IF: How did you get involved with the Chamber?
MH: I spent 15 years in the Boise valley. I grew up in Arco, and moved to Boise after high school to start college. I was active in the Boise Chamber of Commerce at that time. I was on the board of directors, I was a volunteer, very engaged in committees. My involvement with their Chamber really shaped my career as an individual. I’ve always been very passionate about the work that chambers do, how they help businesses and individuals. When I heard about the opening here in Idaho Falls, I said “Man, I would LOVE to get involved with the Chamber!” I applied, and here I am!
IF: What attracted you to the Boise Chamber of Commerce?
MH: At the time, I worked for a hotel management company and we had four properties in Boise. That was a great way for me to network with other business people and to get the name of our organization out there. With service businesses, you just want your name to be top of mind for people when they need you. Being engaged with the Chamber was a great way to do that. From there, it was governmental affairs committees, the equivalent to our ambassadors program here, member relations where you actually go visit other members and talk to them about the Chamber, trade shows, there’s lots of things. That was the first step: I needed to meet people, and they were a conduit to meet people.
IF: What are the greatest benefits of being a member of the Chamber?
MH: We focus in three areas specifically: advocacy, education and networking. We like to say that we create opportunities for you to make your business better. It really depends on the motivation of the business; for small businesses, for outside salespeople who don’t have a lot of time or a large budget for marketing, the Chamber becomes a cost-effective way to network, to advertise, to get some professional development. For larger corporations, the Chamber’s work in advocacy becomes a big benefit. We work on a local, state and federal level to have a voice on behalf of our business community on issues that affect them. For example, we partner with Grow Idaho Falls and the city to go to Washington D.C. every year to advocate on behalf of continued funding and expanded missions for INL. During the legislative session, we host a video conference with our local legislators each week during the session. We get real-time feedback from them on what’s happening with bills, what’s happening with debate. They actually seek out our opinions, asking “How do you feel about this? How do your members feel about this?” We host a legislative luncheon and set priorities to say “This is what our local educators are passionate about, here’s what our healthcare members want you to understand.” For them, that makes a big difference.
We also partner with other chambers in the state through the Idaho Chamber Alliance, for larger scale issues statewide. Larger corporate income tax, for example, has been one of our main advocacy issues. It’s expensive to do business in Idaho because of that, especially compared to our neighbors. We’re constantly working to make the business environment better. It really does depend on a company and what they need. At its base level, when a customer sees that a business is a member of the local Chamber of Commerce, they automatically have a perception about that business: that they care about their community, that their products and services are of a better standard. Any business can be part of the Chamber, and for some, it’s just what you do.
IF: What’s some of the best feedback you’ve heard from members about the Chamber?
MH: For small businesses, it really is that opportunity to meet people and feel welcome to the business community and to have someone they can call to ask questions. “Who should I talk to about this? Who can I talk to, to get connected?”
The thing that’s been interesting for us last year is that the Chamber has been in operation since 1904, it’s our 110th anniversary. Yet, when you have any organization that has that kind of longevity, it’s easy to get stuck in the rut of “This is the way we’ve always done it, and this is the way our Chamber’s always been.” But as the business community changes and as the people doing business change, our Chamber has to change, too. They don’t have the time to attend the activities and functions they used to. We had to step back and ask how we can do it differently. Sometimes, that is painful! We’ve got members who’ve been members for over 50, 60 years and are used to seeing the Chamber do certain things. On the flip side, when I first started in 2013, the feedback was overwhelmingly “We’re so excited for change! What will you do differently?”
Normally, people are a little resistant, but I didn’t hear that at all; not from members, not from our board. They were saying that they were ready for something new.
IF: What changes or adjustments have you made in setting up meetings and networking opportunities for Chamber members?
MH: For 35 years, the Chamber did a weekly lunch and speaker. Well, so does Rotary and the Civitans club, and others. All of a sudden, people have more lunch meetings than they have lunch time! It was easy to decide not to go. We cut back to two lunches a month, and they’re both very different. One is the Out of the Box networking lunch, it’s geared to people who want to network and meet new people and find new businesses in the community. The other is the 2020 Vision for Business. The theme for that is, “Where will your business be in 2020?”
We try to bring in high caliber speakers so that business owners and senior-level managers who are making decisions for the track of their business will want to be there. We try to find those who have an amazing executive story to tell, like Joe Parkinson, the founding CEO of Micron. He came to speak to us about starting a business and dealing with HR issues. Really interesting! We brought in Tim Hong, the strategic alliances manager for Adobe. His clients are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and he talked about how social media is changing the business community.
We’ve tried very hard to up our game, and I think we’ve done a great job, but there’s still work to do. We’re revamping committees and what we’re doing with them and how we’re getting people engaged; we’re doing research with our board on how members organizations in general are changing. People just don’t have the time to connect the way they used to, so we also have to evolve.
The full interview with Michelle Holt has been edited for length. Visit our website at
idahofallsmagazine.com or call 542-2254 for a full transcript.