Victoria Helling, Executive Director, Boone County Chamber of Commerce and Holly Stecker, Executive Director, Downtown Boone Mainstreet, April 9, 2026

On our program today, we are gonna be talking about our Boone County Chamber of Commerce and our downtown Boone Main Street. Joining us for her first visit, Victoria Helling, the new executive director. Hello, so glad to be here. And just one month on the job about?

Yeah, it's been about four weeks, exactly. I'm jumping in. So here we go. Thanks for taking the time to come over for this and we'll get a chance to talk about that. And Holly Stacker. Good morning.

Holly kinda covered when we were going through some of the transition there, but Holly is executive director downtown Boone Main Street. And we got plenty of things going on for everything else.

Victoria, first, a little bit, let people know, obviously, from Boone County, but box home. Yes, so I'm from box home. Me and my husband live there with our three children. We live in on about a little acre and a half with chickens and everything.

So, but yeah, that's where we currently reside. And coming to work at the chamber, a little bit about your chamber philosophy, because apparently through all of the interviews and everything else, they're going, yes.

So my goal at the chamber is to bring all the wonderful organizations that support Boone together. So we can be a united front and show a united presence for Boone County residents.

So that was kind of my philosophy getting started to work with all these wonderful organizations, collaborate on different events together and show that we are all here for the same purpose.

And that is to support Boone business, to bring more business to Boone, to bring more residents to Boone and to really grow this amazing city. And not just the city, but all of the county, because you are Boone County. That's correct. Yes, my kids actually go to Ogden.

So I'm in Ogden regularly and I'm on the box home city council. So try and stay involved in all the cities around here. There's a lot of things happening. Again, the entire county, when you look up from here, all the way down to Madrid. Yes, correct, absolutely.

You got a lot of stuff happening there. And I do know that one of the big programs that was going on was this LEED program. And it's, again, a lot of effort went into doing this. Ag Certain was a big sponsor on it.

It was one of those where when we previously had visited it was a program that really took advantage of expertise that we had locally. People that have been successful in business willing to share that, how to be successful. Absolutely.

So it's a wonderful professional development program that ran from September through May. We actually had our last meeting just a week ago and we were having our graduation coming up in May to celebrate all our participants' achievements.

They've really committed every month from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. They have been at our Chamber's office learning from other business professionals to really grow their leadership skills, to strengthen their ties in the community and to network, so.

One of the, you've been around a lot because Redcoats keep going out and you keep going along with them. So a lot of things have been happening. Everything from groundbreaking is for a new freezer to businesses and just had Flex that did their ribbon cutting this week, so. Busy.

Yes, we've been very busy. The Redcoats go out almost every week.

I think we take off one week of the month but we wanna make sure that we're there to support these businesses, to help them gain exposure, especially these new businesses that are investing in Boone, investing their time, investing their resources.

We wanna make sure they know that they are supported in this community. All right. Well, Holly, let's go over to Main Street for a little bit. Yeah, good morning. And again, you focus on Main Street here. Yep, yep. So let's talk a little bit about what's been happening.

Again, we've made it through our first quarter and everything else. We did. I'll be at Council in May presenting on the first quarter reporting, which I'm in the midst of right now. Lots of great things to report on there.

Let's see, wrapped up our third of the four digital marketing classes last night, where I'd like to give a shout out to Caesar's Digital Strategies and Rampart Digital Media, both fantastic community supporters, helping local business, small business, understand digital strategies from the street level and really breaking it down to something that's understandable because if anyone is similar to me, you say digital marketing and it's right over my head.

So they're really synthesizing things down. Last night we dove into social media. So that was a fantastic- Those are the challenges that you've like, when you were going in through business and all that stuff, it was not that big of a thing then.

It was not that big of a thing, no. And now it's changing so fast, already so fast. And that everything's just in our hands, you know? So anyway, that's been going well, successful, I like that. Yes, yep.

I'd like to take a second and share that newsletter segment for Downtown Boone. We are looking for the Downtown Boone businesses to reach out and share that they're celebrating a special anniversary.

If they've got a renovation or new services that they're offering, we're starting a newsletter segment called Downtown Distilled. And if your business is experiencing anything new, we'd love to hear from you. Just give me a quick email. Okay.

So, and let that information get out to everybody, so. Yep. We could, we keep doing that. I'm going back. Of course. I'm just going back and forth here because I can.

So Victoria, as we get ready now for springtime and all the activities coming up here, what are some of the things that, on the chamber side of things you're looking at? So we are very excited about our golf outing that is going to be on Friday, June 12th.

