102. How to Host a Community Clean-Up Event

My guest on today's episode is Aaron Baker. Aaron reached out to me after listening to, um, a recent episode with Jeff Sigler, and he wanted to share with me this really awesome thing that he coordinates with a bunch of other people in his microtown, which is what he affectionately calls, uh, his town of Atlanta, Missouri. And he talks today about, you know, how they started, what they've grown to. And really, this is all about loving your community. That's what the name of this event that they coordinate every year is called. And basically, they send out volunteers into the community and they just start tackling stuff that needs fixing and addressing. That's a really, you know, kind of a tricky conversation to start in a small town. And so we talk a lot about that, you know, how How are you sourcing projects? How are you finding the things to fix? Because it's not just public property that they're dealing with. They're actually, you know, working with private citizens to fix up and improve their properties as well. You're really gonna enjoy, I think anyway, as much as I did, Aaron's energy, his heart, and his passion for his small town. And I'm telling you, if in a town of 350 people you can pull something like this off, any of us can. This podcast is all about possibility. It's about what we're able to do, not what we can't do or shouldn't do, but what we can do and should try, right? This episode is really, for me, is so refreshing because he talks a lot about all the reasons not to do something because there's always tons of reasons. And he really so strongly believes in the power, the, you know, the progress, the momentum, and the power of, you know, not only starting small, but just being intentional. So this is a bit of a roadmap for all of us, and I can't wait to orchestrate something on this scale in my area, and I hope you find it just as inspiring as I did. Enjoy this episode with Aaron Baker. Welcome to the show, Aaron Baker. I'm so excited to have you.

I am excited to be here. I've, I've listened to several episodes and can't wait to kind of tell our local small town story.

Yeah, so this is awesome. Um, for our listeners' benefit, I, I want them to hear this, that you are an example of a person that listened to an episode and then reached out to me and said, hey, I have a cool story to share. And I love that. And that's— I want people to do that because I think the more that we can highlight people like you, seriously, just doing your part, you're just doing your part. And it's become a really cool thing. And I think the more we can highlight people like you, oftentimes we get hung up that only elected officials or somehow like official people get stuff done in community. And that's just not— that is not the truth. So thank you so much for reaching out, for telling me this story. So why don't we start with just a bit of a background, like who you are and what you're going to be talking to us about today?

Yeah, sure. So I live in what I would call a microtown. I mean, you talk about small towns.

Right.

I live in a town— well, I live outside of city limits of a community that's about 350 people, Atlanta, Missouri, renamed during the Civil War by Southern sympathizers. So we have a small town. There's a K-12 school in the community. But we have, you know, basically what you would expect in a town of 350, a mechanic shop, a post office, and some small business, a place to get gas. But we don't have kind of the Airbnb, the tourist spot, something that we're necessarily known for. Besides just kind of being a great place to live and work and raise his family, and particularly if you're from here, you kind of want to stay here or maybe come back someday.

Right. So again, for everybody's point of reference, where's your largest city and which city is it? How far are you from it? All that.

Right. So we live about an hour from Iowa and an hour from Illinois in northeast Missouri, but maybe the best reference would be We live an hour north of Columbia, the Mizzou campus.

Okay. Okay. And how big is that community?

Columbia would be more than 100,000.

Okay.

Have everything you would ever need. I mean, our closest Walmart is 10, 10 minutes away in our county seat of Macon.

Okay.

And we live on a 4-lane highway, so it's not like we're super isolated in a town of 350. You can get in and out of here pretty fast.

Yeah. Okay. So tell us a little bit about how— first of all, the name of this event that you do and kind of how it got started, because it really is spectacular. So again, for everyone's reference, you reached out to me right after Jeff Sigler's episode, and he's the Revitalize or Die guy, which he— we had such a great conversation just about civic self-esteem is what he calls it. So again, if people haven't listened to that, you really should go back and hear hear him out. He's awesome. And you shared with me this community event that you— and you'll have to just— you started it, right? You personally—

our church, our church did. I'm very involved, and this year was— I was the lead. It's called Loving Our Community, right? So our church is in Macon, in the county seat. Uh, it's a pretty big church in Northeast Missouri. We average 400 to 500.

Oh, that's a big church.

Yeah, yep.

I mean, that's a good size. That is a good size congregation.

Yes. And once a year we have a very abbreviated service where we, we sing and, and kind of get our instructions, and we go out into the community. So instead of just being in the church every day, every Sunday, and worshiping, we kind of worship with our hands and feet. And this, this year it was kind of funny, we did it on Palm Sunday, so we said we're going to get our palms dirty.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's cute.

We had—

I love a good theme, Erin.

That's fun. We have a sign-up for what team you want to be on and t-shirt size. Everybody gets these shirts. And so we sent out 400 people on 24 teams. Some went to the ball fields to upgrade and update those. Some of them went into small towns throughout the area. To serve, maybe pick up trash, paint, that type of thing. But you saw this mass of blue shirts all around the area on different teams picking up trash along the road, cleaning up someone's yard, picking up brush, chainsaws, skid steers, you name it. I mean, you know that country folks can figure out how to get a lot done with farm equipment and wielding chainsaws. So we We have a lot of great before and after pictures, but really it's just our chance to go out and be the hands and feet of Jesus and show the community. You know, the Ten Commandments, part of them are about loving God and part of them are about loving people.

