Interview with Debra Rosen: President and CEO of the North San Diego Business Chamber
Interview with Debra Rosen, President and CEO of the North San Diego Business Chamber. The North San Diego Business Chamber is one of seven, 5-star US Chamber organizations in California. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews female and female-identified entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, and gurus across all industries to investigate women (and female-identified individuals) in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate of female (and female-identified individuals) in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's w i l d dot agency or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.
[00:01:30] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia, and I am gobsmacked today to be sitting down with Debra Rosen. Welcome, Debra. Thank you. Thank you for everyone listening. I'm going to do a quick bio, but Debra Rosen is president and CEO of the North San Diego Business Chamber and in a very elusive individual to sit down with. So I'm I feel very honored that you met with me today. Let me do a quick bio on Debra, and then I will drop into a litany of questions that I have. First to a roadmap of the podcast outline as well.
[00:02:04] So, Debra, since assuming her position as CEO and the North San Diego Business Chamber in 2009 nine, she has built the chamber into a respected regional business organization, diversifying its programs, membership and board of directors. Lobbying for business and communities in the San Diego region has been a focus of the chamber, with an emphasis on job growth, vibrant communities, business retention and expansion. Debra has aggressively advanced a competitive agenda that includes building strong chamber membership and advocacy for political relationships, business strengthening, developing a sustainable military program and protecting business interests on a local and state level. Credited with the turnaround of two underperforming nonprofit organizations, Debra has developed and implemented strategic plans restore profitability for member programs and one market share in competitive regions, while diversifying growth for the chamber, its members and the business community. Debra took the chamber out of debt and into being recognized as one of the seven five star US Chamber organizations in California. She has led her management team and board in identifying critical issues, reduced and streamlined overhead expenses, and paid off enormous debts that carried liens against the organization. When not working, she enjoys spending time with her children, husband of thirty six years boating and a great bottle of champagne. Yeah, me too.
[00:03:29] So welcome again, Debra.
[00:03:31] Everyone listening. A quick roadmap of today's interview with Debra, first going to cover Debra's personal history, academic and professional overview.
[00:03:41] And then we're going to introduce San Diego's Women's Week, which the chamber oversees.
[00:03:47] We're going to talk a little bit about who, what and where of that event. And then we will launch into future goals that Debra has for the chamber as well as San Diego's Women's Week. And then we will wrap everything up with advice that Debra has for those looking to get involved on the plethora of platforms that she kind of functions in and around. So, Debra, will you take a kind of straight to your academic and then professional life following academia?
[00:04:15] Sure. So first, I want to Laverne College, very small, private college up north. And after a couple of years, I competed in gymnastics up there.
[00:04:24] And after a couple of years, I decided that I didn't want to do that anymore and came back to San Diego State and graduated from San Diego State in eighty one, had plans to go to law school, took the LSAT, got into USD, got a job right out of college, making really good money and decided to put law school on hold, always with the intention of going back. And I never did.
[00:04:46] So I started work and my career is just taken off from there.
[00:04:50] Yeah, absolutely. So with the let's get into kind of your work history. You've worked with a couple of nonprofits that you managed to resuscitate out of, you know, what seemed like the best. Can you speak to how you did that?
[00:05:06] I'm sure so. First of all, it started I was working with the Union Tribune and that's what the Union Tribune, 15 years. And it was a great 15 years. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time downtown and in the Gaslamp with some of the icons like Ingrid Croce, David Corn, Eric Vegan and out. And those are really the the warriors that got the gaslamp going. And I was down there during that time back in 92 and built those relationships.
[00:05:35] And I always saw how they did business. And I still have a gaslamp did business.
[00:05:38] And I said, you know, someday I want to run a nonprofit and I want to run a downtown because there's so much vibrancy to it.
[00:05:48] So when you're speaking of Gaslamp, are you speaking of the actual regional district? For those of everyone listening, The Gaslamp is kind of a historical district in downtown San Diego, and it's known for its kind of iconic lampposts in this old world. Feel that San Diego has. Yes. So is that are you talking about a specific industry within the gaslamp or just the geographical region that it maintains the whole geographical region?
[00:06:12] So I was in display advertising at the time and worked with all the different businesses down there.
