The Cedar Valley Historical Society has a meeting tomorrow night downstairs in the Mess Hall area of the Grout Museum of History and Science in Waterloo, and the guest speaker is author and historian Waterloo native Mike Chapman.
Our friend Mr. Chapman joins us live on the news line from his home base in Newton.
Mike, good morning.
How are you?
Hi, Jeff.
Doing good.
My wife, Beverly, and I are trying to hang in here as best we can.
Well, we we all we all face that battle to be sure and I want to give people the information the social hour and light refreshments tomorrow night at six They'll have Cedar Valley Historical Society business meeting at seven and then you Mike Chapman will be speaking What's the topic for tomorrow night in Waterloo?
Well, it's it's a group that is
It's a nonprofit corporation and their purpose is to promote and preserve and perpetuate an interest in state and local history.
And as you know, Jeff, that's right up my ballpark.
I just love talking about history, especially if it's Waterloo and the state of Iowa.
And even I go over to Troy in the Trojan Wars, you well know.
And I wrote a book with Don Huff called Stars and Waterloo and its memories of national figures, movie actors, entertainments,
entertainers and sports legend who actually came to Waterloo, and you and Jeff Frost wrote the forwards.
And the book is sold out, but we'll have a few copies of those with us too.
And it's just amazing, Jeff, that a number of people came to Waterloo that people don't know about.
I graduated from East High School, and Amelia Earhart gave a speech there about nine months before she took off on her fatal flight.
And I never do it all the time.
I was going to Waterloo.
So it was just, I discovered those kind of stories and I just wanted to share them with people.
Well, and what's interesting about that book that you wrote, because again, Waterloo was such a hub.
And as I recall, and correct me if I'm wrong, but
Amelia Earhart, when she was in town, stayed at the President Hotel and wrote letters to people on President Hotel Stationary, spreading the name Waterloo all across the country.
I mean, it's fascinating when you get deep into the topic.
What led you to work with Don Huff and write the book, Stars in Waterloo?
Well, Don, as you know, was the terrific wrestling coach at West High School.
Following in the footsteps of Bob Siddons and Don was a two-time state wrestling champ for coach Siddons and then came back as an assistant coach There and then became the head coach and when I created the International Wrestling Museum in Newton and then we moved it to Waterloo and called it the Dan Gable Museum Don would come in and we'd chat many many times and
He said, you know, Mike, I've been wanting to write this book about Bob Siddons.
And would you be interested in helping me since you've already written about 30 books at that time?
And I said, I'd love to.
And Don and I just formed a great working relationship and a great friendship.
And then we decided to work on another book together.
And he loves Waterloo history, too, just like me.
And so it just kind of evolved into this book, Stars and Waterloo.
and it's just amazing the things we uncovered.
And I'll talk about that and Fred Becker too, another amazing story.
And by the way, Don and his son Dan, who just retired as the athletic director of all public schools in Waterloo are gonna come tomorrow night too, just to hang out and support this event.
So it's just gonna be a great time tomorrow.
Cedar Valley Historical Society.
Grout Museum, and it's in the mess hall.
You know where this is at as part of the Veterans Museum, the Grout Museum.
503 South Street in Waterloo.
It starts out with a social hour and light refreshments at six.
They'll take care of some business at seven, and then Mike Chapman will speak.
Now there is a small admission charge to defray costs $3.
I mean, come on now, $3 to get in for this great program.
And if you'd like, you could purchase a membership.
to the Cedar Valley Historical Society, the non-profit group, $7 for individuals, $12 for families, and again, Mike Chapman is the speaker tomorrow night in downtown Waterloo.
33 books now, right?
That's the scorecard for books authored by Mike Chapman.
As you look at them lined up on the shelf,
What's the one that to this day you look at and it causes you to kind of pull it off the shelf and thumb through it again?
Notice I didn't say what's your favorite of the 33 that's like choosing between your children and I know better than to ask that but What book when you see it on your own shelf do you pull it out and and page through?
Well, this probably sounds pretty self-serving, but I have to say it.