Right.

And I think that a lot of churches are really good at one or the other. And this event, this Sunday that we have every year, is kind of our way of loving on people and showing them just the type of work that we can all do working together and how to just be kind and helpful.

Well, and, you know, I love that. I think the other thing that it does, if, you know, again, if you are a Christian, and again, like people listening to this, if you're not, there's still a million applications of this, even if that's, that's not your religious background. But there's also recognizing that like our communities are gifts So to steward, to steward those gifts well, that it's just, it's caring for the people. But I think sometimes we, we think sometimes I think that comes naturally for people, the idea of loving other people. But somehow the idea of loving the place, loving the physical, the physicality of stuff that we've been given, if we consider them all gifts, taking good care of them, stewarding them well, that's all another part of that perspective, don't you think? I mean, this is like taking care of stuff that we've been blessed with.

I do. And another neat thing about this event, so again, 24 teams, 24 team leaders, members of the church, people of the church have to step up and lead a team and think about what is it, which yards am I going to attack this day? What am I going to paint? They have to get all the supplies. They have to meet with their team that morning and go out and do these things. And one of the cool things about this event is, as you're talking about, not everyone is, um, you know, maybe sold out to the church every Sunday, all these, you know, kind of religious— our church is about a fictional but very, uh, familiar character that we call Chad the Dad. And Chad the Dad wears camo, He loves to hunt, loves to go to his kids' ball games, but maybe, you know, church, a normal church service isn't his jam, and his wife may drag him there once in a while, not kicking and screaming, but just kind of in silence because Chad's a quiet dude. But on Loving Our Community Day, Chad can lead one of the teams, he can bring a weed eater, he can help build a deck or a ramp for someone that's in a wheelchair. And really for this day, it's a, it's a great time for everyone to kind of have their introduction to serving. But really it's a day for Chad the dad to shine.

Right.

And really show his strengths and his background and use those in service that one day. And it's a really— that piece is really incredible in itself.

Take us back to the first event, the first one, because again, like, I think there's going to be so many things that people can pull from this episode as we talk about, you know, how it started, how long you've been doing it, all the things. Because it means to anybody listening to hear, okay, 400 people, eh, where am I going to get 400 people? Then 24 teams, where, how, you know, oh, right. But you didn't start out like this, Erin. So what did it, you know, what was the first, you the first year's event, what did that look like? And I have a lot of, as I'm thinking, I have tons of questions about logistics, but we'll get into all of that in a minute. But I think talking about that inaugural one is always a good place to start.

Yeah, I feel like in the first year we had good projects and good teams. We have a truck stop on US Highway 36 that there was a lot of cleanup along the highway that maybe wasn't appropriate for kids. Human waste in Walmart sacks and everything like that.

Oh my goodness, yeah.

When you think about preparing these teams, I think our staff, it was all on them at the beginning to pick the projects, to buy the supplies and have them all in place. And maybe we picked some projects that we weren't prepared for. We should've had PPE to do that one along Highway 36. We had some good war stories from it, but now we really rely on our 24 team leaders this time to get the supplies, to talk to— We were in 5 or 6 different towns to talk to the employees of that community, the city clerk in a town of 800 and say, "What is it we could do for you?" Right. Relied more on our leaders than staff. And as it's evolved, this was year 3 of doing this, that's been the biggest change because really you can't rely on anyone or a team of a staff to build up supplies and what to do and everything for 24 teams, 400 people. But if you really put the leadership of each team in charge of that, it really helps.

How far ahead are you guys planning to figure out? Because, you know, so, so interesting, we've been talking a lot about community beautification in my community, and just beautification meaning just even, you know, tackling the things that need a coat of paint, that need just general picking up. But sometimes these prop— these properties are privately owned. So what, what does that look like for you guys? You know, are you— and are you planning ahead so That day, it's like, we just go do it. None of the— none of the— all the groundwork is laid, I'm assuming, like you visited with all the people whose properties you're going to improve. So just tell me what that looks like. Because that's something right away. I'm just like, how did they get people to say yes to that?

First of all, from a macro level, we went through what teams we had had previously and our notes and saw what worked well, what didn't, and what would make a big impact that we should add. What should we amplify that we did in the past, or what was missing in the past and add those? On a really micro level, so we start about 2 months ahead picking the team, picking the projects. This year, we had 24. Next year, we might have 19. And then we ask people to serve as the lead. And I got a co-leader. In the age of COVID and whatnot, I feel like there needs to be a number 2 in case number 1 can't be there.

Right. Yep.

