The Chamber Members Podcast Episode 7 - Jeff Dafler New President of The Canton Chamber of Commerce

Welcome back to the Chamber of Commerce podcast, where we provide you with valuable business insights and updates. In this episode, we have an exciting lineup for you. We'll start with a business tip of the week and some important chamber announcements. We are also thrilled to introduce the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce's new president and CEO, Jeff Dafler, who will share his vision for the chamber.



But before we dive into the content, we would like to express our gratitude to our episode sponsor, USA Benefits Group. If you're looking for excellent health insurance options, their team of agents will assist you in finding a plan that suits your needs and budget. Reach out to them at 3302039455 for more information.


In our business tip of the week, brought to you by SBS Consulting Systems, Sean Hetrick introduces the power of AI and specifically Chat GPT. He explains how this AI platform can be utilized to generate content, develop marketing strategies, and even create a comprehensive business plan. To explore this innovative tool, visit chat.openai.com and create an account.


We also have a special guest, Jeff Dafler, the chamber's new president and CEO. Jeff shares his vast experience, including his previous role as a US diplomat and his work in the private sector. With a background in economics and commercial affairs, Jeff brings a unique perspective to the chamber. He emphasizes the importance of collaboration, public-private partnerships, and creating value for chamber members. Join us as we learn more about Jeff's vision and how the chamber aims to foster economic and community development through innovation and collaboration.


Don't miss this episode filled with valuable insights and opportunities. Stay tuned for more episodes and remember to subscribe to our channel for regular updates. Follow #ChamberPodcast for the latest news and discussions in the chamber community. Let's cultivate growth together!


Hashtags: #ChamberPodcast #BusinessTips #AI #ChatGPT #HealthInsurance #EconomicDevelopment #CommunityDevelopment #Collaboration #ValueCreation #Innovation #Partnerships

