And good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust, and it is time now to say hi to miss Judy.
And how are we doing today, young lady?
We're doing good.
How about you, Tom super E Dupe.
We've got the chamber busy as all get out. I said, so, what's on the agenda? And you know what, she just stopped telling me just before the microphone came on. And this is ten minutes ago.
Now I'm kidding, it's probably true. We have a lot going on.
In fact, tomorrow we start off with the whirlwind here.
Yeah. Business after Hours is tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock at the Bartlesville Lions Club and that's at twenty nine hundred Tuxedo Boulevard. That will be it's just always a great time to come out network with other business leaders and other business people in the community. And there'll be food and beverages and door prizes and just a great time to network.
Very good now, Judy.
This is one of the ones that a lot of people like because it's kind of casual. It's very casual, and it's a great way to network, connect or even just just meet a few.
Folks and just right and just like I said, there's going to be food and beverages and door prizes, but it is a great opportunity to just like I said, network and it is very very relaxed and very very it's just fun. It's just a fun time.
Yeah, I just kind of keeping that for last Yeah, it is pretty fun.
It is fun.
It's just fun. And then on May fifteenth, coming up very very quickly, is our annual awards and gala time at celebrating we are celebrating one hundred and twenty one years of Chamber Wow of the Bartlesville Chamber of Commerce. Isn't that awesome? One hundred and twenty one years.
Yeah, And we're doing that downtown at.
The downtown at the Hilton Garden. Enn reception will begin at six point thirty and we will do We'll do awards for Business of the Year and individual Small Business of the Year.
We will have.
Individual honor, will honor individuals and so's. That's a wonderful time just to celebrate the chamber and the businesses, our business community in Bartlesville and the businesses that are here. But we will also celebrate we're going to graduate Leadership Bartlesville and that is a very big deal and so
that'll be a wonderful time. Leadership Bartlesville is these people spend a year of learning about our school system, our medical facility here, the police any They just deep dive into Bartlesville, our city government, so many different things, and it's they learn more about our community. Then even if they've lived here their whole lives, they'll say, I never knew that was even here. And so it's just a
great opportunity. So that's Leadership Bartlesville graduating class. So that means we are going to take applications now for the new Leadership Bartlesville class and those applications open June the first and we'll close June thirtieth. So you need to go online at Bartlesville dot com www. Bartlesville dot com and get that information so you can be a part of the Leadership Bartlesville Class of twenty five twenty six.
Well, I tell you one of the alumni.
They're proud, yes, and they're smart, and they're and we've got such a wonderful crowd this year. And they're they're young, and they're sharp and they are ready to just just take that next step into Bartlesville, and I don't know, I'm out of them.
Well, you know, it's one of those things that each and every year we see those bright faces come up, a new crop, a new crowd, yeap, and it's like wow.
Yep, yep, and they're energetic and they know how to move forward.
And so I'm excited about that.
Everybody should.
And so remember June first is opening application time and June thirtieth is when it closes, So be sure and get in there. And then also coming up in May May twenty ninth, there's our Classic Golf tournament that will be at Hillcrest and it's one hundred and fifty dollars per player, six hundred dollars for a team, and we still have some openings for teams to come in and so so be sure and give us a call about that, or you can sign up online. And so that is
a great opportunity there too. We love to play, We love to have our players come out and play golf. And like I said, that's at Hillcrest. I think lunch and is going to be and check in and lunch is at eleven from eleven to twelve thirty and then I think they start play at twelve thirty, gotcha, Yeah, yepp.
It'll be fun.
And so I just want to encourage any businesses out there right now that aren't a part of the chamber.
We would love to have you be a part of the Chamber.
I would love to visit with you about Chamber membership, some of the benefits of chamber membership, or some of the things we've talked about just now.
Business after Hours is.
One of those wonderful things we like to do, ribbon cuttings. In fact, we've got two coming up tomorrow. Wow, And so it's it's going to be a good time. We've had seven new members this month and I look to have seven more next month. And so if you have any questions about becoming a part of the Chamber, please give us a call. We would love to have you come in and visit with us about that.
You're a great resource for the business community you Like you said, we put on different events for chamber members, but there's also a lot of other components that come in as far as how the city's moving, what facts and figures about the city and the whole area that if you're a business person, you'd be flying blind if you weren't a member.
Of the Chamber.
Right we do events like Eggs and Issues where we have our city people like Mike Bailey, Chuck McCauley from schools and different different leaders in our city government come and talk to us about what is new going on in Bartlesville or what's coming up. The Bartlesville Development Authority will share insights about what is coming up and what's
going to be new in our area. And so then we have hot topics which is going on right now at the Chamber that can tell us about what's hot in Bartlesville right now, what's going on in our community. But just like you said, there's things that the Chambers involved in that people really don't see that Sherry especially is so involved with with maybe helping lower taxes, you know, with the grocery tax issue, the things that are done at the state level that she's a part of, and
things like that that are just affect business. If it affects the business in Bartlesville, we want to be a part of.