[00:06:18] And so at the time it was primarily food and beverage and nightclubs. And so I was able to build a relationship with those three and then was very involved. And the Gaslamp Quarter Association and then got involved with Prop C, the ballpark initiative, and after working on that, I knew even more that I really want to be a part of it downtown. So after 15 years with the Union Tribune, I just woke up one day and said, I need to make a change. And I had done a lot with them. I did business development, display advertising, marketing, my management. So I just realized I needed a change. But I wasn't sure where to go because I'd spent 15 years there. So I saw an opportunity open up. It was the Downtown Business Association in Escondido and I saw that there was a definite division up there between the organization and then the merchants up there. So I did a lot of research and I found out what the divide was. They were talking about getting rid of their business improvement district. They had some challenges with the leadership that was running it. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to apply for it and see what happens. So I applied for the position. I didn't have any direct background running an organization, but I did manage a budget. And in promotion and marketing, the media ended up getting that job. And one of the first challenges was how do we make sure that this organization is not going to close? Because at the time, the city council was looking to disband the business improvement district and that's what funded the business association. And my first question to them was, well, what if the council disbanded? What do we do? And they said, we've got to figure out how to raise three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to to manage this.
[00:08:08] Now, this was 15 years ago, was a long time ago. So that that was a lot of money. Yeah.
[00:08:15] So I remember the first couple months really I had to get out and I met all those businesses and all those merchants and talked about what their challenges were and and how can we make it downtown, come together for the benefit of the merchants. That's interesting. We all went to city council and the merchants actually had done a 180 degree turn and they were all down there saying, let's give her a year. Let let's give the business improvement district one year to see if we can turn it around. And we did. So the city council voted to keep the business improvement district and keep funding it.
[00:08:50] Now, did you market your assessment that there was some kind of a divorce between the administration and the clientele or did they come to that terms themselves, this this kind of assessment that you had made as to where the hiccup was?
[00:09:04] Yeah, you know, it was two things.
[00:09:07] One, the merchants did not want the organization to be political and the organization became very political, right down to endorsing and supporting a candidate for council. And that really upset the tenants because they said as an organization that we feed into, we pay into, we want to be nonpartizan. So that was the biggest challenge with the leadership. The second was they didn't feel like there was enough diversity in the marketing and the events to drive people into Escondido. It was very myopic in its thinking.
[00:09:44] Well, my background was more regional in scope, and so I was able to take everything I learned with my marketing background with the Union Tribune and bring it to them. And we held events like Fashion Week and Clever. We had almost 800 people there each year on on opening night. And and we brought regulars all day. And he was a local, but he was a Project Runway winner.
[00:10:12] And so what we did was we were able to to utilize all the all of the knowledge that I brought and then all the ideas of the tenants in the merchants. And we came together and we offered them ways, workshops to grow their business.
[00:10:27] But it was really listening to them and finding out what they wanted and implementing it. It was just such a simple process. Yeah, a lot of work, but a simple concept. How quickly was the turnaround?
[00:10:38] It took about two years. No, no, it took about two years. And we built our reserves. And then after being there for years, I was approached by this organization asking me to consider coming here. And they had some challenges here and asked me to consider coming in and turning this organization around.
[00:11:00] Were you excited to do it? Do you like saving sic organizations?
[00:11:05] Are where you kind of thinking?
[00:11:06] Oh, again, you know, I was very comfortable there, very comfortable, and I wasn't ready to be comfortable in my life.
[00:11:14] And this organization was closer to home.
[00:11:19] That organization really focused on Escondido. The chamber was more regional in scope. So I was able to bring my skill set and my contacts. Because my relationships are regional, and so I was able to bring that to this and it's interesting because I had two mentors at the time and I asked them what they thought I should do. And one was Brad Holliday. He was the CFO of Callaway Golf and Angelo Damani. He was the owner of Mercedes Benz Escondido. And I told both of them about the opportunity and they said, Deb, you are not ready to be stale or stagnate. You need to grow. And they both encouraged me to take this position.
[00:11:59] So was it the North San Diego Business Chamber when you took over?
[00:12:03] It wasn't. It was Sandy. It was the San Diego North Chamber of Commerce. And that actually was a new name for them. And what happened is three years prior to my coming here, the San Diego North or the Rancho Bernardo Chamber merged with the Diamond Gateway Chamber and they became the San Diego North Chamber. From the time they have that merge, they had three different CEOs in here over a three year period Wolf. Yeah, it is interesting.
[00:12:43] And so my first when I first got here, it was interesting.
[00:12:48] I was told that they're living out of a box because the lease ran out and turned out the lease didn't run out.
