where we bring you up close and personal with c level executives to help provide you with and resources for small business owners entrepreneurs and other professionals who are considering venturing out on their own today i'm excited to bring to you mr robert pernetti i'm going to call him bob as we go through this so robert printed he is the president and c e o of the jersey chamber of commerce and we're going to talk today about some of the things that are on the horizon some of the benefits of show it's good to be here with me with i'm excited to have you here about the program yeah i'm looking forward to this i know that people are probably very aware of the major as you chamber of commerce but i want to talk about some things today that they're not going be able to just find on the i don't want people to just feel like oh i could go on that i really want to qana delve a little bit deeper than that and talk to those people like i mentioned that might be thinking about  becoming a member not really sure you know what should i do so before we get into that i like to uncover this is called in the c suite so i don't care how long it takes i want to back it up i want to find out about you and i want people to know what led you into this role that you find yourself in now i'm curious myself so please feel free well you know a very very quick background i was born and raised in the city trenton with the trenton public schools i got  my degree from the college of new jersey when i went though was trenton state college but i got my undergraduate degree there and then i went on to new york university for my graduate degree in public administration i i  started out as being in finance and budgeting for the county and then lo and behold i got in the politics i was elected freeholder and then i was elected county executive for three terms twelve years then i decided that that was enough of the public service part of it you know in terms of elected office and i opened up a small consulting business i did consulting on government affairs of the consulting on things like energy for example  i mean we did a lot of things but one of the things we did a lot of was finding capital equity capital for start up companies for emerging companies that sort of things i worked with some attorneys wherever to locate and finance some startups in that fashion then that of course you know the great recession came in that kind of put a little crimp on finding capital for companies so we started doing things you know some different things we work for some nonprofit organizations and things like that and then the opportunity came along to work with the chamber of commerce then the mercer regional chamber of commerce and so i was always very active with the chamber of commerce both in my political life and also as a business person and i did a lot of things with the chamber of commerce when we built the baseball state of trance thunder one of the first organizations i went t support was the mercer chamber of commerce at that so i was very close with a lot of those so i think when the opportunity came some members came to me and said you know we really want to take this chamber to the next level we want to grow we want to be much more chamber of commerce and i said well that interests me quite a bit and so that's how it came to me and course i interviewed for the job and lo and behold i was fortunate enough to be successful and then immediately upon my arrival i guess at the then mercer regional chamber we embarked upon a rebranding initiative and now we've become the majority chamber of commerce and now we encompass five counties  all of burlington county some of mahmut some of ocean some of hundred in some of middlesex county and all of mercer county and even bucks county pennsylvania some people say well bucks county how did they get involved well you know there are a number of companies in bucks that do business across the river river doesn't stop commerce and show their interests are here so they join our chamber because they're doing business here and vice versa and we have some of our members that do business in bucks county pennsylvania so it really makes for this  new jersey makes sense to me yeah yeah yeah well because we write the middle and you know we toured with different a central jersey always came to came to the table but central jersey in many areas is there's a  stuff like that idea yeah that's a pretty wide area but we based the area on the market our chambers different than many of the chambers most of them are location based or you know there are based around and municipality or county or what have we said we are market based we have defined what we believe this middle market is here in the middle of the state and we took those areas that we thought belong to that market not because they were a certain town or a certain county or whatever but you know we found one when i was doing research for the trends on we wanted to know where the fans would come from and so what we did was we through a lot of research we found that probably our the nucleus of the fan base would be within thirty minute radius of trenton that's where the stadium is right we took the same philosophy we just kind of drew a thirty minute radius pretty much and said this is the market and pretty much it holds true and so we're very much market driven so you don't need to worry about whether or not you know you're even from further north or further south or pennsylvania the fact is if you want to do business here we are the gateway so that's the key not necessary so it's not as a place space is if you want to do business in hundred a county if you want to do business regardless of where you're located in this is absolutely a remix so that's where the fastest growing number of one of the things that i want to talk about a little bit is people doing business with each other with in the chamber so want to talk about that a little genius find that that's happening it's absolutely true out of our big national surveys that have been done that show close to seventy percent of the consumers will do business with a company or or feel more confident doing business with a company that is a member of a chamber of commerce almost seventy percent of consumers now in terms of business to business yet i would say the number is probably up to eighty or ninety percent not always but they look at fellow chamber members to do business first and that's that's just what it is right so you go to a networking event that you meet some people you get to learn about their business a little bit they get to learn about your business you know i can't tell you the number of people say oh i never knew that so and so did this or did that you know and all of a sudden you get a new customer all of a sudden you're working with a new vendor i can attest to it you have a number of different events but i'm going to offer stiffly shoplifters right the chamber networking breakfast i went to that recently and that's kind of where we reconnected again and i can tell you that right you don't need to take my word for all you have to do is do what you did yeah and you don't need to be a member you can come