Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

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Hello again everybody.

I'm Ray Gildow and you're tuned into Lakeland Currents, where this evening we have some interesting guests.

Interesting to me because so many times we have people who are on our program talking about old events, old shows, old kinds of things.

Today we're talking about youth, young things, dynamic things that are happening in a community and I think hopefully things that can be transferred to other communities when you hear what these folks have to say.

My guests this evening are with a program called WAVE and I promised them I wouldn't ask them to tell what that acronym stands for but it is a Young Professionals Network and Leah let's start with you, maybe you could tell us who you are and where you came from, what you're doing.

So, my name is Leah Boedigheimer.

I'm from Cloquet, Minnesota.

Sometimes I say Duluth because no one really knows where Cloquet is it's so small, and I moved to the Brainerd Lakes area in 2018 and so right before the pandemic.

So, I was able to make a few friends but then the COVID hit and then I joined the WAVE program.

I'm sure it was a challenge coming here not knowing anyone during the pandemic and not probably feeling comfortable getting out into groups just because of the way the pandemic was spreading around.

What made you decide to come to the Brainerd area?

That's funny.

So a boy.

So, I moved here with my boyfriend.

He works at Ascensus and he was up for promotion, so I found a job before I moved and I knew three people.

So, I knew his parents and him and I am fortunate to be a little bit extroverted so I joined all of everything I could join, right, like the golf leagues, the dart leagues, the volleyball leagues and I just really fell in love with the Brainerd Lakes area.

Cool.

And Paul let's talk a little bit about your background.

This is Paul Augustinack and Paul's brother Tony was the first producer for this program for Lakeland Currents back in the, I don't remember what year we started, but Paul spent I think the first year doing that and then went on to have an unbelievable career which he still has an unbelievable career but he even eventually went to work for one of the princes in Saudi Arabia if I'm not mistaken, in Dubai.

So, he's had an interesting background.

So, Paul, tell us who you are and what you're all about.

Absolutely.

I'm Paul Augustinack.

I currently am living in, well, I was born and raised in the Brainerd Lakes area, in Baxter to be specific, and for the last four years after college at St.

Cloud State I got into real estate and I work for Woods to Water Real Estate up in Nisswa and I've really enjoyed that and recently got married and plan to be in the Brainerd Lakes area for the foreseeable future and just go Warriors!

I have been here my whole life and I really enjoyed it.

And your dad, Steve, who is no longer with us was one of my best friends and was one of the real creative people in the Brainerd area in the video area.

He was also a great drummer in a band and did all kinds of things so we do have a little bit of a past here to talk about but it's great having you both on board today and to talk a little bit about this program.

Does WAVE, is it part of the Chamber at all or is it completely independent from the Chamber?

So, we like to just say we're partnered with the Chamber or Chamber sponsored maybe.

We do have all of the marketing tools and Donna Houchin who is a huge member of the staff at the Chamber, who does all of our marketing and has really helped us get WAVE off the ground as well.

We have a Project Manager, Kendra Johnson, who is contracted through the Chamber that has really helped take this group from the grassroots of where it kind of began last March, last April, and has really built it.

A huge driving force was Matt Kilian, the President of the Chamber over there.

So, our goal by being partnered and sponsored with, you know, by the Chamber is to really hopefully have WAVE last longer and hopefully indefinitely in the future of the Brainerd Lakes area.

You know these groups of young professionals have came together in the past, where they form some kind of group and it lasts a few years and then just kind of dies out as that first wave of young professionals kind of lose their energy or maybe age out and so forth.

So, by partnering with them that can help kind of promote it and help bring more attention and then we've actually mimicked their board structure that we are replacing us every so often to keep, you know, new blood and people coming into the group.

So, I would say it's independent.

You don't have to be a board member or not a board member, a Chamber member, to be a part of WAVE by any means.

It's highly encouraged because a lot of things will overlap in that sense but yeah.