And so that's probably— and we met as a group of 24 team leaders 3 or 4 times. Now I will say I'm the team lead for my hometown of Atlanta, Missouri. We've actually inspired by this, had a— this is a spring activity. We added a fall activity for Make a Difference Day. Same thing. We do go, you know, I'll tell you from experience, I will knock on someone's door and basically say, hey, your yard looks rough. Would you mind if we had our volunteers? We're going to have 70 volunteers working on Sunday in my town, a town of 350 people. 70 people will be volunteering. I have the biggest crew. More than half of them don't attend our church. They're just people in our community that are like, yes, want to do this.

Yep, yep.

So, you know, my success rate— they know me, but my success rate's about 75%. Yeah, come on my property, get rid of that junk car, remove the hoard. The school allows us to— we painted inside the school, we've stained equipment outside the school, we work on city parks, but we do a lot of private residences as well. And we do get permission ahead of time to do so. And most people say yes. Now, I will tell you, Rebecca, all year I am driving around town and noticing projects we could do and putting them in a Google Sheet. That I can reference later.

Yeah, of course.

But we have about 6 teams in our town of 350 people that day that are doing very specific things. A paint team, a cleanup team, a man with a— we had 2 skid steers doing projects. So it is a— it is for a town that size to see 70 people working, buzzing around. It just takes 2 or 3 hours, by the way. You can get so much done.

You have no idea how badly I want to do this in Oaks, in my community. It's so inspiring, but I got to come back to you knock on a person's door. How on earth? I mean, there's a social risk for people to knock on the door and say, "Your yard's looking rough." Is that actually the actual words that you use? Like, "Your yard is—" Your yard's looking rough. Or, you know, like the whole idea of having that, being direct but still being kind, you know, like tact, I guess, would be the word, right? Like how do you tactfully broach that with an owner? I just find it fascinating and I'm proud of you. Good for you.

My Myers-Briggs personality test that you talk about a lot will tell you that I'm very direct. And so I've learned how to be better at tact. Okay. We had a previous mayor that his yard just had a lot of stuff in it. Old stuff. He was the mayor? He was the mayor, equipment. And I'm still learning in life. I feel like I'm 18 or 19, like just doing all these things and learning, learning, learning. I still struggle, but I've gotten better about learning what should be an in-person, what should be a phone call, what should be an email, what should be a text. Yep, yep. I emailed the mayor and I said, "Hey, we're trying to clean things up." This is probably 10 years ago. "We're trying to clean things up and I noticed your yard is looking pretty rough. If you're the mayor, we probably need you to step it up and clean up the yard." This is in an email. Why did I do that? So the wife—

well, because you didn't know better, Aaron, it's okay, right?

Like, the wife hits reply. Oh, the wife. And she said, well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but we've had a death in the family and we've had a lot going on, and we, you know, things just have gotten out of hand. But, you know, didn't apologize. It was just very— and I appreciated that. And I hit reply back. Again, I'm still learning. And I said, my goodness, with so little time, I don't know how he was able to drag all that stuff into his yard. How did he have time to make such a mess?

Now I've gotten a lot better. Just laughing because communication is something I teach. I don't teach other people communication because we're all learning all the time. I still make missteps a lot, Erin. So, but it's just making me chuckle because all the nuance, like all of it's lost in an email, right? Like it's dangerous territory to send anything like that. So then what was— then she hit reply. Did she? No, I think we were done then.

Message received. And I tell that story. I mean, I don't know that they would laugh about it, but it's a story I tell a lot about. I've come a long way. Right. But I know everyone in the town, obviously. My family's been here for 7 or 8 generations. And I just say, look, I've got help. We're actually looking for things to do. Would you do me a favor and allow us to help you out? And most people say yes. This year, amazingly, we scheduled this right ahead of bulk pickup. Okay, sure. Showing up at people's doors and, you know, a week ahead and said, hey, bulk pickup's coming up. We could drag that appliance that I can see in your backyard all the way to the street for you and get rid of that. And that really worked out nicely too. But most people, most people know that things have gotten away from them. They are familiar with what we're doing and they know that this could be their chance until we ask again in a year. To get help. Yeah. Yeah. And another thing, you know, I always try to make it sound like they're doing me a favor or that it's timely. Yeah. Another thing I said was, hey, listen, we could get all this stuff out of your yard so that when it comes time to mow it the first time, you won't have to be mowing around things. You know, I try to find a way that logically speaking, yeah, now is the time to do this.

I should stop delaying and let these people help. I want to just touch on that for a minute because really that's the hook, I think, is two things that you've said. One, giving the impression that they're helping you by letting you help them, which I think is a huge deal. And also finding a reason that the benefit's theirs, like truly theirs. Granted, you would think, like, why wouldn't anybody want that? But man, pride is a real thing. Up in the Midwest here, our pride runs deep. And we, I just, as I think about my community, I think about the properties that I just right away go, my brain goes right to them because it's not hard. You can drive down our streets and see the properties that need some attention, right?

Here, we have no monopoly on wisdom here on getting things cleaned up. It's just getting better.

Yeah, right. And so I think, my goodness, the idea of starting that conversation or broaching that topic, It's cringy for most, most of us, I think.

So I think it's a lot of people, they think that their kid will get to it. And so I will say, or, you know, their relatives, and I will say, well, they haven't yet. And we're here Sunday. Cool. On Sunday, we'd love to have them here. And a lot of times that does happen. Yeah, that's really, really cool.