to one of our breakfast kind of spots and see what the room is you know who's there and get to know some people we give everybody a chance to do like a thirty second commercial or so at those breakfast most more free sometimes we have a more i think it's ten or fifteen dollars but most of them are free so just come and get to know us good but more importantly get to know the other businesses that are in that room and we have one a month in different areas around that region right that we call me jersey and are very very effective very effective and so this i hadn't even thought about this but since you just brought it up if people are interested in hosting what's the process for an app well to look like you're going to host you need to be a member ok all right s and what happens or you have to do is tell us and usually it's coffee and donuts or bagels or something like that not an elaborate breakfast ok but if you want people to come to your place of business there's no better way to do it than to hope host one of these breakfast and all you have to do is contact the office and we will schedule you are we doing one amount but that doesn't mean if we have the interest we could even do more than one a day but that's all you need to do and we'll get it scheduled and it's a great way to get people out to your place of business is the spot one of these breakfasts  idea and i get i'm going to reiterate it guys are for people like us especially if you're new to the area that's my story if you're new to the area new business and you trying to figure out how the world do i get the word out about my portal on our website you go into that and then you can get a listing of all the members of the chamber and the kind of businesses that they do the kind is that they do it so you can tell her that these are companies that you know i have a product for i have a service for and then you can start your whole marketing in that fashion but yeah the breakfast are great we have we have after work networking we do that four five times a year we have our luncheon ones coming up actually to our one of our general membership luncheons we always have speakers there at this particular event we're going to have tom brackett who is the state chamber of commerce president we're going to have michelle shikarpur who leads the jersey business and industry association and we have tom byrne who led the the state report on pension reform so this is going to be a really interesting lunch and it's informative but yet same thing with leave plenty of time for networking get to know people that sort of thing so  our website that's it that's a great place and again you can go as a nonmember you have to pay a little higher fee is an odd number because when your benefits for membership is you have a discount my rate for any any of our events but we like to say that what we do as a chamber is that we help you grow your business that's very important obviously we helped to protect your business and what we mean by that is that there's an awful lot that goes on at the state legislature at the county level at city levels where you need to be aware and somebody needs to be protecting your interest right so big corporations usually have their lobbyist they have the lawyers lawyers things like that and we represent big corporations but our main focus is for middle and smaller companies who can afford the lobbyist they can afford the lawyers that's what we're there for we go to help protect your interests so we help grow your business we help to protect your business what any of the things we do in terms of securing your business is that we will call individual ag advocacy you have a problem you're dealing with a state agency the partner community affairs some licensing bureaus the department of environmental protection or you're dealing with a local government and for most business people they don't know how to navigate that iraq or see you know we do now i'm not going to necessarily get you the answer you want but what i can do is be your advocate in that we get you to the right place we can help you set up meetings to discuss what your issues are and we do that on a regular basis i mean it's kind of where i came from right government i understand government i know how to work actually through the day i write and that's another thing we do in terms of helping to protect your business to protect your interests you know we do that all the time that's you know i think it's huge especially again i'm going back to the people who are like you know what i got a couple hundred dollars should i are certain i write membership i'm talking generally i understand and so to your point these things are going to come up it's not small membership that you pay it yes a very very big piece i'm on board thing for you know and then it then the final thing we do is i like to say we like to grow the environment in which you're working what we mean by that is we talk a little bit off camera about it we help build good communities that's part of what we're about that's part of and if you're in business part of which absolutely you want to grow your business you want to do well but part of what you need to be thinking about is how do i make this community better as well general but nonprofits use the young professionals you really do you really out there in a number of different ways i want to talk about it all right and thank you for tuning in we'll be right back after these quick messages majority chamber we are always looking for ways to bring more value to our members with their membership investment this particular program is a marketing platform which took us about two and a half three years of money and those are really just three key things those out there listening who have not used a pat prepackaged to email marketing and we all know the brands it reaches the people you want to reach it gives you feedback because you analytics you can also separate segment your membership that's the greatest thing there's no nickel and dime ng there's no additional charges it comes with your membership many companies don't realize how crucial video marketing is to their success and the business they're losing by not taking advantage of this growing trend from promotional ads to weaponize and video training series if you're not using video marketing for your business and your competition is then you're hurting your bottom line if you wanted to get started with video but weren't sure where to turn you know you can turn to staging executives exacts dot com and get started building a video marketing campaign for your company organization or next event instantly move back to the city of trenton you know our chamber was born of the city of trenton actually john a roebling started our chamber we have a hundred forty eight years now so in a couple of years we'll be celebrating our one hundred fiftieth anniversary so we're very proud of that history and the legacy and so now we have been located in hamilton township for about the last ten years or so we have now moved back to the city of trenton so we're really happy about that that's really the hub of our major as a region and that we are located at