Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

A good day to be working at home

Here in our corner of Floyd, Virginia, we are enjoying this last day of November from our vantage point near the woodstove.

It has been raining and freezing all night. As you can see from the weather map, we will probably have more of the same for the rest of the day.

This winter storm also means that the astronauts now in orbit will not be landing at Canaveral today where their families are waiting. They are expected to land in California instead. We hope that all goes well.

We are cloud-bound at this moment and our visibility is less than 75 feet. The wind is blowing from the east and the ice-covered trees are creaking in unison. The tinkling sound of falling ice continues unabated.

I put out some seed to see if I could attract some feathered visitors and the birds acted like shoppers on Black Friday. The freezing rain did not slow them down at all.

As you can see on this feeder, icicles continued to form even though the temperature is above freezing.

This year, I was better prepared in terms of an adequate firewood supply. I found someone who needed firewood and we worked out a deal where they cut up logs and took home half of what they cut. I am not as well stocked as blogger Fred First, but I have enough well-seasoned firewood for several months. A tractor and an electric log splitter makes preparing more firewood an easy chore.

We now have electric heat, but there is nothing like a wood stove for comfort on a day of freezing rain.

On the other hand, I need to get back into the workshop this afternoon because our custom framing business seems to have picked up again and I have a project to complete for a local musician.

With a pellet stove to keep the shop warm and a CD player keeping the beat, it is a grand way to spend my working hours.

I hear that other small businesses are also seeing an upturn and I hope that it continues for a while.

Like so many other business owners, I have been working to create bargains for those customers who are looking for something different. I think I have found something that is quite appropriate for the uncertain times we find ourselves in.

In this part of the country, recycled materials are viewed favorably when incorporated into new designs. I have found that customers appreciate opportunities to purchase custom frames at huge savings. Cutting down existing frames and refinishing them opens the door to offering superb designs at unusual prices.

I haven't had a chance to update the website yet with the newest product offerings, but I am very pleased at the opportunity to work with local artist Karen Sewell on a line of custom etched mirrors.

Buying locally makes good sense - especially in a recession

We live in a tightly-connected rural community, Floyd County, Virginia, where almost every one we meet is connected in some roundabout way to someone we know. The practice of buying locally affects us both as consumers and as local business owners.

As our income goes up and down, it changes ouy ability to buy things. If we have to cut back on our expenses, We try to cut back on the money we spend outside the local economy first.

We try to "buy local" whenever possible because those purchases help support the local economy. It seems like our purchasing dollars mean more to local businesses than they do to the Wal-Mart or mall stores in Christiansburg.

Here in Floyd, most local businesses go out of their way to make us feel appreciated and some offer "specials" with prices that match big box retailer prices.

In our custom framing business, we do the same. We are directly affected by the economic health of this area and we appreciate those who choose to spend their hard earned money with us. We strive to offer unique offerings and to provide customers with a memorable experience.

The "connectedness" of this rural community makes it possible for a small business to generate effective "word of mouth" advertising with every positive customer experience.

When we buy locally, our purchases serve as an affirmation that we, as consumers, are caring people deserving of special consideration. You might even think of this as "word of mouth" advertising on a personal reputation level.

To sum this up, buying locally increases the affinity within the local community and increases cooperative activity. This is always good news and is vital in an economic downturn.

Can there be an upside to an economic downturn?

The short answer is, it depends on what you want to accomplish.

If you want to re-establish the lifestyle you enjoyed a few months ago, you are probably in for a lot of disappointment.

If you are willing to accept an economic downturn as a learning experience, you may find yourself with an entirely new future and a lot of new skills.

People who survive personal and widespread economic downturns often emerge from the experience with more self-confidence and a wicked sense of humor. Tackling a downturn with a relaxed and positive attitude is probably the best way to come out stronger than you went in.

If you have been spending money on things to improve your quality of life, an economic downturn can spur you on to discover less expensive ways of improving your quality of life. You may even gain the immense satisfaction of getting your finances under control and living modestly with a lean, but balanced budget.

There have been times in the past when I briefly enjoyed that state of economic health, but I lost control once times got good and luxuries became "necessities". With the current economic downturn, I am relearning the lessons of the past, hopefully for the last time.