Yeah, that's so cool. I just, I love it so much. I think because for us, um, in my community, I do think it's probably private residences that need it even more. It's not like our publicly held spaces are all— they're, they're kept up at a pretty reasonable way. I think our parks look great, that kind of thing. But yeah, private residences, it gets away from, from us because it feels like it's not our business. But it is in the sense that it's— it all speaks to the overall aesthetic and beauty of the community. And, you know, like, you can you can totally have a perfectly immaculate yard, and if you live right next to somebody that has a junkyard in theirs, have you really accomplished that much?

Yes.

You know, I mean, yes, you have, of course, 'cause I mean, that's important, but.

I will tell you that there are abandoned properties with out-of-town ownership that I do not, we do not ask for permission in my town. In the county seat, The bigger teams, you know, that would be more important, but we just kind of take care of it in our own way. We had this basement house that just had a patio door wide open on it and junk everywhere. And I told our team that was doing debris pickup, that was a nice way to say it. Notice debris, not like trash. Not junk, yeah. Let's get all of this stuff put it under the porch, make it look tidy, get it ready to mow. And there's this door open. And so we start to clean it up. We've got dumpsters throughout town that we use for this day. I mean, everything is— we got trailers, everything's going really well. And we start to get to the hoard on the front porch. And lo and behold— and there's 5, 6, 7-year-olds helping us, by the way— lo and behold, there's this ginormous potbelly pig living amongst the debris that we didn't know lived at our— it's like a neighbor's house, you know. I drive by this house all the time and the pig apparently lives inside the house. And we just found it and, you know, kind of backed off, but the pig didn't mind. This is just a funny story. I'm not telling it as if it's a joke, but I'm saying it with a smile here. Every time I drive by that house now, I see that pig because we cleaned it up so well. The pig isn't hidden. And there's a door open to the house that I guess the pig still lives inside of. I don't know. See, like this, that, that is hilarious. That's a hilarious— I think it tells you the level of which we are working at. And that was an abandoned home, out-of-town ownership. But I will tell you, every time we do one of these and we clean up a property, 3 weeks later I contacted that lady and she said, "You know, I think I've sold that property." Every time that we touch a property and really fix it up or skid steer or get rid of brush, people have an interest in buying that, maybe demolishing it typically, and making it look better. And so it really inspires, oddly, real estate transactions thereafter, which is not a benefit that I had ever thought about.

Yeah, I can't believe that story. It's incredible. So where did the pig come from?

I think it lived with the previous tenants.

And they just left their pig there?

Well, I think they live in a camper nearby. Oh my goodness.

So do they go and feed the pig? I'm just so concerned about this poor pig.

I think that's It's still their pig. It just lives in a house by itself. So that just tells you, I sent you a picture and this is a funny meme going around with our volunteers. I'm sure. It's a picture of the pig in the middle of the yard, a clean yard. And it says, "We did it all for the pig." That is, and that's it.

I just, but you know what I was going to say, I can't imagine that happening, but you never know. Once we start digging into stuff, who knows what we might find. Maybe there's pigs living amongst us. My neighbors too, who knows?

So these are all church volunteers, just volunteers doing this. And I gave this talk somewhere with a slideshow and the city administrator came up to me and said, "I would really love to do this, but what about the liability? What about if someone got hurt on that property?" Right. And I stopped and I said, I don't think you understand what I'm saying. These are church people. They feel led to do this. We take a risk. The bigger risk from a liability perspective is that there is junk everywhere, dangerous things for kids. In our community, we have an open basement downtown. We have these commercial properties just like every other downtown, and someone had removed the building but left the basement. Next door. It's just like a pit, basically. A pit. A viper pit. What about the liability of not doing something? Yep. Is what really comes to mind. And so, you know, for that instance, there was a sidewalk project that our Department of Transportation was doing in town, and I asked them to put all the clean fill in that basement. Did I ask the owner who lived out of town? You're going to find a consistent theme here. No, I did not. But what about the liability of putting it there? But what about the liability of having an open pit next to the park that my kids play in? Can fall into, right. I had another conversation with the town about, we had a mom that posted a picture of the teeter-totters at that park and said, "These teeter-totters are in terrible shape. The city needs to fix them," or whatever. And I commented and I said, "I think your husband's a really handy guy." would you mind if our hometown festival committee paid for the materials and would he fix that? And the next weekend he was home, he's an on-the-road welder, and he replaced the entire wood part of the teeter-totter. Yeah. And I gave this talk at a town next to us, the same exact size, and the mayor said, I would fix things like that all the time, but I'm afraid Since you didn't use a licensed and bonded contractor, the city's going to get sued now. And I said, what about the liability of that teeter-totter not having handles and being nearly broken wood? We get so afraid, and small town people aren't necessarily litigious people to begin with, but it's a small town. If we don't do something, we might as well tell our kids, "Hey, you ought to move to Columbia, Missouri, where they have parks." Right, exactly. You know, like, we're just going to let that property look the way it does and make our town look abandoned and drive down the property values of everything around it because we're worried about liability. No, you really might just be worried about your own self and the way, you know, whether or not you want to do this or not. You're looking out for yourself. These types of activities are about the community, greater than self. So I will put myself at risk and getting hurt on these properties any day to get it done, because when I drive by it, I'm, I'm tired of looking at it looking the way it does.

