As chief executive of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, Randy Gordon is the voice of business in Long Beach. He’s always ready with an opinion on local and state government policies that impact business. Those opinions are informed by long experience with chamber work and, before that, his years in retail at Montgomery Ward. Gordon, 61, grew up on a cotton farm in rural Texas. He came out to California as a teenager with his family when his father took a job with defense contractor McDonnell Douglas. Gordon started his career in retail, but a chance meeting launched him on a second career as a chamber executive. He has taken to the chamber lifestyle, attending business and charitable events throughout southern Los Angeles County and joining national chamber organizations. He met with the Business Journal in his chamber office, which is decorated with his sports memorabilia and discussed his chamber career, his volunteer work as a charity auctioneer – and his role as a judge of beauty contests.
Question: Tell me something your colleagues don’t know about you.
Answer: I used to judge beauty pageants. This started at the Covina chamber, when I was called on to judge the Miss Covina pageant. I found I really enjoyed seeing such talented young women with so much to look forward to. I’ve also judged the Miss California pageant and several other pageants.
That must be any man’s dream position.
Of course. But it’s not just the beauty. I like to call these scholarship pageants because the beauty part is such a small portion of the overall judging – usually only about 20 percent. There’s also the interview and the talent. What I enjoy most is seeing these young women come through with so much grace and composure – not just the beauty God gave them. And then I enjoy seeing the winners mature as they go through the year with the title.
Does your wife get jealous?
My wife has actually gone with me. She enjoys helping these young women get the scholarships. In fact, recently my wife and I went to visit one of the Miss Covina pageant winners while we were vacationing in Colorado Springs. It was truly amazing to see what she had made of her life after getting that scholarship. She used that scholarship to finish her bachelor’s degree at Azusa Pacific University and today she tutors students in debate.
You grew up in rather humble circumstances on a small cotton farm. What was that like?
Yes, I was born on a cotton farm in the small community of Idalou not far from Lubbock in Texas. When I was growing up, I would help my father plant and then pick the cotton. In fact, to this day, I still measure an acre as 12 rows of cotton that are one-fourth of a mile long. Most of the food we ate came right off the farm; I still remember my mother wringing the necks of chickens that then went on our table for dinner.
Why did you leave?
When I was in my early teens, a big hailstorm came and destroyed the cotton crop. My father had to sell the farm and he used the proceeds to buy a Phillips 66 gas station. Then I helped him pump the gas, change the tires on cars and the like.
How did you end up in Southern California?
Shortly after that, my parents decided to move here. We settled in Norwalk and my father got a job at the McDonnell Douglas plant, now Boeing, in Long Beach. When I turned 18, I got a job at the Rockwell plant in nearby Downey and used that money to pay for college.
Did you study business?
I wanted to teach and got a degree in history. But as I was going through school, I worked part-time in retail, first at JC Penney and then at Montgomery Ward. I found I had a talent for the retail business and at Ward’s, I worked my way up to become the youngest operations manager at a store in Southern California.
What did you do?
I managed all the different concessions in the store – the third-party sellers. I then moved up to regional operations in San Ramon and managed the concessions for all the stores in the state. You know that discount law company Jacoby & Meyers? Well, I put them into all the Ward’s stores.
Why didn’t you stay at Montgomery Ward?
I met up with the owner of a hearing-aid dispensing business and helped her place her concessions in the Ward stores. She then asked me to come to work for her at her offices in Covina. So I became the manager for all the hearing-aid dispensaries that I had helped place. She was also a past chairwoman of the Covina chamber, so that’s how I became involved in that organization.
How did you become chief executive?
At a Rotary Club breakfast in Covina, I was sitting next to the Covina chamber board chairman. He told me that the CEO of the chamber had just retired and they were looking for a replacement. He said I would be perfect for the job and asked me if I wanted it. I accepted.
What was the biggest challenge in running the Covina chamber?
When I took over, the chamber was nearly broke. It was 1982, in the middle of a recession, and membership had dropped dramatically. So I had to hit the ground running in raising money and bringing in new members. After a few years, I built up the chamber budget back to prerecession levels.
What prompted you to leave the Covina chamber?
After about six or seven years, I realized I had grown the chamber as much as it could grow. Covina is a town with a small business community and we had become one of the largest chambers in the San Gabriel Valley with about 1,000 members. I realized that if I wanted the challenge of growing a chamber organization, I had to go to a larger chamber in a larger business community.
How did you make the move to Long Beach?
I met with Diane Creel, then-chief executive of Earth Tech in Long Beach and on the chamber executive committee. She was quite the saleswoman and convinced me to take the Long Beach chamber job. It’s a decision I don’t regret: This is the best job I’ve ever had and I intend to stay here until I retire.
What was your biggest challenge when you started at the Long Beach chamber?
Without a doubt, getting to know the players here – the political players, the business movers and shakers, and the local non-profit community. I was used to a small community like Covina, which had a population of about 40,000. Long Beach is 10 times that. Now I knew how to run a chamber and that’s why I was hired. I relied on chamber board members and staff to get to know the players in the Long Beach community.
What was the state of the chamber when you joined in 1994?
Frankly, it was not great. Long Beach and the entire South Bay region had been hit hard by the aerospace cutbacks. Membership had dropped to about 1,000 and the budget had fallen, too. I immediately launched initiatives to bring in new members and add special events to bring in more money.