An economic downturn upsets the rules and often changes the playing field. This can expose opportunities for those ready to take advantage of them. Small businesses have the agility to create new services and products quickly when opportunities appear.

A family affected by an economic downturn can ask for the government to intervene or it can learn to share resources such as food, shelter, and transportation with others while looking for opportunities for employment and ways of doing business on a small scale.

My family and many others did just this for many years when I was a small child in the 1930's. Families and friends learned the value of cooperative activities because there was no other real alternative. Everybody seemed to get something to eat and had a place to sleep, even if on someone's couch.

What I remember most was the laughter and the music at family get-togethers. It seemed as if bonds were formed in those lean years that lasted until good times arrived in the late 1950's and the families spread out over increasingly wide areas.

I think we have the opportunity now to recover the skills of coping with hard times by working together to share knowledge. We have the advantage of being interconnected through the Internet so useful knowledge will spread much faster than it ever did before.

Money saving tips, bargain opportunities, and employment opportunities will be found through Google and Craigslist and a host of specialized websites. Ebay traffic may double. A world of new opportunities may await us in the coming months.

I think that qualifies as an upside.

Finally! An analysis of election results that makes sense

I have been trying to make sense of the recent Presidential election amidst the cheering on one side and the second guessing on the other side and I was not getting a resolution. Too much raw data and opinion and nothing that actually explained what had happened.

I think the confusion comes from the fact that I was looking for a political analysis when the election was actually a marketing success and can be explained in terms of marketing and branding strategies which are more basic and are more easily understood.

I read these 15 words on Linda Popky's Marketing Leverage Blog and it opened the door to a new understanding of what happened in this election.

...in a very short time, Obama built a strong, powerful personal brand--basically from scratch.

Forget ideology, transparency, media bias, associations, etc. Obama came up with a better way to present a coherent promise of value to voters that resonated with them. That is what a brand is and does.

While party stalwarts on both sides were working on the mechanics of getting out voters, calling in favors, and attacking weak points of opponents, Obama did what was necessary to create a personal brand that was sufficient to overcome criticism during the campaign.

A brand is an identifying symbol, words, or mark that distinguishes a product or company from its competitors.

Sufficient to say that Barack Obama and his advisors did an outstanding job of this and it won the election.

There is another side to this powerful concept of branding and that is the basis for its power.

A brand is a promise of value to customers, and it sets a certain expectation.

A successful brand launch is a wonderful thing, but there is a Sword of Damocles hanging over any brand which will fall when the brand fails to deliver what is promised.

Barack Obama's expansive brand of "Hope" and "Change" offer a wide variety of futures depending on the expectations of the voters. As a result, he may have created a set of conflicting expectations which he may have difficulty reconciling.

To use an automotive metaphor, I would like to hope that his brand of hope and change will result in a "Mustang" future instead of a "Yugo".

We shall see.

Read more lessons to be learned from Obama's victory after the jump. I have linked to articles on this election by Jack and Suzy Welsh and Linda Popky. They are well worth your time.

What happens if we adopt a more modest lifestyle?

Would it cause our disposable, fast food, instant gratification economic engine to sputter and die? Or would it cause a transformation in buying habits which would bring about new relationships between consumers and those companies which were able to rise to the occasion?

Suppose that our available income were to be cut to a mere trickle compared to last years income. Wouldn't that make every purchase more significant and every bargain more rewarding?

What about those expenses that we can no longer justify. What happens when we reduce our food budgets and our entertainment budgets and put off buying new clothes.

Perhaps we start getting satisfaction from planning and making do with what we have or from bartering with others to exchange what we do not need for something we really need.

I think that the best only way to approach this situation of supporting your family on less money is to make a game out of it. Locating bargains and using discount coupons may be absolutely necessary, but these situations can be viewed either as a degrading and undignified imposition or as a challenge to be overcome with skill and good nature.

If you are still stuck in your former high-flying corporate lifestyle, you will be carrying a double burden when it comes to supporting yourself after your unemployment runs out.

Those who can adapt to the lifestyle they find themselves in will probably be more successful in changing it for the better when the opportunity arises.

