BATAVIA — Brian Cousins is in roughly his third week flying solo as president of the Genesee County Chamber of Commerce. For him, though, it continues to be about a team approach.
Cousins has been settling in as chamber president since spending his first official week, right before the holidays and a “storm of the century” undergoing an orientation with former Interim President Tom Turnbull.
Since then, Cousins has been working with Kelly Bermingham, director of membership and special events; Kelly Rapone, tourism marketing director; Becka Preedom, director of operations; Morgan Hoffman, assistant tourism marketing director; Katy Hobbs, membership and marketing director.
“This last week and then this week has been working with staff, understanding their roles and how they approach things and trying to set up some sort of a semblance of an operational structure, not from Ground Zero, by any means, but just to get to know the staff and what there is,” the chamber president said. “If you currently look around right now, we have two very experienced hosts in Kelly Rapone and Kelly Bermingham, but beyond that, the rest of us, the four of us, are new inside this last year. Morgan started in June or July, Katy started in September.”
Preedom began working at the chamber around the beginning of the new year.
At that point, in early-mid January, what are a couple of the biggest challenges Cousins has faced?
“Still getting to know the pace a little bit — which committees and which meetings are when, to make sure they’ve got the right information for the folks, as well as make sure the staff is up to speed in terms of the communication process. My first board meeting to update the board fully as the full-time president will be at the end of the month.
“Thus month and next month probably will still be full of firsts,” he said. “We’ll make decisions, weigh what’s good and what’s bad, talk to members and figure all those things out. My biggest thing, though, is to make sure that we’re doing this together, as a team.”
These are challenges because they’re new for him. Cousins previously worked at Six Flags Darien Lake full-time for about 25 years.
“A lot of the processes and things you do, whether you’re communicating with people or making phone calls or exchanging emails, talking with staff and trying to motivate them, there’s commonality in that, but who the players are and who you’re dealing with on a week-by-week, day-by-day basis, has changed.”
What’s been a success from his presidency so far?
“I feel a very strong bond with this team. They are important to the chamber and their members. The chamber’s not going to be one person. Even though there’s titles and everything like that, everyone has to take their spot in the organization ... They all have their delegation, but without the consensus of understanding where we’re going and how to get there from the people that are experienced, we’d be a rudderless ship.”
As far as upcoming chamber events, the first one is the March 11 Chamber Awards Banquet at Batavia Downs. On March 25, the Celebrate Ag dinner will take place in at the Alexander Fire Department Rec Hall. The chamber’s trying to fill up the calendar for its Business After Hours events. These will allow him to get out and meet chamber members and the community a little more.
“Katy’s got a couple of potential ribbon-cutting candidates over this next month. Other than that, the Home Show’s the second week in April, April 14-16. That’ll be a big one,” Cousins said.
Cousins said with his background at Darien Lake, he’s accustomed to creating and running events when asked to and can help in any capacity. Cousins said in year one of his job, he doesn’t see a lot of time spent on planning for new events.
“But for the first year, you want to see how things go and not upset the apple cart. You want to be slow and steady in terms of your decisions and changes that you make,” he said. “We service over 500 members, so that’s kind of important to keep a fairly consistent chamber presence for them ... The chamber’s a little bit of a different industry. You’re there to support the membership. There’s a lot of members. You can tailor it to a way that works and grows with the membership, based on their ideas, their feedback, as well as the team unit.”