Meet Max Daffron, President & CEO of the HB Chamber of Commerce

SPEAKER_00 0:02

We're back with another episode of Unlocking Huntington Beach. What's going on? My name is Lane Stone, and we have another good one for you today. We're sitting down with the president and CEO of the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce, Max Daffron. What's going on, Max? Thanks for having me on here today. It's a great time. And there's a lot to talk about. So I just want to get into the little bit of an intro before we dig in because you are a HP local. You're a charger. Chargers and Oilers can still sit down and have good conversations together. It's a good time. At least none of us are barons, that's all I need. Yep. That's a good point too. Or Vikings. Just kidding. We love all of our Huntington Beach locals out there. But you started uh economic, you started in economic development in Huntington. Yep. Followed your wife to Colorado. Yep. Came back to Huntington. Absolutely. The first CEO of the for the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce, and you were telling me in more than 10 years or about 10 years? In eight to 10 years. I can't remember the exact time, yes. Perfect. And you're doing a lot of things. A ton. It looks like the new Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce. There's some rebranding going on. Yes. And we're going to be talking about sector partnerships. Absolutely. Do you want to talk about start with that on the sector partnerships initiative?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, we can kind of kick off on that. So to your point, Lane,

How out-of-state recruiters target Huntington Beach businesses

SPEAKER_01 1:10

when I came back here to take this job as the head of the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce, we were really having a conversation with the board as I was going through the interview process of what are the needs of our business community and who's been taking the temperature of kind of what's going on industry-wide throughout Huntington Beach. You know, I there's an anecdote I always like to give is that when people are doing economic development or when municipalities are doing economic development, um in other states, they will actually go out of state to try to recruit businesses out of places like California and bring them to other places. So in 2023, if you don't mind me giving this little uh anecdote here, um I was chair of a group in Colorado called the Northern Colorado Regional Economic Development Initiative, or no co-ready. It's all the communities north of the city and county of Denver. And there was an economic development recruitment trip to aerospace businesses and uh build in Los Angeles. And I was like, ah, I don't need to go to LA. It's a quick turnaround. I'm not gonna see my family, whatever. Um, one of my colleagues, when the plane landed and they got the dossier of the businesses they were gonna visit, she called me and she went, Every single business we're going to see is in Huntington Beach. And so as a Huntington Beach resident uh who was living in or local who was living in Colorado at the time, I was not gonna lie, I was pretty fired up about it. Um and uh I've always just kind of kept that in the back of my mind is what are we doing as a community to build an economic ecosystem here in Huntington Beach that when people come calling from other states that our businesses say, no, thank you. I'm happy to do business here. Um we know what the business climate is like in California. We know we're somewhat insulated here in Orange County, thankfully. Um, but we still need to be cognizant that we are a target for marketplaces throughout the United States to recruit and take businesses out of our communities.

The Sector Partnerships Program and its 5 industry sectors

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Um and so when I was going through the interview process to uh be the new CEO of the Huntington Beach Chamber, um one of the things I had brought up was what are we doing to regularly assess the health and well-being of our business community? Um, and a program that uh I worked collaboratively with when I was doing that no-co ready work was a uh industry sector partnership program um that was done by the Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce. And it was incredibly successful in kind of marshalling the business community through different industry verticals. Um, pardon me. Oh, you're gonna do YouTube. Jeez, did talking too fast here to uh get our business community active, involved, and communicating with the people that are uh that are part of their community. Um so, with that, this program that we've put together here, our industry sector partnership program, has five industry sectors. Um, we've launched the program a couple of weeks ago with our health and wellness sector partnership, with all of our health and wellness businesses here in Huntington Beach. Uh last week we had our professional services sector partnership. Uh yesterday we had our manufacturing, technology, and logistics, or metal sector partnership meeting. Um and then we'll be working on pretty soon scheduling uh our real estate and development sector partnership, which we'll probably call our RED partnership because it's a nice little acronym. And then uh we'll be working on our restaurants, retail, and hospitality sector partnership. But that's gonna kick off in September because I am not gonna ask our restaurants and retailers to take time out of their day during the busy season to uh come listen to me at the chamber.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

What are some of the things that were successful, successfully done in Colorado that you'd like to see here for Honeyton when it

