Back-to-school season arrives at the Gateway Chamber

Back-to-school season has a way of catching up with you, even when your own school days are long behind you.

The air shifts. Calendars fill up. Store aisles suddenly smell like pencil shavings and fruit-scented markers. That old first-day feeling returns: Summer is over, and it is time to get serious again.

Fall at the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce feels much the same. The pace changes almost overnight. Events get closer together, deadlines get shorter, and our office starts to feel a little like the first week of freshman year: exciting, slightly chaotic and powered by a lot of coffee.

Fittingly, our fall begins with a return to the classroom.

The Gateway Innovation Incubator Program, an initiative of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber Foundation, began its next session on Sept. 15. The schedule includes six core sessions and four in-person workshops, all held on Tuesdays from 6 to 7:30 p.m., and concludes on Nov. 17.

This is not school for school’s sake. The Incubator is built around the questions that keep new business owners up at night. Who is my customer? What should I charge? Am I actually making money? And how do I market the business without spending every waking hour online?

Participants tackle those questions through lessons on business purpose, customer discovery, branding, pricing, payroll, marketing and pitching. Virtual, instructor-led sessions are followed by in-person workshops where participants bring their assignments, ask questions and work directly with the instructor team. Every lesson is applied to the business they are actually trying to build.

The final sessions move fully in person, giving participants time to polish their pitches, map out their next 90 days, and celebrate how far they have come. It is like going back to school, only with smaller classes and homework you will use in real life. Don’t tell any of my former teachers I said that.

Applications are still open. The program costs $200 and includes a one-year Basic Connect Level membership with the chamber. Current chamber members receive 50 percent off, plus an additional complimentary year of membership beginning when their current term expires.

Six days later, the foundation will trade notebooks for scorecards at its annual golf outing on Monday, Sept. 21, at Hollow Brook Golf Club in Cortlandt.

Registration begins at 10 a.m., followed by lunch at 10:30 a.m. and an 11:30 a.m. shotgun start. The day concludes with networking, an auction, and dinner beginning at 4:30 p.m. Individual registration is $275, while a foursome is $1,000. For anyone whose golf game is better left untested, dinner-only tickets are available for $95.

The outing is fun, but the reason behind it matters. Proceeds help seed the foundation’s scholarships for local graduating seniors, including students pursuing technical and trade certifications. A day away from your desk can help someone else take an important step toward a career. It is hard to feel guilty about skipping a Monday meeting for that.

Then, on Sunday, Oct. 11, the classroom and golf course give way to vendor booths, families, and rows of cars when the Fall Festival & Car Show rolls into Jefferson Valley Mall from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Vendor registration is open, with 10-by-10-foot spaces priced at $100 for chamber members, $125 for nonmembers, and $75 for nonprofits. Double spaces and sponsorship opportunities are also available.

And those are only the headliners. Our committees are filling the calendar with their own programs, giving members even more ways to meet one another, share what they do, and get involved. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at @hvgchamber and on Facebook at Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce to stay up to date on all the things happening at the chamber.

The incubator, golf outing and fall festival may look very different on paper, but all three do the same basic thing: give people a reason to learn, meet one another, and invest in the place where they live and work.

So, yes, the back-to-school feeling is real. Around here, it simply comes with less homework and more networking events.

Carole Voisey is the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce executive director.