I was a retired Vice President of Central Lakes College and the complaint I always heard from students was there's nothing to do in Brainerd and we had campuses in Staples too and then we had other sub-campuses as you know on the Indian reservations at one time and that was the thing I always heard from students everywhere, there's just nothing to do.

In fact, it's kind of interesting when I was going to St.

Cloud State working on a Master's degree I heard the same thing in St.

Cloud and St.

Cloud is known as a party town, you know, really it was at one time.

I don't know if it is anymore.

So, to me it's fascinating that you are young people coming into an area and you've been here Paul as you said since you were born here, but to start something like this because you see there are so many people growing in the area that don't have connections and we know that success comes from networking and how is it that you decided to get this program going?

Did you guys have, were you a part of getting it off the ground?

That's a great question.

So, essentially what the Chamber does is every three years they have a brainstorming discussion about where they want to be in five to ten years and this was something that kept coming up.

So, they actually partnered with a grad student from the U of M, and we held two focus groups.

So, the Chamber reached out to young professionals in the area and we just got an email saying "Hey would you be interested in participating in this focus group about opportunities for the Brainerd Lakes area?"

And we were fortunately invited and it was great.

We went through a lot of different opportunities and avenues that we could and directions that WAVE could be directed in and we came up with essentially like 19 to 39.

We're not going to kick you out if you age out, don't worry.

We don't check ID's.

But we wanted to create events that fostered professional development in addition to social development because as you said, think about all the rock stars on teams and in social groups that aren't as extroverted but we still want to keep around.

That's interesting.

That's really an interesting approach and you were both here then from the beginning and you now have titles with WAVE.

What are your titles?

So, I'm the Vice Chair.

Leah's the Vice Chair.

I am the Inaugural Chair of the group for 2024 which is very exciting to be.

When I was asked to be the Chair and in charge, I was very excited for it and really an opportunity to kind of help steer where the group is going to go over the next year and Leah will take on that vision and continue to go for 2025 and so forth down the road.

But yeah the two focus groups, we were a part of the first one, and it was cool because it was kind of two parts.

There was young professionals and then they also focused grouped employers in the area and really to kind of figure out a lot of client retention or employee retention and how do we keep our young professionals and just young people in general.

We use that term professional, but honestly this group is meant for everyone and anyone in the Brainerd Lakes area or even if you just do business in the area.

We have members all the way from Little Falls up towards Walker and Pine River and then east and west of us, Fort Ripley, of course.

And so it really is, I mean it's cool, we have members that are maybe mothers who are coming trying to get back into the workforce and felt this was a good opportunity for them to just kind of get involved and start getting their name around again, but people ask often of what industries, you know, do I need to be?

What title do I have to be to be a member and so forth and we have college graduates who don't even have a job yet that are in the group and looking for jobs.

So, we invite everyone and anyone if, you know, if you do business or even feel like this is a part of something you want to be a part of, you know, come.

How many officers do you have?

We have nine board members of our anchor board and then we are up to 65ish members already in the group.

That's a big group.

Absolutely.

Shooting for 100 by the end of the year.

Are you really?

Our goal is 100 by the end of the year.

That's amazing and where do you meet?

It changes every single month.

We really want people to see and understand what the Brainerd Lakes area has to offer, so our very first event was at Cragun's and we had a launch event on the Gull Lake Cruises, that was a very fun event.

We had a really big showing, 85 showed up.

So, we found success in that 85 for a first event and then our second event was just at Woodlore Cider and we had 55 attend there.

And do you find that people are looking more for the social aspect of the area or more of the professional development aspect?

I think it's definitely both.

So, our next event is with Jill Casper from CTC and she's going to be doing a personalities challenge or quiz for all of our members so they can find their strengths and their weaknesses and develop their emotional intelligence.

Have you done any research to show how groups get started and then how they fade away?

What causes them to die out?

Have you looked at that?

Yes.

Part of those focus groups, the grad student that was actually kind of her thesis, that was her final study and so forth for her degree, and what we kind of came to see, we did do, we found there was many other young professionals networks within the state, even in surrounding states and we tried to find out what helped those be successful and some of those things were like our board, we actually have, we serve in three-year terms.