Cross-sector coalition building and prioritizing local vendors

SPEAKER_00 4:33

comes to these initiatives?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

You know, it's really about coalition building for our business community, um, getting our businesses not just within their own sector, but cross-sector, to kind of talk about what their concerns are, not only what their concerns are locally or at a state level, so we can advocate on their behalf, but also getting them in a position to where we can marshal our business community to be active in things like our special events, to be active when we've got specific things going on. The last thing I want is a festival going on downtown where they're getting a bunch of vendors from Long Beach or from Anaheim or from whatever. I want Huntington Beach businesses at our Huntington Beach events. I want Huntington Beach businesses to be the first businesses represented whenever people are coming to special events in Huntington Beach. We need to highlight our incredible business community here.

Beyond Main Street: activating HB's industrial backbone

SPEAKER_00 5:18

When a lot of people think of Huntington Beach that aren't from here, they probably think of Main Street, the downtown area, and the business community there. But I think there's an emphasis that you guys are putting on to take it beyond just the first few blocks of out of Main Street, too. So is that something that you guys are really supporting?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

I mean, uh that's the thing, is that's such a great point. When people come from outside of our community and they think economic development Huntington Beach, they think of the first three blocks of Main Street, which is great. We have a phenomenal downtown bid. We've got uh a great mixture of businesses downtown. Um, but we have over 10,000 businesses in Huntington Beach. And our industrial areas in Huntington Beach are like in industry, heavy industry was truly the backbone of our community. And you know this, Lane. You're a Huntington Beach local. We were always the blue-collar beach community. We were manufacturers, we were contractors, we were the people here that are building things, and that's still a major part of our identity as a community. So we need to be activating that side of our business community to really kind of be a part. And uh and it's of no nobody's fault in particular. It's just it's easy to focus more on the shiny things like just the resorts in downtown. And because downtown is a central business district, that is true. But we have all these other businesses here that are such an integral part of our community that employ literally tens of thousands of people in Huntington Beach in our industrial

Why you don't need a Chamber membership to join

SPEAKER_01 6:35

areas. And that is they need the attention as well. And a voice. And a voice.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

And for these people that these 10,000 businesses that want to contribute or have a voice, what are some of the things that they can look into as far as how to join the chamber? Do you have to be a chamber member to join be a part of the partnership sector?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Absolutely not. So one of the big things that I've been huge on since coming on board is we don't gatekeep business advocacy. We had a phenomenal meeting yesterday for manufacturing technology and logistics uh businesses. But this is a part of our business community that historically, even when I was working for the city of Huntington Beach in the economic development office here, historically was not engaged with at a level that we should have engaged with. Um we had 24 total attendees yesterday, um, which was great. It was honestly better than I thought. But we need that community to continue to grow and expand. We have so many incredible businesses that are headquartered here in Huntington Beach. People forget Travis Matthew Golf is like one of the largest, if not the largest, golf apparel company in the world right now, headquartered here in Huntington Beach. And they're not super involved in what goes

Big business in HB: TravisMathew and Boeing's shift

SPEAKER_01 7:44

on in the community. They're amazing. They have an incredible product. I know they sponsor events. Love to have them at the table to kind of talk about policy that we could help initiate. And, you know, that's just a kind of a microcosm. Our aerospace community here is phenomenal. It, you know, Boeing has been Boeing is still, I believe, the largest employer here in Huntington Beach. They were significantly larger 10 years ago, but they've been kind of slowly navigating outside of California. And we get it because we know what the California political environment is like and the business environment is like. But we have all of these other aerospace companies that are based here in Huntington Beach that do phenomenal work. You know what? I'm gonna give one business

