126. The Power of Place

Welcome to the show, Ben.

Oh, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, so this is really fun. You and I are gonna basically have a get-to-know-you conversation. Yeah, our listeners get to enjoy it.

So I love it, I love it. Sounds great.

Caught my eye. I'll let the listeners know too a little bit more in the intro, but you caught my eye in several community Facebook groups that we're both a part of. And then you had a lot to do with my friend Jeff Ziegler's book, Your City Is Sick. And so basically what I love so much is like when you start to meet great people and then they say, hey, have you met? And then all of a sudden you just start meeting really great people. That's how you came to be sitting in front of me.

So, well, same here. I've been a fan of the podcast and, um, I love what you're doing, love the messages that you're sharing, and really love the angle of the communities that you have focused in on and kind of that size. I mean, I have had the privilege of working all over the country, but I love what happens in smaller communities. There's a magic there and there's a, the ability to actually shape change in a way that you just don't always feel the same way in larger communities.

That is something that I think we don't spend enough time actually zeroing in on. Like, if you are the kind of person that loves to shape things or like create things or shift or influence things, I just want to like yell at those people, move to a small place.

Absolutely. And, and, you know, I think we've all seen it, this idea that it is easy in larger communities to fall prey to the idea that one person can't make a difference.

Absolutely.

And I could sit there and I could list you a list a mile long of people, what they're doing, what community they're in, and how a single catalyst has started a change in a place. And it is pretty awesome to see. And it's always good to be reminded of that because it's easy for us to get caught up in the frustration and then we end up writing the stories as why things aren't happening. And it's like, oh, I can't do it. I can't make it happen. It's like, no, actually you can.

Yeah. So, oh gosh, yeah, we're gonna have a fun conversation.

Yeah.

Why don't we start with, we were talking a bit before we hit record about this idea of community branding as a concept even. Why don't we go back as far as you wanna take us, but talk a little bit about, about the work that you do, how maybe it's evolved over time.

Absolutely.

And then I'll just ask questions as they hit me then.

Okay. Sounds good. Well, I'll start with the origin story because it's, it's funny. Fresh out of college, I had been hired as a strategic branding manager for a telecom company. So this was right after the federal government had kind of broken up all the major phone monopolies. So there was this whole wave of what they called competition line exchange carriers, CLECs. So there were all these like internet and phone companies popping up everywhere. And I got hired as a strategic branding manager. I had no clue what branding was. I'd never heard the term, but I was like, yes, this is, I would like to I have this job. And it was also, it was one of those industries that was getting a lot of venture capital. So there was a big firm out of New York that was trying to acquire our company. I ended up getting laid off the day before Thanksgiving in 2001. And I was the last person, they laid off 318 people and I was, I was the last one they laid off. The boss was trying to figure out a way that he could keep me, but it was a headcount thing. And so literally by the time I got the news and packed up my boxes and had my hand truck of stuff, the news had found out about the story. So a reporter took a picture of me getting laid off.

Nice.

And so front page, you know, above and below the fold of me and my hand truck losing my job. So, you know, nothing better for your, uh, your ego than letting everybody in your hometown know that you no longer were employed. But shortly after that, got a call from my oldest brother Tripp, who he and I are now business partners. And, uh, the way that only an older brother can, he said, hey, since you don't have anything else you're working on, I've got some stuff I'd like your help on. And we teamed up for the first time. It was, uh, actually January of 2002, and we went up to the great town of Concord, North Carolina, just above Charlotte. And I knew a lot about design and about graphic design, didn't know very much at all about communities. And it was the first—

What was your background?