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Chamber of Commerce podcast, where it will go over a business tip of the week, some chamber announcements and need to hear from the chamber's new president, CEO Jeff Dafler First, a quick shout out to USA benefits Group for sponsoring the episode. If you are not absolutely in love with your health insurance, feel free to reach out to one of their agents in there. They’ll search. many different carriers for you. Make sure you find a plan that's that's right for you and your budget and your needs. They can be reached at 3302039455. Up next, our business tip of the week brought to you by SBS Consulting Systems. Hi, everyone. Sean Hetrick, SBS Consulting Systems. This business tip of the Week. This week we're going to talk about A.I., but CHAT GPT in general are specifically what Chat GPT is This is an AI platform that you can use it’s free. So if you go to chat.openai.com, you can create a log in and actually use it and build modules to do various things within your business. I use it quite often with mine. I built a module that is based on the information about my business and I can use it to develop content for my website, content for marketing, content for advertising. I can even use it as a strategic guide where I can say, Hey, I'd like to do this. What are your thoughts? And it would give me ideas and business development, marketing, development, even develop an entire business plan for you and really allow you to get that second or additional idea from, from the interface itself. So if anyone's interested, go, please sign it up. Do that. If not, we can help you out at SBS consulting systems. Try to work through that and really make a an asset to your business. Again, I'm Sean Hetrick at SBS Consulting Systems. Sean, thanks for that great tip. And I've used that a couple times before, But you're at the show when I do the modules, so kind of builds on. Yeah, that's the important thing, is building building that knowledge into it for sure. Yeah. And I'm like just scratching the surface and there's like a billion things you can do with it. Yeah, it's a pretty amazing what you can do. Yeah, well, everything I'm going to say today I already got from Chat GPT perfect. Jeff, thanks for taking your time to come out and do the show with us today. My pleasure. Yeah, it's awesome that you guys are doing this. I think it's fantastic that we're able to highlight members and the podcast and so thanks for your hard work on this. Yeah, absolutely. And we've been we've been having a lot of fun with it. Yeah, I really have. I know we're excited to kind of hear your story and share that out with other members. I know we met just the first time a few weeks ago at one of the tip clubs. Right, Right. And we got to sit down and talk to each other. I'm like, I'm really glad I was here today, but if I wasn't, I would have missed that opportunity and I would, you know, like, it'd be nice to have mine on so you can kind of share his his story. And you know what? He's got going on and his passion about it. So, yeah, here we are. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just so important to get there to the members and give them a place to come to you and kind of talk to you about their thoughts, ideas, concerns, you know? Well, you know, I think the tip clubs are fantastic and it was a great opportunity for me to sit down with members like you and have a conversation about what's working, what we could be doing, better ideas and and just what's going on out there in our economy right now. And so that was important for me just after being named the next president and CEO to get out and engage with members and hear from members. We got to listen if we're going to be contributing to member success. So, yeah, absolutely. So let's start with a little history. Can you give us a rundown of your previous experience? How far back do you want me to go? Whatever you think you know, you know, so and so. I've had I've been absolutely blessed with a, you know, a great career, are fortunate to have had a lot of opportunities. And, you know, I started out my career in government actually, I was a US diplomat for nine years, so I worked at the State Department in Washington and got to work in embassies and consulates all over the world. And that was exciting. And part of what I did with the State Department is I was an economics officer. So that means I would handle economic and commercial and business affairs when I was assigned abroad and get to work with U.S. companies in those markets. And I was really impressed with what I saw. And it started this idea in me that, you know, one of these days I think I want to shift over to the private sector and then see what that's all about. So I did that. I had the chance to work with an NCR corporation in Dayton, Ohio, which is where I'm from originally and was there for five years. And then came up to Stark County in 2005 for a job with the Timken Company. And I was at Timken until early 2018 and so I got that private sector experience. And when I when I wound up my career at Timken, I was able to go out and start my own consulting business and ended up working with a lot of nonprofits, which is how I connected originally with the Chamber. Okay, that makes sense. That Chamber was a public policy client of mine, and I did that for a couple of years. And then in 2020, Danny, Sonya asked me to come on full time and handle both the public policy piece as well as economic development. So so I've had, you know, across the course of my career, I've had some public sector work, some private sector work, some nonprofit work, and hopefully all of that comes together to serve me well as I go forward. Leading the Chamber of Commerce. Yeah, it definitely would have in all those different areas, because the Chamber's a broad organization that covers a lot of different industries and yeah, and we have to work with, with entities from all those sectors. And so understanding how to bring them together to serve the greater good, to promote economic growth and development, to, you know, basically build community vitality. I think those are critical features. Yeah. I mean, being able to collaborate with different organizations is a huge asset to be able to do that. I mean, that's how things get done. You know, when you have ideas, other people have ideas. But if you can't come together and and focus that and nothing gets done. So I can I can see the chamber doing that and they do a lot of it. Yeah. So I think it's going to really, really helped organization. Yeah. Well we've got a real history of leadership in that area, in the community. I mean, one of the strong points of the chamber is that we try to bring people around the table, find new opportunities, address the challenges that we face as a community, and then move forward together. So you want to give a little bit of information about the chamber and why people should participate or, you know, be involved in the chamber? Yeah, sure, absolutely. I'd be happy to do that. Well, because you help me now. Kidding. Know, honestly, you know, I think it's it's when I think about this and, you know, I have conversations with people internally. It's all about creating value. We want to create value for our members so that when everyone thinks about, okay, why am I a chamber member, they can put their finger on something right away. We want to make sure that that we're delivering, that we're doing that, and as I think we talked before, sometimes that value is direct. You know, you can quantify it. It's something that's clear in and and easily measurable. Like, say, for example, you joined the chamber and you can become a member of our Miwok. Yeah. And you can get low cost or competitive cost health insurance for your employees. That's a great benefit that you can do the math on and you can, you can that's a direct that's a some direct value that flows to your bottom line. But as a chamber, we also are engaged in the creation of indirect value. You know, our mission essentially is to, you know, lead our region in economic development and community development through innovation and collaboration. And sometimes that results in new businesses coming to town, sometimes that results in things like we put on festivals and events that draw lots of people from outside the region who, by the way, bring their dollars. Right? Sometimes it results in the creation of new infrastructure, whether that's with, you know, the Kent Akron Airport or broadband or, you know, whatever the case may be, those things that may be more difficult to assign a dollar value to for an individual member still do an awful lot to strengthen our business ecosystem and the environment in which we operate here. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, bringing those dollars into the region is huge, just like we're talking to the on the Health Foundation the other day, you know, their their health insurance, like how can we bring more dollars in because that's, that's what funnels it, right? It's it's providing money to the area for my money to small businesses they reinvest instead of, you know, shipping out the dollars just like, you know, basic economics. You're absolutely right. And these days, it's a situation where quite often you need public private partnership to get things done. And that means the public policy piece that we're engaged in can be really valuable to members because I am guessing that the vast majority of small businesses out there don't have time to track all of the legislation that's moving in Columbus, in Washington, let alone engage and advocate for their own interests. The chamber's here to provide that service and to do that on behalf of all of our members. Yeah, and your background really gives that strength behind the chamber for that, because a lot of times people coming into those positions might not have that public policy kind of background and that just really helps and just a great benefit for the chamber in general. Yeah, and I think if you look around that at large chambers of commerce, whether it's across the state or across the nation, increasingly you'll see public policy advocacy work as a a key feature of the of the value proposition for members. And it's really a best practice for chambers to increasingly invest in our capability are, you know, to do that kind of work. Right. So you'll see more of that going forward. Also. So what's the like what are some things that the Chamber is doing to facilitate growth? You know, I know we talked about that other day. Can you touch base on that cultivating growth concept? Yeah. So cultivating growth is a concept that we have been developing at the chamber over the course of the last year or so. And really it gets back at that that economic ecosystem in which we all find ourselves, right. And it has different components. And if they're all strong and vibrant, then we're going to be moving forward economically and from a community perspective. But if they're not, if one of them is weak, then we're going to see a negative effect on investment and we're going to see a negative effect on the growth of individual member companies and so on and so forth. Communities, neighborhoods will not be as vibrant as they otherwise could be. So cultivating growth is really about making sure that we're focused on each of those individual components of our economic ecosystem and doing what we can as a Chamber of commerce to strengthen them. So that can involve things like investing in our urban core. You know, a lot of people think about downtowns. Why are they important? We were just talking about this. If you think about it, if something is rotten in the inside, then it's not long before the rest of it is going to fall apart as well. So we've got to make sure we've got a strong urban core things like public policy that we were just talking about. I would also say workforce. How many companies do you talk to now that have an easy time hiring workers? Yeah, 5000. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Probably none of them. And so this is you know, we have a workforce and education initiative in program at the Chamber that is trying to develop the next generation of workers to make sure that when there are open positions, that there is a capable workforce ready and able to fill those positions. So important all of that comes together and also the things that we do on the community side, whether it's the enshrinement festival or other events that we put for the enshrinement fest, we'll hear a lot about that. You know, I started researching a little bit. I've been in the area for a few years now, but I haven't really gotten involved with that. So what's that all about? Kind of what does it bring? Who's all involved? Well, I tell you what, if you look at this from a certain perspective, you can you can see that we are the Hall of Fame region. Mm hmm. Yeah. If you if you go around the country and find cities the size of Canton and you were to ask them, okay, you can have something in your town that will guarantee that on the biggest broadcasts in the United States every year, your city is going to get mentioned. How much do you think they'd get for that? Right. Well, then what happens to you and how many times are you watching one of the biggest NFL games in the year? And they say he's going to Canton, right? That happens all the time. And all of that comes together every year. The first week of August with the enshrinement festival actually starts. Well before then. We've got the community parade that's going to kick things off on July 23rd. We have the Balloon Classic, which happens in Jackson Township on July 28th and 29th. And then we get full into the swing of the the Enshrinement festival week. And so we've got the game. We've got a fashion show, we've got the Gold Jacket dinner, we've got the enshrinement ceremony itself, we've got the concert for Legends, we've got the enshrining roundtable. Now, the interesting thing that a lot of people don't know is that most of the events that I just mentioned are actually put on by the Khan Regional Chamber of Commerce and all their volunteers and all volunteers are so critical to the success of this. And this is a challenge. I mean, I've put this call out to anyone who watches this podcast, right? We've also we've talked a little bit about workforce. And one of the things going on with workforce is generational change, right? You've got a lot of baby boomers who are reaching the age of retirement and so they're leaving the workforce and this is creating a void in the labor market. Same things happen with volunteers. So you've got volunteers that, God love them, have been stepping up and volunteering for decades and have made incredible contributions. But they're thinking, you know, maybe we're going to move full time down to Florida or I just don't know that I want to do this anymore. And so it's critical for us to develop and bring in a new generation of volunteers to engage and be part of this. And I'm telling you what, they're going to have a lot of fun when they step up and. Yeah, yeah, I've done it for a couple of years now and oh, fantastic to see somebody who in the amount of people that come into the area, it's just it's my mind blowing just to see the amount of people that can fill up all the hotels and everything is great, you know, I mean, the economic impact is incredible. In Stark County alone, the economic impact of the Enshrinement festival every year is $40 million. Wow. So we're pumping $40 million into our economy and having fun while we do it. So, I mean, how can you go wrong with that? You can't. So, yeah, thanks for having us. You know, thanks for coming on speaking with us. We love we'd love to hear your story and we're going to get the word out and what's going on. And yeah, we're just really excited and everything that the chamber has going on. Well, listen, it's my pleasure. You know, the transition between me and Danny Signer will take place between now and the end of the year. During that time, I want to hear from members. I want to know your stories. I want to know what your challenges are, your opportunities. And I want to know how we can help with the chamber. That's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Up next, quick chamber announcements. And so just want to talk about tip clubs real quick. Great benefit the chamber has going on their one hour meetings either during breakfast or lunch. There's five of them during the week. Come mingle some, serve some food, get to know other people, and, you know, give your 32nd spiel to everyone each time. You can find more details on those that I can't chamber talk. And yeah, that wraps up episode seven of the Chamber Members podcast. There we go. I'll see you all to Tip Club there again. Thank you. See you next week.