Ep 100, Dec. 2021:

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

Today on Wisconsin veterans forward celebrations are in order folks. This is episode 100 of this fledgling podcast started out as an experiment and started to gain some traction and, and now we're not going anywhere. You know, we're a hundred episodes in, and here's two, another, a hundred. So very, very excited to celebrate that. We're gonna talk about some of our favorite moments from 2021 as we bring the year on home, we wrap it up and put a neat little bow on it and, and bring the year into a close here. So this will be a fun one. Stay tuned. Folks. We're gonna dive right in. After this, you are listening to Wisconsin veterans forward. Wisconsin's premier audio resource for veterans, military families, veteran owned and veteran friendly businesses. Wisconsin veterans forward is brought to you by the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

It has been a crazy year. And I suppose with the, with the way things have been I feel like I get to the end of every year. And I say, man, this year has just been nuts. I wonder if that's the way that, that we just are from here on out every, every year comes to a close we're like, man, that year was, oh my goodness. There's a lot to, to, to look back on and be thankful for though. And there's a lot of things to be happy about and proud about and excited about. I hope as you look back on this year you know, I, I hope you, you you're happy and you're healthy everybody out there. That's, that's listening and beyond. I hope you're happy and you're healthy and you have optimism looking forward to 2022. And, and I I think this is gonna gonna be our year.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

This is gonna be your year. And we got exciting things to look forward to for the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce. It's been a heck of a year. My goodness we've had <laugh>, we've had a lot of successes. We've had a lot of, we've learned a lot. We've had a lot of go rowing pains, you know, as we adapted to the new reality of, I don't wanna say a post COVID world, cuz I, I feel like that that may be premature. I'm not sure if we're ever, I mean, there's so many things that have changed now that have just become normal that are never gonna go back. That's just the way they are now. So I'm not even sure if post COVID world is, is an accurate it will ever be an accurate statement and there's the world before COVID and then there's the world after it hit.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

And I don't, I don't know if post COVID is accurate, I'm gonna have to ruminate on, on, on what, what we should be calling that. But we had to, we had to learn and make some, some adaptations and we tried a lot of things. Some things worked, some things didn't, most things worked. We were pleasantly surprised with how our shift towards streaming video, towards podcast towards shorter form content. In some cases we were pleased with how that resonated with our audience. And we had thought that our assumption was justifiably so that our audience was a gonna be a little more old school. Generally speaking, if you think of the veteran community in quotes, the I'm doing air quotes right now, the veteran community overarchingly the average age range that, that demographic is gonna be a little older than the average internet user cuz a veteran has to be, you know, typically at least like 20 some years old.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So they're, they're on average gonna be a little bit older, a little more old school. You know, it's, it's never, it's never really safe to make assumptions about any, any demographic, but you know, and, and that was proven to be true in this case because we had made assumptions about the demographic and how they would respond to our remote offerings that we had to do because things were all shut down. But we were pleasantly surprised with how that resonated and how it gained traction. And they were things that we had to do anyways. They were things that, that before a COVID we were saying, man, we really should do this. We really should have a podcast. We really should do a live stream. We should do more video. We should, you know, have more of an open forum, you know, more of a more of an effective internal communications, more of an effective external communications, more of a steady stream.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

We should be doing more frequent newsletters. You know, things that we were talking about for a very long time were things that we were forced to do because of COVID. You know, and if there are silver linings, that's one of them, we were forced to modernize forced to make some steps that we were talking about making forever. And so we made those changes and we were really pleasantly surprised with how a lot of it, a lot of it turned out. So just to go over some of the highlights, some of the cool things that happened this year for the chamber, and then I wanna talk about after that, I wanna talk about some of my very favorite episodes that I think you should check out, you know, before we go into phase two, season two, episode 101 and beyond, I think it's important for you to look back there's some episodes, some really quality pieces of content and some nuggets of wisdom in there.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So this year we launched our live video stream series office hours. And for those that both watch office hours every Wednesday at 1130 and listen to the podcast, you'll see a lot of similarities because it's typically the same audio. We do have some exclusive podcast material, but generally speaking, our Wednesday live streams, I rip the audio from those and they become our podcasts. This is right here is a standalone thing. This isn't a video. This is audio only. This is so for you podcast listeners, this is exclusive content, but we launched that video series, that office hours, and just kind of dove in thinking that we'd have three viewers, four viewers, less than 10, but turns out given our kind of wide audience that there were people that wanted to see the stuff that we were presenting and we didn't make it a webinar.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

