Embracing the Local

A Review, written by a former Chamber of Commerce Director

This book should be required reading for every small town chamber director, board member and volunteer. You’ll laugh and cry as you read and see yourself reflected in his words. And you might even learn a few new tips to make your service more rewarding!

Glen is the volunteer chamber director in Twain Harte, located in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills. He wrote about what happens when organizational work becomes community work. Stretched volunteers, fragile institutions, local businesses, trust, belonging, limits, and the persistent assumption that somebody will always step up.

This book is funny in an “I know that feeling” kind of way, with a touch of dry humor at the telling of his foibles.

IYKYK could’ve been the title.

Most of the chamber directors I know work way more than 40 hours a week, even though they are volunteer or only paid for 40 hours. Because, as Glen says, loving a place is easy, serving it is harder.

A few quotable tidbits from the book include:

• But a good weekend isn’t a good season.
• Don’t build the cathedral, build the door and see if anyone walks through it.
• The squirrel gets attention, but then someone has to feed it.
• People like the idea of change up until change started asking something of them.
• I knew if we wanted to grow, we needed better tools that would let a volunteer organization accomplish more without simply demanding more hours from the same exhausted people.
• A crowd is not commerce just because it put on pants and showed up.
• I had to stop asking people to help me carry the chamber and invite them to own it.

Glen learns what it means to delegate, instead of doing it all yourself. He finds out that there are those that know where the dead bodies are buried, and it pays to hear what they say quietly. And he recognizes and rewards the unsung heroes of every small town – the volunteers that make it happen, seemingly like magic.

You can read more about the book, and get your own copy at: https://www.moretastethanfortune.com/books/embracing-the-local If you’re looking for a gift for your local chamber leaders and doers, this is it.

Bio: Glen Cantrell is an organizational strategy and technology delivery consultant who spent twenty years building and leading software development teams before a hobby of “helping out” quietly took over his life. He grew up in a small Kansas town with a courthouse square, the kind people call quaint right up until a big-box store moves in and the storefronts start going dark one by one. That left a mark he wouldn’t name for years – a distrust of what gets lost when nobody’s paying attention, and a soft spot for the people behind the counters. Kansas prepared him for wheat.

It did not prepare him for bears in the backyard, or for deer.  He holds an MBA with a concentration in leadership and organizational development, which he has put to use in boardrooms, in early-stage chaos, and, most improbably, in a mountain-town wine bar. At night, on weekends, and in every other free moment he can carve out, he serves as president of the Twain Harte Area Chamber of Commerce. He works with volunteers, local businesses, and community partners to support Twain Harte and the upper California Highway 108 corridor – ideally ensuring the Chamber has better luck than some of those startups had.

Embracing the Local (Extension Cords and All) is his first book: a wry, tender account of what it actually costs to help hold a small place together. He lives up the hill with his husband, Michael – the person who never asked for any of this but stayed for all of it anyway – and three dogs of varying levels of cooperation, at least one of whom is a genuine handful.

p.s. I was given the book to read by Glen because he is a subscriber of ours at SaveYour.Town and recognizes a kindred soul when he sees one.