So I had a double major in marketing and advertising, so I was really kind of, you know, from that. But my, my brother and his business partner have owned an urban planning firm that they started you know, roughly that year. They were actually, I think, working for an architecture firm and doing the urban planning thing under that at that time. And it was a logical connection. But what he was doing was a downtown master plan for Concord. And what he explained to me was, he was like, look, so what we do is we go into the community, and the first thing that we do is we look at their past plans. And so he like pulled out and he showed me some of the plans, and he's like, So here's our challenge. These plans show this community what they should have done already. They paid for these plans 10 years ago and they still haven't done these things. So they're now paying us to tell them that they still need to do the things that they were told a decade ago they were supposed to do. And so then he was kind of like, what we have to figure out is why are these plans going unimplemented? And one of the things that we really landed on was the idea that if the citizens do not fall in love with the vision, if they can't insert themselves into the vision, if they can't actually see, then it is simply a document that is representative of the elected officials of the time. So my brother did a lot of, of market data. And so like what would happen is we'd have a, an urban designer say, hey, we really need a building here.. And then Tripp would say, hey, based off the market data, we can support a full-time, like, full-service restaurant. And then I would go and I'd create an ad that would say, imagine having a place that you can celebrate your child's graduation right in the heart of the place they call home. And the people can now insert themselves into the reality of the vision. And it really just kind of took off. So like, literally in the beginning, it was simply a function of increasing implementation. We wanted to turn plans into less plans and more action. And that's where that kind of convergence happened. So we started to team up and then, you know, fast forward 20+ years later and, you know, still he hasn't killed me, I haven't killed him. We have a third partner who is the level one that makes sure that You know, if he has to put on the referee shirt, he always kind of does a good job with that. But yeah, so now fast forward to this, we're approaching 900 communities in 40 states and 5 countries that we've worked with just on branding systems.

That is absolutely astounding. I mean, truly.

It's wild. One of the things that we really believe is most communities need this kind of work. But a lot of communities, especially smaller communities, have a hard time justifying investing in it when they are trying to figure out simply how to make ends meet. So one of the things that we've really tried to do is create a process that allows high-quality product at a price point that small towns can afford. And that's what it does, is it puts the pressure on us. It forces us to be faster. Forces us to be— yeah, like we've had to squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of the process. But one of the things that I love is a lot of times in the marketing world, if you go and you hire a marketing firm or an ad firm, a lot of times they're trying to not have the same kind of clients because they don't want the overlap to be seen as, as, you know, a conflict. I have had the luxury—

And you're talking about kind of just like industry, right? Where it's like, we don't want to serve two banks or we don't want to serve—

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Like industry exclusivity and then finance? Right. Right.

Exactly. So with us, I've had the luxury of being able to dive full tilt into the world of community development and economic development. And so like, I know what works, what doesn't work. I've seen the plane crash and burn, you know, where it's like, ooh, are you sure you want to do an $8 million incubator? Like, are you sure that's what you need? Is that really going to incubate what you think it's going to incubate? So it has really been amazing to kind of watch the evolution of just the exposure to that many places and being able to carry with us the combination of the passion of being able to empower people to shape their place. Combined with, hey, here's some best practices. Maybe I know a lot of people say this, but maybe you want to focus on this. You can win real quick and you can earn competence and build momentum if you start kind of eating these smaller bites. And it's rewarding.

I want to dive into some of this with a little more detail if we can, because I think—

Absolutely.

As I listen to this, First of all, you clearly have a strong sense of what the things that hold a community like mine. So I'm in a town of 1,800 people. A lot of the small towns or people that listen to this are in small communities. I mean, you and I were talking like 200 people in a town. That's not uncommon. And what I think is crazy about it is just on the level, there are far more small places than there are large places.

Absolutely.

Yet the resource deployment strongly favors the large places because, obviously, it's politics, it's all sorts of stuff. And what I love about everything that you've said is that, to me, it sounds like you and your brother and your entire firm, like, you seem to have a pretty keen sense of that it's the people with their boots on the ground in a community that make or break every plan. And I think that's— Absolutely. Because everything you just articulated about this Concord, that you guys go, oh, like, it's the same things that were said to them 10 years ago still hold today. That's happening. I think any community that's done a strategic plan can absolutely say, like, that's us. That's where we're at. Absolutely. Right?

Absolutely.

Can we talk a little bit about the communities where you've seen the most success on the implementation of any plan, whatever it might be? How would you define or how would you characterize the humans involved? The people in the community, what, what do they do? How do they think? What do they believe? How do they show up? What does that look like?

