Chamber highlights businesses with videos

Grace Mendez interviews American Family Insurance agent Daisy Padilla for the first episode of the Liberal Chamber of Commerce’s new “Discovering Liberal With Grace” video series. The series’s goal is to spread the word about new businesses in town. Courtesy screenshotELLY GRIMM • Leader & Times

Many businesses make Liberal their home, and the Liberal Chamber of Commerce works hard to make sure people know about them. 

Most recently, those efforts have included the inception of a new Facebook video series, “Discovering Liberal With Grace.” As Liberal Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Rozelle Webb tells it, the inspiration was right at the Chamber’s fingertips. 

“Our Chamber of Commerce Board has a Community Connections Committee so we can keep in touch with our Chamber members and do what we can to spread the word and give them more recognition,” Webb said. “That committee began a Community Connection video series, and we've done about 30 of those so far. The Community Connection Team is Enrique Franz and McKensie Hood and then we decided to expand that to another team to do the 'Discovering Liberal With Grace' videos, and that is comprised of Grace Mendez and Tyler Parks. With the 'Discovering Liberal With Grace,' they focus on newer businesses and interview those owners and talk to them. The Community Connections Team takes the videos of the ribbon-cuttings and also interview some of the businesses in Liberal that have been around longer. Videos on Facebook are very popular, and we have some people on the Chamber of Commerce Board who are good at taking video, so we thought it would be a good idea to produce some videos for our Chamber members and give them an extra boost and help give them some recognition and enhance their visibility. The main goal is to put a spotlight on local businesses and give them extra exposure to the community and the surrounding area.”

Mendez said she was excited to be asked to help with the new series. 

“Just like anything new in life I was nervous yet excited to step out of my comfort zone. I am incredibly honored and grateful to Rozelle and to the Liberal Chamber of Commerce for even considering me for such a role as this. I am truly delighted!” Mendez said. “'Discovering Liberal with Grace' is presented by the Liberal Chamber of Commerce and is all about introducing a new business to the folks of Liberal who may have an interest in such a business or the services they have to offer. The people of Liberal may not know we have these new businesses or even know about all the services we have here. This will assist with getting that information out to the people and hopefully boost shopping local. It’s a great opportunity for the new businesses to advertise and promote what they have here in Liberal.”

“With the 'Discovering Liberal With Grace' series, we've only just premiered it recently and we've done one video with Daisy Padilla and her American Family Insurance office, and we were really happy with how that turned out,” Webb said. “It takes longer to put together those videos since there's more production values that go into them. That was our first one, but we're ready to go and ready to talk to more business owners. We know who we'll be talking to next, and we're excited to keep going with it. Also with the 'Discovering Liberal With Grace' series, we plan to do the videos of new businesses' ribbon-cuttings, and we're excited for people to get to know those business owners better. And any new businesses that join the Chamber, we'll be happy to talk to them as well. If any business wants us to talk to them, we'd love for them to get in touch with us at the Chamber of Commerce office at (620) 624-3855, and we'll be happy to set up a time to talk with you, whether it's the Community Connections Team or the 'Discovering Liberal With Grace' team. We want people to see these videos and ultimately decide to be part of this themselves.”

The videos will be available on the Liberal Chamber of Commerce Facebook page, and both Mendez and Webb offered encouragement for people to tune in when new videos are posted by the Community Connections Team and the 'Discovering Liberal With Grace' team.

“I would just encourage people to keep an eye on the Liberal Chamber of Commerce Facebook page, that's where these videos will all be available,” Webb said. “The videos are all really well done and share a lot of good information, and you'll actually get to meet the owners of these awesome businesses and get to know them and what they have in their business and all of that.”

“I would like to encourage and invite our youth to get involved and engaged in serving their community to make a difference and an even better place to call home,” Mendez said.