It’s tough trying to keep your feet on the ground, your head above the clouds, your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel, your finger on the pulse, your eye on the ball and your ear to the ground.
Based on proverbs
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From the monthly archives:
January 2009
My husband and I just signed up for a bridge class to be held at our local coffee shop. I’ve never played bridge before, and to be honest, never thought much about it until we received a promotional flyer this week from our local Chamber of Commerce.
The flyer certainly achieved its goal. It described how playing bridge exercises both sides of your brain, improving your skills in communication, memory, logic, visualization, counting and psychology. Did you know that bridge can also improve your physical health, by boosting your immune system and reducing your likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease? I’ve just turned 50, and have to admit the claim that individuals who play Bridge regularly are 2 1/2 times less likely to develop Alzheimers sure sounds good to me!
It’s also Winter in our small rural town, and most of us with seasonal businesses finally have some time to participate in community activities - at least until the tourists return to our Blue Ridge mountains in Spring. And we’ll get to sip some great coffee as we learn to play.
But as a rural business owner, what also struck me was the strategy of scheduling the Bridge club for Monday mornings at 10:00 am, after the morning coffee run when downtown retailers rush to open their shops, but before lunchtime when retailers return to the restaurant (along with shoppers needing a break and everyone else who stops by.) Those Bridge Club members who choose to stay for lunch do pay for their own lunch, but they get a free dessert. The Beginner Bridge class is scheduled for 3:00pm on Wednesday afternoons. The class will end just before 5:00 pm, so class members could stay on for an early dinner.
Shortly after making the decision to join the beginners’ Bridge class, I ran across a blog that made me think and will probably prompt you to do the same. The blog post is entitled Does Your Community Need A Coffee Shop and Other Third Places? What’s a ‘third place’ you ask? Here’s how Mike Knutson described the concept, originally created by sociologist Ray Oldenburg:
It has been two decades since Oldenburg invented the name “third places” in his influential book, The Great Good Place, to describe informal gathering places like cafés, pubs, bookstores, community centers and main streets.
To Oldenburg, third places carry out important community building functions that cannot be fulfilled by “first places” (our homes) and “second places” (our places of work). They become the places where people develop personal relationships and a sense of community. Without them, families are left to sit at home and watch television by themselves.
Judging from several blog posts and news stories written over the last week, many communities are putting energy into strategies to keep their favorite ‘third places’ alive, whether they are local traditions that might need to reinvent themselves or cope with increased competition, a bakery with suddenly shrinking sales after sixty years, or start ups trying to establish themselves.
To the great credit of its founders, Dave and Trish Niven, DT’s Blue Ridge Java has become a ‘third place’ in our Spruce Pine, North Carolina community. In addition to building community, they also creatively build their business by linking up with groups in need of meeting space and offering incentives (like free desserts) for groups to gather there. It’s what rural communities have always been good at - supporting each other. The day of the week and time of day the groups are meeting seem to fit nicely between the morning coffee and mealtime crowds, a win-win for all involved with the added benefit of strengthening our rural community - One sip at a time.
How are the Third Places in your community doing?
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Here are a few interesting blogs and online articles published this week that relate to Rural Business, ending January 24, 2009:
Conservation and community development groups are urging Obama to use the economic stimulus package to improve rural America by investing in the nation’s public forests. Improving the health and productivity of our public forests would provide employment for forestry workers displaced by the decline of timbering, and also reduce the cost of forest fires that often take place in unmanaged forest properties. Read more about it here.
Becky McCray, primary author of that great rural business blog, SmallBizSurvival, has created an interesting list of Top Rural Small Business Trends for 2009. You can read Becky’s complete list at Small Business Trends.
Can Social Media Save a Local Business? is the question Chris Brogan asked this week, and the incredible ideas described by nearly 100 blog readers in their responses are worth reading. Only time will tell whether the Simply Gourmet Bistro and Groceria in Peabody, Massachusetts will survive, but in the meantime those of us with rural businesses can learn from its struggle. It certainly made me think in new ways how I might use Twitter to promote my business to tourists passing through the Blue Ridge region - what about you?
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And for all of you city folk trying to get away from it all and make your way to our neck of the woods, you’ve can get some specific guidance about starting a rural business at Goodbye, City Life blog.
Starting a new business during a recession could be perfect timing, if you listen to this podcast by David Lester of the publishing company Crimson in the UK.
Or if you want to expand your rural business with a new product or service, perhaps Evaluating the Rural Enterprise from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service will provide just the help you need.
Which marketing methods might work better than others in 2009 for your new business? Take a look here to see some common sense suggestions.
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Looks like rural business and handmade business owners have found a kindred spirit in Walter Olson, a lawyer at the Manhattan Institute whose opinion piece at Forbes business magazine website states his case - “Scrap The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.’
Olson makes the point that the concern is not only about handmade toys, but almost every product made for children under 12:
With few exceptions, the law covers all products intended primarily for children under 12. That includes clothing, fabric and textile goods of all kinds: hats, shoes, diapers, hair bands, sports pennants, Scouting patches, local school-logo gear and so on.
And paper goods: books, flash cards, board games, baseball cards, kits for home schoolers, party supplies and the like. And sporting equipment, outdoor gear, bikes, backpacks and telescopes. And furnishings for kids’ rooms.
And videogame cartridges and audio books. And specialized assistive and therapeutic gear used by disabled and autistic kids.
Our lawmakers may have been well-intentioned last year when they acted to address the outbreak of problems caused by lead paint in and on Chinese-made toys. But Olson says our government’s haste to take dramatic action revealed a failure on the part of our lawmakers to read the laws they vote on, or to look ahead to how these laws will be implemented. The government might have been worried about defective toys when this process started, but now we can all be worried about the defective process for creating public policy that’s been exposed.
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