Ryland Miller became president and CEO of the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce at 27, and he didn't know what a chamber of commerce was until he stumbled into one as an intern. In this conversation, Ryland walks through how chambers actually work, what membership buys a small business, and why the real value shows up in rooms where strangers become partners. Sam also shares how early Ottawa Chamber support pulled Lockbaud back from the brink of pivoting out of tech entirely.
What You'll Hear
- What a chamber of commerce actually is, and why 'if you've seen one chamber, you've seen one chamber'
- How annual dues work and the realistic price range for a small business to join
- Ryland's path from exercise science undergrad to chamber intern to president at 27
- Why the Ottawa chamber runs nearly 50 networking events a year and what happens in those rooms
- The committees an individual can volunteer for, from events and promotions to the Legislative Action Committee
- The communication and volunteerism challenges chambers are facing in 2024
- Sam's story of what the Ottawa Chamber meant to Lockbaud's early years
- Ryland's closing advice on growth mindset, mental health, and surrounding yourself with good people
What a chamber of commerce actually is
Ryland opens with a line he says chamber execs love to repeat. If you've seen one chamber of commerce, you've only seen one chamber of commerce. It sounds like a joke, but he means it. Chambers vary wildly by location, structure, and scope, and anyone trying to understand them from the outside has to start there.
The Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce is one of the only chambers in Franklin County, which Ryland contrasts with the overlapping territories you see closer to the Kansas City metro. Geography is one of the main ciphers of where a chamber works. Inside that footprint, a chamber is a business nonprofit. Not a United Way or American Red Cross style nonprofit, but an organization whose books end up level and whose purpose is to serve a membership.
That membership is broader than most people assume. Ryland's chamber works with sole proprietors who aren't even on a W-2, all the way up to industrial employers of 1,500 people. The bread and butter sits around eight to ten employees. Alongside the businesses are nonprofits, civic clubs, and individuals, including retired community leaders who want to keep giving back through a committee or a volunteer role.
Every one of those members pays an annual fee. In exchange they get marketing exposure, advocacy, and connection. Connection gets repeated the most. Business to business, business to customer, business to resource. Ryland also names the softer benefit that chambers have carried for hundreds of years. Being a chamber member signals that you're in good standing and that you care about the community you're working in. Boards approve new members, and a chamber can walk with a business that needs support, so that quiet weight of membership is backed by real accountability.
How a 27-year-old ends up running a chamber
Sam calls Ryland out as the youngest guest on the podcast to date and asks the obvious question. How does a 27-year-old become the president and CEO of a chamber of commerce? Ryland's answer is a little bit of luck and a lot of good people around him.
He isn't a Kansas native. He grew up on the Missouri side of the Kansas City area and came to Ottawa through the university there. He started his undergrad in exercise science with a concentration in coaching, thinking he wanted to coach soccer. Around his junior year he realized that wasn't what he wanted to do full time. When it came time for an internship, he tried a few groups that weren't the right fit. Staff on campus who also served on the chamber's board suggested he go talk to the chamber directly.
The president and CEO at the time offered him an internship on the spot. That turned into a part-time job while he earned his MBA, which turned into a full-time role. At the end of 2022, his predecessor announced retirement, a hiring committee formed, and Ryland threw his name into the hat. He was selected, and at the time of this conversation he had been in the role for a little over a year and a half.
Ryland credits the progression to mentorship. He says it would have been easy for the chamber to hand him grunt work as a young intern and call it a day. Instead, he was given real opportunities and took them. That shaped how he thinks about the interns working under him now. He wants to be the kind of organization that prepares people for life after school, whether or not they stay in chamber work. The MBA gave him the accounting, finance, and economics grounding he leans on today, but the chamber itself taught him how to be community minded, which is the piece he most wants to pass on.
Networking, membership dues, and what you actually get
Ryland pushes back gently on the idea that chamber value is abstract. He points to the calendar. The Ottawa chamber usually hosts a networking event every week, and this year they've been layering in extra weekday events. By the time of recording they were in the high forties. In a single room you can find nonprofit executives, branch managers at banks, city and county elected officials, retired community leaders, and someone who works at the car dealership. He calls that diversity intentional. The culture of community at those gatherings is not an accident.
