to earth sales philosophies for dues and non dues revenue.

Our sponsor is chamber marketing partners, generating substantial non dues revenue from Chamber of Commerce publications without using a turnkey publisher, the chamber gets total control full financial transparency, and uses local vendors. Some chambers have seen returns up to 30% or more from their award winning publications, visit www.chambermarketingpartners.com and follow us on LinkedIn. I’m your host, Ed Burzminski, President of chamber marketing partners. Now let’s get started.

Our guest is Mark Losh, Director of membership for the Missoula Chamber of Commerce in Montana, I asked mark to be on the show because when he and I spoke on the phone, he had such a Down to Earth Matter of fact way about him, his approach to sales was just sensible. And he seemed to come from a place of genuinely providing solutions, be it for non dues revenue, or for membership. So I felt that many of us in the chamber world could learn a few things, particularly about some of the changes that his his chamber has been making. So glad that you could join us, Mark.

Mark Losh
I am excited to be here. It was a it was a wonderful first conversation. It was great to meet you and any way that I can help and share some information. I’m very happy to help with my chamber brothers and sisters.

Ed Burzminski
Well sounds good. So let’s get started. Mark, tell us a little bit about yourself a little bit about your chamber and describe your community to us. So we get a good feel for who you are and what your what your organization is like,

Mark Losh
be happy to. The background picture is the view I have every day. People may know as well as the river that runs through it. We have about 68 to 70,000 members. The next largest town from us going west is Spokane, about 260 miles and going east is Bozeman, so we pull people for 100 250 miles around that come into Missoula to do business. We have about 680 chamber members, businesses. I grew up in the farming community in eastern Washington and have been blessed to evolve my own business. four separate times, I’ve been involved in a few startups, been involved in quite a few different industries and have enjoyed the sales and marketing industry for almost 40 years. Our community is is got a University of Montana’s here. So we’re a university community, a very, very large medical presence. And the it structure and growth in Montana is is making news all over United States. We are becoming a hotbed for it. We used to be a heavy logging industry, but that’s not so much anymore. And we’re finding that other other businesses are kind of filling in those gaps. But we’re we’re a thriving community that’s very independent.

Ed Burzminski
Sounds like a thriving, growing community making a transition. So one of the things when you and I talked was very interesting is that your chamber has started to move away from networking events and going to industry Roundtable. For those of us those that are joining us. Tell us what an industry roundtable is and how did your chamber decide to migrate and move in that direction,

Mark Losh
or didn’t have much choice. A year ago, networking was taken away from us. We were always a heavily heavy networking group. We had our monthly business after hours we call them were usually toward and 50 people would come out once a month to network engage, communicate lot people only sideshow that those events. But when that happened with COVID people were wanting to connect and wanting to be involved. And we found out that at these events, many different industries would be huddled together or they connect in that large group and they lost that capability. One of the things that we focus on is we listen to our members have been for a long time we survey members a lot to find out what it is that’s going on and what we can do to help. We’re not experts in let’s say the construction, the trades in industry which has grown very fast, we’re not experts in that area. So how can we know exactly what they need? So we got a hold of a bunch of our trades and construction and said, what’s what’s happened? What’s going on? What can we do to help? And they said, We’d love to have a discussion. And that’s where the idea of the roundtables came from. So we set up a zoom meeting, and all the trades and construction folks could be there. And we had a roundtable with about 30 to 35 different businesses. And we talked about what is it you need, and we discovered that the permitting system and the inspection system through the county in the city was really slowing down growth of new home built and commercial building, which was affecting our problem with affordable housing, which was affecting our problem with no inventory of homes. And they’ve been trying for two years to get a meeting with the city in the county to talk about these permits well, because they are chamber members. And because our relationship with our city, Kennedy is really, really strong. We reached out to them say we really would like to put together a meeting so that this industry can talk to you the city in the county, so that you can work together because you need each other and they 100% agreed and 10 days later, we had a meeting set up and that meeting took place and some changes are taking and we discovered through the roundtables that we’re giving industries an opportunity to talk to other other folks in that same industry, about best practices, challenges, understanding that they all have the same challenges, what they didn’t realize, and it just created some more tight community. And those folks now talking each other on a steady basis. When things open up and we can do networking events, again, we will but we’re probably not going to stop the roundtables. It’s just too valuable to understand exactly what our members need and want. Our focus is making quality of life Missoula better. And that’s directly related to quality of business life.