Yes,
I wrote a book called a journey reflections on 50 years of writing and
wrestling, weightlifting and heroes.
And Jeff, it starts out with me in Waterloo, Iowa and the impact that city had on me.
And starting on this long journalistic career that took me to six newspapers and eight different in six different states.
And it's just the people I met.
Muhammad Ali, Ronald Reagan, Robert Redford, four movie tarzins, Olympic champions, NFL football players.
It's just been an amazing ride.
And journalism opened the doors to all these opportunities.
And that's one of the things that I think I'm most excited about.
And so the book, it's not about me.
It's about the opportunities that I had.
and you know I've always been a fan of Achilles and the Trojan War and when the movie Troy came out in 2004 with Brad Pitt playing Achilles I had just written a book about the real Achilles and my son Jason and I flew to Istanbul and then took a eight-hour bus ride to the site of ancient Troy and I spent four days walking through Troy and I'm gonna tell this group tomorrow night
an incredible story that whenever I tell people about what happened to us at Troy, they gasp, they can hardly believe it.
And I'm also going to have a couple other items there.
You know, I wrote the book Lowell Park
and
that's out in Hollywood right now.
In fact, I just talked to my agent two days ago.
He's got a good lead on a company that wants to, that has shown interest in making it.
And it's about Ronald Reagan as a lifeguard in Dixon, Illinois in 1932.
And he was there 100 years after Abe Lincoln at age 22 fought in the Black Hawk Wars in the very same location.
So there's just lots of stuff.
We're going to have a lot of items there for people to look at.
You know, I was on Antiques Roadshow last year with incredible letter.
Ronald Reagan wrote me, hand wrote me, and we're going to have that there too.
So, and we'll have some books for sale.
not a lot, but if people looking for Christmas gifts with a local historical angle, we'll have some books there too.
And if you cannot make it tomorrow night, well first of all change your schedule.
So you can make it, but if you cannot make it and you're interested in some of the work that Mike Chapman has produced over time, including that fine memoir, a journey, you can either go to Mike dash Chapman.com.
That's his website.
And there are links right there to a number of the books.
Mike dash Chapman.com.
We have some of his books as well at totally Iowa.com.
Mr. Chapman will be at the Cedar Valley Historical Society meeting tomorrow night, the Grout Museum in Waterloo, social hour at six business.
and then the guest speaker at seven, three dollars is the admission charge and a number of items available.
You have told some of these stories many times, hundreds of times, if not thousands of times.
And I think I know the answer to this, but I have to ask anyway.
I bet you just don't get tired of telling some of these stories because the story may be the same to Mike Chapman, but the audience is different every time, right?
That's a great point Jeff and I know you're a very accomplished speaker and travel the state to give talks and it's exciting to see the reactions on the faces of the people that you're talking to because So much of this is brand new to them.
You mean Audie Murphy was in Waterloo You mean Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill were in Waterloo.
You mean Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, eight presidents
An astronaut who walked on the moon was actually walking through the streets of Waterloo.
Dr. Martin Luther King was there, Johnny Cass, Bob Hope.
Yes, and so when you start telling people, and of course my Fred Becker story, might be my favorite story of all.
I don't know if you want me to go into that.
Why don't you?
Because again, it gives people, first of all, it's a tremendous story, but it also shows the power
of history and how it can literally change the course of contemporary actions.
Please do tell the Fred Becker story.
Yeah, Jeff, that's such a great point.
So I went to East Waterloo, graduated in 1961, and I was on the football team.
And I didn't know anything about Fred Becker.
Then years later, I've become sports editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and I'm covering Iowa football.
And one day, I'm walking past the front of East High, and I see this plaque up by the flagpole, and I walk up.
It says, in memory of our classmates who gave their lives in World War I, and I'm looking at this, and the first name is Lieutenant Fred Becker.
And I say to myself, well, that's the same name of the first All-American football player in the history of the University of Iowa.
It couldn't possibly be the same Fred Becker, or I would have heard about him.
Certainly somebody at East High would have talked about him.
So I do my research.
Fred Becker graduated from East High in 1916 as a sophomore at Iowa.