That one thing.
And I hate to bring up the COVID era, and I don't think anybody really wants to revisit it. But I will tell you that the Bartlesville Chamber of Commerce was a shining beacon in that because businesses really didn't know what to do, how to do it, how to get through it. And thanks not only to our chamber but also to our state officials who were actually listening to us, things reopened a lot sooner than they did
anywhere else in the United States. And we were able to help people adapt by sharing knowledge and just a great conduit is what the Chamber acted as. And there there was just one of those things. So imagine if you don't have a pandemic, what kind of resources they
have there for you. If you're a new business in town, or an existing business who hasn't been with the Chamber ever or it's been a while, give it a spend, give it a try, give them a call, get in and get on board, and you know you'll be able to really see the landscape a lot clearer.
That's awesome business climate.
That's a great way to put it.
And then we do things like well, during the pandemic, one of the things we did was make a list of people that were open or maybe that they were even if they were not chambermen. We did that and would try to publish that, you know, through our website and other things, so that people could see what was opened but when they were open, so because it was such a hard time it was. But we also right now we have a little program called Member to Member where our members can offer discounts or Q ponds or
something special to other members. And that's a that's a neat little program that we have.
And then we.
Also have Chamber Bucks where you can come in and buy Chamber Bucks for a gift or you know, a bonus for one of your employees or something like that, and then we give you a list of the businesses that will accept Chamber Bucks and it drives business to uh customers into your business to use those there.
It's really amazing.
Like I said, you're a great resource for the business community and for the community as a whole. One of the fun things that you do with the Chamber, and I know it takes about half a year to do it is Christmas in the film. What a driver that is for the downtown businesses, but not only for downtown but for all parts of town. Is people are coming into Bartletowe because we're such a draw from east, west, north and south. It's a great thing to be a part of. Just that it is.
It's a wonderful It is just it's that wonderful time of year and the music and the kids laughing and the skating, and it is an enormous amount of work. And we are so grateful to all of our businesses that help sponsor that and help volunteer there, and so thank you to the business community that does that.
And it is just so.
Important for individual businesses to know that without each one of them, how would we come together collectively? Each one is so valuable and so important, and so together we can do things that individually we simply cannot do. So Christmas in the bill is yeah, it's it's at the Chamber. But it takes all of our sponsors and all of our volunteers to make that happen.
One of the cool things you were at one of the trailers. You were helping poor coffee. I was talking to you. I don't think your hands stopped moving the whole night. It was kind of chilly, But right outside of your little trailer was an old timy like a way bearing sign that had different businesses and pointed him into the directions and there was actually a couple of businesses that, you know, I've been here for a while, Oh that must be new. Yeah, and by golly, it was.
And there was a couple of them like that.
Yeah.
And so imagine, you know, you're a business in the downtown area or just in town whatsoever, and you've got folks coming in from I don't know, Coffee Bill maybe, uh Oceanida, Tulsa, Pahusca.
We had some Parsons, Yeah, we had some from Parsons and Chanut oh yeah, and Coffeeville. But yeah, and then they see that sign and it points them to crossing second or or painted whorse or you.
Know whatever the sign was out there that Yeah.
There was like ten or fifteen bass on it. But imagine being a business and just benefits from that, you know, and you could be one of those businesses.
We brought around twenty three thousand people into downtown.
Bartlesville last year, that's.
And then how many of those stayed at a hotel or went out, you know, down seventy five to eat or something like that downtown and we're downtown. I mean it just like you said, it was all over Bartlesville because we are the Bartlesville Regional Chamber of Commerce and and and that's just such a you know, it's just kind of a neat thing that people know they can be a part of the Chamber, even if they don't, even if they're not right downtown, but think.
But we are just so grateful for our for our.
Members and what they bring to the community.
You have a dazzling website Bartlesville dot com. I'm not easy. I mean, you guys, you.
It is and it's we've had it now for about eighteen months. I think that website. It's a new website, and it is.
Beautiful and it's easy to work.
It is if I can work at anybody can work it because I'm not exactly tech savvy, and so I mean, it's a good thing that I can do my email. But you could join online. People can pay their chamber dues online, they can sign up for an event online. But they can also just go in and learn more about Bartlesville and more about the Chamber at www dot Bartlesville dot com.
Your calendar is wonderful, by the way, I know two different calendars.
You have the chamber calendar, then you have the calendar.
Of the whole community calendar.
And Dawn is our receptionist at the chamber, and she does an amazing job of keeping up with that thing because it, yeah, it moves and changes and adds very quickly every day, so she knows how to work that thing a whole lot better than a whole lot better than me. But anyway, I am just I just want to encourage people to come out tomorrow at four o'clock to business after hours at Bartlesville Lyons Club and that and again that's at twenty nine hundred Tuxedo Boulevard.
Very good, Thank you very much for being with us today.
Thank you for having me and for helping me. You always do such a good job.