Is life any poorer when you are not going out for meals every day? I don't believe so, because in the distant past I used to go out for meals because I was bored or didn't have time to prepare meals at home. Now I eat at home and enjoy cooking meals occasionally and helping in the kitchen.

There is a real sense of achievement when we adjust our spending to match our income. It is not a trivial matter and it involves hard choices. We can either focus on the "sacrifices" we are making or focus on the upside which is that we are paying as we go and we can take satisfaction in every action that we take to make our lives better.

Possibly the future may hold out the promise that reader Mouse suggests:

I am hopeful that our current economic troubled waters will have some positive effects, that people will learn to be happier with a more modest lifestyle, that some kind of common sense returns to the world of rampant consumerism.

I hope so too. I am working on that approach to life right now. I think it is the best response to the situation we find ourselves in.

Fireside update

It's 19 degrees outside and I am taking a break to enjoy the warmth of our wood stove. Working from home allows me to spend more time on the things that matter to me, but it doesn't always translate into blog  posts even though writing is one of the great pleasures in my life.

Blogging got put aside for days while I dealt with the problems of running a business and caring for my wife while she recuperated from surgery. We are making progress in all areas, but it is taking more time than expected. Today, things are going well and I wanted to post an update.

The biggest challenge of doing business in hard times is maintaining confidence that something can be done to achieve positive results. Since I am wrestling with this problem myself, I try not to waste your time with my opinions. It is hopefully more useful if I can report on what works and what doesn't.

I try to draw useful conclusions out of every experience and have found that bad experiences can produce long term benefits if completely understood. Since I try to do the right things, if things turn out wrong I need to figure out what I did not understand and get it right for the next time.

I was no better prepared for this recent downturn than anyone else, so I am not dispensing knowledge from some ivory tower. I write things down as I discover them in the hopes that  they may be useful to others.

Now that many of my customers are retrenching, I have cut back on my expenses and have increased my networking to reach out and find people who need services I can provide.

Fortunately, this has produced encouraging results. It is not business as usual by any means, but it is movement in a positive direction and I will happily take what I can get these days. I am also taking every opportunity to assist others in promoting their businesses and to connect people up in every way possible.

In a small community such as ours, peoples lives are tightly connected. When one family suffers a loss, others are more likely to reach out and lend a hand. This benefits the giver as much as the receiver.

This recession may inspire a greater sense of community in many areas as people learn to rely on each other for support again. We generally do better in life as we are aligned with others. If you feel out of touch and alone, there is probably something you should do about that. Try finding someone else you can help. That is a good place to start.

Doing business in hard times

As a small business owner in an economic downturn, whether it is a recession or a depression, it is absolutely necessary to offer a great value for a customer's money and to provide an uplifting customer experience in the bargain. Based on my personal observations, the more outstanding the customer experience, the more likely the business will survive.

A small business offering art or music or any handcrafted products must find ways to change its product offerings from something that is "nice to have" to something that "helps people survive better". This is a challenge that thousands of artisans and artists face here in Southwest Virginia.

We have a formidable problem if the products and services we sell are generally considered "luxuries" or "discretionary items and our usual customers have lost their discretionary income.

This is scary in the extreme, but it is not an insurmountable situation.

This problem has been solved in the past by businesses which have been able to think outside the box and essentially reinvent themselves or their relationship with customers.

Those companies that survived were those which figured out how to produce "necessities" instead of "discretionary items".

Did this mean that their products changed? Not necessarily, but it does require a change in the customer's buying experience.

When times get hard, there is not enough money to cover all of the necessities and people make hard choices like choosing not to get medical treatment and they may let their insurance lapse, but there is always a need for something to lift their spirits.

If a business can offer a product or service that lifts customer's spirits, they will probably find a way to pay for that product, even if they have to give something else up that would normally be considered essential.

I am sure you can find examples from your own life, especially if you have ever been unemployed for any length of time.

This is a big topic and deserves a series of posts in which the problem and various solutions can be discussed in more detail, especially concerning businesses involving fine arts and craft work.

I welcome comments from readers who have observed how small businesses survived economic downturns in the past.

