What we CAN do to improve our community

The interplay of diverse types of people can spark innovation.

Do you want an innovative rural community? Creating more ethnic and religious diversity (etc.) would be ideal. But can we realistically recruit people to a boring town without jobs? Can we force them to join us?

They might choose to move here, after we reach critical mass of progress, but that would mean we had already solved the problem without them. They might come, however, after we prime the pump, using people we already have.

We can make the citizenry as diverse as we can, simply by first focusing on age diversity.

Start now, by convincing at least some youth to stay put and start micro-ventures after graduation, and by encouraging younger professionals to return to town after they have gone into the world and learned a skill.

Building the type of amenities that younger people like will help. 

The Lowest Common Denominator

To build excitement in your market, you need to do something remarkable and original.

Unfortunately, many companies (and especially media companies) struggle to create something original. So they resort to shock value.

Shocking people doesn't build, edify, or in any way make the world a better place. It does get people talking about you for a short time, and the short term has become our sole focus. Most organizations have given up on building long term value.

The market is full of Lindsay Lohans, doing egregious things just for attention. "Our product is lousy, so we'll keep you interested with prurient appeal." It creates a spark of interest that burns out fast, and puts you at the bottom of the rubbish heap even quicker.

Our advice: instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator, shoot for the stars. That will make you unique.

Rural-city Disparity

In the city, people have the opportunity to make use of all of their talents.

If my daughter is a sufficient singer, she can participate in the opera. I can hone my persuasion skills by competing for time in front of legislators or before boards. We can get noticed by talent gatekeepers. Most importantly, I am able to rub shoulders with other talented people. We encourage each other and share ideas, creating better ideas through our combined efforts.

And in the city, people see more possibilities, so they raise their aspirations.

In here the country, people might be just as smart, but we have fewer opportunities. We have fewer of everything except open spaces. So people are less likely to excel.

Obviously the lifestyle has many advantages. The air is clean, the nights are quiet, and less energy is wasted by various annoyances.

But in terms of personal development, the lifestyle does have limits. Can we change this? Can we replicate the city advantages while keeping life simple?

The answer is: maybe. We might be able to, but we won't. It takes too long, we don't have the will, and one or two "show stoppers" in a community can scuttle any progress.

But let's keep talking anyway.

The U-Turn

In Japan, the term "U-turn" is applied to people returning from the "big city" to their hometowns, and is involved with the career concerns involved with such a move.

When you decide to leave the cube farm (slang for a floor full of cubicles) and move to a place with real farms, you need to find a livelihood.

Here at the Nauvoo Commuter, we encourage self-employment in that situation, as we do for most rural dwellers. But your plan of attack will need to be different from someone who has already lives in your new neighborhood.

 - you won't have as many connections, your local personal network will be 
   smaller
 - you will lack a knowledge of the "lay of the land" that an already local will have
 - your cost of set up will be more, as moving and changing lifestyles have costs

...but:
 - you will bring creativity to the situation; you've seen other options for how to 
   solve problems


If you persevere, you'll do fine. 

Urban Poor vs. Rural Poor

When Americans think of economic development, they are generally envisioning the need to eliminate inner-city poverty. But isn't the problem of rural poverty just as important? 

The Rural poor deserve revolving loan funds, efforts to encourage banks to lend to urban residents, microcredit structures, and charitable help-them-to-help-themselves organizations just as much as the urban poor do. 

That is today's social comment. Dissenting arguments are welcome. 

Accentuate the positive, OR eliminate the negative

Annoyance bears consideration. If you could eliminate one annoyance in your life (with the wave a magic wand), what would it be?

The question is not rhetorical. Please answer. Write it down.

Now, does a business exist that could take it away for you? Could such an industry be created? Could YOU create it?

Accentuating positive aspects of people's lives is admirable. But eliminating their difficulties might be a faster route to success.

And your personal annoyances might be common to others living in the farm belt.

Downgrading and Upgrading

Air travel used to be glorious. People dressed up and dressed their children in "Sunday best" for a flight. It felt special.

Bus travel, on the other hand, was for normal people.

Then deregulation changed the travel industry. The riff-raff like me de-boarded buses and started flying. Airports now feel like Greyhound terminals used to feel. Air travel is for normal people, and a bus terminal is entered only if absolutely unavoidable. You avoid making sudden moves and you never make eye contact with people.

Moving downmarket is easy and profitable. A brand can take years to develop exclusivity, then suddenly Kmart carries it and everyone buys it (for a short time.)

Moving upmarket is more difficult, but does happen. Toyota was for people who needed a car but never needed to drive up hill. But the marketing people delivered a consistent message for give decades: "you made the right decision when you bought a Toyota." People like to be told they didn't do something dumb, so gradually everyone started believing them.

The takeaway: Toyota established their brand just in time. Kia, Hyundai, and a host of other companies would have killed them by now if Toyota had not worked so hard in their marketing. You need to build a brand, go upmarket, differentiate yourself rather than digging in to survive. 

Branding

Today, I will be discussing branding in my class. Here are some points I may or may not bring up.

Branding requires nurturing. It takes a long time to build a brand, constantly nurturing it.

A brand represents a value or values. Want a universal, huge brand? Tie it to important values, and make the connection between the two believable and tight. You can represent a lesser important value, or make the connection weak, and not build something lasting.

Brands can be lost quickly by neglect or stupidity. The stronger the brand, the better it can withstand your stupidity. But better to not be stupid or neglectful in the first place. Remember the Cadillac Cimarron in the early 1980s? GM slapped chrome onto a cheap Chevy and called it a Cadillac. Dumb. One of the best brands in the world, arguably the Cadillac of brands, was lost, including the work of generations. Now Cadillac makes one of the best luxury cars available to normal humans (a Bentley is nicer, but normal people can't dream of buying a Bentley), but Cadillac is still struggling to regain their place in our hearts.

Don't sell your brand equity for a mess of potage. 

The importance of referral marketing

Let's say you are a house painter. You can market your services the typical way:
- buy an ad in the yellow pages
- rent billboards
- shove flyers into screen doors

Or you can be recommended by:
- interior designers
- real estate agents
- carpenters
- paint retailers
- contractors
- mortgage brokers
- flooding cleanup professionals

A fan club is much better than a brochure. Way better.

Now, getting those endorsements is not easy. Let's talk about it soon.

Public Partnerships and Entrepreneurship Coalitions

Here at the Nauvoo Commuter, we are working to build a coalition to develop local entrepreneurs through education. The original plan was to create a model community, but our community is in fact too small. We're rolling it out to include all of Hancock County, and honestly Carthage is doing the heavy lifting so far.

We'll be discussing this issue more later, but here are three hints when building a coalition to promote entrepreneurship education:

- involve as many pertinent people as possible, but leave the "stoppers" out of the planning process
- build the partnership on a bigger scale than you are comfortable with
- include school superintendents (go straight to the top), banking and other funding professionals, and helpful public employees

Why do you need all these people?  Because you will be doing more than teaching a class. You will be providing mentorship and support to help launch businesses, so you will need broad commitment.