Yeah, I, I think that is so, so true, is that we, we often let things go because, like you said, then, then we, we end up, um, it's ordinances and it's rules. We let the rules get in the way of of doing good things. And I get it. I mean, I understand that rules are rules. And yet this is such an important thing for people to hear that. Okay, so what? Yeah, like you said, I ask that question all the time. What happens if we do nothing? Yeah, rules are rules. Right. 5, 10 years from now, what does this thing look like if we don't touch it now when we have the ability?

The benefit of being really small town people is you don't hardly have rules and ordinances. I mean, it's kind of a pro and con there. Yeah. So just get it done. Just, just move and keep moving. I will say we also, in addition to these workdays, we've had a demolition project. And I don't know if you have this in your state, but our Department of Economic Development will use federal funds to provide a town with a grant to demolish residential and commercial properties. Have you heard about this in other states, or is it just a Missouri thing?

I think it— well, I don't know. I have not heard about this.

So it's Community Development Block Grant funding, CDBG funding. And okay, sure, uh, uh, outside source comes and identifies all the abandoned properties in your community, and 80% of people that— 80% of those properties their owner has to agree to participate to demolish that house or demolish that downtown building. If it's a home, the property owner is only responsible for $500. Okay. Wow. They get a sawed grade lot. All the wells are gone. The trees are gone. The house is gone. The garage is gone. A commercial property owner— I bought a property just to enroll it in this. A commercial property's owner is responsible for 20% of the cost, but we've had a lot of success as it relates to our workday. These properties where these abandoned buildings were are now seeded lots, and people have purchased those and built machine sheds or homes on them. It's really the first time in my life that I've seen people building houses in our small town. We've only been on the decline over the last 100 years. Our county and our town have half the population that we once had. And so these types of programs and making things look better make this town more inviting for folks to move into and move back to.

Right. Yeah, I don't know that we— It's interesting, housing is such a challenge in a lot of rural places right now. Our community, we just don't have enough housing. And so demo projects or rehab projects are a huge thing that we do look at. We just don't have any scale around it. It's, you know, little, it's one by one by one, which, you know, it's better than nothing, but it's still, it's, um, that's interesting. And we, you know, of course we can access that, that chunk of funding, the CBDG funds, we can access those as well. But I don't know that we have a specific, um, provision for demo like it sounds like Missouri does.

It's a little bit sad to think about that the most funds that our Department of Economic Development use in these— you know, I would call them micro-towns— are to demolish buildings or to demolish places where people once lived or where businesses once took place.

It is hard. It is hard. But if it gets to the point— What's the alternative? Right. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. That's like we have a situation on Main Street in our community where there's a lot of second-story apartments that are unused and not renovated and in pretty bad— pretty good disrepair, I guess we would say. Bad disrepair, whatever. It's not a good situation. So we've got proprietors on the main— on the main level, and then second story unused spaces. And I'm— I want to put together, uh, at least a plan and see exactly what it would cost if we would condo out the tops, renovate them all in one fell swoop, right? The ones that the proprietors want to sell off to us. Um, and it'd be a private investment group probably, but doing that then you don't have any extra infrastructure, so our city should be pretty pleased about that. And you make, it's that investment in the next, I mean, gosh, how many years would we be looking at? We'd be fixing the roofs. All the roofs on our Main Street businesses are all pretty rough for people. And yeah, and people will say like, "Oh, well, you're never gonna get your money back." And it's like, but if we do nothing, we're risking a lot. We're risking all of our main floor, business owners? What happens if they just crumble from the top down?

In our community, I was too late. I was 30, 40 years. The '80s were hard on your town and mine because of the economy and our reliance on the ag economy in particular. So when I moved back, my number one goal— I moved back in 2011 full-time, and my number one goal was to demolish two downtown properties. They were the remaining, you know, old school, tall, two-story brick buildings, unfortunately, that were beyond repair. And, you know, what you're doing now keeps someone from me 30 years from now having to make that decision, really tough decision. Yeah. Um, one of the properties had three owners, one in Vermont one local, one in Vermont and one in Massachusetts, and he was in prison. I had a very hard time getting the real estate transaction in place to enroll it in this program. And I, you know, where you are at in doing something now is so important because what I inherited was too far gone. Right. And we enrolled it in this demolition program and for the older generation in our town. I posted, learning TAP, I posted pictures and videos of these buildings being demolished because I thought it was neat and historic and significant that this blight was going away. For the older people in our community, what I was saying was, these buildings are not important to my generation. What happened to them was not important to my generation. Sure. What you did there was not important to my generation, and we will forget you just like we've forgotten these buildings.

Oof, that hurts my stomach. That actually hit me right in the heart.

