Paul Szmal: Now we're ready for the music, 8-15, FLX Morning, Friday Extravaganza. Not her regular day, we rescheduled, and we'll tell you why in a moment, but we have Tara Sovey with us from the FLX Area Chamber of Commerce. Good morning.
Tara Sauve: Good morning, Ted. And we're happy to reschedule, because you've been very, very busy, and now we have a sold out Member Harvest Celebration, beautiful spot at Lincoln Hill Farms. Tell us what's going to happen for those lucky enough to have tickets.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, we're really excited for this. We are officially sold out. I just want to say thank you to our host over at Lincoln Hill Farms. They are awesome to work with, and we're excited to be back there for our third year. We are going to have some live music, of course, Harvest Raffle, our silent auction, and just craft beverages and food, and also people are really excited to see the goats when they first arrive.
Tara Sauve: Yeah. So, yeah, we're really excited. So that's what you can expect. And then I just want to say thank you to our sponsors. Our title sponsor this year is Four Winds Chimney. Our promotional sponsor is Potter Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing. We have five community sponsors, Canandaigua National Bank and Trust, Finger Lakes Federal Credit Union, Lugana Plumbing and Heating, Lyons National Bank, and Massa Construction. And our tasting station sponsors are our 13 annual partners as well. So we're really excited to have a great attendance for this event, and we're really excited to show people there and see everyone come.
Paul Szmal: As I recall, the idea kind of started looking for kind of a major thing, but everybody has a dinner, and a lot of them are at Club 86, and we love Club 86, and we love the chicken, but it was like, what can we do that's a little bit different and celebrate the harvest time of the year? And like I said, it's a perfect spot at Lincoln Hill Farms. They keep adding things there, and if you haven't been, I mean, they've got beautiful stages for music and accommodations for food and drink, you know, covered pavilion in case you get rain or anything. It's perfect.
Tara Sauve: Absolutely. And this is just another event to celebrate our members and try to get everyone together. So this is our second largest fundraiser that we do. So we're really excited about that. And Lincoln Hill Farms has so much going on. I know they do a lot for Halloween, too, so we're right a little bit before that. So yeah, we're excited. And I mean, from Geneva, it's only like, I don't know, 12 miles or something, maybe.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, not far. It's not even all the way to Canandaigua, so again, a great spot. So because of the harvest celebration, there's no mixer in September. In October, it's October 9th, it'll be hosted at the Guerin Center for the Performing Arts, a relatively new building at HWS and a beautiful spot to host arts.
Tara Sauve: Yeah, we're excited to have them host. We've never been there, so we wanted to try to feature a different spotlight for them in a new building to kind of showcase everything that they do. They'll have kind of different departments there as well, so you can kind of learn everything that Hobart and William Smith Colleges has to offer. So we're really excited about that one.
Paul Szmal: And the November one, we're really excited about this one. This is beautiful. It's going to sell out, too, real quick, so you better get your tickets. It is a train ride on the Finger Lakes Railway, and that is so much fun. I love those big, luxurious cars.
Tara Sauve: Yeah, we were excited when we booked this last year. So we've been telling everybody, make sure you save the date for this one, and make sure you definitely RSVP for this one as well, as we'll be having a certain time that we'll be leaving. So yeah, we're excited for this one, excited for Finger Lakes Railway to host.
Paul Szmal: Now, of course, there is the Season Pass program that allows you to get extra tickets for people and save. The details of next year's plan will be announced soon. And obviously, like we say, you want to jump on that early. The earlier you get on it, the more savings you get. So details to be announced, and also the 2025 calendar is going to come out.
Tara Sauve: Yes, exactly. Well, we have a good group of other locations throughout the Finger Lakes, so we're really excited about that one. And the Business Season Pass, you can get into all the mixers, and then you get extra guest passes. So it's easy to bring a coworker, a friend, or anyone that you would like to attend, just to different locations throughout the Finger Lakes that maybe you've never been to, and kind of get to see the behind-the-scenes afterwards. So we love trying to get unique spaces that people haven't been to before.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, it's been neat this year. It was a combination, not all retail. Some of it's industrial, places like Guardian Glass. Like you say, we know it's there, but unless you work there, you don't really see the inside or what they do.
Tara Sauve: Exactly, yeah. And so it's a real education for people. Yeah, and this just shows our membership. Our industries that we have are all over, so we get to showcase that and tell the stories of our members.
Paul Szmal: We've talked about the Lunch and Learn series. The Fall Session gets underway. This is everyday financial planning. Actually, the first one of those was held yesterday with Adam Rayburn from Edward Jones. What a great idea, because everybody kind of puts it off, or they have their envelopes and they've got cash stuffed into them, and here's a chance to get a plan from someone who knows.
