We have a fun interview with Mark Nickerson, First Selectman of East Lyme. He shares a bit of his personal story, his love of music, and quite a bit about what it takes to keep a small town government running. As the publisher of Niantic Neighbors, I love East Lyme, and it was such a pleasure to get to connect with Mark.
We have a great interview with Michael Mish, Assistant Vice President for Residential Lending at Eastern Connecticut Savings Bank. Michael clarifies and demystifies the world of mortgages in an interesting and engaging way. I learned a great deal from this interview, and it really drives home the importance of working with a professional who can really guide you through the process.
In this episode I interview Connecticut State Representative Joe de la Cruz. We talk about what it’s like to serve in the state legislature, the importance of bipartisanship, and searching for the missing minion in the Groton town wide scavenger hunt.
2006 was a different time. Twitter would not be invented for another year. The housing boom was incredible with no end in sight. Zoom Video Communications was 5 years in the future.
When Godin said zooming, he meant “doing the same thing as usual, only different.” Most people are resistant to change because change is hard, painful, and expensive. However, expanding the horizons of what you are already doing is inspiring and exciting. During the crisis of Covid-19 that we now face, the companies best able to adapt by zooming rather than changing will dominate the new market.
Apple is a company that has been a mighty zoomer. They reached into market spaces from communications to video games to music to shopping, but they were able to do so because they had a wide zoomwidth.
Zoomwidth is how broad you perceive your existing domain to be, and thus how far you can move and pivot without having to deal with the painful process of change.
Rolling Stone magazine never became as big as MTV because their zoomwidth was narrow. Their ideas were limited by their self perception as a magazine while MTV saw themselves as a cultural medium.
Best Version Media, whom I work with, has a broad zoomwidth. Our CEO Dave Durand often reminds us that we are not a magazine company, we are a results company, and community magazines get results so we publish magazines. We are constantly researching and developing new ideas that will also serve the same mission of connecting local businesses to local communities. When we deploy one of these products, it won’t be changing, it will be zooming: doing the same thing as usual only different.
During the Covid-19 crisis, there’s a lot of different, and a lot of adaptation. Those businesses with a broad zoomwidth are better able to adapt quickly, because they don’t have to deal with the convulsions associate with rapid, urgent change.
As I speak with Realtors, I find some are in utter despair while others are more successful than ever. What’s the difference? The ones who saw the quarantine and said, “I work in person, and now I can’t work,” are paralyzed. The ones who said, “I work with people, and now I can’t work with people in person like I’m used to, so let’s look at how else we can do this,” are continuing to do business.
Best Version Media has always worked through in person meetings. We had no method for remote presentation, but our concept was that our publishers worked with local business owners, not that we worked with them in person. Our zoomwidth accommodated the concept of remote presentations. This allowed us to pivot rapidly and maintain activity almost without interruption.
Your business has likely been disrupted as well. Perhaps you have adapted easily, and perhaps you are completely shut down. Examine your own zoomwidth. Is it too narrow? Could you redefine your core competency more broadly to incorporate a line of business that can function under quarantine conditions?
Now is the time when flexibility and quick adaptation will be rewarded greatly. How broad is your zoomwidth?
Michael Whitehouse is the author of The Guy Who Knows A Guy, publisher of Mystic Neighbors and Niantic Neighbors for Best Version Media, and a business coach for businesses looking to untangle knotty problems such as adapting to new realities. To contact him, click here.
When a catepillar enters the cocoon, it is the end of everything it knows. And what comes next is better.
I recently read an article on ForeignPolicy.com entitled The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back. The author Adam Tooze basically predicted an economic collapse like nothing world had ever seen, even exceeding the Great Depression. The article was shared by Patrick Wyman, who is an excellent historian and podcaster. I highly recommend his show Tides of History.
I agree that the “normal economy” is never coming back, but not in a catastrophic way.