So how did you go about recruiting new members?
We did something the Long Beach chamber hadn’t really done before: we reached out to neighboring communities in the South Bay – Torrance, Redondo Beach, Hawthorne and the like – and invited businesses there to join. We kept growing our membership until it peaked in 2007 at about 2,000. In effect, we had become a regional chamber.
But now the membership is back down to about 1,100. What happened?
Well, the economy went south of course. And many of those new members we had recruited from neighboring cities dropped out. In tough economic times, membership in a regional chamber is the first to go because companies are under orders to keep only one chamber membership and that’s usually the chamber in the city they have offices in.
So how have you coped with this?
We’re focusing more intently than ever on special events, which now bring in about 60 percent of our $1.6 million budget. We have added events like the State of the County and greatly expanded our State of the Port event, our golf tournament and our Entrepreneur of the Year awards banquet.
You mentioned you like to be the auctioneer at charity events. How did you get started doing that?
Back when I was at the Covina chamber, the head of the local Ronald McDonald chapter was on our board. She invited me to go to a Ronald McDonald event. The person who was scheduled to be the auctioneer had cancelled out at the last minute, so she twisted my arm and urged me to go up to the stage and conduct the auction. God gave me a great voice and the gift of gab, so I used those talents and found that I really enjoyed getting people to open up their pocketbooks for a good cause.
Do you do the fast-talking style?
Oh, you mean “cattle-calling,” like when someone comes in to auction off the livestock at a farm or to auction someone’s assets, right? No I don’t do that. It’s really not the style for charity events. The most effective way is to do it in a really personal way, especially when you know some of the people in the audience.
What’s the most memorable auction you’ve conducted?
That would be one I did recently for the local chapter of the Special Olympics. The grand prize was a trip to the Ryder’s Cup golf tournament in Britain. The winner got to travel on the same plane as the U.S. Ryder’s Cup team, stay in the same hotel and get to watch the tournament in the box reserved for members of the royal family. That took me half-an-hour, but I sold it for $46,000, by far the most I’ve ever raised for a single auction prize.
Who won the prize?
His first name was Tony and he is a successful entrepreneur up in Los Angeles. He’s a big golfer and always wanted to go to a Ryder Cup event.
How did you meet your first wife?
I met Gayle when I had just started out at Montgomery Ward’s selling suits. She was in the children’s clothing department. We dated and got married and were married for 27 years.
Why did you split up?
Well, we grew apart. I was a workaholic and didn’t spend as much time as I should have with her or with our two children. And then, as I got more involved in chamber activities, both in Covina and Long Beach, she didn’t like going to all those evening dinners and charity events. So we went our separate ways. But we are still very close friends.
Then you met Nancy. How did that happen?
I met Nancy at the World Trade Center right here in Long Beach. She was in the global logistics office at California State University Long Beach. Nancy is really outgoing and loves the chamber lifestyle, the dinners, the charity balls and the like.
Do you feel now you have been able to get to a better balance of work and family?
After Nancy and I got married, I didn’t change my lifestyle all that much. But then came the grandchildren and that really changed things. I now say “no” to events because we’re either babysitting our grandchildren or I just want to spend the time with them that I didn’t spend with my own children.
You’ve got quite a sports memorabilia collection here in the lobby.
Yes, here is a basketball signed by John Wooden, and here is a volleyball signed by Olympian Misty May, who started her career right here in Long Beach. I started out with a small collection back in Covina, but through the years, people have kept bringing things to me. What you see here is only part of it; I’ve got quite a bit back at the house.
What memorabilia do you have there?
I have an autographed photo of Nancy and me with legendary coach John Wooden, and several signed baseballs by former Los Angeles Dodgers and Angels.
What are your travel plans?
I’m trying to lose weight so I can get on one of those zip-line tours when we go to Hawaii over the holidays. When you go on a zip-line tour, you’re strapped in a harness that’s attached to a cable and you start from a high point and then you pause at several points on the way down and look at the wonderful scenery below. But there’s a maximum weight of 250 pounds – with all your clothes – and they weigh you before you get on. If you’re 251 pounds, it’s “no go.” Right now, I’m right at 250 pounds.
Do you have retirement plans?
I plan to remain involved in charities, especially the Ronald McDonald House. I see myself perhaps working part time there and maybe at some other charities. And, of course, I plan to spend more time with family and travel.
What’s the best advice you’ve received?
One of my mentors, Ernie Guerrero, who managed the Montgomery Ward store I worked at, said that I should always remain positive and never give up. I’ve tried to follow that advice, especially during difficult times.
Randy Gordon
TITLE: Chief Executive
ORGANIZATION: Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce
BORN: Lubbock, Texas; 1949
EDUCATION: A.A., Cerritos Junior College; B.A in history, California State University Fullerton
CAREER TURNING POINTS: Recruited in 1982 to run the Covina Chamber of Commerce; hired in 1994 to run the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.
MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE: Ernie Guerrero, department store manager; Tom Donohue, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce; the late UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, whom he knew personally.
PERSONAL: Lives in Long Beach with his wife, Nancy Becker; each has two children from previous marriages; those children have five young grandchildren.
ACTIVITIES: Auctioneering at charity events; judging beauty pageants; active in Ronald McDonald organization; collecting sports memorabilia.