Ed Burzminski
So how do you deal with the competitive businesses though? Isn’t there any kind of friction with businesses that are competitive that are there on this Roundtable,

Mark Losh
we’ve actually found that they put that aside. Be Missoula is unique because we’re not part of a large, you go to Everett, Seattle, Bellevue Tacoma, anywhere on the ifI quarter, there’s all separate chambers, but it’s all one big mass of population, a lot work where you live right now. Because we’re so independent, it’s we need each other to survive. And so even though this competition, the the health of the business community is most important. And so we found that they Yes, they compete with each other, but they also need each other for that industry to survive, survive and thrive. And so we’ve, I was worried about that first, but we found that they’re actually coming, coming forward and having great conversation and working together.

Ed Burzminski
So let me step back a little bit about how it came about was your chamber doing that the pivoting to online networking events through zoom, and was that kind of just not getting a lot of traction or what was going on there?

Mark Losh
I know we have short window of time. So I’m gonna try to keep this short. Four or five years ago, we heard from our businesses, that we have some serious workforce issues. So we had them define that and that worked out to be childcare, trained workforce, housing, and growth potential. The childcare is one that really surprised us, we found that it costs more money to go to the to get childcare in Missoula, than it does to go to the University of Montana, when a business has 25 employees, and they have three baby’s gonna be born in that in that business that year, the odds are, you’re gonna lose two employees, because the cost of childcare is so high and so hard to find, we found that we had over 1000, kiddos on a waitlist before COVID. So in that process, we started really listening to our members about workforce. And then they came and said, we can’t find any way to get trained employees. We’re keen finding trainable employees. So we started going down that channel and working on a workforce website that maybe we can have another meeting one day and talk about that one. And then that got us connected to our industries much closer, and then they were able to start then trusting that we really did care. And they began to then share with us what our needs were. And then we said, well, we need to put these people in a room together so that we make sure we’re getting all of their needs. And that was the genesis of the roundtable. I say,

Ed Burzminski
got it. So what industries are you approached or what kind of industry roundtables you’re dealing with?

Mark Losh
Oh, God, we’ve got eight or nine of them lined up. I have a cheat list here because I can’t memorize everything. We’ve already done industry roundtables for our entertainment venues. We’ve also done for our restaurants and bars, our trades. Retail, we have tech coming up next month and then we’re going into auto dealers. And then we’re going to go back into retail again. And transportation is also out there. It kind of goes it’s kind of dictated by what members are saying we want some help. So it I know I keep saying It goes back to listening to our members, but that’s what it is.

Ed Burzminski
So and by listening, you’re calling and you’re surveying your members in particular industries, right? Okay, that makes sense. Are you monetizing these roundtables?

Mark Losh
No not as of yet, yes, we have a sponsorship structure. And it’s, it is given us a non dues revenue, our business networking events that we hold monthly, have a fee involved to host having everybody come to your business learn about well, that went away a year ago. And that was a revenue that we had to replace. So the roundtables do have a sponsorship that someone pays and they get a five minute introduction into the group, and we try to get sponsors that are tied to that industry, or support that industry or do business with that industry. And so we are able to not totally replace what we lost with our networking events. That’s just too much. But it has helped us recoup some of our non dues revenue by the roundtables and we found sponsors that are that are open and are ready to sponsor, again, we anticipate we’ll have two or three more roundtables of just a construction group, because there’s more to talk about. So yes, we’re able to monetize that and, and be able to make some non news revenue on that.