That is my interpretation of why it upset people, some loud individuals who care a lot about the community, and I care a lot about them, who were so heartbroken to see these properties go. They had literally crumbled onto the toddler park, electrified. The electricity was live, the fence at the toddler park, and these downtown buildings had apartments in the top but no back wall, and you could see beds and whatnot as if it was a dollhouse because it collapsed. Wow. And so these buildings were in disrepair, but my lesson in life, and I've learned many through these projects, is that I should have never bragged about demolition. I should have just let it happen and let people see a sodded lot take its place, to grade and not take credit for it or not celebrate what I thought was kind of a win in progress because it wasn't viewed by all that way.

Yeah, that is such a tricky dynamic, isn't it? That's why in Growing Small Towns, my nonprofit, one of our values is honoring the past, and that was 100% intentional. Because I really am a forward-thinking person. I think big and I think out there and I get excited about visions. I get excited about what comes next. And I've found myself in a similar situation, kind of drawing that same criticism of you just— everything you're trying to do makes us feel like what we've done isn't good enough. And that's— it's truly not where my heart is. So yeah, that balance, that's tough. That's a hard thing to balance because it is, it's, but at least with this project, like what I just described to you, it would literally be saying, let's restore, let's restore our Main Street to what it was first built to be. Absolutely. And I think that's exciting. And where people just can't get over it is the cost. And it's so funny 'cause to me, I'm like, we'll find the money, we'll figure this out. Like we've gotta decide that we care enough These have been sitting here. I mean, we— I think we could rent them out. We could rent them out really quickly. And then someone said, well, what if we don't have the renters? I said, well, then just— we can post them as Airbnbs because we, we always have a need for that. So yeah, I think it's just looking at what's— what exists, trying to think differently about, you know, what it could be. And with you, what you guys are doing, it's just simple. It's— you've made a simple small-scale improvements on a bigger scale because of the the facilitation and orchestration of the people involved, which every single community could do this.

And we have not only volunteers, but we have people— it seems kind of weird. I'm not a real estate agent, but because we're cleaning up properties because of the demo grant, because of our efforts in cleaning up what was a downtown, we are what I would call land assemblage. We are taking what used to be little bitty lots of downtown buildings, putting them together, and people are building new businesses and homes there. It seems odd to imagine, but every month there is a contract sitting at the local title company of land or these lots, these buildings, these spots transferring from out-of-town ownership to local ownership. So not only do we have volunteers,. But we have people that are willing to invest. Now, a lot in Atlanta, Missouri costs $2,000 to $6,000 typically, to be honest with you. But we're putting them together. They're getting mowed now and everything's really starting to come together because this movement kind of breaks things loose of people that inherited this 50 years ago and didn't know what to do with it. Yeah. And it's really making for much neater, tidier spaces.

So you've addressed this or said this, that you've got debris pickup, which I love the word debris, debris pickup. You had talked about having a place, and you said dumpsters too. So what's that process look like? Because I'm assuming that's a big part of the facilitation of it.

Just making it easy. Right, sometimes we use the trailer and take it to the landfill, but we have found that that is, more expensive than having a large roll-off. Our city has an agreement with the local trash hauler that the trash hauler has to provide a dumpster, a large roll-off every year for our annual festival. We ask them to bring it to our community for this workday instead. And so we also inventory, does the school have dumpster space? Does the city have dumpster space? Do our volunteers have dumpster space, and a lot of it goes into there. But I will also say, every small town— so a city of 5,000 people or more, they have a place for yard waste, they have a place for clean fill, they have a place for these things to go. In a small town, you kind of have to know someone to get rid of your sidewalk that you just busted up or your yard waste. And so we've identified a spot in town where we need clean fill. And anytime someone has a construction project, they know they can take it there and we're working to fill in a gap, so to speak. We have places for people to take yard waste as well. And so when I see a pile of sticks starting to add up in someone's yard, I'll make a note of it. And on our workdays, we will take a skid steer with a grapple bucket, pick those sticks up, take them to our place for yard waste and take care of that. And so again, a lot of communities would have a yard waste pickup day or a place for clean fill. Sometimes in a small town, you have to identify that and let folks know. Right.

So when you're sourcing projects too, have you found now that you're on your third year, have you found people raising their hand to say, you know, hey, I know this, your day is coming up, I could use some help with this. Has that started to happen or do you still feel like you're pretty much actively sourcing the projects?

So I do ask the school. I think their ideas are getting better and better at what we can do, but we've always partnered with them that day. The city has some ideas and we do have, you know, my son's disabled. He's got a limb that fell. We do have folks that reach out to that, but a lot of it again is just me driving around and noticing something needs needs sprucing up, right? How about funding?

Has funding come along? Have people started to say, you know, have you seen— because again, when I think about what are the two big barriers that seem to like plague us when we struggle with getting things off the ground, it's funding and it's volunteers. Those are like the two things we just— we need people and you need money. So when it— when you first started your first year, what did the money side of it look like? And have you seen any improvements, or has it gotten easier in some respect with the consecutive years?

