 Welcome to Rational Business, and this is going to be our first Rational Business. I'm joined today by Scott Cook, who is the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce here in Longmont. Scott, welcome to the table. Thank you, Nigel. So let's start off with the very basics. The Chamber of Commerce is a little bit like the United Way. Give us an overview of the main aspects of what the Chamber of Commerce is trying to accomplish. Well, thank you, Nigel. And yes, I would agree. There's a little bit of mystery around what we do. And when I'm telling people that I'm the CEO of the Longmont Chamber, they think, oh, so you run the city, can you fix this traffic light down the street from me and that kind of thing. And I know the people to talk to to get that traffic light fixed, but no, I don't do that myself. On our staff, Karen Stallard, our membership director, has a common line where she says, we're the Chamber of Secrets. So a take from Harry Potter, and I think there's a little bit of truth to that. And I think one of the reasons why that's the case is because if you've met a Chamber of Commerce in one community, you've met a Chamber of Commerce. That does not mean you have an idea of what chambers do across the country or even the world. But I would say at a basic level, chambers are trying to create and maintain an environment for business that's suitable for business. We all know that businesses are very susceptible to the changing environment, whether they can survive or not. And so the role of a Chamber of Commerce at the local level is to maintain a good environment for businesses to succeed. I'll say also, in effort to do that, chambers should be the voice, the collective voice of businesses around that community or that state, depending on what the chamber is representing. On feedback on a number of different things, that can be things that are going on legislatively at the state, that can be at city council, that can be with a citizen initiative or something that's going on. You know, sometimes we have citizens that are pushing back on a business coming into town. Well, what does the business community think about that? What's the collective voice of the business community saying about that issue? And I think one of the powerful things about a Chamber of Commerce is many people think that we are representing just small business. And I will say that probably 80% of our own membership is small business, a very small business. But it also includes very large businesses. So when you hear the Chamber speak, you are hearing the collective voice of both large and small businesses. And one of the things that's important to understand is that businesses are very intertwined. The dry cleaning business on Main Street is dependent on the high-tech manufacturer being in town. And so it goes to restaurants and retailers. Yeah, that's an interesting point you make there because obviously Longmont is really... We only really got one big employer in this area, IBM, just down the diagonal. And I'm not sure whether that would come under Boulder or under Longmont because some of the county lines or areas are a little bit strange. But obviously the point you raised about the Chamber of Commerce having different issues in different areas because obviously a small town like Longmont probably has very different issues than say a large city like Pittsburgh. What are the ties between the Chamber of Commerce? Do you all talk to each other or are you still just little independent groups? Yes, that's a great question. We are independent from each other. So the Chamber of Commerce in Longmont is a completely separate organization from the Chamber in Boulder, let's say, or Denver. However, we do work very closely together and we have a number of organizations both regionally, statewide, and even nationally. We join that where we can learn from each other and that kind of thing, but we're not... And we even take our memberships in other chambers of the Commerce organizations. For example, there is the U.S. Chamber. Our chamber here in Longmont is not a member of the U.S. Chamber. However, we are a member of the Colorado Chamber and we work very closely with them. We're a member of the Denver Chamber and their organization called C3, which is the Colorado Competitive Council. That's how we do a lot of our different advocacy work at the local level. And then just recently, well I say recently, it was 2016, we put together a regional alliance of our chambers. So all the chambers in Boulder and Broomfield counties are part of the Northwest Chamber Alliance. And within that alliance, we work on a lot of regional issues. So what we were finding as our communities grow and expand, a number of workers, as we know, that work in Boulder live in Longmont and vice versa, or in Lafayette, Louisville, Broomfield. And so when it comes up to issues like transportation and housing, what happens in Boulder matters to us in Longmont on both of those issues and many others. So it just makes perfect sense for us to work together. And I'm proud about that because I think in some ways the business community has been kind of on the leading edge of connecting our communities and having us work together a little bit more closely. Right. Let's talk about infrastructure and all the rest of it. Let's talk about that just a little later because I think right at the top of the list, we have to talk about the pandemic. This has to have been the toughest two years ever for someone in your sort of position because I'm sure you have unfortunately seen a lot of your members vanish. Talk to us from your perspective on the pandemic and the business community, specifically Longmont but also around the country. Sure. I'll say a couple things about vanishing businesses and things like that. Yes, we did have some of that. Our staff spent hours and hours calling each one of our members. We have over 700 members and we called each one of them. And I'm telling you having a phone conversation with someone that's about to lose their dream is a very difficult conversation to have. Oh, almost impossible. And then you do that again and then you do that again. I had staff go home just absolutely worn out just from making phone calls during that day. But I'll say a couple of things. The first thing is Longmont's an amazing community. We have a lot of local support for our local businesses. I think people have a good understanding of the importance of having business in our community, what that means. If we have a business that's successful in our community, that means they can help with school activities. That means they can employ people at higher wages. That means our parks get paid for and our sidewalks get built. I think there's a general understanding, a good understanding in Longmont of why it's so important to support our businesses. Second of all, I have to say with the Paycheck Protection Program, without that I should have to think what it would have been without that. Oh, it would have been an absolute disaster. Yeah. If you talk to the bankers in our community that were filing these applications, they will tell you of 12, 13, 14 hour days what they were just doing that all day long and getting that money out into the community. Into the people that need it. So without that we would have lost many more businesses. It did surprise me because you are actually, I hadn't thought of this, but you're 100% correct that with the telecommunications and the internet that we have nowadays, the whole world did see what the rest of the world was doing. And it always struck me, it's strange how countries all tackled it from different directions. So we've talked about the pandemic. Now, luckily the bubble hopefully has burst. Employment. Employment now is kind of interesting because employment numbers, the unemployed rate is now one of the lowest it's ever been in the history of the United States. Right. And particularly good in Colorado. And particularly here in Colorado. How are your members dealing with this? Because I mean, if you need somebody, you need somebody. But there's no one to get. It's a very interesting conundrum that we're in. Because as you said, unemployment is low or unemployment is low. Wages have gone up. We've all seen the signs when we're walking into a business and they'll quote the hourly rate that they're paying. And it's much higher in many cases than it has been even just a few months ago. We've done a fair amount of reading on this. And I don't know if anybody really has the exact answer. Now we know some things. We know people have taken early retirement. We know some people have said, you know, I'm not going to work. I'm not going to have an employer. I'm going to go out on my own. Well, you know, actually we kind of like that at the Chamber of Commerce because we want to see more new businesses and innovation take place. Right. The other side of that coin though is that so many of our members are struggling to fill positions. We have one member that I was talking to the other day. She has a lot of new space in her building. It's a massage therapy business. And she said, I could be bringing in twice as much income right now if I could find the people. Right. I have the space. I have the facilities. It's a very nice facility. But I can be bringing in twice as much income into my business. She says, and I need to hire a front desk person, but I can't hire at $20 an hour. She can't afford that because she doesn't have the people doing the massages. Right. Now if she had that, then she could afford to pay the front desk person. So she is really in that famous catch-22 situation. And she can't do that because she hasn't got that. Exactly. And that has impacts not just for her directly but on the community because you take that business and you double that and look at all the other businesses where this is happening. That's lost revenue and income to our community. Right. That's lost tax revenue. And I'll say this as well, that it doesn't matter if you are talking to a restaurant owner or someone in high-tech manufacturing at a large company. It's the same story. It's a great place to be if you are job hunting. Yes. If you're the employer, you are struggling. No, you're not going to tell me how much I'm going to earn. I'm going to tell you how much I want. That's exactly right. It's difficult sometimes for companies. They can raise their wages and things like that. But we've also got to consider benefits. You know, many of those are going up as well. Oh, absolutely. Okay, so we now have struggling businesses. And one of the reasons a lot of them are struggling is because of infrastructure. I mean, here in Colorado, at one time, Boulder was the place to live. Everyone moved to Boulder, filled it up. Health pricing went through the roof. People moving into the area wanted to live in Boulder, discovered they couldn't. So Longmont now is getting like Boulder. Very, very expensive housing, which means service workers, etc., are having to live elsewhere. How important to you is having a good, solid infrastructure between all the different towns and cities, especially here in Colorado, because we are a little spacious here. No, it's a very good point. And I'll say it's very important. And I'm glad you brought that up because I think we are having a particular problem with employment in our community based on what we were just talking about because of service workers not being able to live here in Longmont or close by. I have another member that I was talking to that has a longtime employee. This employee's apartment complex was bought out recently and rents went up. And