Ed Burzminski
Has the roundtable helped with membership development at all? Or? And

Unknown Speaker
It has, yes, we, when we do the roundtable, we invite anybody to join in that industry. So there’s no chamber that has every every member of an industry that’s part of the chamber. So we do invite everybody. And we’ve been able to add members through the roundtable because they see what we’re doing that we really care. And so yeah, the industry roundtable for construction program brought us seven new members within 30 days.

Ed Burzminski
Do you allow sponsorship of the Round Table events by non members?

Mark Losh
No.

Ed Burzminski
So you have to be a member to sponsor

Mark Losh
Gotta be a member to sponsor,

Ed Burzminski
but a non member could come and participate,

Mark Losh
we want more members to come and see what we’re doing and see that, see what the chamber is doing and see that we’re giving back.

Ed Burzminski
So any business can be a part of it, it’s open to everybody do you then try to convert them into membership, or they can come and stay and participate as long as they want.

Mark Losh
So the first industry roundtable we have they’re open to anyone that they can, and they can be involved if we have a follow up meetings, because usually there’s a punch list of items that we’ve discovered that we need to go through and work through. So if we have a follow up to that those are only members involved in that there still is the value of membership, and you have to protect the value of membership. And we’ve had people understand that to Yes, I want to join the chamber to be involved with this. I want to know what’s going on. And so it’s been a great retention tool, and new member tool and non dues revenue tool.

Ed Burzminski
Last question on this, what’s the range of sponsorship? You know,

Mark Losh
price wise,

Ed Burzminski
price wise?

Mark Losh
Right now the sponsorship is $750. very reasonable. And you get at least 30 days of marketing and your branded on all of our publications tied to that roundtable and any follow up activities? Then you’re also still branded on it.

Ed Burzminski
So quickly, then the chamber is looking to start a round table. What steps should it take in a nutshell, chamber wants to do this? hasn’t done it before has been thinking about it? How do they identify an industry? How do they go about reaching out to those people? What are the questions and then what what kind of a process to set it all up?

Mark Losh
We started our ran tables because we had an industry letting us know they were having issues that they couldn’t solve on their own, they needed the power of one of the chamber. We then were able to through our membership break down and reach out to them some by phone some I just personally went and saw some we send emails, say hey, we like to put this roundtable together, we send it through social media through our E blast, which is a newsletter we put out once a week. And we let everybody in the public know, hey, we’re gonna have an industry roundtable on the 13th of January for construction and trades, please click here for more details and was on our website. So we put it out in multiple ways for people to know gave an opportunity to sign up and let them know it’s free and open to everyone. And then in the roundtable meeting itself. We then in that process, we got a sponsor also and then we let them know that this is open to everybody. But we would encourage you to take a look at the chamber who we are and what we’re doing and we’d love to have your support.

Ed Burzminski
My comment to all this is what a great way for the chamber to show its relevance during a crisis and not during a crisis just identifying what issues certain business industries are having, taking stock or that assessing it, identifying it, bringing those industries together as a voice sharing information identifying those topics Using the voice of the chamber to affect change for that business community. I mean, that’s that’s, there’s relevance all over written all over that.

Mark Losh
It’s a common sense thing. It’s it’s really it’s, it seems simple to me. That’s what we’re supposed to do.

Ed Burzminski
I know we’re gonna have a question and answer at the end. But this question is kind of relevant. That’s coming in. Does the roundtable have a panel? And how many people are on each panel?

Mark Losh
It does not. We have one person who is a staffer here at the chamber named Clint Burson, who’s our Government Affairs Director. We open up the roundtable, we usually have two or three questions that we want to ask. But we really let people know ahead of time, this is a participation. And it’s not putting a panel of experts as front, it’s all of us getting around a roundtable. Everybody has equal say, and so tell us, what are some issues you’re dealing with? What about and we ask ahead of time, some of the issues, we try to bring that up, and we try to just get them to our we’re not talking? They are we’re just taking notes and listening.

