SignalsAZ.com Prescott News Podcast - Steve Bracety, President & CEO, Takes Charge at Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Send us a text and chime in!Steve Bracety, the newly appointed President and CEO of the Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce, is eager to build upon the foundation laid by his predecessor, Marnie Uhl. Bracety shared his vision for the chamber, emphasizing its role as a vital resource for small businesses and startups in the area. With a focus on providing comprehensive support, the chamber will assist local businesses in critical areas such as human resources, financial planning, and marketing. His goal is to ensure that businesses in Prescott Valley have the tools and resources they need to thrive in today’s competitive environment.In addition to these efforts, Bracety highlighted several exciting upcoming events designed to engage the community and promote local businesses. Notably, the International Women’s Business Luncheon will spotlight women entrepreneurs, while Team Up to Clean Up aims to beautify the area. Prescott Valley Days, a major celebration marking 50 years of community achievements, is also on the horizon. To further support business growth, the chamber will continue offering its Business Academy, which provides educational seminars on valuable topics like social media marketing and public speaking. Through these initiatives, Bracety plans to foster an environment where local businesses can succeed and grow, ensuring the continued success of the Prescott Valley community.Check out the CAST11.com Website at: https://CAST11.com Follow the CAST11 Podcast Network on Facebook at: https://Facebook.com/CAST11AZFollow Cast11 Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/cast11_podcast_network

Steve Bersetti, President CEO, Chamber, Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce. Welcome. Thank you very much. Finally got you in here. Yes. I've known you for a long time. You became, I believe, the gym of the resort over there back. 2005.

2005. I moved here in 2004. Okay. We've come full circle. Now you're in the studios here at Talking Glass Media and want to talk about all the things that you're doing as the new leadership. Sure. or the town of Prescott Valley in the chamber.

So welcome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. So what's up first? What do you want to talk about? What is going to be different and what are you going to do different at the Chamber of Commerce and PV and why?

Good questions. You know, quite frankly, as you know, following Marnie Yule is position. And it's tough to replace the legend. So I don't see it as a replacement per se. I like to think of as carrying on her legacy. She had built this chamber out from scratch, great reputation, tremendous leader and advocate for Prescott Valley. My role is to make sure the ship still sails on, so to speak.

We still do our signature events. But the way I see the chamber more so in the future as being that business resource for small businesses. Specifically, a lot of these new startups, new businesses, small companies, they don't have the corporate structure. They're missing that human resource component, that financial planning aspect. They had that great idea for business, but now it's trying to make it be sustainable. And that's where I feel that we come in as Chamber of Commerce.

Okay. We see a lot of businesses that come to us for marketing or advertising with TGF. maybe it's a fragmented business plan maybe there's not a budget or maybe there's not a marketing budget but there's a lot of passionate and a great idea which i love i love catching companies at that stage right because i remember it when i moved here we could help develop that basically here's a question for you so we had in robin bryce from young by college okay and robin One of her roles over there was hired on to go from department to department essentially and assess what these folks were doing in each department and help them with some of the

business AI tools that they could implement to maybe knock out some of those mundane tasks to make them more efficient. Do you see a role where some of the chamber is like that AI guru for you to help small businesses with, hey, you might want to look at this procedure. You might want to look at this app because technology, it seems, I jokingly said it the other day, you could be talking about walking your dog and AI comes up. Absolutely. You know, actually, I use chat GBT and both chat GBT and Gemini. And that helps me a lot with all my newsletters, all my news articles, and I can be a resource for that skill. Right. So there's all kinds of things.

coming up. Even logo development. I mean, you'd be surprised what you can do on chat GBT right now. It's almost everything. We use probably four or five programs right now. Chats one. Notebook L.M. by Google. Is a great one. Yep. We use OPAI clip for our video. Microsoft has their version, too. I think it's like Office Select or something like that. Right. Yeah. A lot of scheduling apps, a lot of marketing apps. So that's going to be interesting how that. that all kind of develops. The technology is clearly out there. And honestly, you can get some good tutorials on YouTube.

Right. You still go back to some of the basics. Exactly. How to tie, tie. So what's next time for you coming around the corner? Well, immediately we have just this coming Friday, we have an international women's business luncheon over at Park Collective. And then on the heels of that, we have, you know,

we're known for a team out to clean up first weekend in May. And then PV days, Presby Valley days, on May 8th through 11th of this year. We love that. We're always usually a part of that down here. That's awesome. Anything different with PV days? Is that a little earlier? Is that always the same time?

I think it's a week earlier this year. And then kind of, you know, it's when graduation hits, Mother's Day weekend hits, you've got kind of shoehorn it in. Okay. This year, it'll be the same as last year. We're still having that one parking lot across from the event center. So we got that for another year. So we're good to go.