So, me and Leah will be here for three years and then at the end of that three years, you know, three new members will come on.

So, if there's nine of us total, almost every year three new members of our board will be joining and that's to kind of sustain the leadership and help promote from within and get people excited to be in charge of something and keep it going and then the other side of that we found is a good mixture of events.

We felt that a lot of times these groups that when it's the same thing every week or month that you're meeting, and it's just redundant, people eventually don't feel the return.

They're not gaining any value out of it.

So, our big push for this 2024, we've been doing a lot of planning of our next year's calendar and trying to find a balance of social events, of networking opportunities, of professional development oriented meetings as well as fun ones.

We want to get out.

We want to rent a golf range and lower some of those barriers of entry for our members to come out and try something that is very popular or very unique to this area, mountain biking, the curling club - different things like that where you might not go do it on your own or it's too expensive to kind of go out and try, so we can get people out and they can experience the Brainerd Lakes area and all it has to offer.

Do you have an idea of the group you have now, the 60 some, how many are not native from the area?

Quite a few.

Quite a few?

We call them transplants.

I'm one of them, absolutely, and a lot of people with COVID and especially remote work being so popular, they've moved here because they love the area and they're just trying to find their community.

What do you, when you say they love the area, do they like the activities in the area or do they like the lakes?

What is it you think that's drawing them?

I think that the Brainerd Lakes area is really easy to fall in love with, exactly what you said because of the lakes, the hunting, the fishing and then the golf, that's why we want to rent out a golf range because if you live in the Brainerd Lakes area, you should be able to hit a driver for sure, but we just really feel like.

There's a good mixture.

I think just this last event we were talking with, she's a CPA but she works remotely, but her parents live here in the area and she found the opportunity that she could work for someone remotely and make maybe a little better wage but she loves being here and you know and wants to be close to the family.

So, I think there's stories like that that are out there whether it's this is where people come to vacation, you know, there is a few of those stories too where it's just oh I grew up coming up here and I just want to live up here instead of just vacationing up here.

So, I have two grandchildren who are not children anymore, they're about your age, but they are both working remotely.

They're both highly skilled and their connections are really nationally and the thing that I am worried about in the remote areas is depression because we have so much depression especially since COVID came about.

There's so many people that if you're sitting in a room by yourself every day and you haven't talked to anybody outside of your network of people that you work with, there's a lot of social things that people are missing, which I think is where your organization can really make a difference because you can step into that void.

You know, depression is hard to deal with.

It's hard to recognize.

Do you have people in your organization that have skills in that area that you know of?

Maybe you don't know that yet.

We do certainly have some people from the medical field and the healthcare and probably even mental health field as well.

I know that was a hot topic for one of our events coming in the future whether that's going to be highlighting, maybe one of the mental health facilities in the area that would be accessible for our members or if that's going to be kind of just an awareness topic we aren't for sure how we're going to approach it.

Like you said, it can kind of be a touchy subject for those not everybody knows it, or knows how to process and handle that but there is certainly.

My wife worked remotely for the last year and you know when I came home, she was ready to spew out everything.

And you know we do miss that social aspect, and I can only imagine.

And I think we got that from the employers during that focus group of you know those employees they come to work they go right home they sit on the couch they go right, you know and and so forth and hopefully yes, we can fill that void and get people out into the community and have a sense of community once again, because I think with COVID we're really missing it or lacking it.

Do you have a website?

Yeah, we do.

What is it?

www.waveypn.com.

Or else you can find us on the Brainerd Chamber of Commerce website as well.

You just go on there and search WAVE, or I know we're on the front page of it right now.

And but yeah, so that's the easiest ways to find us, easiest place to register or just hear of upcoming news.

I believe we have an email campaign that's promoting just our next events and so forth that you can follow even without being a member yet.

And you have a budget?

We do.