Ed Burzminski
Got it? Okay, well, questions are starting to come in. I know we’re going to Well, I’ll ask you the questions because they’re relevant right now. Steve Rosansky from Newport Beach is asking, you mentioned the two of your groups are autos and restaurants. Are there any other organizations that are representing these groups in the Missoula area, like an Automobile Dealers Association, or a restaurant association,

Mark Losh
they all do have different associations in the American national level. But every community is unique and different. So in Missoula, we have a group called thrive, that’s an organization of all the restaurants, and they were being hindered by the restrictions from COVID of when they could open when they could close all of those different things we’ve heard in the news, and they were just looking for ways to have the Health Board take, have a conversation with them saying, you know, we all want to be here in 2022. So you got to help us survive 2020 and part 21. And all we did was help put those two folks together so they could have a conversation. That’s what turned into a roundtable with them of here’s our needs, here’s are our challenges. Here’s what we propose, here’s a solution that we think would work. And we took that and then help connect them to the to the health department.

Ed Burzminski
Once the, you know, starts opening up and you guys are starting to do in person events, again, you may already be doing them. Are you going to continue with this as a virtual event, or you’re going to maybe change it to hybrid or all in person? Have you guys thought about that,

Mark Losh
if thought about all of it, we don’t really know what it’s going to look like yet. I’d like to have it continue, I’d like to have it be face to face. But there is a part of being a little bit more comfortable to talk about challenges in a zoom meeting. That’s a little more protective. It’s you know, we all know people can say anything online, and not have to put their name on it. But in a zoom meeting, you know who’s there. But it’s, there’s a little bit more, I think there’s a lot more freedom to speak out when you’re not sitting right there looking at someone. So we’re gonna see how it plays out. We, we pride ourselves in not trying to, to pigeonhole or have blinders on everything. It’s the members, let us know what they want to do. They’ll help steer where they’re actually want to go.

Ed Burzminski
You know, it’s interesting that you say that I’d actually like to ask our attendees, if you’ve experienced people that are on zoom meetings and zoom conferences, are they more likely to speak more than they do say at an event? Just say, No, just type in? Yes. If you’ve experienced that I’m actually very curious. Because that’s, that’s interesting. If people are in a room together, they may be more hesitant to bring something up. But if they’re online on a zoom meeting, they may speak more freely. Yes, some people are saying that, yes, they’ve experienced that, too. Okay, thank you for that about roundtables. I want to move on to your membership and your retention during the pandemic in the crisis, and that you retain a good number of your members, and you added new members. What’s the secret sauce?

Mark Losh
So the reason we were able to do this is because something that happened before anybody knew anything about COVID, or the pandemic. I mentioned earlier, about three or four years ago, we began to really listen to our members and we became an initiative driven chamber, not an event driven chamber, event driven chambers when there’s no events that can be really challenging, and many chambers have had challenges that way. But I mentioned earlier about talking to our members about workforce and we we identified four areas. Now there’s five that we were going to dive into deep on initiatives of our community, childcare, lack of addiction, too much workforce connections, trying employers trying to find trainable and or trained workforce and then legislative activities. We are heavily involved in The Montana State legislation on bills and activities that affect our business and our community. So because of these areas and growth, we also the bill grant, which be another story, we helped bring $30 million to Missoula for infrastructure growth from this federal transportation department grant. Because we do all those things. When the event started to go away, the value of what we brought to the community did not change. In fact, it became more relevant, because we were the voice. And we were the center to help keep sharing, and, and promoting these things. So we don’t have members, we have investors, the Missoula chamber makes no money on city, county, state or federal funds, we are only supported by members dues. And so when members understand all the things we’re doing in the workforce area, and the roundtables and the childcare and addiction and the build, fund, and all that they’re like, no one else is doing this. At this level, we’re going to support you. And we’re going to keep keep our marriage, our dues coming in so that you can keep doing what you’re doing. We’ve earned we’ve earned the respect and value of investors not members. Now look at all of our members as investors now I treat them as investors.