Orlando Precision: cutting red tape for local aerospace manufacturing

SPEAKER_01 8:25

a ton of credit. Nice. Can I give them a ton of credit? Yes, please. So we've got a group in town. Um, they're called Orlando Precision. Um, they just bought an 80,000 square foot building on the north end of Huntington Beach in the industrial area, right on the other side of where Boeing is. And I met them when I first came on board because they needed help going through uh the planning processes. They're having issues with parking requirements and planning and this, that, and the other. And we were able to partner up and get them into that building, um, you know, getting them connected with the right people at the city to help kind of move their project forward. Um, that's their second location in Huntington Beach. They have an original location that I think is 30,000 square feet. Don't quote me on the square footage, big numbers. But this is a business that is growing here in our city. They're also partnering with other aerospace companies here in Huntington Beach. I'm not going to name names because I don't want to think it's proprietary, but to manufacture parts for other uh aerospace companies in Huntington Beach, manufacture these parts here in Huntington Beach. That is incredibly impactful, not only to our community in terms of providing jobs, but it's incredibly impactful that you're keeping that money in our ecosystem. And in key instead of having it being shot off to other states or overseas for production, this is being produced here in Huntington Beach for a Huntington Beach company, and that is incredibly impactful. And they have been they have been an amazing partner uh ever since they reached out to me. They spoke on a panel during the mayor's breakfast back in uh March. Was that March? Yes, March. And uh they're they're great folks and they've got a really cool operation.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

And it's probably nice for them to feel like that they have this kind of level of support. It's not like you helped them kind of maneuver through some red tape stuff too. And and so there's a lot of businesses that maybe feel like they're on their own or they're it's them against the city or them against the state or whatever it is, but they maybe don't have to be. Exactly. Build a team around them to help them s like get through some of these things.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

It's that's exact it's exactly correct. And I mean, they're just one example of how dynamic our business community is. And you know what? They were they came to our uh our metal partnership meeting last week and they were the biggest business in the room. That was a big deal. Um this is a business that you know was doing over 20, 30 million dollars in sales a year, and it has a growth trajectory that's phenomenal. And uh we want businesses like that to stay here in Huntington Beach because not only is that bringing money from outside of our economy, that's like what you call a primary employer, where they bring money in from outside of the Huntington Beach economic ecosystem into Huntington Beach that then pays people in our city to then shop and dine and live and do all those things that we need for all of our businesses to be successful. And you

How primary employers keep downtown restaurants open in winter

SPEAKER_01 11:00

want those businesses to succeed in Huntington Beach and to keep growing because that's what's gonna keep your restaurants downtown open throughout the winter. That's a good point. That's that's a good hugely important.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yes, the roller coaster and the seasonality.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's how you strengthen that local economy, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

So that's good stuff. So for those that are watching right now or listening, if you're listening on a podcast device, and they um are small business owners in Huntington Beach, what are some of the ways that you recommend that they should get involved, whether it's with the chamber, whether it's with one of the partnership sector initiatives? Like what what are some of the ways that you feel um they should how should they get involved? Where should they go? Who should they contact? What's the first steps for them?

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Absolutely. It's different for every business, right? Um there are some businesses that you know what they thrive

How HB businesses get involved and take the temperature survey

SPEAKER_01 11:45

in the in the chamber mixers or our AM connects or golf tournaments and things like that. And that's great. We love every business in Huntington Beach. It does not matter what level of involvement. There's some businesses that join just because they like the message and they want to be part of the business community at large and kind of be in the know, and that's fine. Um if you're looking for help on the day-to-day, there's things that we could do here. A, our sector partnerships are a great, a great spot to get your foot in the door, even to just learn what we're about. Those those different industry partnerships are gonna meet quarterly. So if you miss these first ones, it's okay. There'll be another meeting coming out soon. Um if you want to be on a list, that's fine. You can email me, mdaffron at hbc o c dot com.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

And we're gonna have all of the links and everything that you need to know in the show notes. So that you don't have to, if you're driving, you don't have to pull over and write this down. Just go to the show notes. We're gonna have everything there.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Well, and that and that's the thing. Our sector partnerships are great, not only to meet other people in your field where you're gonna get help, you might meet a future vendor, you might meet another business that's experiencing the same problem that you're experiencing. One of the things we've been doing in these sector partnership meetings as we're first kicking these off, or kind of a temperature-taking exercise where we're having our businesses rank what is it keeping them up at night, basically? Is it local regulations? Is it state law? Is it changes in technology? Are you having workforce pipeline issues? Um, and we're having our business community rank these. And then we're doing another rank choice exercise where we're talking about instead what would make this sector partnership impactful to you and what would make it a you know a home run out of the park for you in the future. And so we're talking about are we doing industry-specific events? Are we building a workforce program in partnership with our partners at Golden West College? What are we doing to better support our business community? So if you're looking for an advocacy angle or an involvement, a uh uh true involvement angle, um, sector partnerships are great. You might meet some new um uh prospective customers or prospective suppliers, et cetera. Um, you might just get better in the know. If you're trying to kind of get bigger into the business