We didn't make registrations out of it and, you know, sign up here and blah, blah, blah seemed too formal. And people were so weary and sick of being just zoomed to absolute death and back just beating the dead horse with a, with, with a zoom app logo with the icon, just beating the horse with the zoom logo or go-to webinar or whatever you name it. So we thought we'd go a little less quote, unquote, formal with it. And, and just do the live stream, do a little, little bit of promotion on the front end, but largely people who know that we are on it a certain time or people who stumble upon it, maybe they can find something that resonates with them. And we were super happy with how that turned out. You know, each one has had hundreds of views at, at a minimum 'em and then, you know, grow as they over time and then live on in an evergreen fashion over on our YouTube channel, which is still growing there.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

Youtube is a weird beast. It just grows so slowly. And we're, you know, it's completely organic for us. We're not putting a lot of targeted effort into that. It's just more of a, a repository for our video content that comes for our streams. So so we launched the office hours shortly after that, we launched the Wisconsin veterans forward podcast largely with audio from office hours, sometimes with audio from our morning formation sessions. And, and sometimes with exclusive audio that's just like today or, or some exclusive interview material. So the first half of the year was establishing this new normal, our newsletters. We, we came out with a Monday edition and then we found that, that we had more to say about our members more to celebrate for, from our members and supporters and partners and sponsors. So we added a Friday edition.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So we have a Monday and a Friday edition, and those were getting a little long even. So in circumstances where those newsletters were getting too long, we added we added a Wednesday special edition. We called it. We have like an events digest as well. You know, that, that you'll notice sometimes pops up on Wednesdays. So we, we just kind of figured that out over time. So after the, the first, the first half of the year comes to close, you know, we, we get to June, July and we have, or we get to June, let's say almost halfway through the year we have a podcast that's established. We have a weekly live stream. That's established. We have a, a minimum of two times a week newsletter that's established and we're starting to gain way more traction, way more organic growth and engagement and views online. And then June comes around and boom we can do live things again.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

We can do live things again. That's crazy after so long. We F there was a time that we were looking forward to that in our local area, Southeastern Wisconsin, Milwaukee county, that the occupancy restrictions were being lifted. And we were able to start doing live things again, w I mean, I can't even express to you how excited we were, because you know, the live events, that warm handshake thing that, that face to face mean that was our bread and butter. Well, maybe not handshakes still <laugh>. We really weren't at that point, maybe fist bumps at a maximum <laugh>. We weren't quite there yet. But we were able to celebrate pen fed out in DC pen. Penned credit union came out with their annual top cities list, you know, their best cities for veteran entrepreneurs, their, their huge study that they come out with annually and both Milwaukee and Madison were on the list.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So they sent out a delegation. They flew people out here to celebrate with us the successes that are, or opportunities that are available in the state of Wisconsin for veteran on entrepreneurs. And it was a celebration. We had an entire full day worth of events with penned. And they're just awesome people from out there. They, they like genuinely care about the veteran community, anybody that, that hung out with, with us during those events on that day in June man, you you saw it firsthand. These people are the real deal. They put their money where their mouth is. They have an entire foundation that is dedicated to supporting veterans and their, you know, entrepreneurial endeavors and their career endeavors and stuff. So it was a really cool, we spent the whole day. We didn't mess around. They flew in and we gave 'em 48 hours of just unstop.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

