- March 12, 2025
One of John Phillips' first chores as the new president of the Palm Coast-Flagler County Regional Chamber of Commerce was spray painting lines on the field for the Chamber's SpringFest event.
As a former college athletic director, painting lines on a field is a task he knows well. Phillips has been involved in athletics most of his life. After serving two years in the Air Force, he played baseball for three years at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and then worked in the Daytona Beach school's athletic department for 27 years, the last 10 as the athletic director. On the side he has been a radio sports broadcaster.
He remained in the sports business when he became CEO of the Pictona at Holly Hill pickleball complex on July 1, 2024, but left less than seven months later while he was in the interviewing process with the Chamber, which he said is just a better fit for his skills. He takes over for board member Howard Holley, who served as the Chamber's interim president for five months after President and CEO Greg Blose stepped down in September.
The Palm Coast-Flagler County Chamber is less than five years old. It was established in August, 2020, after the Flagler County Chamber of Commerce dissolved because of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“John Phillips is the right leader at the right time for the Palm Coast-Flagler Regional Chamber,” Chamber Chair Michael Chiumento said in announcing Phillips' hire. The Observer sat down with Phillips in his new office on March 6, which was officially his fifth day on the job.
What does the job of Chamber president entail?
I'm still trying to figure that out. Right now, I'm the chief listening officer, just trying to learn what the challenges are, working with our board. There are 19 board members that that are in charge of the Chamber. They're essentially my bosses. I’m working with them and also working with the businesses. I’m working with the board to learn what the challenges and their desires and direction are from a strategic standpoint and then getting to know the business community. The overall goal of the Chamber obviously is connect business to business, certainly, business to community and community to business, and we're trying kind of that hub and spoke system — I'll use an aviation term because I have that background there. We're in the center.
There has been some turnover with the Chamber. What wasn't working how can they be fixed?
That's one of my big challenges. The previous president stepped down in September.. Howard Holley, one of our board members, stepped in on an interim basis. So, Howard's been keeping the boat moving in the right direction for the last five months. So, I've stepped in as of March 1st. What I'm trying to do right now is, is learn as much as possible. One of the things I asked the board during my interview process was after the first 30 days, what would be an accomplishment that would help make me successful, and the most important thing I need to tackle, and they talked about policies, procedures and getting our organization of the Chamber kind of cleaned up and put back together. And so that's what I've been doing, focusing on our policies. What happens if someone were to walk in the door right now and say, I want to join the Chamber. What's that process look like? What do we do for them? What do we provide? Do we promote them on social media? How do we get them onto our website? How do we tell their story? How do we connect them to our other members? And those are the things that I'm trying to find out ,what the systems are today and try to improve them because that's one of the areas that the board felt like was an area for improvement. And then overall just trying to reach more people. Growing membership, of course, is always a goal. Chambers are member-driven organizations. We can’t be successful without members to help our organization. If we don't have members for us to help, then there's there's no purpose in us being here.
How do you grow membership and what are the numbers you're looking for? (Currently the Chamber has about 150 members on six different membership levels ranging from corporate partners to small businesses.)
It's that classic chicken or egg thing. What value do we provide to members? Why should someone join the chamber? And so we're putting together those value propositions of what we can do for them, so that I can go out and meet with people and encourage them to join the Chamber. And so, what we do in a perfect world is connect businesses together, to help them help each other. And so, I've got to learn who our members are. I can run a report that tells me who they are, but who really are they?
For me, relationships in business are not transactional. I don't want to just walk in and and buy product X and walk out and have no relationship. I would like to find out what is this business all about? Who runs this business and what are they looking to do. If the local store that sells X is trying to grow and expand and they want to do more things, how can we help them do that, and the only way to do that is to get to know people, to get to know the business owners and the business community, the entrepreneurs, and there are a lot of small businesses. There are big businesses here, too. But there are a lot of small businesses in Flagler County, and that's the other thing I think our Chamber needs to be really focused on. It's called the Palm Coast-Flagler Regional Chamber. The vast majority of the people and the vast majority of the businesses are in Palm Coast. But this Chamber is not a Palm Coast Chamber. This is a Flagler County Chamber. We're going to focus on Palm Coast, because that's where a lot of people and businesses are, but we need to advocate for Flagler Beach, for Bunnell and for all the residents of Flagler County.
Being an athletic director at a pretty big university is like running a multi-million dollar business. Is there a lot of experience that carries over into your new role?
There is. It's probably more similar than it is different, and a lot of people who don't know the collegiate athletics landscape might not understand that, but the athletic department at Embry-Riddle is a multi-million dollar business. It's about a $14 million budget. About half of that being scholarship money and about half being operational money, and our budget here at the chamber is nowhere near that. I had 52 full-time employees at Embry-Riddle. And there’s two here at the Chamber. So that's that's very different, but as you know it's all about relationships. Collegiate athletics is about relationships from the business side. I needed to get out and help sell tickets, help sell sponsorships, help get businesses connected to Embry-Riddle. My job was to be an administrator, and to be out in the community as the face of the franchise, trying to sell our value of what Embry-Riddle brings to the community, and that's the same way here. I'm connecting with the businesses. I want to try to be the face of the Chamber and help people grow together.
We do a lot of events, SpringFest, luncheons, dinners. We do a lot of B2B (business to business) events. We do professional development events. One of the things I'm trying to do is to find out what our businesses' needs are. Where do they need to grow? Is there an entrepreneurial series that young businesses need to learn from other experts who have built their own business? So, maybe I can find some veteran leadership in this community, and I know they're out there because I've already met several of them, and they can be mentors for young entrepreneurs. We could have an entrepreneurial series. There are some great leadership events for women that the Chamber’s involved with to help female business owners, to help them work together. And there's dozens of other ways like that. But that's our job, to provide educational opportunities for business people to grow their business, connect them with other businesses. It’s easier said than done, but that's the things that we're going to try to do.