now this employee is no longer able to live in Longmont. They have looked elsewhere in the community to see if there's something at their original rent. And the employer has a problem because he can only pay so much. It's a very small business. It's a fairly new business and fairly small. And so this long-term employee with all his institutional knowledge of that company will be leaving the community. That's one less service employee that we will have. But infrastructure is extremely important and I bring up those stories because it's very closely tied with housing. And your very correct housing has gone up quite a bit. Living expenses have gone quite a bit in our community. And so we are at a point of having to make some transportation and infrastructure decisions and also housing. Right. And in Longmont particularly, we don't have a lot more room to expand. We can look at our community and think, oh, there's all this open land around it. Well, that is open land. It will remain open. Open land. Open space. And so we actually are kind of landlocked. So a challenge for us, I see going forward from here until probably for a long time into the future is how will we attract employees to our community when we no longer can actually have a lot of our employees actually live here because we are at max capacity. And that is a really dangerous double-edged sword because, again, we're right back into the catch-22 situation. And somehow the town has got to solve that by getting some reasonable priced housing. And when you say double-edged sword, I think that's interesting too because we have made some decisions in our community that have been very good and very beneficial to our community which has led to the increase. It costs money to live in an efficient, well-performing community. We have next light in this community. Yes. One of the fastest internet connections in the entire country. The. Yes, that's correct. Well, the word gets out on that. We were recently named one of the top places to relocate to work remotely in large part. Obviously. Because of next light. I mean, it makes sense. We have a tremendous school system with a fantastic innovation center. People want to put their kids into good schools. Right. We have good schools. We have fast internet. I had my house valued a little time ago. Moved into it in 92. It's more than doubled in value. And I look around this place going, this is not worth that amount of money. You know, we work very closely with the Long Mind Economic Development Partnership in our community which, you know, has Long Mind as Colorado's hidden gem or best kept secret. Right. And I don't know, I don't want to speak for them, but maybe at some point we might have to change that because I'm not sure how much of it's a secret anymore. It's gotten out. We've got one of the best climates of any state in the country. Yes, we get high winds off the front range occasionally. Yeah, we get snow. It's normally gone two days later. I love it. And no plans to move, right? Sorry? And no plans to move. No plans to move at all. Right. If you want a four season climate that doesn't have extremes, I mean, sometimes we have very cold days and very hot days, but they're small in number. Right. But if you want a four season climate with lots of sunshine, you're going to be really, it's going to be difficult for you to find something else that compares. Right. It's hard to find a place where you can have six inches of snow on the ground and you can still go outside wearing a t-shirt. Talking about next light. Yeah. It's funny. You brought that up and it was a good point to raise because I voted against the town putting this in because I thought, government, they have got no clue what they're doing. They're going to mess this up royally. And what happened? I was proved 100% incorrect. They nailed it. Fort Collins is now putting in the same network. Well, Loveland is looking at it. Loveland is now looking at it. A couple of our people here work in Frederick. I think they're going to be out of luck. I will say to Longmont's credit, we've had a history of that too. We have our own Longmont power and communications, which next light is a part of. And that's something that other surrounding communities are jealous of. That's correct. And that's been a very well managed program for over 100 years. Yes. So there is a history of good and effective government in our community. Yes. And I'll say that's too, where the chamber comes in as well, because when we first looked at it as well, we were a little bit on the fence with it because we have businesses that provided internet service. Yes, obviously. And then we had the city asking us, would you support this? So the first time we looked at it, we were neutral on that. And then the second time we supported it. At least you didn't take my stance. Well. You're right though, many times these kinds of things don't work well. And there are communities across the country that try these and it didn't actually work out. And maybe this is another good thing about Longmont. We are the size of community where you can very easily access your city council members and your city staff. Well, they do the little meetings in the cafes around town. And you can actually get to meet your council people, talk about your issues, which is wonderful. Right. Scott, thank you so much for coming down. I hope, actually, we get a chance to talk further on this. I would love it. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you, Nigel. Appreciate it. You're in Longmont and you would like to talk about your business here at the table. Let us know because we would love to have you come in and talk about how your business is working, where you'd like your business to go, how it fits in in Longmont. I'm Nigel Aves, your host. Once again, thank you. Goodbye.