So we'll talk about money, we'll talk about volunteers both. So, you know, the church— this is through our larger church— helps fund some of these projects. Ours in Atlanta, Missouri is so extensive that I raised some of the funds, but we have a festival every year and I kind of call it our slush fund. Whenever that mom noticed there needed to be new teeter-totters, she used— we used We told her to have her husband go to the hardware store in town, put it on our bill if he would do the work. And so we use our festival funds for a lot of this work. The city will pay for things that are related to them. The school will pay for things that are related for them. We've received grants for this day through our local electric co-op. Sure. All of our volunteers get a t-shirt. For free, which to me, Rebecca, is an important part of getting them to commit to coming. If you will tell me your shirt size, and I, which I've now, by now I have everyone's shirt size memorized, but if you will tell me your shirt size and I tell you that I'm going to give you a shirt that day, you've committed. I know that you'll be there at a pretty high level of confidence. And so the funding is never a problem. If we ran out, I would ask someone else to help. But it is never a problem. The most expensive piece of this is going to be dumpster. If we need to rent a roll-off or something like that, that's going to be our biggest cost. But a lot of these cities have contracts with their trash provider to provide a roll-off once a year. Right. Or, or doing at the same time as your bulk pickup is very, very helpful. When we talk about the challenge of volunteers, I keep a running list of jobs in town, but I also keep a running list of volunteers. If I think of someone or they say, I really like what you're doing, I will put that in my Google Sheet as well with everyone's number. And I reach out to about 150 different individuals and individually ask them to help that day and tell them, I know you're good at painting, or I know you did that last time. Will you do that this time? Now, maybe I've upset that person by email by telling them that their yard is a mess. In the past, or there's some sort of generational friction that I'm not aware of, but they don't seem to maybe like me or whatever. I will have one of my friends that's friends with them ask that person to volunteer, ask that person to bring their tractor with a bucket. And so I'm self-aware enough to know that I have a personality or a connection to people, but maybe I don't for everyone. And so One of my best resources for that is my best friend is the mechanic in town. He lives in the funeral home since we are basically a real-life version of Schitt's Creek. Yeah, I love it. And he has a mechanic personality. I do crisis communications for a life. He fixes tires and is super mechanical and growing his business. And we have two very different personalities. And two different types of friends set. And so he does a lot of the help in recruiting volunteers and equipment as well.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think— so you're talking about something that we— and this is among— so we do a lot of events. We do a lot of stuff. We need a lot of people to raise their hand. And I can't overstate the value and importance of personal invitations.

The statements when people put on Facebook, we need volunteers for this day. Yeah. I just want to cringe. No, that's not how this works. Right. Go and ask someone specifically, hey Joe, would you mind helping on this day? We really need someone to lead trash pickup. Here's the yard we're going to do. Right. I know that you drive by it every day and think of it the same way I do. Would you mind helping? And the first person that talks loses. Wait on them to answer. They will let you know if they're available. Don't say, oh, I'm sorry, but if you're busy, it's okay. No, let them talk. Yeah.

This, this, the same goes for filling committees, or if you're having a meeting where you really are looking for certain people to share their input, if you share that with them and say, I'm asking you because, like, that's the thing I've been telling people too. It's like, people want to know what you see in them or why you think they'd be a good fit. Because if I feel like you're just asking me because I get stuff done or because I have a pulse, right? That's the other thing. We just need people. We don't care. Yeah, well, maybe take a minute and actually care about who it is that you're asking and give them— So it's funny, way back in the day, I was a Dale Carnegie training person. Dale Carnegie wrote the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of his human relations principles is give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. That's one of the human relations principles. It's so it's saying to them like, here is why I think you would be a great fit for this thing, right? And then they feel like maybe a little bit more seen, a little bit more valued than if you're asking them, like you said, to respond to a social media post that's asking just anybody who sees it to raise their hand. So, yeah, so obviously, you know, you take that to heart because you get a lot of people involved. Right.

We also, you know, I haven't mentioned one of the most important roles that day is we have 1, 2, 3 people who their only job is to go out and take photos of people working.

Yeah. So smart.

And we create excitement for that day and future days. And we have a lot of young families who have their kids, again, ages 5 and up, helping that day. And so we painted every fire hydrant in town. Well, it means a lot to my kids and other kids to drive by a fire hydrant and say, that looks so good because last spring I painted it. Or to say, hey, there's that pig in the yard. Remember that day that we cleaned that up? And so my kids, I noticed, pick up trash when they see it around town. Like when we're walking, they notice when things don't look good and they'll offer to help people as well. And I think that day is a good practice for that.

I love that. I love that. I love that so much because I've, again, another kind of thing I feel like we've been hearing a lot is just where, where are all the volunteers? Where's all the civic pride? Where is all the— well, this is where it is. And we need to start our kids by letting them get involved so that they see and start to create that tie between their love of community and their, their own life and role in it.