[00:12:58] They hadn't paid their rent in in months. And fortunately, the property owner was the brother of one of my merchants in Escondido who had a great relationship with and he worked with me to keep the organization in the building and getting it paid back, bringing the lease current. So relationships are so important, I just can't even emphasize that enough. Then the my predecessor had contracted one about one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in services from members and those services never got paid for.
[00:13:42] So they were about one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in debt. And I didn't know that when I took the job. I didn't know it until I got in there and we found all the envelopes of been open bills. Yeah. So it was a little bit stressful.
[00:13:58] But I have to say that with the support of my circle of influence, we were a and I kept two employees.
[00:14:08] I had to let the others go. We just didn't have the money. We were able to get all that debt paid, get all the leads released and begin to build an organization within a year. Within a year, then I can't believe you kept the lights on. Yes, remarkable. It was tough.
[00:14:23] We didn't run our air, and yet we cut everything that we could get. But, you know, we knew we had a diamond in the rough.
[00:14:31] We knew it.
[00:14:33] And so what made you know that? Like what Tennant's did you think I can fix that Fast and Furious and it's going to make it a different beast when it's done.
[00:14:41] It's interesting because I had two colleagues, two employees that were here and I kept both of them and both of their strengths along with mine. We each had such a strong focus in areas that we could do it. And then my circle of influence and the connections that I was able to bring in and bring onto the board, that gave me the strategic direction and kind of the road map to follow where we knew we could do it. A lot of the members from Escondido followed me down here and joined this organization. And just knowing that you have that support builds the confidence, right? Yes. And all I could do was go up. It couldn't go down. So it just took a lot of hours, a lot of strategic thinking. And the very most important thing was going back to find out what the members liked, what they didn't like, what the challenges were. Would you figure all that out and you put the pieces together? It it works.
[00:15:39] Yeah. I imagine staying really in tune with your members is crucial, though. I've never really heard of a chamber reaching out, which is ironic. You know, it's the custom client service relationship.
[00:15:51] But it's interesting. This, um, chamber is kind of because it feels government and so it feels like they don't need to touch base, you know, the answering as to government to a different issue.
[00:16:01] You know, it's interesting you bring that up, because after we got out of debt and we realize we did a real in-depth assessment, we found out that a lot of people making decisions to join organizations are engaged.
[00:16:15] They didn't know what a Chamber of Commerce was. So a Chamber of Commerce, it's not your daddy's organization anymore. It had it had to become a future driven and it had to stay relevant to those that. You wanted to serve, right, and it wasn't so we rebranded the organization. We did a lot of intense surveys. We worked with an agency. We rebranded the organization, and we dropped out of Commerce, Chamber of Commerce. So we became the North San Diego Business Chamber, period. And and so you dropped Commerce and then the 30s and 40 year olds don't say, well, what does that mean? And commerce? Well, it's an important word. It really didn't have any relevancy to those that were joining. So that's the first thing.
[00:17:03] Second thing is, we knew to reestablish credibility in the community. We needed our accreditation. So we went for our U.S. Chamber accreditation, which took us a year to put together and put together first three years we had it or I'm sorry, first five years we had it for the three star. And just two years ago, we got our five star. And we are the only five star accredited organization in San Diego. And I think we're one of five or six in the whole state of California. And what that accreditation does is they go through everything in your system.
[00:17:44] We get our books audited every other year. Our members can come in at any time, ask for financials, then they have to give us notice. They look at our employee processes, are employing manuals. Are our every single piece of this organization.
[00:17:58] In total transparency, a total transparency is audited. So we got our accreditation.
[00:18:04] And it's interesting because people go, well, what does that mean for me? And I'll tell you, this is what sets us apart from every other organization out there. Every single member is treated equally. Whether you spend three fifty a year or you spend thirty five thousand a year, every member is treated equally. I have best friends that belong to this organization and they don't get anything different than anybody else. We never give one member competitive advantage over another member ever. It just doesn't happen. The second thing that sets us apart from everybody else is our member outreach. So I don't have a business development person I haven't for five years. We don't need business development of all of our colleagues and team members here focus on outreach and engagement. So what happens is we have eight hundred members at the beginning of every month. We're each given a list of members that we either have to call, write a handwritten letter or visit, not an email.
[00:19:13] You might get a follow up email, but that's it. So every member is touched once a month. So that's the first thing. Second thing is we focus on engagement. So we have advisory councils, we have strategy teams there. There is something for everybody. And we look at our engagement numbers and we look at our retention numbers. So eighty three percent of our members this last year were engaged in one way or another, whether they came to a networking event or they sat on an advisory council or a strategy team or went to some kind of weather event.