He becomes first team All-American football player.
A year and a half later, he's charging up a hill in France as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps.
and his shot and killed.
They bring his body back to Waterloo.
They did that with a lot of soldiers after World War I. And in 1920, he's buried in Fairview Cemetery there in Waterloo.
5,000 people showed up for the funeral.
It was the largest crowd in Waterloo history at that point.
And then Jeff, he's completely forgotten.
Well, my wife and I had started a magazine called Iowa History Journal.
Michael Swanger now owns it and publisher and doing a great job and you wrote for us and you write for Michael.
And we put Fred Becker on the cover of a magazine and said, Fred Becker, Iowa's forgotten all American and Patriots.
That exploded the Fred Becker story all over the state.
Jim Zabel had me on, WHO to talk about it.
Excuse me.
You had me on, all kinds of people want to talk about it.
The University of Iowa called me up and said, you know, he's not even in our Hall of Fame.
They inducted him into the Hall of Fame.
They couldn't find any living relatives, so they asked me to accept on his behalf in Kenick Stadium in front of 65,000 fans.
Then East High called me up and said, he's not even in our Hall of Fame.
And they put him in their East High Hall of Fame.
And then Don Huff calls me up one day and says, hey, Mike, they're building a new school in Waterloo and they're looking for names.
Any suggestions with a big smile?
And so I showed up and gave a emotional pitch at the board of education meeting.
I said, there are heroes in life.
There's heroes in sports.
And then there's heroes who transcend sports.
Fred Becker is one of those.
He was extremely popular at East High.
He was president of the senior class.
He became an All-American.
He gave his life for the good of the country.
And he's buried here in Waterloo.
What better example for young people?
They named the new school Fred Becker Elementary.
And they asked me to be the guest speaker at the Grand Opening.
So that's the story, I think, that touches me the most of all the stories.
that I've been involved with Jeff.
There are so many great stories that Mike Chapman has told over time.
His is a pretty good story as well, and you can hear all about it.
Mr. Chapman is the guest speaker at the Cedar Valley Historical Society meeting tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 27th, social hour at six, business, and then the guest speaker at seven.
It's in the mess hall, that great facility within the Grout Museum, and it's only $3 to get in, and you can hear Mr. Chapman talk about all manner of topics like this, and there will be a
few items available for sale.
Mike-chapman.com, his website, totallyiowa.com, his books are available at both locations.
I cannot tell you how good it is to talk to you always on the radio, but when I know you're coming to town to give a talk like this, the audience is going to enjoy it greatly.
Safe travels, hope you have a wonderful time tomorrow night, and we'll connect again sooner than later, my friend.
Jeff, and I want to thank you for all you do for working hard to keep history alive in the Waterloo area in the state of Iowa.
So we're on the same mission, my friend.
Absolutely.
Thank you kindly, sir.
Take good care.
I will.
Thanks again, Jeff.
All right.
He's Mike Chapman, the Waterloo native author historian, and he is in Waterloo tomorrow night, Cedar Valley Historical Society.
And again, if you'd like all the details, go to his website, mike-chapman.com.
Book's available there as well.
It's at totallyiowa.com.
And Mr. Chapman joined us live on the news line on News Talk 1540KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.
KXEL News Time now is a quarter past nine.
This is KXEL Live and Local.
Good morning.
I'm Jeff Stein.
I am pleased to welcome now on the news line Angela McCartle.
Ms.
McCartle is the former chair of the Libertarian National Committee and chair of the Mises Caucus and she recently wrote a piece on humanevents.com
about Republicans winning in the midterms, but they've got to pay attention to a few things first.
Angela McCartle, good morning and thank you for the time.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
Tell us about your background a little bit that I think would be helpful for the audience to know.
You've been politically active for some time.
Absolutely.
I ran for Congress in California's 34th district a couple of times.
It's a district that is so blue.
It's red.