Stay tuned for future posts on this topic: Doing business in hard times"

A well-documented election

Barack Obama's management of his campaign and the mobilization of a 501c 3 organization as a campaign arm was incredibly brilliant. His oratorical ability and his sense of theater struck a resounding chord with a great number of voting citizens. He won a well-deserved victory in the sense that he did the necessary things that resulted in his being elected. He convinced enough people that he was the solution to their problems to gain enough votes to win.

He was helped in this campaign by avidly partisan Main Stream Media figures, but this has happened in almost every Presidential election. In this election, the majority of MSM outlets did a fantastic job publicizing Barack Obama as the obvious choice while suppressing those challengers like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, etc., etc.

The MSM know they played a major role in electing Barack Obama and they are certainly savoring their victory. Charlie Gibson's fawning interview with the President-elect was right in line with his earlier interviews of Barack Obama. It was a marked contrast to his demeanor in interviews with the other candidates. But this was not unexpected.

The MSM has never been non-partisan, except in their own eyes.

The major difference in this election was that hundreds of thousands of individuals got to see the seamy underside of the political process on the Internet. Blogs and YouTube videos revealed embarrassing details about every candidate and highlighted the unfortunate bias and misinformation emanating from the MSM.

The dirty deeds and unfortunate relationships that were swept under the table as being "unimportant" will not go away as they might have in the distant pre-Internet past. The details of who did what and who benefited are still out there and will be digested and discussed for years to come.

Will these uncovered misdeeds and crimes affect the political fortunes of our elected officials, hard to say. Probably not, as Congress, the Senate, and the President-Elect will have most of their attention on creating alliances that will carry them through the coming year.

On the other hand, bloggers of the Left and of the Right and every position on the political spectrum will have ample time to uncover information and connect the dots so that a coherent picture will evolve of every incident worth discussing. The shifting positions of the candidates will be laid out on a time track for all to see and analyze. These analyzes will probably be used in an effort to predict future behavior and to anticipate weaknesses.

Efforts to obfuscate and hide data rarely work and there will be a cost to those who attempt it. Who does not know for example, that the LA Times has been sitting on a video of Barack Obama. A news organization suppressing news? How noble of them! What will that do to their bottom line? Probably more layoffs.

By the end of the first 100 days of the new presidency, there could be more well-informed citizens of every political persuasion than ever before in history. The scrutiny that will result from this access to information will cast light in more dark places than you might imagine.

Scrutiny by bloggers will continue to force MSM outlets to cover issues at the risk of being discredited. Bloggers are no more intelligent than the media types they compete with, but bloggers are resourceful and often highly motivated to expose injustices. Their alliances are clearly labeled and you can quickly see where they stand on most issues.

We will see whether the new Administration handles this challenge with style and grace or by repression of dissident voices.

We live in interesting times.

This election is the ultimate test of voter judgement

Almost everyone wants what is best for their families, their communities, and our country and they rely on the election of a President who will make changes that will improve conditions in those areas.

The Presidential candidates have told us what they intend to do and the promises are either enchanting or horrifying, depending on your viewpoint and level of experience. If the voters are good judges of human nature, they will select a candidate who delivers what he promises.

If they vote on what they believe the candidates have told them, their expectations will undergo some readjustment in the months to come. The difference between what a Presidential candidate says and what he can deliver depends on his personal integrity and on his ability to mobilize support in Congress and the Senate.

There is also a difference between what a candidate says and what he means. Campaign promises undergo a predictable downsizing in the months after the election. No matter which candidate wins, the first announcement will be that more time will be required to institute promised changes because the incumbents have left things in such a sorry state of affairs.

The next announcement will be that more money is required to make the promised changes than expected and that some programs will have to be delayed indefinitely.

The announcements of advisors and key staff will disillusion some of the most dedicated campaign workers because this will probably signal a major shift in the new Administrations priorities away from what was promised to voters over to what must be delivered to fulfill promises to key supporters and financial backers.

If voters listen only to candidate promises and haven't looked closely at what the candidate has done and who he has associated himself closely with, there may be some disappointment after the election.

The candidates have done their best to show us what they are capable of. Voters will decide what promises fit their concept of a desirable future.

By next Spring, we will know for certain how well the voters have chosen. Let us hope that the new President has a higher approval rating than the current one.