[00:19:51] Number four even used our board room.
[00:19:54] So what we realized is with eighty three percent engagement, we were at eighty one point eight or eighty two percent retention, which is high.
[00:20:04] And so we know that with retention or with engagement, customer retention. And we put all our focus on that. And guess what happens is the icing on the cake is our members bring members to us so we don't have to go out and get new members. Absolutely.
[00:20:19] And we have an intense onboarding process for new members. So they feel like they're part they're part of this organization.
[00:20:26] That's wonderful.
[00:20:27] So where how do you kind of indoctrinate people with what what is offered with within the the chamber? I mean, is it the website that explains it to people? Is there an intake process? How does someone go about finding out? Because when I walked in, I was introduced to you or just mentioned, you know, your amazing conference room and things like that.
[00:20:47] Yeah, you know, it's interesting. First of all, our members are always the first ones to bring someone to us. And the members have pretty much told them what we're all about. They'll bring them to a networking event. And before I guess comes to a networking event, they get a call from us because we know they're registered. We tell them we're looking forward to meeting them there and we meet them there and we make sure we introduce them to people. And then we always follow up the next day with our guests. So whenever we have a guest, we just want to make sure that if they have any questions at all, they know they can come to us.
[00:21:20] We do not run hierarchy here. Anybody that answers the phone and everybody answers the phones here can answer your question because you're just part of the. Right. We have an intense onboarding process when somebody joins Ginnell, we'll sit down with them one on one and she doesn't say here's everything that we have. She does a really intense analysis that asks you, what are your goals? What are your expectations? What do you want from the chamber? And and then we match up what they're looking for because people have two things, time and treasure, and they don't have the time to be a part of everything. So let's find out what they want to get out of it and then match it up.
[00:22:00] So we've been really successful with that. Absolutely. I mean, it sounds like a very fine tuning and profiling process from the get go, you know, to find out what their needs are first by just say rather than not like club membership. Here's what we offer. Right.
[00:22:14] You know, and we take it personal. If somebody doesn't renew or we take it personal, if they don't renew, which isn't often, but if they don't, I get it. I get on the phone, I call them. I always thank them for their support and find out what we're could. We have done something different.
[00:22:30] And interesting enough, we get very few people that say, why didn't have the time or or I just didn't get anything out of it because we set expectations early in the process. What they say is, gosh, you know what, I'm retiring. My business is closing. I'm a small business. It's just me. I just don't have any way to engage. But interesting enough, are small businesses now are are staying on because they have what's called compliance corner. Small businesses can't afford to have attorneys on staff. So we have all the labor laws and all the labor documents on our website that are free for small business.
[00:23:04] So it costs them less than one hour of attorney's salary to become a member for a year and use all those benefits. They don't have to engage. They can just go on the website and get them. Yeah. And it saves them thousands of dollars in litigation.
[00:23:21] Absolutely. And just like sorting through, having all those resources in conjunction with the other resources is amazing. It's just sounding better and better. I love it. So let's pivot a little bit and get into I really want to touch on the introducing San Diego's Women's Week, so if you can tell me when it launched and who was kind of the brainchild of that.
[00:23:44] So good question. I was hired in April of 2009 and was told that we needed to have a signature event. And I went into an executive meeting. It was the day before Thanksgiving. It was that November of 2009. And there was Trudy Armstrong and myself. She was my board chair and three gentlemen around the table.
[00:24:10] And I had pitched this idea and I put a whole business proposal out with the budget. I mean, it was a full on business proposal.
[00:24:18] And you would have thought I just gave a presentation in a different language because the same thing. And all of a sudden one of them said, well, what does this have to do with business? Oh, and Trudy and I just looked at each other and we explained, you know, we said this is this is what we get out of it. This is what it does for careers. And so we do the whole thing.
[00:24:41] And they said, well, will approve it. Now, remember, I was new, so I had to go to them for approval for this because there was no funds will prove it under a couple of conditions.
[00:24:52] One, you need to have fifty percent of your entire cost budget costs raised by January one. Fifty percent of your entire budget, it costs your expenses raised. OK, no problem. This is a holiday. Yeah. So I said, OK, game on. Yeah, and they had some other conditions. So I said, OK, come on, we'll do it.