Ed Burzminski
What explain that a little bit more, what do you mean, you treat them as investors Tell us about that.

Mark Losh
50% of my time is spent face to face with members walking in the door. Hey, john, how you doing what’s new, just want to give you an update on give them a flier of what’s happening with the trades or information about workforce or information. I just, we work as a unit very hard and keeping our members up to date and in tune with what we’re doing outside of events, events, take care of themselves, their broadcasts their marketing, their social media Facebook website. But if the public doesn’t know what the Chamber’s working on and what their successes are, then they’re going to assume there aren’t any. So you’ve got to market your chamber to your members. If I’m an investor, or if I’m managing your investment portfolio, and I’m not keeping you up to date, what’s going on in the market, or what your stocks are doing, or how things are changing, someone’s going to keep you up to date and you’re going to leave, I won’t I don’t want that to happen. So we work really hard and keeping our members up to date and information. And it’s the old fashioned way of a phone call or a face to face visit. I hope I answered that for you.

Ed Burzminski
Yes, do you do when you’re you’re in Montana, you’re more spread out. A lot of us are in you know lockdowns, things are just starting to open up and people are hesitant to have it in person, do you a lot of the some of that by zoom or video calls, or phone calls,

Mark Losh
a lot of a lot of zoom, we’re blessed to have a conference room downstairs that can hold 45 people sitting at tables. When you empty that room out during COVID. I can sit down 20 feet away from someone and have a conversation, we can sit outside and have a conversation, I can go to their place of business that they’re at and working, put my mask on social distance, say stay be safe, but still have a face to face conversation. So we can look each other in the eye. We also keep our members up to date through a weekly e blast, which is the chamber connection email that goes out. We also have a very active Facebook page. And we keep people up to date and do a lot of Facebook sharing of our members. We also have a ga report that comes out once a month that are that talks about what’s going on with these initiatives and and the hell on that. And then we we have a read codes committee and some other committees that we just really push and share information out. So we’re always thinking about what do we need to tell our members today?

Ed Burzminski
How much is your base membership,

Mark Losh
we are a tiered system. We are not based on population. And our tears people join the chamber based on what benefits are best gonna fit them. We have six tiers starts at 495 and goes up to $10,000. Right now, our tier one level, which is at $495 value, less than 15% of our members join at that level. At the second level, which is 695. That brings in radio spots, videos marketing, I put together a whole marketing package that helps get your name out at 695. We have about 35% of our members join at the 1325 level, which even brings in more to play relocation leads us to the conference room marketing, personal introductions at 1395. About 40% of our new members are joining. We have people investing in this. If I can get some great marketing and you’re doing all these other things. I am very happy to to join you the 13 $100 level they get the return on that community.

Ed Burzminski
So you mentioned a lot often you talked about listening, understanding a member understanding of business and what what is important to them. I want to ask you about what makes it a salesperson successful? What defines a successful salesperson?

Mark Losh
stop selling.

Ed Burzminski
What do you mean?

Mark Losh
If I don’t know what your needs, your wants are, if I don’t know what your problems are What kept you up last night? If I don’t know those things, how can I help you? I can sit down and I can start telling someone about my chamber. And I can go through every single tear and tell them everything. But if I don’t know what their needs are, I probably wasted most of their time. And they know that and they know that in five minutes. So I try to have conversations of Tell me about yourself, where you come from, what’s your business doing? Have you been involved at chamber before? What was good? What was bad? What kept you up last night? What’s your three biggest issues you’re going to deal with in the next three weeks? direct questions to get down to what’s really the challenge, and then talk about solutions. And the chamber may not be the solution. Maybe something that we offer helps. But it’s hard to explain. I just I want to know who I’m talking to. I want to know what your challenges are? Because I can’t help you if I don’t.

