Jeanne Englehart, President of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, interviewed by Catherine Ettinger of Grand Rapids Insight (formerly Inside Grand Rapids) 2007-09-11
Announcer: Welcome to Grand Rapids Insight, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, business leaders and individuals who are committed to building a stronger future and now, here is your host for Grand Rapids Insight, Catherine Ettinger.
Catherine Ettinger: Welcome to Inside Grand Rapids, this week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast studio by Ms. Jeanne Englehart. Jeanne is the President of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. The Grand Rapids Chamber is preparing to celebrate 120 years of business in community development. Welcome Jeanne, it's a pleasure to have you on our show.
Jeanne Englehart: Thank you Catherine, it's wonderful to be here.
Catherine Ettinger: Can you share a bit about your background, how did you come to be President of the Chamber?
Jeanne Englehart: Prior to taking this position, I'm in my fourth year, I was the Community Services Director for Congressman Vern Ehlers, here in the district offices. Prior to that owned a business in West Michigan, that was technology based business that I sold after 13 years. So I owned a business, then worked for the government, and now I'm working for the Chamber, so it has been a nice career.
Catherine Ettinger: The Chamber has a long history; how has it evolved over the last 120 years, and where do you see it going in the future?
Jeanne Englehart: Well, in January we are celebrating our 120th anniversary. The Grand Rapids Chamber was originally formed in 1898 as the Grand Rapids Board of Trade, and several of the companies that were part of the Chamber in 1898, some of them are still in business and in existence, and hopefully will be able to attend our celebration. But it started originally as a group of individuals who wanted to -- they wanted to make sure that Grand Rapids business continued into the next century, and wanted to make sure that there were rules and regulations and legislation and things in place that would support businesses as they grew in our economy.
Catherine Ettinger: When you look to the future of the Chamber, what do you see?
Jeanne Englehart: Well, we see a lot of things changing obviously. In downtown Grand Rapids you can't look anywhere that you don't see a crane in the sky. Certainly, there is a lot of interest in the health and the biosciences and life sciences quarter, but we also see a great deal of interesting things like alternative energy. We are doing some things with some alternative energy work right now with our members and trying to identify some of the resources for alternative energy. We know that Grand Rapids, especially Michigan, is very much the leader in LEED certified buildings throughout the United States.
Catherine Ettinger: I see quite a bit about that in the paper, I know the Art Museum I think was in the...
Jeanne Englehart: Yes, the Art Museum, the new Metropolitan Hospital, many of the buildings are LEED certified. I believe the statistic is 18% of all of the LEED certified buildings in the country are in Michigan.
Catherine Ettinger: The Chamber is involved in both business development and community development, why both?
Jeanne Englehart: Well, we think it's our obligation to support the community as well as just the businesses that are members of our organization. We have 2,800 member businesses, which represents roughly 160,000 employees in the West Michigan region. We also do a lot of work in the community because we believe that we need to have community programs that make it a better place for people to do business so they want to stay here.
So for example, some of the programs that are part of the Chamber that people don't necessarily know about, and you certainly don't have to be a Chamber member to participate, are things like our Leadership Grand Rapids program, which is a wonderful program that trains and works with individuals who want to become leaders in our community. Silent Observer is one of our programs, which surprises many people.
Catherine Ettinger: That's with the police department, right?
Jeanne Englehart: With the police department. The reason it's a Chamber program and we continue to support it is because we know that in order to have a healthy business climate we have to have a safe environment for people to do business in, so we support that.
We also have a Family Business Alliance, which is a partnership with Grand Valley State University, to support family owned businesses in our region. We know that West Michigan has a huge concentration of family-owned, privately held companies and we want to keep them here. We want them to stay here, we want them to go through succession planning and passing it onto other generations, not to sell because one family member is ready to retire and they haven't made succession plans, so we're working very closely with many, many family businesses.
Catherine Ettinger: Just on that topic, what are sort of the statistics, if you have them, on family-owned businesses as they move through the generations, or what percentage of those survive?
Jeanne Englehart: I don't know the exact percentages because they change so fast, but I do know that most businesses that are family-owned never make it to the second generation. Second generation, it diminishes greatly between first and second, between second and third, it goes down even greater, and the fourth generation is almost nonexistent.