Like here is Wisconsin. You're gonna get it, get it all in one, one package, it's a great time. And then it was off to the races. Then we started doing events all over the place because what we didn't want to happen was we didn't wanna spend all of our time focused on Southeastern Wisconsin because we're headquartered there. We're established there. Obviously we're gonna have deeper roots here, but we served the entire state of Wisconsin. And we spent the last six months creating these room mote offerings that helped us get to almost every nook and cranny of the state. It was an equal offering the office hours, the podcast, the, the, the internal communications, you know, the, the way that we supported and communicated with our members and partners was equal across the board. We weren't, we weren't more present for P people that were close to us.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

We were, it was, it leveled the playing field in a lot of ways. And we wanted to ensure that when we were able to go back to live stuff again, that we would have more uniform representation. So it was important for us to, okay. We did our Milwaukee thing with pen fed. That was awesome. Now let's get, let's go. So we started putting things on the books in green bay central Wisconsin, Oclair lacrosse Madison, and, and really just putting our money where our mouth is and showing that we are here to physically support you in person, as well as remotely. We're not like here for you in person, if you're, if you live in Milwaukee or senior Kenosha counties and then remote <laugh>, otherwise that's not, that's not who we are. It's not who we want to be. So we hit the road, man.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

We got out, we, we pounded the pavement and it was, it was a good time connected with some great new people. We reconnected with some old friends. And you know, I still have a lot of great photos and videos from those events that I gotta, that I gotta share. So we expanded our program offerings throughout the whole state. We launched a new website in a new member portal, which we're gonna be talking a lot about this next year's arm member portal. So if you're a member of the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce, you know, this portal is in access to not, you know, obviously everybody can reach our business directory, but this is more in depth opportunity well, well, we'll get into that next year. I'm getting, I'm getting too excited, but the new website looks great. We're streamlining all of those processes.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

I think our, our new website has like 25 less pages than our last website did. It's just simplified. It's streamlined. It gets you the information you need and you know, no additional, no additional fluff man this year was all about streamlining. You know, so we expanded our programs throughout the date. We started getting back into events and all of a sudden we were very busy because we were back to our previous ops tempo when we were able to do live things almost fully, not fully, but, but almost, and then also supporting our new endeavors that we were doing. And, you know, so, so combining those two things we found, like there was a synergy there, you know, they really built each other up this cross pollination and all of that culminated in our business conference, which we had in November, it was our fourth annual business conference.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

And we say annual loosely because, you know, it had been 30 months since we had had the business conference, but it was our largest recorded attendance. We had our most exhibitors. We had our most sponsors by far our most presenters, our revenue. I mean, we, the, the business conference was an unparalleled success for a lot of reasons. Mostly I think because people were just so ready to get back, you know, to this, to being able to do things like that, they were just excited. They missed the conference. I remember before I, I was with the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce officially, you know, I went to the conference every year. It was a great time. It was one of my favorite things. So I think people were really ready to get back there, ready to engage in a way that was more familiar from before things became so, so heavy.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

And so it was, it was a great success. We were very excited that Darren college, who is a, you know, super bowl champion, former green bay packer, and now serving in the army came to do the, the keynote, which is just amazing what a guy, what a great guy. I so if you were at the business conference, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It was, it was a spectacular event. So going over some really cool data for the chamber before I go into my favorite podcast episodes here. So by the numbers at the end of 2021, the veteran's chamber has 288 members. So we saw 12% growth with an 86% retention. And given the circumstances of the year where a lot of people were tightening things up I think that's a huge success. We have 16 bro, bronze members, 16 silver members, and three gold members, or three gold members.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

You probably see their logo on pretty much a everything that we do. All of our newsletters at least are Reinhardt Bayer van Durham attorneys at law fab, C B D an associated bank. And we only have three gold membership spots, and they were full all year going into 2022. One of those spots is gonna be open. So, you know, if you're, you're a high roller and you're looking to get all that, that marketing benefit, I mean, at a minimum, your, your logo is, is going to be seen on our newsletter. You know, a quarter million times we had a quarter million unique opens on our newsletter this year. So, and then additional perks and blah, blah, blah. We also had a great partnership and support from Wisconsin department of veterans affairs and the Wisconsin economic development corporation. So our events throughout the year live and virtual combined, we had 92 and our total event attendance was over 14,000.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So that's an average of 153, you know, 0.2 people per event. We've never had numbers like that before. So that was very exciting. Communications wise, our newsletter was opened almost a unique opens. Our newsletter was opened almost 300,000 times, 300,000 times had just about 2 million social impressions and a really impressive things thing for us was our total minutes of video viewed, you know, live and evergreen videos, 107,940. So that's like if I do some, some quick math, I actually am one of those weird guys that has a physical calculator. If I divide that by 60 that's 1,799 hours of video viewed. So if I divide that by 24 that's 74 days, can you imagine watching us for 74 days? Oh my, if you watch 74 straight days, that's how much Wisconsin veterans chamber folks and programming and material, and more importantly, that's how much of our partners and sponsors that we were able and our, our, our friends and members that we were able to feature through our video content that's how much they were seen.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So that's insane. We, we call that a huge win. We provided direct assistance to 154 veteran owned businesses, and we feature hundred, 549 veteran owned or veteran serving businesses throughout the year. So that's cool. And I could go on all of this stuff is gonna be in our annual report, which is gonna be coming out here in a couple weeks. So we'll have that plastered everywhere. You know I mean, obviously as a nonprofit, we'll require to be transparent with this sort of stuff, but I've found that when a nonprofit goes above and beyond and is transparent with all of their numbers and their data and their financials and you know, who they served and when and where it's just, it's better for everybody. And we don't have anything to hide. We actually have just nothing but things to celebrate. So we are gonna be plastering that everywhere.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So keep an eye out for that. Now I'm gonna talk about some of our favorite, very favorite podcast episodes from this year. So you're gonna want to, you know, make a mental note to go back and check these out. I'm gonna go in reverse chronological order. Most recently earlier in December, we chatted with our forensic guitars for vets. The title is how this powerful nonprofit uses guitar lessons to help struggling veterans super interesting stuff. Yeah, just check that out and going back in time back in November, my favorite one in November, I would say is create powerful blogs, how to get your articles to the right people. Our guest is an absolute her name's Terry loving, just an absolute pro when it comes to blog SEO optimization, you know, and, and blogs, aren't dead. They're not going anywhere.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

So I found that to be very informative and very interesting. Going back to October, I would say my favorite, and I'm trying to surprise myself with this in October. My favorite was, I would say, how can you increase your homes value with simple projects from October 11th? My, for and Tom Combs who is a real estate pro in this area, talked about some simple projects you can do and increase your, your house's value going back in time. Hmm. What are some of my other favorites here? Here we go. The truth about the hemp, C B D and cannabis industry from back in August, we actually talked to our, the, the founder of fab C B D, which is one of the biggest C B D distributors online name's Josh Delaney talked about the industry, you know, whether you partake or not, it's, you know, it's not what we're talking about, but I, I mean, you cannot avoid if you're an entrepreneur interest in the industry and the opportunities that Hep CBD and can cannabis offers.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

We talked about ways to get into that industry. And I found it to be very, very interesting. Also in August, we talked to the department of agriculture trade and consumer protection which is a huge department. If you don't know about the, a department of agriculture trade and consumer protection, holy cow, they cover a lot of stuff. I found that to be very interesting all in all agricultural month, which was August, was I found very interesting. I learned a lot of things that I didn't know. And that's the point of this. I mean, we, we went we, we really cast a wide net and we talked, I tried to seek out people who knew things that I didn't know and what, and things that I was outta my element on and wanted to learn more about cuz we wanna, we wanna provide value and, and share valuable information.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

A great one is you know, how to maximize your veteran benefits claim and maximize what you're owed that that was lights out. That was with Jim Bransky of Taback law. And if you're a veteran or caretaker, I mean, it's, it's, it's part of the promise that the department of defense that our country makes to you when you sign on the dotted line is that they're gonna take care of you. Enduringly that's part of the deal. And sometimes, unfortunately it, it takes some effort to get the VA to give you what you are owed. And sometimes you need some firepower in your corner. And so we talk to Jim Bransky, who does that all day long. He helps veterans get what they're owed all day long, sun up and sun down. So he talks about how to, how to maximize your veteran benefits. That's from July 26th, and I'm gonna have in the show notes, all of these. So you can go back and, you know, go back in Peru at your ledger at leisure ledger at your leisure.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

