Welcome everyone.

It is six o'clock.

Let's get underway.

We have our study session now, and our first item on our agenda is a report from our South Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Mr.

Jay Francis is going to make that Jay come on up.

Thank you.

They send me those chaperones because I tend to bring things away if I'm not chapter.

And all I had to do is send them this and that.

Thank you.

Once again, this is an annual thing.

I'm a week or two earlier this year than last year.

So speaking of staff, this is this is who we are.

And I've got Jamie and Corey with us tonight.

We knew we were in a small room, so we didn't bring the rest, but we've got Dana Reed and Maryam and Diana Lund and Barbie and Missy and Zoram.

So we've as the chamber has grown, so is the staff.

It's kind of been nice to kind of put some things on some other people's plate.

This is our executive committee with it changed to the first of the year with Scott Western now is our chair, and Rob Ruff is stepped back, is uh just the what we refer to as the most recent chair, and Jennifer Sylvester, Heather Curtis, and uh Dave Dennison with the Gardener Company and Heather's with Swire Coca-Cola.

And this is our board, um, which both the executive committee and the board, that's why I sleep well at night.

Uh they they are such great uh people to work with, they have my back, and we just work well together.

Um what we do we connect, educate, advocate, and roll.

Those are kind of our four pillars that we've kind of plan everything around.

And then we've added and more, and we'll get to the end more at the end as well.

So uh in Draper we did uh 11 ribbon cuttings in 2025.

That's what we're talking about.

Um, which is just you know, if you take that and it times it by uh the number of cities, we just had a record number of uh ribbon cuttings throughout the South Valley, and it just that bodes well for what's going on, regardless of what we're hearing in other places.

People are bullish on going into business.

Under Connect, we have uh our committees.

We have 25 uh members serving on our ambassador committee.

We have 25 members serving on our government repairs public policy committee, which has become really robust.

We spend a lot of time on the hill.

Um we have 38 people on our small business committee, which helps us kind of plan some things that is important for small business, some of our boot camps and our business accelerator that we're providing tools for small businesses.

35 people on our tourism committee, many of which are restaurateurs and hotel managers from Draper.

Um, and we'll touch on tourism in a few minutes.

And then 24 in our women in business committee plus 24 junior with participants, which is something that I'm really pleased.

Um we'll be graduating them next month, this year's um next month already.

Um under the educate, we had uh 27 graduates from the Ladership South Valley.

We had 14 grad, which one of them was Mike last year.

Um, and then we had uh 14 graduates from our business accelerator, our everyday entrepreneur.

We had 14 participants in that course.

And I always like to say that our success on everyday entrepreneurs sometimes they they they all complete the course, some of them go on to start their business, but some of them about session five or six, they say, you know, um I'm not ready to start and be an entrepreneur.

My product's not ready to launch, which is a success because we've saved them thousands of dollars.

Um it's because a lot of people just think they've got this greatest idea and they run out and they spend thousands of dollars only to find out they should have done a little bit more homework, and this helps them.

Our business boot camps, we had four of those, we had 127 attendees.

Our business boot camps are really become hands-on workshops where um small businesses come and get really good hands-on uh topics around AI or around advertising, around sales, and and they they bring extra people and they come and they sit with them after they may give them a half hour of instruction and then they go sit with them and help them really get the tools that they need.

Uh, under advocate, uh we we hosted round tables, we hosted executive forums.

We tracked 20 plus bills in 2025, so that's a year ago.

Um, and then we had what we call the in the know, and we had the uh uh Robert Spendler come talk about the big beautiful bill, and we had the Wasach Regional Council to come talk about their transportation plan for the South Valley.

Under our GROW we hosted our Connect After Hours, which is a number two years ago.

We had a group of uh some of most of which were our ambassadors that said we just we want to have an event where we can come and just rub shoulders and connect with each other, and so um kind of assimilated after some chambers called their business after ours, and it's just done well.

It's they they have not misbehaved, um, and it's we've had good sponsors, so it hasn't been a drain on the chamber, but we've held it all across the whole South Valley.

We're having tomorrow night, we're having one at Top Golf.

If you would like to come swing the clubs.

Uh, let's do lunch.

We had five let's do lunch because we alternate that with Meet the Member every other month.

But we had over 728 attendees that are let's do lunch, meet the members is become a real popular event where we have they just kind of come and meet, and then we have 12 to 15 of our businesses and get two minutes to tell who they are and what they do, and it's a time, they get told to stop.

But they they love talking.

It's kind of I remember my parents used to go to something called bring and brag, um, and it's kind of they get to brag about what they've done and their accomplishments, and it's um it's been a great event for our members.

Our women of business is stellar is uh 10 events last year with over 1,200 attendees, and we're we're now posting you know, sold out uh almost on every one that we're doing.

We had one held one today, and uh with Caitlin Eskleton from Business All Lake, and we had the market sold out in one of the largest rooms that we have available to us.