Last week, retiring Lexington Chamber CEO Otis Rawl talked about his journey to leading the state’s largest chamber of commerce. This week he talks about his chamber work and challenges he welcomes in retirement.

Getting involved with the chambers was a natural transition. At the SC Department of Revenue, I worked as a liaison with city, county, state and federal officials on policy issues and helped recruit new industry.

As president and CEO of the SC Chamber of Commerce, Hunter Howard approached me about being the head of the chamber’s public policy area, lobbying the legislature and Congress and keeping close relations with state agencies to assist our business members.

Chamber work is about helping businesses create jobs. If everyone has a job, it means less crime, better health care, stable family life and children tend to be better educated.

At the Lexington chamber we just became accredited by the US Chamber as a well-run chamber. Only 200 plus state and local chambers of more than 7,000 chambers nationally and internationally have been accredited. That’s a real achievement for the staff and our members.

The chamber has grown from a half million dollar chamber to potentially a million dollars in 4 years.

We created a signature event, Dining on the Dam, along with our governmental and business partners to bring the midlands community together to develop relationships that will allow them to identify and work together to resolve issues.

We established a committee structure to identify issues facing our county.

We have built support with the school district and the county to identify current and future issues.

The chamber was instrumental in changing the way the school district buys land, but we couldn’t have done it without the help of the district leadership.

The county is looking at our recommendations on roads, storm water and growth issues and creating a county economic development product.

At the state chamber we:

• Reformed the employment security commission to prevent its reserves from ever going broke again.

• Protected businesses from claims when an employee was released for failing to show up for work, drug and alcohol abuse and other causes.

• Reformed the system to prevent frivolous law suits.

• Helped pass the Education Economic Development Act to set higher standards for graduation. The bill set up ways for young people to see what interests they may have before they leave high school and have to decide what to major in.

Q. What of retirement?

A. Melissa and I will spend more time at Edisto Beach. She loves her job as Lexington High principal. The children, the teachers, the staff and the folks she works along side are hard to leave. There is one thing that intrigues me a lot. I have been approached by as many as 30 business people that are frustrated about our elected officials, predominately the town, that find it convenient to not address issues brought by the business community to their attention and their use of strong armed tactics. These business people want to create a 501C(4) non-profit to recruit and elect business candidates for seats on councils.

I don’t know if it will happen. It is an issue that is not going to go away.

I am also considering setting up a business that will allow me to use the relationships developed over 43 years to introduce businesses to other business not only in Lexington, but across SC and the nation.

20 years involvement will allow me to call any chamber in the nation and ask them for help in contacting with one of their members. The brotherhood and sisterhood between chamber executives is second to none.

Creating jobs and hooking up businesses with each other are at the forefront of a chamber executives daily calendar. Let’s help Lexington and South Carolina businesses be successful.

To young people, I would say 3 things:

• You do not have to go to a 4-year university to be successful. A lot of jobs provide a great future for those with skills learned at our technical colleges.

• Relationships are the only thing that matters. Your relationship with your spouse, children , family, God and social and business relationships and working hard will allow you to achieve what you wish.

• Remember that when a door is closed, God usually opens a window. Be ready to jump through to see what life holds for you.