We, yes, we are going to be over at Cedar Point Golf Course. So we are preparing for that. Our events committee is meeting every week to work on all the logistics for that. And that should be posted here pretty soon. So teams can start signing up.

So that's a great way to get out in the community in, I say, a fun interactive way, right? Because it gets fairly competitive. You can sign up your teams to go participate in the golf outing. It is an all day event. Lunch will be provided as well.

So right now we're working on the sponsorships for that. And yeah. We get that going on. And again, one of those things that's been around for quite a while. So I'd like to keep those traditions going. I would say it's one of the chamber favorites. Our members really love it.

I've already had so many members contact me about let me sign up my team. Well, they're, and they will. You have time. That's right. Make sure you do it right away. That's right, absolutely.

One of the things that did happen just recently was like the annual meeting or get together. It was a little different this year out at the Y camp. Yes, so we wanted to make it more of an interactive event. A place that was more relaxed.

We could be out in nature, commune with each other. We had everyone participating in the activities. I think it was the big draw this year. So there was a s'mores station. There was a climbing wall open. The archery range was open.

So it gave everyone an opportunity to connect in a more casual way outside of the office and really get to know each other. Because that's what being a chamber member is all about, is that support system that you have and those deep relationships that are built.

And how many of them had ever really been out there? I mean, to see everything that's available. I would say that most of them had not. So everyone was shocked about how amazing this Y camp is. My kids have been going there for years.

And so I was aware, but they were just blown away and they actually got to take tours of the grounds as well to see all of the offerings. Yeah, everything they've got available. It's a lot out there. So golf outing, coming up, get signed up for that.

Are we looking at some other things outside? Or are we just shifting our lot of focus going for Pufferbilly? We are getting ready for Pufferbilly. We've been meeting about every other week now. It's gonna be the 50th anniversary of Pufferbilly, which is gonna be huge.

We've already booked our entertainment. So there'll be more information on that. Once we have our official press release should be the end of April. Okay, coming soon. Coming soon. All right, we'll do that. Ollie, you have a couple of other things that are coming up.

Yeah, as we mentioned, the ribbon cuttings and the red coats visits will be stopping at the whistle stop on 421. And we have a new coffee shop down here, The Daily Boss. And she will be opening for 10 and we'll have a ribbon cutting for her on 428.

And then we, the Main Street crew will be attending the Main Street Iowa Awards, which are also celebrating their 40th anniversary where George Eckstein will be receiving a volunteerism award as well and could not be more proud of that.

And then our downtown boom cleanup, Saturday, May 9th, 9 to 12. Downtown cleanup, anyone can just sign up. Excuse me, you can just show up that day. But if you sign up, I'll have a t-shirt ready for you as well. And you can sign up through our website. We'll get going on that.

Get ready. Well, it is Earth Day, it's around the corner. We'll be ready for that too.

Pufferbilly, I did wanna ask Victoria about Pufferbilly because part of it is having an events person and we know Courtney had an opportunity to go into Main Street and she stepped up to be an executive director and congratulations to her.

But that does leave you looking for some events out. Absolutely. So we are gonna have a posting tomorrow. There will be an Indeed posting to fill our operations and communications manager position. That will be a full-time position.

So we are gonna be looking for candidates for that. People who have a passion for community, who have experience with office management, bookkeeping, invoicing, those sorts of things.

And also it's gonna be a face of the chamber because they're gonna be sitting up front so that when we have visits from chamber members or from the public, they're gonna be the first person that they see. Come right in the door and there they will.

Okay, so we'll be looking at that position. But your board, pretty excited about being able to move forward with it, I'm guessing. I'm very excited about being able to move forward with it.

I feel like I started and then I was like, oh my goodness, I lost my second in command, but we are so excited for her to be with Downtown Nevada. That's quite an accomplishment. Those are the challenges out there. And I think what, who else?

Oh, somebody else just got a new Main Street person too. Aims. Aims, yeah, that was good to say. Yeah, everybody's keeping busy. Lots of changes. Yeah, well, after so long, you keep working at it.

You have, coming back here, of course, one of the mainstays downtown in the summertime is Farmer's Market. Yes, Downtown Boone will be managing the Farmer's Market. But everything on the surface will look just the same.

You can sign up, the vendors sign up on Facebook through the Boone Farmer's Market site. We will be moving from 7th Street back to Story Street. So just mark your calendars, that Story Street will be closed on Thursdays for the Farmer's Market from, the market is three to six.