Ed Burzminski
So do you mean that sometimes, when you’re talking to a business, you may recommend another organization or if it’s not the right fit with the chamber, you may suggest something else?

Unknown Speaker
I’ve had, I’ve had many is not the right word, I can think off the top of my head seven or eight current members now that when they first came to me, they weren’t ready to be in the chamber. Their business wasn’t far enough along. They weren’t organized enough, they didn’t have a clear understanding what they wanted to do. They didn’t know who their customer was. And they would have joined the chamber and six months later, not seeing any results, any value, not connected. They just just weren’t ready yet. And they come back six months later. And they say I’m ready now. And they were and then they build a successful business. It’s my goals not to see how many members I can get. My goal is to develop business partners.

Ed Burzminski
You mentioned when we talked that a percentage of the number of eyes We have share that with our audience.

Unknown Speaker
My I grew up in a farming community where a handshake was a contract and my grandfather who he was john wayne and Bob Hope in the same body. He always he always said you have two eyes, two ears and one mouth use them proportionately. Which is odd because I’m doing all the talking here. But yeah, it’s it’s, it’s if you listen long enough, someone will tell you, what they’re what they need, what they what they want to have. What they hope to have, I’m blessed, because I have a lot of people refer… you need to go see Mark at the chamber and have a conversation. And so I’m at the point now I have some raving fans, that’s a good book to read. If you haven’t read raving fans,

Ed Burzminski
what is it? What is it again,

Unknown Speaker
Raving Fans raving fans? It’s a good book. It I think it’s a story about the fish markets in Seattle that throw the fish. So I’m blessed. I have people that come look and say someone told me I should come and talk to you. And I say Great, let’s have a conversation. You tell me your story. I’ll tell you mine and see if we’re on the same. same page.

Ed Burzminski
When Mark and I connected on LinkedIn. He was we just connected. And he sent reply to my message. I just asked him to connect. And he said, Great, call me I want to know about your business. And he gave me his phone number. And he was very open and very inviting. And nothing more than that. So that’s Bart spurred a conversation. And that spurred him to be on board here. So and he listened. And your email is… how do people get in touch with you mark?

Unknown Speaker
It’s very simple. It’s MarkL@missoulachamber.com And we can put it in the chat box again. It’s Mark my first name, L, Losch is my last name. And it’s just MarkL@missoulachamber.com and go the website you can find everything I talked about on our website. It’s very transparent. We are a humble nonprofit like every other chamber. But we’ve been blessed to be able to have some folks. Help us with our website. But I’d be happy to have a conversation with anybody.

Ed Burzminski
So thank you for sharing all that. Let’s move on to questions and answers. I did answer or ask a few questions that were in the q&a. And Judy Hayes is helping us in the background. Judy, do we have any questions that are coming in that we haven’t already answered?

Judi Hays
Let me just ask Have you talked about Mark how big your staff is? How many people and

Mark Losh
sure I can share that we have a CEO Ken Littrell, who’s been in this chamber building on the 15th of March for 48 years started right out of high school. Yeah.

Ed Burzminski
Wait wait 48 years?

Mark Losh
48 years. She started as an intern. worked her way up. She’s been the CEO for almost 30 years now and grew up in the Missoula community lives on the high road. She grew up with every influential person in this town is probably the most connected person and truly is a saint and and is never, ever looking to put herself first it’s all about everybody else. Then we have an administrative assistant to her. And everyone in the chamber world knows no one has just one role. We all do everything but tagged as administrative assistant to help her with our board writings and things like that we have an event coordinator person, and they handle events. And when we get close to a big event, we all become event coordinators. Then I have Clint Burson, who is our government affairs director who deals with a lot of our initiative work, gutter affairs, work city and county meetings, and also helps with all of our writings and keeping us keeping us keeping us on track to our messaging say straight. Frank Cudi is our CFO. And he handles all the finances for us. We run about a somewhere around a 1.4 to $1.5 million budget. And then I am the humble salesperson at the chamber.