riverview plaza which is on the delaware river right next to across from the trends thunder baseball stadium it's so great it's a good location easy access from all points and you know kind of makes a statement that we want to be part of the you know redevelopment the rebirth of the city of trenton we want to be part of that so that's one reason why we're there and we're really excited about this that's a big deal and so within this move though are there some new initiatives that businesses can get excited that i'll start a couple of things in particular one is as part of the move we have a  nice training so our companies can use it for company training it will be pretty much stated the art civil have all the electronics and all the good stuff you need to do training and it's just a beautiful space for people as i said easy access plenty of parking and so we have some companies we have certain real estate companies that do training on a regular basis so they'll be there but there we will hold some training there  an education credits in different fields like accounting and planning and real estate and things like that or just a meeting facility for when you need to hold you know kind of large meeting so our  room holds about fifty five people so you can have a nice sized meeting there and training and as i said it's a beautiful facility easy access good parking so that's one of the things we want to promote being a sort of  all inclusive chamber you know something for everybody and so there's a facility there that you can use now we will if it's sporadic use for our members for let's say a few hours or something we can make it available for free but if it's something that you going to need to use on a regular basis or all day or for a complete half a day then they'll be some fees that are associated but they'll be far less expensive than if you went out to some other facility to use and we're going to team up with other organizations like the  new jersey redevelopment authority we're going to team up with them they hold certain classes for continuing education for professionals in business and so will be partnering with them will be partnering with some real estate organizations to do some real estate credits and things like that so we're really excited about that so you know one thing that that we haven't mentioned is the fact that when your company is a member all the employees of that company are members so any employee can take advantage of anything that we're doing you know we have different for we have discount drug programs we have a whole bunch of other kinds of programs that you can take advantage of so i just wanted to make that clear that he said last night that yeah if you're a member of a company that's a member of ours you're a member that's a big deal yes so it's not just that's what it is you know we have training that's like with word you know microsoft word and we have training sessions on that x l we have training sessions so some things that employees can use to better themselves and it's available you know so we'll be we work with the merced county community college with training courses like that and so on so that's great it's becoming a hub and i love that it is bringing people together you know people have to learn sometimes you  have to force people to collaborate absolutely and it's i couldn't pay for them to do that and the other initiative that i want to tell you about very briefly and it's called save local now the jersey save local now it's deciding for smaller biz any business can take advantage of it but it's really designed for smaller retail businesses but it's a digital marketing program that you get for free by being a member so for example if you're let's just say your restaurant you know you have an opportunity restaurant on this page all the characteristics of your restaurant on the page consumers can go to the page when they're looking for a restaurant let's say in trenton or hamilton they go to page look up the geographic region see all the restaurants that are there and where you can sort of strike your stuff there but you also can use it to send out messages so i guess if you're a restaurant and you have thursday night pasta night you want to get that out but you can do that you can use this program to buy yourself you don't need a special train and we will train in the beginning just so you know how to use it but you use it you put up your special for the week and you know everybody that's going to cite or your individual list you know your client base list you can send it out so it's going to a great digital media digital marketing that's to train and so you're and fun of it if you were to do that yourself and pay for it it's got a question probably two hundred dollars a month here for the price of your membership you have a very well i love it so let's talk a little bit about community we talked about how just becoming a member of the chamber helps to improve the commune ups all right whether it's tangible or intangible but i also want to highlight some of the things that i was excited to find out about the chamber you really do provide a lot of support to the nonprofit community and so that's a big thing for me let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you do i want to highlight that well that that's very important to us we have the largest contingent of nonprofit members as any chamber in the state in the jersey many of our nonprofits are much larger than our private businesses they employ people they buy goods and services you know and they produce services so they're very very important segment of our economy and think it's part of our mission to as i said strengthen our communities grow the environment in which your business is is working because if you've got a healthier stronger community in your business is in it you're going to do better we try to do is we've developed what we call nonprofit executive council and this is a council that meets at least once a quarter sometimes more often sometimes they have subcommittees but the idea there is to get all of the c e o s and the c nonprofit organizations together in a room to share just meth it's best practices you know to share ideas about how they can work together you know some provide more benefits more  benefits affective benefits how they can share services show that they can reduce their costs so there are a lot of things that come out of these meetings and would also comes out of them is that we should have identif you can and try to bring more services to the people we serve yeah well i'm excited about it and again your time the input what you shared with me today i really really appreciated again that's the whole purpose of this show you know  entrepreneurs small business owners people who are in those nine to five to thinking about taking that step and taking that leap i want them to know that there's an organization here that you can kind of fall back on th about the chamber why don't you share the you know dot jersey chamber dot org new jersey chamber dot org perfect i've been on the site is so much information there and but it's laid out in such a way that it's not overwhelming so really