Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance is the chamber of commerce for the Lakewood Ranch region. It represents about 750 businesses and 4,000 individuals, connecting business communities across Manatee and Sarasota Counties in Florida. Lakewood Ranch also provides opportunities for members to connect and educate through the organization.
Brittany Lamont has served as Lakewood Ranch’s president and CEO since 2021. She has worked in chambers of commerce throughout her career, including for the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce. In addition to working for chambers, Brittany is heavily involved in and passionate about nonprofit and community work, serving on the board for directors for both Take Stock in Children Sarasota and the Bradenton Area Economic Development Corporation.
With a background spanning multiple chambers of commerce and association platforms, Brittany brings both strategic and operational insight to Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance.
The Challenge
Before moving to GrowthZone, Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance faced challenges tied to growth and capacity. “Two big things for us really are scalability and efficiency,” Brittany said. As Lakewood Ranch expanded, it needed systems that could keep pace.
Additionally, the Lakewood Ranch team is small. “I’m a staff of six and-a-half,” Brittany said. “So, my efficiency within the database, whether it’s communications, billing, tracking membership engagement, those types of things are a big focus.”
Lakewood Ranch has also lacked a clear, consistent metric for success. “It’s OK to say we haven’t had a great metric other than anecdotally for defining success,” Brittany said. Without reliable insights into attrition or member value, strategic planning relied more on intuition than data, which was something Brittany was determined to change.
How Lakewood Ranch Discovered GrowthZone
Brittany and the Lakewood Ranch team started using GrowthZone shortly after Brittany stepped into her role. Their previous software was better aligned to country clubs and family groups than the business side, so when Brittany started working with Lakewood Ranch, she had the opportunity to choose a different solution.
Brittany had previously worked with a different software prior to Lakewood Ranch, and while she knew that software well, there were necessary features this software didn’t have that GrowthZone did. Additionally, the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce she worked with previously was using MemberClicks, so she had an idea of how both the prior software and GrowthZone worked.
The decision to switch to GrowthZone came down to responsiveness and relationships. “Honestly, the relationship and follow-up were hands-down why I selected GrowthZone,” Brittany explained. Consistent communication from GrowthZone support teams, combined with trusted industry relationships and necessary software features, helped GrowthZone stand out during the decision-making process.
The Implementation Process
Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance transitioned to GrowthZone with implementation focused on usability across roles rather than rigid, top-down training. “All six of my staff are using it for whatever their job function is, whether it’s mining data for consulting, accounting, engagement tracking, or reporting,” Brittany said.
GrowthZone’s flexibility allowed the team to adopt features gradually. “We’re using all of the basic things you would assume: billing, auto-renew, tracking member engagement,” Brittany added.
GrowthZone also supported deeper analysis. “I have a consultant who’s mining data out of it for dashboards and things like that,” Brittany said. This access to underlying data helped lay the groundwork for more strategic planning and the ability to truly define success with data.
What Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance Loves Most About GrowthZone
Today, GrowthZone plays an important role in helping Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance operate with greater clarity and confidence. The platform supports daily operations while also enabling leadership to think strategically about their long-term goals. Utilizing GrowthZone’s software “allows us to really look under the hood and understand our market share, member attrition rates, and our sales goals,” Brittany said.
Engagement reporting has been especially valuable. “I do appreciate...the fact that you have more of an engagement report,” Brittany said. “I think that was my one ask coming into this because I will say [another company] had a phenomenal one-sheeter engagement report that I could hand to a business and be like ‘this is what your people are doing,’” Brittany said.
GrowthZone’s approach to feedback and improvement also stood out to Brittany and the Lakewood Ranch team. “I really appreciate that hands down, I’ve asked for things, and they have come,” she said. “So the feedback [GrowthZone] takes and the fact that [they] are then continuously working on those is always appreciated.”
For a small staff managing rapid growth, this expertise provides reassurance and momentum to continue growing and defining success.