They have
communist marches uh... i've done some a lot of coalition work actually i spearheaded this event called rescue the republic where we brought together bobby kennedy tolsey gabard uh... and a bunch of president trump's like most ardent supporters like jack the sobeck uh... right before the twenty twenty four election while i was chair of the national libertarian party and uh... you know most famously or infamously i invited president trump to speak at the national libertarian party
convention in 2024.
So I'm just really passionate about issue coalitions and bringing people together in order to advance liberty.
So here we are a week away from the general election.
What is the path to victory for Republicans?
And again, I note a recent piece you wrote in humanevents.com.
Sure.
Well, you know, they've been working really hard to strengthen their own base.
And, unfortunately, the really broad coalition that they built in 2024 seems to have fallen apart.
I think they really need to regain libertarian support in order to have a stronger turnout in the polls, especially in these, you know, not just swing states, but swing elections, like in Pakistan, you know, some of the really critical Senate races.
And I think the easiest thing to do is to pardon some of these libertarian
Prisoners of war everybody's very upset about you know all the libertarians are upset about the Iran war the Epstein files Thomas Massey There's out of prison.
I think it's like the low-hanging fruit and an even something they can do without you know disrupting
other plans and things that they have
so what is the why does something that might seem common sense why is that not getting accomplished and by the way i realize i just use the phrase common sense with relation to american politics in 2026 and that may be a bit of a disconnect sad sad to say
right well i know that they've got a lot on their plate you know we're a small chunk of the coalition we don't get to be first priority all the time you know there's been
a lot of unfounded and unfair accusations about the president's pardon process.
You know, maybe that's playing into it.
I'm not really sure.
But I know that they're just very busy, you know, kind of collecting their own votes at this point.
Now, I want to talk about the Libertarian Party effort broadly.
And the Libertarian Party had received recognition as an official party for ballot purposes in Iowa a few years ago.
It still has a strong presence here.
We have races, for example, U.S.
Senate in Iowa.
Republican Democrat, Libertarian.
Northeast Iowa's second district, an open seat Republican Democrat, independent Libertarian.
Now obviously the Republicans and the Democrats are suggesting that folks don't give the Libertarian candidate much attention because they want to preserve the two-party system.
I assume you'd be in favor of folks having an open mind as they go to the voting booth.
Make the case.
Well, I think Thomas Lawn is a great candidate for Senate.
I believe he is an elected official at the local level.
He's professional and he's got some experience.
I do generally urge people in really close races across the country and the Senate specifically to vote Republican.
But I think Thomas Lawn is a
is a fantastic candidate, and I anticipate that libertarians in Iowa are going to support him.
And again, he is a county attorney, the first libertarian to be elected to office in the state of Iowa.
I want to shift gears now as we continue with Angela Cardle.
There was another piece that you wrote recently, clearworld.com, and this has to do with artificial intelligence.
And whether you call it artificial intelligence, smart intelligence, et cetera, it has been posited that we have to, we being the United States have to play ball here or else China will beat us to it.
And that would be a bad thing.
But you've posited that American taxpayers are already involved in essence on both sides.
We're being encouraged to support it in this country.
But we're supporting the Chinese as well, according to your piece.
Give me some insight on that if you'd be so kind.
Yeah, it's really frustrating.
As a libertarian, I'm very anti-regulation.
I would just prefer for individuals and businesses to essentially behave themselves so that we don't have to have aggressive regulation, crackdown from the federal government on emerging technologies like AI.
And unfortunately, you know, there are AI companies who are starting to
sort of double dip, you know, working with our federal government while also working with businesses in China.
I think if they were manufacturing McDonald's toys, sporting equipment, you know, widgets of whatever kind, it wouldn't be such a big deal.
People do that all the time.
But if you have sensitive government contracts and your servers are, you know, sharing information back and forth with Chinese companies that work locked up with the government, it seems like a really stupid idea.
It's inviting like a national security issue and then all the an aggressive regulatory crackdown that is extremely stifling to innovation startups and people who can't, you know, pay to play around it.
Here in Iowa have been very aware of the Chinese theft of intellectual property.
This dates back a period of decades where folks were criminally charged and convicted for trying to steal secrets from a seed hybrid company in Des Moines.
