Chamber Chat

Chamber Chat is a new monthly series written by Lauren Cohen, Co-Owner of San Juan Canvas & Chamber Board President, to keep you up to date with the Chamber of Commerce…

Tom Kirshner and Becki Day – Contributed photo

Becki Takes The Helm
Your Chamber of Commerce is thrilled to welcome Becki Day as our new Executive Director. She will officially take over the position from Tom Kirshner on March 1 as he heads off on a fabulous retirement adventure. We will miss him and wish him well.

Becki will be a great asset to our Chamber as she is a business owner herself and has a great deal of management and leadership experience. In her more than 20 years living on San Juan Island, she has made many connections in the town and county that will serve the Chamber’s members well.

Becki is a long time member of Soroptimists, has served on the Chamber Board for 3 years and is a member of the Board of Director’s for United Way. She is full of ideas to move our Chamber of Commerce forward, make sure our member businesses are well represented and our visitors welcomed and served.

Becki says….
“I am really excited about my new position and gaining more momentum and community involvement for the Chamber. I will represent business interests to our community, manage the daily operations of the Chamber of Commerce, develop membership programs and continue to seek funds for the Chamber.”

Chamber Member Survey
Thank you to all of our member businesses that took their time to complete our survey. You provided us with some very useful ideas and suggestions. Including updating and optimizing our website which will be at the top of our list. The Board of Director’s will discuss them all at our next meeting and come up with some goals based on your input. Member involvement and feedback is always welcomed and appreciated. We will all get more out of this organization if we participate fully.

One suggestion was to offer training, lectures or classes for members on business. Fortunately, we have the Economic Development Council (EDC) on San Juan Island that does just that with the goal of strengthening our Island economy and creating jobs through strong, thriving businesses. They are offering the following upcoming workshops. Please visit their website for details at: www.sanjuansedc.org

• February 24 – Business Planning Workshop
• March 4- Everything About Your L&I Account
• March 25- Women’s Business Boot Camp

Why Join The Chamber Of Commerce?
The question often comes up of why join the Chamber of Commerce. There are the standard reasons of exposure for your business to visitors and locals, credibility afforded a member of a Chamber and networking with other business owners. The most straightforward way for me to answer that question is to say why San Juan Canvas chose to become members.

Derek and I believe that a strong business needs to be connected to the business community at large and a Chamber of Commerce in any town is the one organization that unites and supports business owners. Ours is a manufacturing business and really is not tourist related at all. Honestly, we have little expectation that the Chamber will recommend us nor that visitors will look for us on the website (though we are very surprised every month how many do look at our chamber web page). Instead, we feel it important to support local business, remain informed on issues affecting the business environment on San Juan Island and get to know as many fellow business owners as possible in our small town.

We also live by the philosophy of “you never know”. Who knows who might walk into the Visitor’s Center, happen upon our rack card and become a great customer? Who knows who we might meet and what we might learn from other business owners with whom we share a lot. I got involved on the Board because I found myself complaining about this and that, then decided I had no right to complain if I was not willing to do anything about it. So here I am with the goal of having 100% of our San Juan Island businesses involved and committed to making our Island’s enterprises wildly successful. Come join us!

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