How do you raise your money?

So, we have been going out into the area and asking for sponsorships.

They're $2,500 and with the sponsorship the employer gets 10 memberships for their employees.

If they don't have, we've had some sponsorships that don't have 10 employees, they just believe in the program and then those are then put into a scholarship fund.

So, if an individual has moved here and doesn't have the funds but really wants to be a part of the program, they can apply for the scholarship.

Yeah.

It's about, the membership yearly is $240, we do have a subscription version where you know if it's more attainable $20 a month, you know , gets you to all the events and so forth.

Some events will have additional costs just due to the popularity or maybe we're bringing in a very, you know, well-renowned speaker or like our Gull Lake cruise ship, you know, that there's just some costs involved on the upfront for us.

But yeah, between the sponsors, between the membership dues and then I know we've gone out, we've done a little bit of fundraising and grant searching for ourselves through the different groups initiative foundation and so forth so we've got a little startup money there but the goal is for WAVE to be self- sustaining you know within a year or two.

And we are still looking so.

Yeah.

If anyone wants to make a donation or be a sponsor.

And if you got a website that's good, people can go to that and find that out.

Absolutely.

Do you have a committee then?

I'm sure it's a challenge to figure out what is it that's going to attract people.

Yeah.

And what is it that's going to keep them here.

Absolutely.

Not only once you've attracted them.

Do you have a committee that works on that alone?

Yeah.

Or is that part of your office or responsibility?

It's our board.

Your board.

And you were spot on, it is so hard to keep people's attention spans nowadays.

So, what we did on our launch events for Gull Lake Cruises we had different little booths and stations, and we kind of surveyed people.

We're like, what would interest you, what times work for you?

Because really this whole program is for the community.

So, if we're going to put effort into these programs we want people to show up and we want people to be interested.

So, we're taking direct feedback from those 85 people that attended our first event and that is how we're planning our 2024.

If you have people interested outside of the area and what do you find as area kind of mileage wise?

How far out do you see yourselves going?

It is big.

It's bigger than we kind of expected it to be.

Which is good.

Which is great.

I would say the furthest out we've currently is kind of that Pine River and Little Falls , maybe Wadena over to Aitkin so I'd kind of say.

Up to Cross lake.

Yeah, up to Cross Lake.

I'd kind of say 45 minutes around Brainerd /Baxter if you want to take the 210/371, you know and draw a dot go around out there.

But it is fun.

Cuz we are going to and yes, from that survey and trying to kind of figure out what exactly members want to be included we definitely decided we're going to try and get to some of the different communities.

We're going to do events out in Cayuna, up in Cross Lake, over in Pequot and Nisswa and Pillager and so forth and we're going to try and spread things around so maybe not every event is just right here where everybody has to drive a long way.

We can try and make some things closer to home for some people.

And then we do have social media pages, both Facebook and Instagram.

I know our last event at Woodlore we kind of FaceTime lived it where you could tune in even if you weren't able to make the meeting itself and at least kind of get some of what it was about and the the interview that we did with Josh Gazelka of how Woodlore was started and so forth and I think we had a lot of people that actually kind of tuned in and was just interested in it.

It's maybe a little easier way to see what the meetings are about without actually attending.

We do encourage any guests to come for the first two meetings for free before really kind of becoming a member just to check it out and see if it's something there, and hopefully they build a bond with somebody that will attract them and want to come back, you know, a third or fourth or 20th time.

It's a real commitment that you folks are making, I mean it really is, because you have a regular job too and this or multiple, so it's a real commitment, and I really commend you for doing that.

If someone were interested from Perham or Detroit Lakes do you have someone that goes out and works with them or did you do Zoom calls or how do you make that connection to give them some advice when you're so new yourself.

Yeah definitely something I feel like we're kind of still working through and some of that, you know, if you were in an outlying community, you know.

One I would reach out to either their Chamber of Commerce or so forth and see if maybe this group already exists in your area.

We were surprised.