Smart business owners are already thinking about where their business will be when the COVID-19 crisis is over. Many are using this time to remodel facilities, boost brand presence, and reposition their business during the crisis to better serve the community in order to engender goodwill when all this is over.
When if first became apparent at the end of last week that we were entering a quarantine situation, I recognized that there would be needs among the more vulnerable members of our community. As the president elect of the Groton Rotary Club, an organization that lives by the motto of Service Above Self, I knew that it was time to prepare.
A number of people have asked me to summarize what I did so they could emulate it in their own communities, so what follows is a game plan for organizing to serve your community.
1. Find Out What Everyone Else Is Doing
While it’s not a huge problem for there to be two volunteer lists, it is more efficient to at least know what else is being done so you’re not totally duplicating efforts.
My first call was to our town manager. He told me that this effort would be greatly appreciated. Most municipal governments, especially here in Connecticut, have been dealing with progressively less state aid and increasing health care costs. This has forced them to cut out anything not strictly necessary, which would include any kind of staff or capacity to deal with an unusual situation like this.
Your town is likely well prepared to deal with keeping order and keeping the lights on, but getting food to people who need it, checking on the elderly, and all the rest, that falls to groups like Rotary, Lions, and other kind hearted volunteers.
If there are other service organizations in your community, reach out to them as well. You may be able to collaborate.
2. Organize Volunteers and Resources
The COVID 19 situation is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. That means that the needs will be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. We can guess at a few because they are existing needs that will simply be made worse by social distancing and business closures: food insecure people will become more food insecure, elders who are lonely will become lonelier, etc. Beyond that, who knows what the needs may be.
Thus, my first step was to solicit volunteers. I created a Google Form. Google Forms are free and easy to use, and can output to a Google Sheet, which is Google Drive’s version of Excel.
On the form, in addition to basic contact info, I asked what people would be willing to do, if they had a car, and what towns they were interested in serving in. That last one I added later when I realized that other surrounding towns weren’t doing the same thing and I wanted our list to be usable not just for Groton but for the area.
I also started coordinating with my own Rotary Club to see what resources we might have financially to bring to bear on the situation, if we could do online fundraising, etc.
Our work was featured in our local paper, The Day.
3. Offer Resources to Identify Needs
Once resources are gathered and you know what you have to offer, you can start spreading the word that you have resources to offer. I reached out directly to Groton Human Services, which runs the Groton Food Locker, in our town. I also put out on Facebook and in the local newspaper that we were available to help.
We created a second form for anyone who has needs assistance. Requests will start as a trickle, but may become a flood, and having a form to channel information through is vital to keeping track and not letting people slip through the cracks.
One challenge you may run into here is getting people and even organizations to as for help. One particular food distribution site had said they would welcome our help delivering food for them. A few days later, they mentioned that they didn’t have enough donations to be able to stock the effort, not realizing that I could help them solicit donations.
Just saying “we’re here for anything” may not get them to identify their needs. You may need to have a more in depth conversation to really identify the needs that you are able to address.
4. Build a Team
The step I am about to undertake is building a team so this doesn’t all go through me. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. I will be building a team of people with different skills to support the project in different areas.
Even if you are a one man band, you should have at least one assistant. Why? Because we’re dealing with an epidemic, and if COVID 19 puts you in bed for two weeks, who is going to do the work you stepped up to lead? Even in normal times, you should have a back up, but especially now.
That Brings Us Up to Now
This who thing started 5 days ago, so the story is a fairly short one. Find out what’s being done. Develop resources. Identify needs and deploy resource to needs. Build a Team. That’s pretty much it.
If you have questions or would like to share ideas, call Michael Whitehouse at 413-218-7946 or email rotary@guywhoknowsaguy.com.
The very successful Dinner in the Dark is an excellent example of how to capitalize on the generosity of your donors to make a difference in the world.
You’ve planned the dinner, you’ve sent the invitations, you’ve sold the tickets. Now it’s time to raise the money.