Okay, so team up to clean up. What's that again for people that may not be familiar? Just help with garbage, a huge shredder, basically. What's that? A huge shredder? Yeah, huge shredder. A huge shredder. Do you know when that's happening?

May 3rd. So team up to clean up happening May 3rd with more information to follow. And then you go to the PV. Is it PV Shamer? Prescue Valley Days. Prescott. Right. And the theme for this year is celebrating 50 years of heroes. Okay.

So come dressed up as your favorite hero. That could be anything from a superhero, Marvel or DC Comics, or your first responder or your teachers. Okay. Can I dress up like as MacArthur or something? MacArthur? MacArthur. Yeah, General McCartner. George, yeah. Okay. So what else is happening? What made you decide that you wanted to do this?

Because, you know, it's a very public position. You had sort of a public position before, but not like this. What made you, what was the impetus to take that step? You know, that's a good question. When Marty announced a retirement and we're kind of kicking around some candidates and potential replacements. And I looked at the skill sets of my current position at the Prescott Resort to what's needed at the Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce. A lot of it is people skill sets, communicating with the community at large, networking, development people, developing people, and being a business resource.

And given my background, I've seen the world change over the course of the last 20 years. You had the 9-11 and how business changed, the whole business model, especially in tourism. You had the Great Recession or the Great Reset, they call it. And then you had COVID. I mean, each, you know, touchpoint, you always learn something different about your business. And I figured if I could take that knowledge that I accumulated because, you know what, I had to pay rent, I had to make payroll, I had to buy supplies, cost of goods. cost of goods, utilities, all of us, you know, things you need to operate a business itself. Right. I've done it. I've managed or was proud of it. We were able to cash flow during the pandemic.

We kept our doors open where a lot of hotels were closing up. And there's things, lessons learned, you know, good, good lessons, bad lessons. It's still that knowledge that I feel like I can impact or impart upon the business community. What would you tell a new business that wants to come here in Presby Valley and open up shop? Sign your own checks. Okay. Cash is king. You know, it's one thing, you know, you'll get, you'll find out quickly, you'll get bill for like people that you owe, but always be close with people that owe you money. Okay.

Because one thing I learned during the pandemic, you got to know your accounts receivables. You need to know who owes your money and you got to make sure that they're still solvent to pay you. Okay. Yeah. All right. Cash is king. Cash is king in a world that's more and more debit. Yeah.

Exactly. But cash is still king. Gotcha. What else? What else is going on? Are you still in the planning stages with events for the year? You mentioned PV days and team up to clean up. We have them all penciled out.

We have the dates established. And again, you know, we'll promote them as we come closer to those respective timeframes. But, yeah, it's a working progress. I mean, there's never a slow moment at the Chamber of Commerce. We always have something going on. Even when you think, like, all right, January, February March, you know, it's kind of quiet. Well, no, we have our business academy going on right now where we have 11 students right now from various businesses throughout the town. and we're teaching those skill sets like marketing, like finance, how to do a P&L,

how to read a P&L statement and create a P&L statement for your business, you know, human resource, the proper way to hire on board, coach counsel, develop. And ultimately, if you have to terminate, you know, the right way to terminate someone, because that could get into a legal quandary if it's not done correctly. A little bit. That sounds really interesting me is developing. a series of programs that educate small business. Things are changing so rapidly.

Laws change, right? Right. And that's something maybe you should do in a podcast. Your people and your members can go to those places to listen at a later date if they want to pull that information from the website. It's good point. Right now we do live in-person education seminars for next eight weeks. And actually we're on week six right now.

What's up next? Our business academy. We have social media marketing next. Okay. Yeah. That's coming up. A lot of automation there. A lot of automation.

Also public speaking we covered too. We had somewhere from Toastmasters recently come in and do a presentation on how to speak in front of a captive audience. Okay. So you got kind of a PV chamber university going, if you will? Pretty much. Yeah. We call it our business academy, but it's the same concept for sure.

All right. Well, we definitely want to get those on a podcast. Oh, yeah. A future date. Well, Steve Presbyt, President, CEO, Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerceists or anything else that we haven't covered? You got a big list there? No, these are just my events coming up. You know, we pretty much touched on all that.

You know, to answer your question earlier, you know, why the PV Chamber? I serve on the Yavapai College District Governing Board representing this District 5. And it's just, I love the community. I live here. I've been here for 20 years, so I'm not going anywhere. Right. You know, this is home. Exactly.

Same here. Well, we appreciate you coming in. Will you come in on a regular basis as a guest host to talk about events? Absolutely. Yeah, I love to do that. Fantastic. Steve Presetti, President, Senior President of Valley Chamber of Commerce. Welcome.

And I look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks, Guy. All right, buddy. Take care.