These were Chinese folks who, again, from the inside, were pilfering the state secrets or the intellectual property secrets and sending it back to their home country.
So this is not a new issue, but it's gotten even worse when you consider the scope of artificial intelligence, correct?
I mean, again, everything is just magnified now, then it might have been in a more, shall we say, quaint era.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a real issue.
Culturally, Chinese businesses, maybe the Chinese people at large, I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, but they don't really respect international intellectual property rules.
That's something that businesses in America need to work around.
You have to be aware that if you're going to work with Chinese companies, if you're going to do this or that, you need to treat it more like a trade secret because they're not going to respect IP laws.
It's just it's an unfortunate reality.
I think that we have to start adapting to and then continue with it in a different way.
Now, you're concerned about it from a business standpoint.
However, now we're talking about national security.
What leads some of these American companies just to be so willing to be so cavalier with the accept of national security in this way, as you mentioned?
I mean, I think there's some hubris.
I think that people I don't think that they intentionally want to, you know, engage in
espionage or sabotage or anything of that nature, but they just probably think, hey, we can handle it.
We're secure.
We've got this.
We've got that.
You know, there's some computer viruses going around right now and PHP and other types of software coding over the last week that made, you know, people were estimated.
It's like 70% of certain websites were just totally corrupted.
People could steal your information.
You know, no one is invincible.
No one is invincible, especially when you're dealing with AI, which is like a new emerging technology.
It's sort of like evolving, quote-unquote.
You know, we have all kinds of examples of AI agents running rogue doing things that they were explicitly told not to do.
I would not be cavalier about combining that with, you know, national security interests.
It seems common sense.
But again, that's one of the things that is lacking and I wonder if some of it is because We're not playing the same game and here's what I mean by that Most Americans presume the best in others
And we can't imagine that the Chinese would do something to hurt their citizens or that the Chinese would do something that isn't honorable.
In other words, it's hard for honorable people to deal with dishonorable people because they don't understand the game that's being played.
I would respectfully suggest we've got an awful lot of that going on in this country right now.
Absolutely.
It's just a completely different value system.
And and it is you're right.
I think it's something that we're seeing happen in the United States as well where the value system is shifting You know rapidly maybe from generation to generation It's a little bit.
It's a little bit scary that people just don't They just don't value like security.
They don't have what would you say the same amount of respect for some of these like potentially dangerous situations and certainly in other countries
You know, they don't have, they don't share American values.
They don't really care if something terrible happens to us.
We're way over here.
You know, we're not, we're not their problem.
They just want to get ahead.
Angela McArdle is our guest live on News Talk 1540 KXEL for a few more minutes.
So on this topic of AI and again, the pieces at realclearworld.com under the headline American taxpayers shouldn't be funding Chinese AI advancement.
What should
First, the American government and second, American business could be two very different things.
What should they be doing to be properly responsive to the concerns that you raise?
I think any company who has a contract with the federal government and is also working closely with China, they need to have their contracts canceled.
They need to have their contracts canceled.
you know, perhaps it needs to be done publicly and it needs to be, if it's not a law, it needs to at least be an internal policy.
We do not work closely.
We do not share data with any AI company or emergent electronic technology company that is working closely with China.
It's just, you know, let's start there.
Even if we don't need a whole regulatory framework, can we just make it a policy that we don't ever do this?
It is
interesting as we see how dominoes start to fall.
Because again, I mentioned I began our conversation by talking about an election and how that turns out may affect a number of these different issues.
There seems, and I've got a little more age on me than you, it seems like we're at a time with more and more of these pivotal issues at the whim of how an election turns out.
And I don't know if I'm just misinterpreting, but it seems like there's an awful lot more at stake now than might have been the case 15 and 20 years ago.
I think that's true.
I don't think that we're necessarily just fighting over who will build the roads as the libertarians say.
We're fighting over what the makeup of the United States of America is going to look like.
We're fighting over essentially what the purpose of our country is.
A lot of people think that it's to quote-unquote spread democracy or entitlements across the globe.