The outcome he watches for is two strangers walking into a chamber coffee, then leaving talking about how their businesses can help each other. Weeks or months later he sees them fulfilling that partnership and doing something in the community together. That, to Ryland, is the chamber working as designed.
On cost, he's transparent that dues vary drastically by chamber. Closer to the metro, prices trend higher. Some chambers have no membership cost at all and run on sponsorships. The Ottawa chamber does a little of both. Rates scale with the size and type of the business. Financial institutions pay one rate, a hotel another, a small mom-and-pop shop another. At the low end he mentions individual memberships around $80. On the top end, the largest industrial members pay something in the range of $1,500. The average small business with five or fewer employees is looking at two to four hundred dollars.
He flags an important detail for anyone who's never joined before. Most chambers charge annual dues, not per-event fees. You pay once, and it covers you for twelve months of programming, networking, and referrals. Sam adds his own example of calling a chamber to ask about internet providers in an unfamiliar town, which is exactly the kind of referral a member, or even a non-member resident, can get.
The challenges chambers are wrestling with in 2024
Sam asks where the friction is, and Ryland names two areas. Communication and volunteerism.
On communication, he points out the paradox of 2024. It's easier than ever to reach anyone anywhere in the world, and somehow harder to learn news about your own local community. He can't count how many times the chamber has marketed an event two months out through social media, local radio, and flyers in downtown businesses, only to have someone show up the day after and say they wish they'd known. When he asks how they'd like to be reached, the honest answer is often that they don't use social media, don't listen to the radio, and don't shop downtown. Algorithms chew up the rest.
On volunteerism, Ryland sees a generational shift that isn't unique to chambers. Baby boomers largely spent part of their lives inside a fraternal or civic organization. His rough estimate is that only around twenty percent of younger adults in his community are involved in those same organizations today. Volunteer forces across chambers are either shrinking or aging, depending on where you look.
He ties this back to technology with a careful line. Social media gives people a false sense of security about community involvement. Doing things with people in person is different than doing them online, and it's a challenge for organizations to adapt without alienating either their long-tenured volunteers or the younger people they need to pull in. Change has to be incremental. Ryland says part of leadership is recognizing that experienced volunteers can view change as loss, and the best idea in the world still fails if the people around you aren't on board. He also notes the flip side of being a young leader. Older groups sometimes assume that because he's younger, he's technologically minded, which is why, he jokes, he sends his IT work to Lockbaud. His own computer skills are surface level.
How to actually plug in, and what Ryland wants you to take away
When Sam pivots to the listener who wants to get involved but isn't sure how, Ryland gives a concrete tour of the Ottawa chamber's volunteer lanes. He opens it by saying no prerequisites are needed. If it sounds interesting, that interest is enough.
The Events and Promotions committee plans and executes chamber events, or helps on the day of. The Legislative Action Committee works with candidates and sitting legislators at the local, state, and federal level. They'd just hosted a candidates forum the week prior. The Ambassadors help organize networking events and speak at them, which is a fit for anyone who likes being around people and is comfortable in a speaking role. Leadership Franklin County is a course for people who want to build leadership capacity in others. And if none of that fits, Ryland says a short conversation is usually all it takes for him to point someone toward a civic club that does. He mentions the Franklin County Optimists as a group that works with youth.
Sam underscores what that actually unlocks. Public speaking practice, exposure to local politics, a path into coaching and mentoring youth. You enter asking what you'll get out of it, and you end up giving and getting at the same time.
Ryland closes with two pieces of advice he'd leave a small business owner. First, keep a growth mindset. If you're comfortable with exactly where you are, you're scooting backwards. Second, be honest about your own mental health. Don't assume you're the center of the universe. Nobody's watching your podcast or liking every post. But if you're getting up and putting the work in, keep going, and surround yourself with good people. Staff, mentors, the community you exist in geographically and civically. That's the thread he wants to leave listeners with. To reach the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce, he recommends searching your city plus the word chamber. Every chamber has a website, a Google Business listing, or a front door you can walk through.
About Ryland Miller
At the time of recording, Ryland Miller was president and CEO of the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce in Ottawa, Kansas. He was 27 years old, about a year and a half into the role. Originally from the Missouri side of the Kansas City area, he came to Ottawa for college, earned an undergraduate degree in exercise science and an MBA, and worked his way up from chamber intern to part-time staff to full-time employee to chief executive. Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce