Director of Lake Zurich Chamber of Commerce

>> My name is Dale Perrin. I'm the Executive Director at the Lake Zurich area Chamber of Commerce. Generally chambers promote the commerce in the community that they are located in, that's a general term. Specifically it's a lot more detailed, works a lot with the government, the villages, businesses itself, the state and the national organizations to help keep it a friendly, profitable business environment. We also do community events to help promote the community, kind of the concept of making it an enjoyable place to live and work. So we have a couple of events like our Taste of the Towns event which are very popular end of summer taste event in the park, draws a thousand people to it so things of that nature. That's kind of the fun part about this job. It varies so dramatically. I could have the best laid plans of what I want to do today but that first phone call will totally throw that off guard. But generally I communicate with as many of our members, which are local business owners, to find out what their needs are, to help support them and find out what we can do to help make their business more profitable and enjoyable. Typically I spend probably 60% to 65% of my day in the office here communicating via the phone or the internet now, email, but I do, about 20% to 30% of the time I'll get out and actually visit members and actually walk in, cold call, if you will. Right now we're working on our golf outing event, which is the end of the month, so I'm visiting them trying to sell sponsorships to them and get them involved to help promote their business. We also have raffle prizes and silent auction prizes for the golf outing so I'm in the process of picking those up as well. So it's a lot of running around which gets me out there and communicates with the businesses, which is really what it's all about. Well the set hours of the office are 8:30 to 4:30 or 5:00. I'm here by 8:00 and that can depend on the event, I may not get out until 6:00 or 6:30. I may leave at 5:00 but I have to go to a village board meeting at 7:00 which could last until 9:00 or 10:00 at night. Golf outing will be 8:00 day and probably won't get home until 9:00 that night. So can be some very long days. Actually I do work from home quite a bit in the evenings or on the weekends I'll log onto my computer remotely and do that so I'm never really away from my office. I guess that's the trend nowadays. I do very little travel. There's a few trips, I was in Chicago on Friday for a lunch meeting for the Illinois Chamber of Commerce annual meeting luncheon. It's not a must of the job but it's important because it gives me face time with other politicians, state level politicians as well as staff members with the Illinois Chamber, which is a great resource for us as far as information, mostly political information about what's going on so we can stay informed with that. Again, it wasn't necessary but it was important. We were at a program called the Young Entrepreneur's Academy and the organization that runs it is based in Rochester, New York so I usually go out there once a year for a meeting. I might go to some trade association meetings for American Chamber of Commerce Executives National Meeting so I travel two or three times a year. Usually it's all pretty local.