One that Brainerd didn't have one, but then how many other surrounding communities did.

Alexandria, Duluth, Bemidji.

They do.

And it's kind of an arm of the Chamber as well, just like how we're associated with the Chamber here in the Brainerd Lakes Area.

So like Duluth's is called FUSE and I attended a few of those events when I lived in Duluth and when I went to college up there.

So when I moved here I was kind of like oh this is an opportunity, we should have something like this.

But there are a lot of different young professional programs.

Do those organizations network at all?

I believe so, I think they do a lot of, I mean we based a lot of what we want to do off of what they've found to already be successful, and I think each of them has their own way of how they go about doing stuff and some is maybe a little bit more professional development focused, some are a little bit more social focused.

I can't say I've been to any of the other actual meetings or anything like that but just from the studies and research and then kind of looking through their websites and so forth their social medias that was kind of how we gathered a lot of the info about them.

So how is your organization measuring success?

What are you going to use as markers?

That's a great question.

I would say, one, kind of our first and biggest, is kind of attendance.

You know we can have 150 members but if we're only getting 25 people to an actual event you know that means employers are just paying for people to be a member and so forth.

We want people to show up because that's where they'll really gain value, whether that's through networking or whatever speaker we're bringing in is providing them value in some sort of side of their professional world.

So I would say that's probably our biggest one is just attendance and getting people there.

And I would say, in addition to attendance of our members, attendance of non-members.

So we take attendance for all of our events but then also we track people that showed up just from a word of a friend right and then we make that connection.

And we actually had a lot of people at Woodlore sign up that weren't a part of WAVE yet or remember they just saw it and they're like wow this is something that I would be interested in, and I think that in itself is success.

If we can continue that.

So the cost should not be a restrictive factor, right?

I mean because you can find ways to help people get in.

Yes and even on our website as you're going through the registration process there is a simple you click the button says hey you know this may be a financial burden for me I'd like to at least be thrown in the ring for a scholarship.

Then at our board meetings we'd go through that, you know, look at their case.

We want it to be mostly for small businesses or people who maybe don't have that career yet and they feel this would be of value to them but it would be a financial burden so we would certainly be willing to help out with those things.

And actually so far we haven't used one but we do have them from sponsors that people have donated back membership fees.

So if it is of need, you know, please click that button we'd be more than happy to help.

So if somebody wants to talk to someone about this obviously you don't have full-time receptionist doing business there.

It's Paul.

It's Paul.

Really they would call you.

They will call me.

Is that on your website, the phone number?

Yep.

So it'll either be myself or Kendra Johnson, who's our project manager currently, and she's an independent contractor through the Chamber.

She's kind of our honorary 10th board member.

But yeah, her or myself feel free.

All of our contact info is there, get a hold of us.

Yeah.

And that was something that we really wanted to make sure that the cost was on the smaller side because we recognized, we looked at other professional programs in the area or just across the state and a lot of them are around the thousand mark.

That's a lot of money, you know, and so we did not want that to be a barrier for anyone, especially young professionals starting out.

Yeah, many of our members still have college, you know, student loans or different things and so a lot of businesses are stepping up in the area and actually paying for their employees to be members, which is great.

You know we're happy to see that and hopefully we'll get a few more employers in the area to really sponsor back.

And then down the road we'll probably open up for other sponsorship opportunities and so forth.

Well we're out of time.

All right.

It went fast didn't it?

Yeah that went super, super fast.

And you guys I just commend you for doing this, it's just a marvelous idea that I personally have thought was needed in this area for a long time and being an old guy like me we don't start those things it has to be coming from people like you that have the youth and vitality to do it, and it's just, I think, a wonderful idea.

Again it's called WAVE.

Leah and Paul thank you for coming on board today, we really appreciate it, and if you want more information about it they have a website and maybe we'll even post on our websites here, and keep it going, it's a great idea.

Well thank you.

Thank you for having us.

You bet.

You've been watching Lakeland Currents.

I'm Ray Gildow.

So long until next time.