December 2020 President's Report

Remember in May, when it felt like the days were dragging on? We were working, homeschooling, stressed out, scared, and maybe eating and drinking more than we should? I thought 2020 would never end. Now here we are! The last half of the year just happened, and I haven’t quite caught my breath. We have become experts at adapting. We mastered Zoom, we found touch free solutions to problems we didn’t even know existed, and we figured out how to cut things out of our lives that don’t make sense. If you think about it, we crammed like 5 years of a strategic plan into 5 months. We did this for our business, our home, and our social lives. It is kind of cool if you think about it. I think there are a lot of things we gave up that we aren’t that sad about. And we found out what matters the most. The people. The friends and family, customers and clients, and our co-workers. My year as the Chamber president showed me this too. We can trade in monthly meetings and promote more outdoor activities and we can keep focusing on the people in our area. I am truly in awe watching Jamie, Katie, Mallory, Tia, and Alicia work. We asked the world of our Chamber staff. We asked to keep what we had going on, improve other areas, cut expenses, expand our reach, track down programs to help businesses and individuals, and to literally reinvent the way we’ve always done things. We’ve called on our board to make big decisions. It wasn’t the year I expected when I got to become the president. I wanted to do something cool with my time here. I wanted to make some magic happen. But the magic was already here. The board, the staff, and the community more than rose to the challenges. I’m so proud of where we were, where we are, and where we are going. So as weird as it sounds, 2020 has been an incredible year.