[00:25:19] When we went down the elevator up on the third floor, we went down the elevator. It was the longest elevator ride I have ever taken. In fact, I called my chair that night and said, you know what? I just don't think this job is for me because I'm dealing with these men that don't really understand. I remember this was ten and a half years ago, and back then it was a four and a whole foreign concept, right?
[00:25:44] Yeah. Yeah. So it turns out we ended up raising one hundred percent of our of our expenses budgeted by the end of the year.
[00:25:53] We already had some of our first speaker secured, so it kicked off. It was a good year.
[00:26:01] It was your brainchild. It was hatched and then miraculously funded prior to the beginning of the year. And what was the construct? How was it constructed? Originally it was how long did it run? What was the venue? You said you had some speakers already lined up.
[00:26:17] Well, the first year we have events every day and we realized that that was way too many days. We call it San Diego Women's Week, but we have events Monday, Wednesday, Friday, only three events for the week.
[00:26:30] We really learned a lot the first year. In fact, we had no money the first year.
[00:26:34] So we did it in a vacant building, a vacant, empty building. There was no lighting. We had to bring in our own lights and a generator.
[00:26:42] There was no carpeting. And so as vacant as an old Gearoid building on Saber's ring, I mean, we really did bare bones, but and we learned so much.
[00:26:53] Yeah. And the former mayor, Pete Wilson's wife, Gail Wilson, she's one of our speakers. And she gave me a lot of really good ideas and helped us a little bit kick it off. So year one came and went. Then we had year to year three, year four, year five, and we just celebrated our 10th year. And the Friday conference has up to five hundred people now. And then, of course, kickoff is always sold out. All the events are sold out in advance now. But our speakers have included Deepak Chopra, Mariel Hemingway, Marlee Matlin, Elizabeth Smart people, women, men that have inspiring and leadership messages to share. So it's not an educational conference. It's a leadership conference, which is totally different.
[00:27:42] Yeah, it is. It's and it shows a different message. And I think it lends a very different tool.
[00:27:48] Oh, very much so. It used to be an empowerment and empowerment conference this year. The last two years, it's been a leadership conference. And I'll tell you the biggest change. When we first started ten years ago, we had to go to the marketing departments to get partnership dollars. And then I would say per year for year five, we we're going to the H.R. departments. And then you're six, seven, eight. We started going to the employee resource groups. So now they didn't even have ergs really ten years ago. But more and more companies have been adding them. So it's the employee resource groups. It's a women's leadership groups that are getting involved with us.
[00:28:26] Nice. Yeah, it is. It is an interesting transition as to who would be pulling the strings. Oh, yeah. That is a fascinating I hadn't really thought about that. Changing the trickle down effect, I suppose, of how that changes outreach through liaison. Oh yeah. Communities.
[00:28:43] So the it's shifted into like inspirational leadership conference and it's you've got events on three days. And who who is your ideal guest. Who do you guys think you do want to reach out to. Most you call it Women's Week.
[00:28:58] Anyone can attend, anybody can attend. And you know, we actually found that about ten percent of our Friday conference audience has become male, which is nice. And you see a lot of male leaders coming with their executive teams and their leadership teams. And it's been really nice. And that's grown every year.
[00:29:14] You know, anybody can come in, you'll find mostly corporate women, women in the workplace will attend, but it's opening up. You know, we're finding more younger people are coming. We have to change our strategy almost every year because what we have found in the last couple of years is there's so many organizations out there trying to copy us.
[00:29:39] In fact, one just popped up this week and they copied right down to our format, our format and our topics. And and it's in November and we're in March. So so we change it up every year.
[00:29:52] Yeah, the vote, Latorre. But we really, really go back to our attendees and ask them what are the topics that are of interest? What are the hot topics? What is it that you want to hear? What do you want to know? Who are some of the speakers that you think would be good and that does become a challenge because I get probably five or six requests every week, people email me, oh, I want to speak at Women's Week, but, you know, they're not the right speakers.
[00:30:19] And that actually is the hardest part of Women's Week is I get six keynotes and then we put together two panels and I never, ever go local for my keynotes. Unless it's somebody that is notable. I try to stay nationally recognized so that I don't hurt anybody's feelings. Right.
[00:30:42] So my board members will offer up speaker suggestions. But one year I didn't use one of their speakers and I had an angry board member. Members offer up people, they offer up themselves and just to stay neutral.
[00:30:55] And like Switzerland, I stay totally away from that. And I make sure that their national level so nobody can say, oh, you gave it to her because she's your favorite.
[00:31:06] Right.