Chamber Golf Tournament and Sunset Mixer at the Huntington Club

SPEAKER_01 13:48

community as a whole, we do monthly mixers. We have our AM Connect events, our golf tournament is on July 27th, is almost sold out. We still have a couple sponsorship opportunities available. But after the golf tournament is our largest mixer of the year, it's our sunset mixer at the Huntington Club. That's open to anybody. You can come to that. We'd love to have you there. We've got all kinds of events and uh it's truly going to be a great time. Come and meet some other members of your business community. Yeah. And but there's also no pressure if you don't have time to do those things. If you want to sit down with me and have a cup of coffee, I've I've offered that to our business community truly at large. If you've got strong, if you have strong opinions on the chamber and what it used to not provide or what it needs to provide to keep you or to get you to be a member, I'm willing to hear that. I mean, like you said in the beginning, we didn't have a CEO for eight years.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah, and there's a lot of changes that seem to be happening and

Common objections and engaging young professionals

SPEAKER_00 14:41

still to come. And it could be completely different than what you thought it was five years ago, ten years ago, or it will be completely different.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

And that's that's kind of the goal is turn everything we did on its head, make sure what we're doing is actually serving the interests of our business community more so than anything. Like, you know what? Um, it's it's fun. Uh, we all have a good time. And I I have a great time at these events. You know what one of the funniest things I heard from so many people, and and it's kind of tongue in cheek, but when I took this role, I sat down with a hundred people in our business community, ranging from elected officials to former chamber board members to businesses that are chamber members and not chamber members and interviewed them really on what do you want to see be different from the chamber? And the amount of times I heard, hey, I like everybody at chamber events is 30 years older than me. I can't relate to anybody. I heard I'm not kidding, I heard that probably 30 times. And so we're gonna start putting

The Robert Mayer Leadership Academy

SPEAKER_01 15:35

together a program for a young professionals group next year. We want to really start engaging people. Um, like how many people know that we have a phenomenal leadership academy that is a subsidiary of the chamber called the Robert Mayer Leadership Academy. Robert Mayer is the, you know, that's the family that built our resort hotels here in Huntington Beach. Um, a lot of the economic success, especially in our downtown, can be attributed directly to that family. And they have a leadership academy that's ran for 30 years and is now a couple years ago uh became a subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce. If you're interested in putting staff through a leadership academy, you have one here in your backyard. You don't need to go find another one. Um but it's about getting the word out, kind of building these organizations up and rebuilding what we do organizationally to serve our business community best.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

So, in addition to somebody saying, Oh,

Winning back local businesses and rebuilding the Chamber's value

SPEAKER_00 16:22

these folks are 30 years older than me, what are some of the other objections that you hear most common as far as like, you know, I'm not ready yet, or I don't think this is for me, like what are some of the other objections that that you hear that probably aren't true?

SPEAKER_01 16:34

So it's funny. Um I would say the biggest thing, and this was uh made very evident at the uh professional services partnership. We had a gentleman there um who's had a business in Huntington Beach for decades. And he said at the conclusion of the meeting, he said, you know, I got an email because so so right now, just contextually, we're redoing everything we do. We're getting a new CRM system, we're redoing our website, we're doing all the backhouse stuff in addition to all this front house stuff. And so we had sent out an email to our uh accounts receivable aging report of everybody whose chamber dues were like over 90 days uh uh due, basically. And it was a hey, you know, we'd love to win you back, but we're going to a new CRM system. If you're if you don't renew in the next 30 days or call me or whatever, but we're gonna drop you from our from our new CRM system. And I had a gentleman who was in the meeting and he said, I got that email and I had not been planning on renewing my chamber membership because there was not a value add to my business as being a member. And he came to the professional services partnership and he said, After this meeting, I'm gonna going to go home and renew my chamber membership because this is the best thing I've ever seen the chamber do.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Our business community has been dying and hungering for true business engagement and business advocacy. It's the old model that you know at golf tournaments and mixers are fun, but they cannot be the end all be all, right? We have what is the service that we are providing our business.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

We still need things that can move the needle.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Exactly. Is it moving the needle? And if not, we need to pivot and figure out what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

And everything's still in the infancy stage. Like you've only been a part of this for eight months, right? Yeah. So um the like I hopefully for those of you watching, that you can see like how important it is to really have a CEO and a president that can really do a lot of things