Right. And if you're old and you're frustrated by no one's volunteering for this or having community pride in this, That could be because you need to have someone else ask them to. You need to let go of, you know, it's so frustrating to me too whenever they say, "I don't even know any of the people that live here anymore." Well, you know, is that your fault or their fault? Go ask, go make a relationship with someone that does and ask them to recruit volunteers. I just think a lot of times we have a really hard time in small towns handing off an ongoing task to the next generation. And I think it's that lack of connectivity, but also who have you asked exactly to do this? Right. And I think the answer is no one.

Right. Yeah, that control, like letting the way that we've done the thing get in the way of the thing, like the goal. The goal gets lost.

And just because you're the only one that's ever done it and you can probably do it better than anyone else, Right. Doesn't mean you have to be the one that keeps doing it. Exactly.

So if we could loosen up, like, let— like, just loosen up our grip on exactly the process of it and let more people find their way to it. I think that's it. It's a huge part of letting things evolve too. And I know that that's hard because you have people— the people that hold stuff so tightly, they have pride in it. They're proud of what they've done. Um, but I only— it's only an issue if after year after year after year, you start to find yourself getting more frustrated, you're finding less people coming to your thing, you're finding it harder to get people involved, then maybe it's about the tightness of the grip, right, that you might have on it.

So change it up a little bit. You know, one other lesson— I feel like I've shared a theme of lessons here.

Yeah, which is great. I love it.

The last, the last lesson I think of as I think through these cleanup days and our demolition work and all the things that we've done to change the trajectory of how things are looking and going in our community. You have to maintain. So our 4-H club, there was this abandoned house on one of the main drags and brush had grown up everywhere where you couldn't even see the house. You didn't know there was a house there. So a lot of us dads, we brought our chainsaws and we worked on it. We made it look sharp. Then we walked away from it. Well, I should have known, I'm a farm kid, that when you cut brush out, if you then leave it and abandon it, it will grow back tenfold. And so it hit that house again. So one thing that I've started in my mind, the if you see something, spray something doctrine, of course, again, farm kid. So once a month I go into town with my John Deere Gator and my sprayer tank of Roundup, and I spray weeds anywhere and everywhere on mostly public, sometimes private properties that I think need it. And it's helped keep what we've done on those cleanup days with the weed eating and the trimming and the chainsaws, it's helped maintain that. And so the "if you see something, spray something" doctrine is something that I truly love and live by, and I think it's, it's really helped as well.

Yeah, I love that. I— that's, that's just it. Maintenance is an active ongoing thing as well. So it's probably possible that some of your initial properties become, um, 2 years, 3 years down the road properties because you come back to them for maintenance stuff, which again, it's— there's no limit. So the only limit you have is the number of volunteers that you have, and it sounds like it continues to grow. And I just think this is such a doable thing, Aaron. What you guys have created down there, it's doable for every community, no matter how big you are. That's why I love this idea of a microtown, because if you're not going to love your community, who will? If we're waiting for— who are we waiting for? We're the somebody that we're waiting for. I don't know what we— I think sometimes we're overworked, we're tired, we've got a lot to do. I mean, I can appreciate all of that, but This ends up making it a community thing where you're also working alongside other people. So it doesn't have to feel like a slog, right? It's inspiring and motivating.

A little town called Beavere near us, we had a team that went there for the first time and I said, we're gonna— the church is gonna buy a pallet of mulch. In the least, grab 20 bags off of that, that Sunday morning. Red mulch can make something look so much sharper. Go to your Welcome to Beavere sign spot, put that down, put it down at the park. We had another town that did the same thing and they started painting bleachers in town and random people driving by stopped what they were doing and went and helped and went and helped spread mulch on the playground and things like that. And so people are out there wanting to help. People have pride in their town. They are bogged down by permission, liability, preparation. And so this day, takes care of most, if not all, of those things and just really gives us an annual opportunity to do it.

Well, I think it is absolutely fantastic. And I'm so grateful to you for doing this in your community because, again, there's pockets of people like you all over the country. And I'm so thrilled that you reached out and we get to share this story with our audience because there's a lot of people that listen to this show that don't have an official, air quotes, official title, that doesn't have to be what you are at all. You're a citizen. That's your title. You're a parent. That's your title. If you care, there's a way that you can move something forward. I hope that people feel really inspired. I know I do. This is something— Our annual festival is coming up here in just a couple of weeks. And I even think like maybe we can do a couple of mini workdays, you know, to get us even just to kind of take care of trash or weeds or that kind of thing along our main corridors and stuff just to make sure our town looks in tip-top shape, right? Exactly right. Yeah. Thank you so much, Aaron, for joining us on the show. And I can't wait to share the pictures because you're going to send some pictures. We'll be sharing that with people so they can see what you've done. Yeah. So we'll put any connection, you know, information to you if people want to reach out to you, if they have questions. That absolutely might happen. This is a pretty cool thing that you guys have organized. So we'll put all of that in the show notes. We should link to the SlideShare too, I think, so people could see it if you're okay with that. If you'd be okay with making that available to our audience, they'd be able to check it out.

As you can tell, I'm a pretty open book and I love talking about this type of thing. So anytime, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it today and I've had a really good time.

Thanks so much. Hopefully we'll see you on the show again.