[00:31:06] So that really is the toughest part of Women's Week is picking those six national keynotes, VegFest, nonpartisan.
[00:31:13] Yeah, absolutely. And you're wise to do it. Oh, yeah. That's that's like you said, you run in a culture of relationships. Exactly. So. Absolutely.
[00:31:22] So that's the who. Well, let's get into the where originally. Are you still at a vacant office building or graduate and. No.
[00:31:30] So, you know, we've been moving the conference around because the conference has been growing. So we've held the conference at California Center for the Arts on multiple years. The last last year we held it at the town and country. This year, town and country wants us back and and we'd like to go back there. But we also have a couple of other venues that have been approaching us to host it there, too. So we haven't made a decision for 2020. And then, you know, it's funny because we've held our opening day at the Del Mar Fairgrounds and we looked at large numbers of people with speakers. And then we the last two years we've held it at Sony. We've had a kickoff luncheon. So and then when there's popular every Wednesday night is we do the Bernado Winery, we do women and wine. And that's always been popular. But it's scary because we never know if it's going to rain or not. So we're always biting our nails up to the end.
[00:32:27] But, you know, it's we're we're growing and we hope to continue to grow. And and I think we have enough venues interested in hosting us that we will never outgrow a venue.
[00:32:39] You know, and it sounds like every venues wise to want you, you know, with your growth and with your your following and things like that and the attention that you're giving the event, it could only do wonderful thing.
[00:32:50] Well, the challenge is it's expensive to host an event. The venues costs are high and of course, we understand that. But being a nonprofit where our cost per person to put this on is so close to probably ninety five dollars per person, that's our cost, our cost between swag and meals and venue and parking. And it's expensive, but we don't charge that much for our tickets.
[00:33:20] Well, yeah, and the human hours that go into our organization, we never cover our personnel costs. So yeah, there's not, it's not possible to know.
[00:33:29] So what are like without giving away secrets which seem like they're going to be plagiarized within the next five minutes? Do what kind of future goals do you see for it like you have. I'm sure you have this next year. Well, at hand or at least you're looking at something for this next. It's every year in the spring or summer.
[00:33:46] It's always in spring and usually in March this year. We held it in April. But we're going back to March, catch up.
[00:33:53] So what what are the like? You talk about all the projects, even the companies you've worked with kind of take taking on this transformative role so that they can kind of keep current and stay in tune with the clientele that you're in, you're reaching to. What do you see happening with them with like Women's Week in San Diego?
[00:34:13] You know, we've seen it grow. In fact, it's grown so much that we now have a quarterly luncheon around it called Women Connect. And that continues to grow, too. And our goals really are to continue growing it. But you can't just say growing it. You have to stay relevant. So it's continuing to fine tune. What are the issues of today and who are the speakers that women want to hear? What is it that women want? What is it that men want? What do they want to know? It's again, our hardest part isn't driving attendees to this. It's staying relevant and making sure the topics that we're presenting are on are what women want to hear.
[00:34:58] Yeah. And so how do you do that? How do you test the waters for those topics? Do. Reach out to where you can reach out to eight hundred attendees.
[00:35:06] Well, we do. You do. So we do. We follow up. We have such fine tuning mechanisms for communicating.
[00:35:13] We follow up with all of the attendees and we ask them, what are some topics you want to hear of here on here about? We have our women connect and we always ask the women. Women connect, usually at about one hundred and fifty women at those. So we're asking all year long and we keep our ear to the to the ground. Then we listen to the rumblings, what's going on, you know, and why. And again, it's not an educational conference. It's a leadership conference where most women in the workforce want something in the way of leadership and personal growth. So it's just finding the right topic. So we try to keep our topics diverse. We have finance, we have diversity, we have taking risks. I mean, there there's so many different topics and we're watching all year long. And we get a lot of ideas from LinkedIn, but we ask and we have a strategy team this year. And so we're working with a strategy team, but we're always asking it isn't just my team and I putting together what we think because we would never be successful. We need to know what our members think.
[00:36:21] Did you see an influencer, our growth after the ME2 in twenty seventeen. Did you take that into consideration? What topics to discuss or did you see the growth of membership or attendance?
[00:36:33] You know, that's a good question.
[00:36:36] We saw some growth, but we were very, very careful in that. We had a lot of people say, oh, I want to come speak on that. I'm an expert on this and I can speak on this. We did not want to be seen as antagonists. We did not want to bring somebody in to speak. That was an antagonist for me to write. And we had to be very careful with that. Yeah, because we had an opportunity to have an A-list speaker, but she was out there and everybody knew her and she was very vocal.