Tara Sauve: Yeah, Adam Rayburn, we're really excited. He's with Edward Jones, so we're going to have a three-classes part. So yesterday was the first one, which we had a great turnout for, but this is just everyday financial planning and just quick tips or tricks that you may not know or realize, and then Adam can kind of go into detail about certain questions that you might have by attending the class. Same kind of concept that the last Lunch and Learn, just a different topic. People can send in their questions or topics that they want Adam to touch base on or go over. So we're excited for the feedback from our members that attended yesterday. And Adam is so unique in a way that he can answer anything from, depending if you're just starting in your 20s or you're in your 40s, a different age range. So it was really cool to see him cover a wide range of things yesterday and just the tips that he has to share with everybody.
Paul Szmal: On the front page of the website, flxchamber.com, you'll see all kinds of member benefits and ways that the Chamber helps get your message out. And something I don't think we've talked about so far, or at least not recently, that I saw on the front page is the Ambassador Committee. So tell us how that works.
Tara Sauve: Yeah, so we have a great Ambassador Committee for events. So that's who have been helping prepare for Lincoln Hill Farms and our Membership Harvest Celebration. So yeah, you can get involved throughout our events. We kind of meet maybe three or four times gearing up for a major event, so our Membership Harvest Celebration or golf tournament. And so you can come kind of meet other people that are in our committees and help us kind of get these events going and just new ideas and helping secure donations or getting people to sign up for something. So it's kind of highlights everyone in their industry too, and kind of meet everyone that maybe you wouldn't meet someone before. So it's kind of a network, small networking group too, but they help to bring our events together. So we couldn't do all this without them, honestly.
Paul Szmal: Well, and I know they're really good with the logistics and things. Whenever I go to a Chamber event, I mean, there's always their signage. You know exactly when things are happening and where you're supposed to go and what happens next and that's part of what they do is just to keep the wheels turning smoothly.
Tara Sauve: Yep, and you'll see a lot of them at our Membership Harvest Celebration helping with registration and check-in, helping us put all the decorations out, and then helping to do the auction, selling raffle tickets as well. So they are really a huge help with that. So like I said, if you go to flxchamber.com, you'll see right on the front page all these different ways that the Chamber helps get your message out. And one of the things that you created recently was the Annual Partners Program, a way of saying, okay, we'll really ratchet up our efforts for you, and in return, you make a commitment to be there for all of our things and support us and it works for everybody.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, people love this program. We've had 13 Annual Partners this year, which they get inclusion on our website and our newsletter and all of our press releases that go out, and then they get inclusion in all of our events and some of our programs throughout the year. So this has been very popular if you want some extra advertising and then get in with the more networking and you get two season passes, so then you'll get 10 gas passes for your team as well. And you can kind of switch them out, who wants to go each month. So people really love this program and it's just been growing over the last few years and we're excited to see it come back for 2025. And like I said, it's just a little bit of everything throughout the year and then you get a lot of extra advertisement throughout the year.
Tara Sauve: So one of the major things that you do is membership outreach. Do you ever have one of those? You must have those fun days where you come in and somebody reaches out to you and you get a call, I want to join the Chamber because I heard about this event or something. That has to be pretty cool when that happens.
Paul Szmal: We get that a lot. We get phone calls or even on our website people can submit a thing to become a member today and we get their contact information. So it's funny, people that we see kind of reach out to us in different industries and just want to learn more about us. So we always want to have that initial conversation to see how we can help them, what they're looking for, if they need help with marketing or just networking or making connections throughout Finger Lakes and different industries that they want to partner with. So yeah, we're always excited for people to kind of reach out to us and see how we can help them.
Tara Sauve: And I know with all these different social events, you get members that hook up with each other. I always tell the story way back when I was in Massachusetts that two people that were on opposite sides of an industry, one was a buyer, one was a seller, and they met at one of these events and started doing big business with each other just because of this chance meeting.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and we've had a lot of connections too just throughout our Lunch and Learns with people hosting our website designer, Mark Dominguez, with Dominguez Marketing has made some connections too with just being able to talk to our members and get to know them a little bit and what they're looking for. So it's funny how different connections get made through just attending these events. And maybe you don't need something right away, but you remember, oh, I met this person not too long ago. I'll have to go back to another mixer and see if they're there again. So it's funny how that works.
Tara Sauve: So go to the front page of the website, flxchamber.com, and you'll find all kinds of services. And again, it's a PR-based chamber, so the whole thing is to get your message out to the public. Tara, thanks for doing that, and thanks for sharing it with us each month.
Paul Szmal: Thanks, Todd, for rescheduling. Appreciate it.
Tara Sauve: All right. Always a lot of fun.