Okay. And the street closure happens right around there. So probably for that block in there, or will you be, could it be bigger? We hope to grow. Yeah. Yeah, we are in the process of scheduling the main, excuse me, the entertainment for the third Thursdays.

That's underway as well. And those have always been a bigger night, the third Thursdays. So looking forward to a great season. Well, we know that people are already gonna start asking, when is it coming back? The first Thursday in June. Give them an opportunity.

So first Thursday in June, on the 4th. Hey, all right. Looks like we might be here talking about it also. We couldn't be that very day. We might even mention it. Great timing, right? That's how it works.

So Victoria, one of the things, obviously, as the new executive director, and as you get everything filled out, you got these obligations with Pufferbilly Days and a few things like that going on.

But some other things that you're looking at, because you've got business experience, you've worked in other opportunities, helped in other places. What are you, you gotta have some ideas about it. Oh, absolutely. We're in development with a lot of different programs right now.

I definitely wanna be bringing back some after hours programming to the Boone County Chamber for business professionals to network, because I feel like that had kind of gone to the wayside.

Additionally, we are working on some different membership levels, especially geared towards entrepreneurs. So we are working on a program that would be a lower membership to get, to attract some new entrepreneurs to the area, and to help support them as they grow their business.

So me being a small business owner for the past eight years, that's something I'm very passionate about, to give businesses the resources to really jumpstart their business and make it successful and for the long haul.

So again, working on those opportunities for people to take advantage of that. It is, having been a small business owner and stuff, you know what you wanna do and how to do it, but again, starting to do that networking and getting together with others.

That's the challenge, isn't it? Absolutely, and having those resources available to you, I feel that I learned the most from other small business owners.

People who have been there, who are in their fifth year, sixth year, seventh year, eighth year of business, and can kind of help me avoid some pitfalls, things that I want to put my resources into, things that I don't need to put my resources into, and having that mentorship from someone who's already been around the block.

So, got them there, keep working at it too. Holly, some other things from the downtown boot, obviously, still, we have our confined area where you're working in a particular space, but did we have anybody step up on the challenge grant?

Do, is that, that is a statewide contest, really? Correct, correct. We did host an open house and had three interested parties stop in, and they individually have been checking the pre-application boxes. Going through that, so.

Yep, and then that will be a blind contest, if you will, with the challenge grant, only one application from each community can be put forward, so at the downtown boon level, we will pick the project that would move forward.

It's one of those where you do have, from the private side, they do need to be willing to be making a commitment, right? 100%, it's a match, yep. It's a big effort, so. We like that, that's one of those opportunities that are out there.

Absolutely, I feel so lucky to be in the same office space as Holly, because I feel like that's such a benefit for our chamber members, because I know what's going on with downtown Boone, they know what's going on with me, and we can really help lead them to make the most of these memberships and programs, so.

It is still one of those things that people would say, well, you're in the same building, it's the same.

No, it's not, because Victoria, you got the whole county that you're dealing with, and opportunities all over, and Holly, you've got a small, confined area here in downtown Boone, which is really what Main Street focuses on, those designated areas. Correct, correct.

And still overlap in a lot of things, too.

I know what I did before I missed out too much here, I did wanna find out, for Victoria, some of the things that are coming up, some of the things that you guys are putting out there, obviously, on the website, but do you use your, again, Facebook?

Facebook is gonna be our primary mode of communication, so if you're not following Boone County Chamber Facebook, please do so, like and follow, because that's where most of our information will be coming out, and we also have, for our members, we have a newsletter that comes out regularly, but as far as for the public, Facebook is going to be our number one mode of communication.

Again, that digital. Yep, that's right, absolutely. So, and again, it's one of the more convenient ways, and they can make contact back with you that way as well. Correct, absolutely. Or, you can go in and get your chamber box. That's right, come on in, come on in.

I would love to meet you. You do. I do appreciate you both for coming over, and talking a little bit about everything that's coming up. The most recent thing, of course, are the things that are coming up. We have the golf outing, so be on the lookout for that.

Businesses, getting ready to get your teams together for that, coming in June. And Holly, we've got the cleanup, but you've got, what, ribbon cuttings and?

Couple ribbon cuttings, and then we did not touch on crazy days, but that will be July 25th, and we've got plenty of time to talk about that. But be prepared for something big. Oh, okay. Oh, we love that. We'll go for it too.

I do appreciate you taking time to come in and let us know what's going on. Thanks so much. Thank you, Jim. Thank you.