They don't agree necessarily with the tenants of the American Declaration or the Constitution.
And that's, you know, maybe that's becoming more and more at stake every two to four years.
Ms.
McCartle, thank you so much for taking the time.
This was a fascinating conversation.
I hope you'll come back again.
Thank you.
All right.
Take good care now.
And Angela McCartle, former chair of the Libertarian Party and chair now of the Mises Caucus, which is a political action committee.
She joined us live on the news line on News Talk 1540 KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.
News Talk 1540 KXCL where Iowa comes to talk and good morning.
Next month, Groceder Valley is bringing together entrepreneurs for a small business summit.
Organizers say the one day event on November the 12th will connect small businesses to strengthen the regional economy.
Let's find out more from Erin Langenberg of Groceder Valley, director of events and engagement.
Thanks for being with us.
Thanks, Tim.
So this is a second annual event.
Always interesting to talk with folks who are organizing something when it comes back for a second year.
What worked well?
What were you excited to bring back?
What will be new that you found that people wanted to have in this second edition?
Yeah, so we are very excited to have it back for our second year.
The people that did attend last year said it was super helpful.
They loved all of the different breakout sessions, resource booths to help them find resources that they didn't even know existed.
So we're excited to bring that back.
We've got some new speakers, some returning speakers that people really loved.
And then we've got even more resource booths this year.
We really focused on making sure that we had the right people there.
to help support small businesses.
It seems like based on the way that this has been presented, looking ahead towards November 12th, that there's maybe some data that you're really looking forward to sharing and making that the crux with the Count Me In population study and information that's available from that.
Yes, so the population really helped us identify some things that needed to help the Cedar Valley grow as a whole So we really took all of our three big bets out of that population study Big Bet one is one vision one valley Big Bet two is innovation that competes and Big Bet three is careers We're staying for and every single one of those really touches on this small business summit So one vision one valley were really focused on bringing all of those communities together to work towards shared goals So we're bringing all
of those people in the room, letting them network and meet and help solve some of the same problems that maybe other people are dealing with.
And then innovation that competes.
So we're just really focused on helping those businesses grow, embrace new technology and find new opportunities.
And then careers we're staying for.
So this one's obviously huge, focused on creating career opportunities that engage people to really stay here in the Cedar Valley.
So if we can provide those resources, get them connected to the people
that they really want to be connected with, then they will more than likely help stay here in the Cedar Valley.
We're talking with Aaron Langenberg of Gross Cedar Valley, director of events and engagement about the small business summit that's coming up on November the 12th, Gross Cedar Valley organizing that event for a second consecutive year.
Why call those things that we just talked about, the One Vision, One Valley, and the innovation, the competes, and careers worth staying for?
Why term those?
big bets.
Yeah, so when we hired our consultant, that's kind of the terms that they used.
But they really focused on, you know, if you really want to change and make the impact of bringing that population back, then you need to make these big bets.
And these are the the things that are big enough that are going to create change.
Well, let's go over those just again, and just a little bit more detail.
One vision, one valley.
What's the vision, I suppose, would be the first question that people would want to know when they hear that phrase?
Yes.
So, Grocery Valley, we cover all six counties surrounding us.
So, a lot of times people think of...
just Waterloo Cedar Falls, but we really encompass all six counties.
So it's thinking of ways, you know, when we're recruiting businesses here or trying to put Cedar Valley on the map, if you Google Cedar Valley, people outside of this area have no idea what that is, right?
You think of Quad Cities and they know exactly where that's at, but Cedar Valley, we're really trying to get put on the map.
And so having that one vision, one valley, it's going to kind of help create that vision.
The region can point to different kinds of innovation in its past, but I don't think anyone would mistake Waterloo Cedar Falls and surrounding communities for Silicon Valley.
So what sort of innovation that competes are you thinking of and what's viable for this corner of Northeast Iowa?
Yeah, so like this past year, we brought back the Cedar Valley Manufacturers Association.
So manufacturing is huge in our area.
Just, you know, Hawkeye even below in our building has the robotics center.