In this article, I will be discussing certain key points to maximizing the fundraising potential of your event. For the purpose of this article, I’m specifically thinking about fundraising dinners, but you will find the advice relevant to a variety of different fundraising event.
Most Americans are one surprise away from financial crisis.
One of the most viciously insidious things that our culture does to keep working class people in their place is this ethos of independence. We are taught this myth of independence: an adult should be able to do everything without assistance all the time.
A friend of mine recently had a situation in which her car was hit by a reckless driver causing damage which impacted her ability to earn a living. It was suggested that she should create a GoFundMe to ask for help in repairing the car and dealing with a few other unexpected expenses, and she was very hesitant to do so.
The myth is that this idea of asking for help online with unexpected needs is some new millennial phenomenon. I’m here to tell you that is garbage.
In days past, when a person would have an unexpected expense, the community would come together to pitch in and help. They would pass the hat, sometimes literally. Most churches have a Deacon’s Fund or similar concept. This is something that everyone donates to with the understanding that it will be used to help someone who has a need beyond their capacity.
For many families, a simple fender bender can be the start of a crisis. The car is needed to work. The work is needed for income. The income is needed to fix the car.
Before many unexpected needs were addressed by formal insurance, this was insurance. If you broke your leg and couldn’t work for a few weeks, your neighbors would collect money to help with your bills and bring you food and help with the kids and all the rest. This was done with the expectation that when another neighbor was in need, you’d be ready to pitch in.
Obviously, this is idealized, and did not happen in every situation, especially as we started moving to cities and no longer knowing our neighbors. Thus came the need for formalized insurance programs, government assistance, and the rest.
GoFundMe and other similar situations such as for my friend are not some new millennial trend. Rather, it is a digital mechanism to replace the form of supporting your neighbor in time of need that has held society together for the past 20,000 years.
Furthermore, this is not merely an artifact of the past. This is the way things are done among people of means today. Naturally, people with money don’t have to worry about the same small shocks like fender benders disrupting their lives. An unexpected accident or short term disability digs into savings rather than creating a crisis. But when larger issues arise, they are able to turn to their network for support. The business owner who turns to a friend for a loan to keep their business afloat through a crisis. The parent who turns to their friend to help with a financial need for a child.
Why don’t we hear about this? Because if you are a person of means and your friends are as well, you don’t need to 100 people to put together the money to address your need. You can ask one or two friends, and know that they will be able to help you without dramatic hardship, thus no need for a public request for assistance.
Put another way, if you do not have great wealth, you have been made to feel shame for not having great wealth when you need money to survive. If you buy into this, you are buying into the idea that not being wealthy makes you a worse person.
I, for one, do not buy into this. In fact, I believe that our willingness to support our neighbors, even those we do not know, makes us better people. The success of GoFundMe and other similar platforms in helping people overcome temporary hardship shows to me that we still live in a world of good people and that there is still hope for good in the world.
So if you need help, post that GoFundMe. And if you see someone asking for help, help them as you can. Remember that, when asked “who is my neighbor?” Jesus answer was that everyone is your neighbor.
If you’d like to help my friend Sarah, visit her GoFundMe here. If you are reading this after that request closes, consider finding another request and helping them. Even $1 or $5 can make a difference.
Actual snake oil liniment will do as much for you business as some “social media experts.”
In the 19th century, snake oil salesmen would travel the country selling “miracle cures.” There is actually a traditional Chinese medicine made from snake oil which has some pain relieving properties, but the snake oil salesmen of America were not so particular in selecting compounds with actual curative properties. Why go to the trouble of finding the real thing when the story will sell the product for you?
Today we see the same thing in social media. Digital social media marketing can be incredible effective if done correctly. It can be a medium cost, high bandwidth method of communicating with existing and new customers.
Like snake oil, however, most people peddling “social media marketing” wouldn’t know effective marketing if it made 12-15 impression on their face. They trade on the fact that you don’t know it either, so they flim flam you with buzzwords and fancy graphics so you don’t realize that your money is completely wasted on them.