The 1, 3, and 5-year vision for the HB Chamber

SPEAKER_00 18:19

in a short amount of time. And so when you fast forward, just a couple more questions and we'll wrap it up. When we when we fast forward, you know, one year, three years, and five years, yeah, what would you like to see happen for not only the businesses of Huntington Beach, but for the chamber and these partnership um sectors?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah, so in the one the one year goal would really be kind of getting everything that we've been doing on the back end fleshed out. When I say like we've just done a lot of deferred maintenance organizationally for the last eight years, that's what it was, and that's okay. We were we were limping along. I'm I'm very thankful for for the chamber board who kept the chamber afloat um for that period of time. It was a lot of work and it was an all-volunteer board with one full-time staff member. Wow. And truly incredible work to even for me to even come in at the chamber in the condition that it was in. Incredible. Um, so getting that all fixed. So once our new CRM is up and all of that, we're gonna start running forward on this is who we are and this is what we're all about. We've already adopted in a new mission statement, a new vision statement. We've done our new strategic plan. I can send you the link for that. I gave a presentation on it in our May, AM Connect. Um, kind of our it's our visioning for where we're gonna be at the end of at the end of 2027, right? And then our three year and our five-year, our three year is really cementing ourselves as a as a thought leader, um, not just in Huntington Beach, but kind of starting to build that out in Orange County. Uh, we work a lot with the Orange County Business Council, which used to be the Orange County Chamber. It uh rebranded the Orange County Business Council, I don't know, like 20 years ago. But they're involved in countywide things, but also doing things like um business attraction into Orange County. Um they've asked me to be part of a group uh that helps with international business attraction because I have experience of that, with that. And then in five years, I want us to be uh one of the top economic development organizations in Orange County, truthfully. That's what I want. Um there's no reason why we shouldn't be. Um, in my opinion, we have one of the most robust uh economic ecosystems in Orange County. You know, Irvine is a beast, yes, it is, but it after that, I don't see how anybody can beat us. And then that's my personal opinion. Our our business community is phenomenal. We just need to uh get them to the table and activated.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

I see a little competitive edge in there, and I love it. You're a Huntington Beach local, you know. I love it. I love it. I absolutely love it. Hopefully you guys feel that and resonate with that too, because I I

State of Orange County, State of the City, State of Public Safety

SPEAKER_00 20:39

loved what what you just said there. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to mention or plug, any events, anything happening coming up for that you want to you know mention while we have the floor?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah, absolutely. So we've got July 27th, our annual golf tournament in Sunset Mixer. I mentioned that. Um August 7th, we are partnering with the Newport Beach Chamber for the um uh the state of Orange County. It's kind of an economic development summit. I'm going uh if you're interested in sponsoring or being a part or getting tickets, you can reach out to us. We can uh send you information on that. Um and we're working right now. I I have a meeting this afternoon with the city to talk about our state of the city event, um, which will likely be September 10th. Um as soon as I get more information on that, I'll gladly pitch it to you guys so you say you have it and follow up your with your listeners on all that. Um and then we're really gearing up for the somehow the back half of this year. We're launching a new what's called state of public safety event um and kind of getting ready for next year. In January, we're doing a large uh business conference with the Orange County I OCIE SBDC network, um where the chamber is partnering with the city and and the SBDC network to do a basically business um conference here in Huntington Beach uh for I think it's uh an entire day in January. I can't remember the exact date, but I can get that to you as well. Um, and then our sector partnerships, moving those programs forward. And uh that's really our our big focus right now is getting the back of the house ready, sector partnerships formed and running. And then uh 2027 is gonna be a big year for us. It's gonna be a truly a huge year. And like I said, if anybody's got questions, they can always reach out. We're here to serve our business community truthfully.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

And let me know how

Outro and sign-off

SPEAKER_00 22:18

I can help too, just from one local to another. And thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you got some sort of value. Everything that we mentioned will be in the show notes. All the links you need, all the contact information, that will be in the show notes, whether you're watching this on YouTube or on your favorite podcast station. Uh I'm gonna leave you with this like I do each and every week. Do good. ITB deserves it. We'll see you on the next one. Thank you, Max.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Best city in Orange County. Thanks for having me, Lane. Woo! Woo! Perfect, thank you. Yeah, that was great.