Ed Burzminski
So I just want to say one thing. Kim 48 years. Pat Clark, who’s on with us. Now today, she’s at the Los Angeles area chamber. And, Pat, I believe that you celebrated 40 years at the chamber. I’ve never heard 48 going on to 50 kudos to Pat and kudos to Kim. Yes, 40 years and

Judi Hays
mark of those people, how many are full time, the ones that

Unknown Speaker
All of them all full time we run six full time employees.

Judi Hays
Okay. And then I think this might have been covered, but as far as the the roundtables, the industries that you’ve selected, can you talk about those in which ones have been more well received?

Mark Losh
Sure. Our Restaurant and Bar roundtable was very successful. Our industry trades construction. During the pandemic, our trades and construction are blowing up busiest can be. And that was a big one. We also had a very healthy retail around table and then accommodations, which are hotel motel restaurant traits, event centers, that was a wonderful one, we’re now getting ready to gear up for transportation. And then we have retail, health, and then education. We’ve got about seven or eight lined up. But it’s they really it’s not like we’re determining who they are or what they’re going to be. We’re talking to our different industries find out who wants to get together and have a roundtable. I know I keep saying listen, the key folks just listened to your members go talk to him.

Ed Burzminski
Well, I’ve got one question for you if you could share, you’ve gone through some sales training programs. Could you mention some of the sales training programs that you’ve gone through in your in your history in your past, see

Mark Losh
if I can remember everything. Um, I was very fortunate my grandmother grandfather sent me to Dale Carnegie when I was 16 years old to teach me how to be an adult is how he put it. I was fortunate to I sold a herd of Angus when I was 16 years old, became owner or part owner of a restaurant. And that’s a whole nother story about that life. Tom Hopkins I was introduced to in 1989. At a boot camp went back to the second boot camp in 1990. I spent a good five to seven years studying how to master the art of selling which is truly the art of communication. I know that t is still active today, doing very specific types of trains but and then from there, many books to fob remits made a big impact on me. A lot of Wayne Dyer information. When you change the way you look at things when you look at changes. And then also raving fans can’t remember anything and the other ones right now.

Ed Burzminski
That’s plenty. That’s quite a bit. That’s a lot of reading for anybody. But that’s over a lifetime of learning. Mark, I want to thank you for joining us and sharing your insights. And thank you to Judy Hayes for assisting. You share quite a bit of information mark, very much appreciated. And I hope I hope we’ve imparted some some good information to our audience. I’m Ed Burzminski. For Chamber Marketing Partners. Let’s connect on LinkedIn and let’s supercharged, More Non-Dues Revenue for your publications. If you found value in this episode of More Non-Dues Revenue, then subscribe, subscribe to the videos on YouTube. listen to the podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify among others, or visit More Non-Dues Revenue comm stay relevant and keep on making a difference for your businesses in your community. Onward and upward everybody.

Mark Losh
Thank you very much.

Ed Burzminski
Thank you, Mark.

Mark Losh
You’re most welcome.

Ed Burzminski
Are any of these things true at your chamber? Has the board ever said you’ve got to take the directory in house to staff sometimes say we should really just do this directory ourselves. Are turnkey publishers giving you grief or could your in house publish performed better. We’re Chamber Marketing Partners and we turn the royalty around. Your members pay the chamber directly for advertising in their publications. We manage the project for a chamber just like a general contractor manages building a house for you. We manage putting a business directory communicate Community Guide relocation guide visitor’s guide map together for you as an in house project. We’re Chamber Marketing Partners, www.ChamberMarketingPartners.com.

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