We have a saying around the chamber: “We love our customers!” I view each business that chooses to invest in a chamber membership as our customer. Sam Walton was often quoted as saying that "There is only one boss…the customer. And they can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending their money somewhere else."

Yes, even chambers of commerce have competitors.

Why is it then that so many customers never appear more than once? Well, the answer is they don’t care and the reason they don’t care is because we didn’t give them anything to care about. Quite often customers don’t feel appreciated. Sad but true.