Jeanne Englehart: There are a few of them in West Michigan. We have Bissell, which is a fourth generation company. Actually, Mark Bissell is on our Board of Directors of the Family Business Alliance.
Monarch Hydraulics is one of the oldest -- I think it is the oldest manufacturing company in the State of Michigan, and they are in their fourth, and going into their fifth generation.
The Jackoboice family is a great example of one of those companies that has been able to make the transition, and been able to keep the company profitable.
Catherine Ettinger: That's fabulous. Over 80% of your members are small businesses, how do you help them?
Jeanne Englehart: The small businesses are 80%, but we look at many different ways that we help them. Probably the number one reason that people join the Chamber, if there are small businesses, is to take advantage of our networking opportunities, so that they can increase their business in the future.
So for example, we have many things on a monthly basis. We have a Business After Hours that people can come to, its free of charge to Chamber members. We have Business Exchange luncheons, where people are able to exchange business cards, and hopefully become known by other folks. We know that people do business with people they know, so we just try to provide as many opportunities as possible for them to network with other individuals and increase their opportunity to connect, and then grow, and ultimately succeed in West Michigan.
Catherine Ettinger: I know also that there has been several educational type programs; there is the CEO Roundtable, how have those program progressed over the past few years?
Jeanne Englehart: The CEO Roundtable is one of the most successful programs that the Chamber has. Some of the folks that have been part of the CEO Roundtable have had the same members of their Roundtable for over ten years.
The way that it works is individuals are paired with other individuals, and it's like a -- we call it your ad hoc Board of Directors, if you will. So you have an opportunity to sit down and talk about what the issues are that you're facing, and have other folks around the table help you to perhaps come up with creative solutions to what some of those challenges are that you're facing.
So, people are not allowed to be competitors, it's all confidential. So anything that goes on within the group of 10-12 individuals is kept within the confines of the CEO Roundtable. Many people tell us that that's the only program that they take part in, in the Chamber, but it's something that they do year after year. I think we have over 400 individuals participating in roundtables right now.
Catherine Ettinger: So a very safe place to grow in.
Jeanne Englehart: Absolutely.
Catherine Ettinger: Excellent, insight and advice from other businesses. The Chamber is many things to many people, what would be either the largest or the most common misconception about the Chamber?
Jeanne Englehart: Probably the most common misconception is that many people think that the Camber only represents and hears the voice of the large businesses, because much of the publicity that we get on a day-to-day basis may have to do with things like our advocacy efforts.
We do have full-time staff that work on advocacy and government affairs, and a full-time lobbyist. We do have an office in Lansing, and so many of the issues that we're working on in Lansing really directly affect the small businesses in our community, but I think people think, well, the only people that can take advantage of that are perhaps the people that are the larger companies that have some particular interest in a piece of legislation.
Catherine Ettinger: Looking to be more proactive than reactive, possibly.
Jeanne Englehart: Exactly.
Catherine Ettinger: How do you see Grand Rapids evolving over the next several years, what does the future look like?
Jeanne Englehart: Well, we think the future is bright. I think when you look at West Michigan and you see all that is happening here. We are part of the West Michigan Chamber Coalition, which is a group of four chambers; it's Muskegon, Holland, Grand Haven-Spring Lake, and Grand Rapids. As part of that coalition we have 6,000 business companies that are part of that. That represents a quarter of a million employees in West Michigan.
So that coalition works very closely. We meet on a monthly basis, we work through issues that we think affect our entire region. So what I see with Grand Rapids is probably the same thing that we all see in different parts of our region.
So I would answer that by saying, I think West Michigan is well poised to be a leader in our state, it's no longer the Southeast side of the state that's driving the economy here and the growth, it's clearly West Michigan. The statistics this morning that came out from Manpower, I believe it was, was 26% of the employers in Grand Rapids expect to add more jobs in the next quarter. In Muskegon it was 40% of the employers, and in Holland I believe the number was 34% or 35%, so you can see that we are growing in West Michigan. If you were to contrast that against the Southeast side of the state, I'm sure those statistics would be in the negatives.
Catherine Ettinger: Jeanne, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today and for sharing information about the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. If you would like to contact Jeanne Englehart, she can be reached by telephone at (616) 771-0322, and you can read more about the Chamber of Commerce programs online at www.grandrapids.org. Until next week, this is Catherine Ettinger with Inside Grand Rapids.
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