[00:37:10] And we didn't want to appear to be male bashing or or derogatory in any way. Again, we're a leadership conference and diverse. So we made sure that the speakers we got really spoke about leadership, more about that instead of the Metoo movement. We didn't want it to be about me, me, me and women only, but more of a diverse group and leadership.
[00:37:37] Yeah, well, and I don't believe you can truly propel, you know, women or men, for that matter without inclusive of the other gender and all genders in between those two, for that matter. But yeah, I think it is. It is it's a cautionary tale that I've heard a lot of people speak about.
[00:37:55] But I had wondered if it, in effect said something like this. So the future goals are to listen to the wire and pay attention to what's going on and stay relevant with your speakers and things like that. Do you reach out to potential candidates since they're on the national circuit or do they come to you?
[00:38:11] Yeah, that's a good question. I used to always have to do the reaching out, but now we've had such great relationships with all of our former speakers. They opened doors for us. Yeah. And the publicists call us and they say, hey, I've got a great speaker, I've got a national keynote. They've got a book coming out. So it's funny, I don't have to reach out anymore. I get calls, I'll reach out to some of my speakers and say, hey, we're working on you, have any thoughts or ideas? And then they'll do email connections for me. But I really don't have it's the hard parts not getting somebody the hard parts getting the right person. Yeah, always.
[00:38:49] I think maybe sometimes it's just getting someone getting the right person is really hard. You want.
[00:38:53] Well, we already have three of our national keynotes selected for this upcoming year for twenty twenty. So and I'm in talks with a couple other for the other three positions. I'm waiting to find out what topics we're going to focus on.
[00:39:06] When do you release the schedule. November. November. OK, and then what.
[00:39:13] So if if someone was looking to get involved in Women's Women's Week or with the chamber itself, how would they go about looking into what areas they could get involved in, either of those either joining the chamber or volunteering at Women's Week or something like that?
[00:39:27] Well, you have to be a member of the chamber to volunteer or be involved in any of the planning at all. We are exclusive to our members and that's one of the things they like about us. So but they could go to S. S d business chamber, dot com and everything about Women's Week and all the chamber programs is on that. And membership for the chamber and everything every there and the chamber, dotcom, SD, Business Chamber, Dotcom, purrfect.
[00:39:59] And then what about so if you ran into, let's say your.
[00:40:03] Taking a beating and you run into a young woman or a female identified individual tomorrow and she said, listen, I was young, I just graduated, I was going to go to law school. I got involved in a nonprofit. And then I'm pivoting. I'm doing a bunch of things I'm kind of interested in, in modeling my life after you.
[00:40:21] What would be the three top pieces of advice, given your extensive and kind of epic history with businesses and nonprofit that you would give her? Oh, my gosh.
[00:40:36] Oh, my gosh. I know crystalizing that kind of history is daunting.
[00:40:41] Well, sometimes I regret I didn't go to law school because I love the strategy behind law. So I would tell them really make sure that that's what you want. And I know at that young age, you don't know. I would say experience as much as you can, as young as you can build. My number one piece of advice to any young person is build relationships and don't just meet somebody. Expect that that relationship is going to build itself and that you can call them when you need something. It's like a plan. You got to you put a seat in your water at water and it's going to grow and it doesn't grow overnight. It takes years. You have to nurture that plant if you want to continue to produce. Yeah. And people don't get that. It just this week, I've had two people call me that they're going to be out of a job with this next election. Now, I haven't heard from them in four years and they want me to know that they're looking.
[00:41:38] It's like, well, where were you these last four years? Yeah.
[00:41:41] So I say build relationships. You don't need to have a relationship with everybody, know those that you respect and that you want to be like and build a relationship with them and follow them and watch, but just experience everything that you possibly can speaking to and knowing and observing and things of that nature.
[00:42:06] Can you speak to mentorship either in your own life or what you see?
[00:42:11] Do you think that a lot of young business professionals are still involved in the mentorship model or do you see it falling off? And how important was it for you to have mentors?
[00:42:22] You know, that's a really good question. You know, I never asked somebody to be my mentor. You know, that's that's kind of daunting for a young person to ask somebody, would you be my mentor? And I know because I could never ask anybody, but I would watch people and I would see who I wanted to be like, and I would watch them carefully and I would just try to build a relationship with them. And that's how I did it. It's interesting because I hear all these people say, oh, you need to have a mentor, you need to have a mentor. But people aren't going to ask me to be their mentor. I mean, would you feel weird?