So just thinking about all of these different innovation things that really make the Cedar Valley what we are and honing in on those to make them grow and be more efficient.
And the careers worth staying for part that that's an interesting tie-in with some of the study work that's been done because I know that part of that study for the count me in a population study looked at people who've actually left so Fascinating to know what it was that pulled them out of the Cedar Valley
Yes.
So I mean, you think of, I mean, I know back when I was young, it was like, okay, I'm ready to get out of here.
But I never did leave and I stayed because I just love the Cedar Valley and everything that it has to offer.
But we really have to highlight all of those things.
You know, people can work remote nowadays.
And so you can really go wherever you want to go.
So what is it going to be that pulls people here?
Like, let's highlight all of the amazing things and amenities that the Cedar Valley has.
I mean, we have the
number two water park in the country or world.
I don't know what it is.
So just highlighting those things, our trails and all of the cool things, our downtowns are incredible and just highlighting those things so that people know what it is like to live, work and play in the Cedar Valley and really attract them to want to stay here, want to raise families here, want to work here.
So that's really the goal with that one.
We're talking with Aaron Langenberg of Gross Cedar Valley ahead of the second annual Small Business Summit that will be held in Cedar Falls on Thursday, November the 12th.
Registration is underway right now.
And I know you mentioned that there are just a wide variety of different sessions and topics.
Is there one that you really would want to attend if you're a small business owner that you think would be particularly informative and useful?
Yeah, so we actually had a committee at the beginning.
We had speakers kind of submit their applications for what they wanted to speak about and we really have four tracks that we focus on.
So we really kind of dove really deep into what is it that the small businesses want and really.
took that into consideration when making sure that we got all of these speakers that we did.
But we have some that are really focused on marketing, which I personally love.
You think about a small business or even a company, maybe you're a mid-level manager or something, and you need something to take away.
You don't want to just go sit and listen to the...
Yay, let's have a great day.
You want to listen to, okay, I can go back to the office and put this into action right now.
And I think our marketing section really has those things, which is exciting.
We also have an HR and finance, which
to me that is not my cup of tea but for small businesses you know you're running your own business what are you might need help with those things and so having that on there we have challenges within small businesses as a whole track so there's four different speakers talking about you know some of those challenges that small businesses might face and then we also have people culture which is also just something that not just small businesses need but anybody within the working field.
Well again this summit is on Thursday November the 12th so it's a few weeks away still we're connecting with listeners they're hearing this on a Monday morning when they've got that whole list of things that they need to do in front of them for the week and
probably Monday morning more than any other day is a time where you could rationalize, hey, I've got all this stuff going on.
I don't have time to take a Thursday in a couple of weeks and do this and be away from my day.
Or Thursday, November the 12th seems a long, long way away when it really isn't.
So for those small business owners that I know are hearing this who are maybe rationalizing all the other things that they've got on their calendar ahead of this, make your best pitch, Erin, on why they should attend.
Yes, so we understand that it is a full day, but it's a full day packed with intentionality.
So it is getting away.
You have to step away from your business for...
time to time and work on your business instead of in your business.
So take the time to get away.
Really kind of take that 30,000 foot view and work on your business instead of in your business and it will pay off in the long run.
I know we are all busy.
It's crazy right now, especially on the last quarter of the year.
Everything's coming up right now, but I think it's so important to just be able to take that step back and work on your business for the day.
The registration deadline for this November 12th summit is coming up very quickly.
Just Erin, would you leave us with the registration details and timeline that remains?
Yes, so registration closes on Thursday, so it'll be 10 days before the event, just so we can get numbers and finalize and make sure that it's a great event for everybody.
have the link on grossedervalley.com.
It's hard to miss.
I'm pretty sure our marketing gal put it all over every single page.
So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me as well, Erin at grossedervalley.com, but you should be able to find it anywhere on the website.
And our Facebook has the event page as well.
Aaron Langenberg of Gros Cedar Valley Director of Events and Engagement looking ahead towards the second Small Business Summit coming up on November the 12th in Cedar Falls.
Aaron, thanks for being with us.
Thank you so
much.
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