We talked about a lot of cool tech stuff. Man, back in June, we talked to us Senator Tammy Baldwin about the American rescue plan. That was amazing. We had some heavy hitters on the show. That's great conversations about real estate back in may, free sales training and job placement for vets. I had no idea that this would be such a bomb show. I mean, Raleigh Wilkins, who is the founder of sales platoon. It's a sales training program. It's free for veterans, helps them get world class training and sales, but also helps them in job placement. I, that guy dropped some wisdom bombs, some truth bombs. Like I, I didn't even see that coming. That is, that's probably top three favorite episodes just because that guy is smart and drop some nuggets of wisdom. I would check that out free sales training and job placement for vets that's from back in may.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

Also we chatted with a guy named Todd Sini who is known as the hemp Colonel he's a retired army Colonel he's a global CEO of harvest 360. And again, in that, that cannabis legalization space, he's a, a advocate for legalization, but we were, were talking about what effect that would have on Wisconsin, veterans from a medical and a recreational standpoint. It's important stuff. It's this conversation's not going away. So it's an important thing to, to be aware of. One last one I'm gonna give, give one last good one. Oh, we who is the secretary from the Wisconsin department of veterans affairs back in March. One of our, it was the episode six, seven and eight. That's good. We brought in some, some heavy hitters. We talked about some veteran supporting programming. That really was still at a time when we weren't sure when we were gonna begin back to normal.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

It's you know, I wanna go back and listen to that one just to, just to see where you know, where we are now compared to where we thought we were gonna be. And you know, man, there's been so much change this year. You know, if you're still listening to this right now, I tell you what, shoot us an email, shoot me an email at a Braz ABR, a a TZ veterans chamber.org. If you're still listening, shoot me an email and say, I just listen to you ramble for 30 minutes for almost 30 full minutes. I love Wisconsin veterans forward. If you shoot me that email, I will send you a Wisconsin veteran owned business price pack. I'll send you a, a gift. I wanna see if there's anybody out there who would actually, who would actually <laugh> make it to 30 minutes of Adam rambling.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

You know, if you've listened to the podcast if you've seen our live streams and our, and our shows and been engaging with us and in our community throughout the year, thank you. We can't thank you enough. You know, like, like we discussed earlier, the, the chamber has undergone rapid an unprecedented expansion in so many ways, but we wouldn't have been able to do that without all of you. And I know that sounds corny, but I'm dead serious. The community aspect, you know, when industries rise and fall, when things become popular and not popular, when pandemics come in and out, you know, the, the enduring thing is the community. When platforms come in and out, you know, when my space become and not popular, did the community die? No, the community was still there. Just found another way to, to coordinate, to chat. They went to Facebook and when Facebook is gone, they're gonna, you know, the community's still gonna be there.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

That's the enduring thing, the community, and the way that they communicate. So we can't you know, we wouldn't be able to provide the services that we provide and programming that we provide services that we provide. Like we wouldn't be able to do that without all of your support. So we thank you. And again, abraatz@wiveteranschamber.org, send me an email and we'll send you some swag for listening to me, ramble for a full 30 minutes straight. Now, listen up. This is important. We're gonna be taking a little break for a couple weeks from podcast episodes from live streams because it's the holidays folks. Let's give us a couple weeks. We're gonna chill out. We're gonna come back strong with, with 101. And the first part of January sometime we're gonna take it easy. We're we're gonna chill it out. We're excited for it. I hope the rest of your 2021 is magical. And we'll see you in the flip side, we'll see you in 2022 friends.

Adam Braatz, WVCC:

Thank you for joining us on Wisconsin. Veterans forward brought to you by the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce. Please visit us at wiveteranschamber.org. Read our blog, sign up for our newsletter and follow us across all social media platforms.