[00:43:01] I would. It's a staunch kind of ask for me. Yeah. And I'm old. I'm, you know, I'm in my forties and so.
[00:43:08] Oh, I guess maybe I think well, no, I think perhaps it's something that, you know, it's a more of a younger generation that's kind of used to this very dogmatic approach, you know, where it's just you need that go get it like that. That that that this kind of relationship building that you're talking about is more the the suit I was raised in. But I think that I think to ask is big because I think you don't define that term very well. When you say will, you meant me. Like, I don't know what that for me. I don't know what that means to buy you coffee. Right. Yeah, I would get into this massive responsibility, Labrinth. But I think that I think it's a buzzword. I think mentorship is thrown around a lot.
[00:43:49] It is a buzzword. And I'll tell you, we have a program here called The Emerging Leaders, and these are hot shot young. Forty something year olds under 40 that they have their own advisory board. And and it is my responsibility. I am in my sixties. It is my responsibility to make sure that we coach and give the right direction and guidance to our young professionals. So what I've done is I'm matching every one of these advisory members for the emerging leaders with one of my board members. Now, my board members are in their fifties and sixties as well, and it's not to be a mentor. Every one of my board members has agreed to sit down with one of the emerging leaders, advisory board members for forty five minutes to an hour and just have a conversation with them about how they got where they're at and and give them maybe give them some guidance. It's a one hour meeting, but it gives them the the idea of how to start these conversations and how to ask for questions. These are all C Suite board members. You're getting an hour in front of somebody that's smart at the top of their game, it's not a mentorship opportunity. It's an opportunity. It's a connection opportunity. Right. And who knows what will come from that, right? Yeah. So that that's how I define I think you're right. Mentorship is a buzzword. I don't like it.
[00:45:22] Yeah, it's a loose but. Yeah, exactly. And it's a very catchall, you know, it stands for a lot of different things.
[00:45:29] And my dog's mentor, on some day we should all be mentors, we should all be guiding and giving advice and doing the very best that we can so that people can watch us and follow if they choose to and be a good role model. To me. That's a mentor. I agree.
[00:45:46] Yeah. And I think that defining that for yourself and then defining that for whomever you're approaching in whatever manner is probably the greatest road to that success. So you you have the next couple of years or it sounds like the next year and change planned out for Women's Week. What about the chamber? Do you see any growth or what is your major goals for the next, let's say, between one to three years?
[00:46:10] That's a good question. We actually just had our staff retreat and planned out the next three years.
[00:46:16] So our focus for the next three years is really, again, on growing the organization. And when we say growing, it's not growing. The number of members we're very comfortable with, the number of members. It's really growing our engagement and growing our retention because with that revenue follows. When revenue follows, you can hire more staff. And then when you have more staff, you can give more to the members. Yes. So our focus really these next couple of years, again, is just to drive engagement and drive the retention.
[00:46:52] That seems to be a very smart move because I believe that's when you focused on that. And in the past, you that's increased your numbers. Yeah, absolutely. Good game plan. And so I like to always end with a quick bird's eye view or a window, rather, into your personal life. What have you done in the past? Let's say we're just wrapping up summer passed over the past three months. That was the most fun for you.
[00:47:17] Oh, my gosh.
[00:47:18] OK, well, I just had surgery, so I was flat on my back for almost a month. And so I spent a lot of time boating with my husband, family and friends.
[00:47:30] Yeah. And I'm looking forward to welcoming a new boat into our lives in the next couple months and spending time traveling. So really, that's it. Yeah. My family and friends, that's the most important thing to me. And when I'm not working, that's I'm with them.
[00:47:51] Wonderful. Well, that is going to wrap us up for today. I'm going to have to circle back. Debra is an elusive character because she works more than she sits around and talks with people like me. But I will circle back around, I'm hoping, within the next year and kind of touch base about how this year's Women's Week went and everything else. But I just want to say thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I really appreciate all of your candor and your information. And if anyone wants to check out both the North San Diego Business Chamber Business Chamber, rather, and San Diego's Women's Week, again, you can go to the chamber is S.
[00:48:31] D Business Chamber dot com and Women's Week is Ezzedine Women's Week dot com.
[00:48:39] And I'm sure there's links to both. Perfect. So wonderful. Well, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you so much. Absolutely. And for everyone listening, thanks for letting me your ear. And until we speak next time, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte.
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