Absolutely. So I just got back from a trip Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week in a community of 1,800, 1,900 in Missouri. As you can imagine, You know, you go through— one of the greatest parts of my job is I feel like I get to meet with, like, the changemakers. I get to meet with the people who are going to make the change. And let me just tell you about this community that I was in. They have a relatively new city administrator. She is absolutely amazing. Like, I started to hear her talk about things and I was just like, She gets it. This is awesome. But she was also realistic. So like, she was like, look, guess what? We passed a vacancy ordinance. We have a vacancy ordinance. We have the teeth to be able to go through and make sure that our property owners quit holding our community hostage. Now, do you have the political capital and do you have the actual resources to enforce it? We're not quite there yet. But, you know, she's sitting there, she's checking off all the boxes. And then I turned to what is now the combined Chamber President and Main Street President. She's awesome. I mean, she is just like— she's a consultant. She travels around and works with law enforcement agencies all over the country. So she gets government, she gets, you know, government funding and all that kind of stuff. But man, she literally looked at me straight in the face and she was like, We swing for the fences here. Like, we believe that you gotta go big, and it's not worth doing if we're not going big. And like, sometimes I, I think one of the things that I always think about when I go into a community is I try to think through all the different things that they need, and then I try to figure out what are the elements that are going to be demoralizing. And how do I put those in a safe place? And what I mean by that is, is perfect example. I produce a ton of product. One of the things that I share with communities is examples for wayfinding signage, and they love wayfinding signage. If for some reason there's this weird, like, magnetic force, like moth to the flame, to the wayfinding signage. And I always make a point to say, hey guys, I just want to point out to you that this is an important component, but this requires you to work with what we call the DOT. And that's not always fun. You know, it's like DOTs and railroads are not exactly the entities that you want to enthusiastically say, hey, let's go do a collaborative project. So figuring out what are the things that are going to say, You can't do this. You can't accomplish this. You can't, you can't, you can't. And put them farther down the line so that they don't decide to go and try to do the hardest, most demoralizing thing first. How does a community earn wins? Where are the passion points? Every community's a little different and they're different because the personalities are different. What are the things that that person is gonna want to make happen? Like, where are they really getting into? Oh, they're a business owner. They own multiple businesses. They also are doing property. Well, they might respond a lot better to getting some teeth behind a facade grant program because they get it. They understand the numbers, they understand the impact, and they can start to leverage it in a way where it will actually be catalytic instead of simply creating a fund that no one does anything to their buildings until they receive a grant. But I think the thing that you always look for in a small town is the people that never say, "We're a small town." And what I mean by that is say it in a way that's like an excuse.

Right. Well, we can't.

We can't do— We can't because we're small. When they say it in almost an apologetic way, it's like, nope, nope, nope. That's not a bad person. It's just like they've already experienced the beatdown. Of being told you're too small, can't make this work, can't make that work. Some of the most amazing places that I've ever worked are small, and part of the things about it is just desperation, isolation, and just determination combined into sheer creativity. And I love it. I love it when you don't achieve a level of being desperate enough, it's like, oh my God, how are we going to continue to exist? That is where true community creativity comes from. And it's exciting to me.

I feel like when I'm listening to you— well, first of all, you told me that North Dakota is one of the 10 remaining states. You've done work in 40. So we're one of the 10 that you haven't been to. Well, I might be a little bit hellbent on changing that then.

I'm game. I'm game.

Come out to North Dakota. But as I listened to you talking about, again, and I asked about the people because that's where my passion lies. I think I really fundamentally just to my core believe that if even one person decides to get incrementally better at something, the ripple, same rock, bigger ripple, like everything gets better. And so if you start to get a small little gaggle of people all working to get a little bit better, it's incredible how quick the tide can turn. I desperately, deeply believe that.

Absolutely.

So it feels like you really get behind what I guess I would maybe call grassroots change. Right. I mean, you're talking about looking at a person that has the characteristics of that determination, that fire, that hope over fear. They carry that with them and you look at them and you say, what do you want to get behind?

Mm-hmm.

Is that, I mean, because again, that's so important.

Absolutely.

Right.

No, absolutely. And it's like, I mean, you think about it, you think about any good movie, you know, it's like you've got the one person that starts the slow clap, right? And literally all it takes, they just stand up and it's one clap. And then they decided to try it. One more time. And then invariably by clap number 2, somebody else has watched and they kind of go, wait, are we, are we clapping? You know? And then by the end of it, it's like, it is like, it's a roar. And I think that, that a lot of what I feel like a lot of my career has actually been focused in on giving that First Slow Clapper, the visual tools to create the Roaring Crowd by connecting the dots, visually connecting the dots, making it super easy for people to realize, holy crap, I think we might be part of a movement.

I think we're clapping.

I think we're on to something. I think that we're, we're actually, yeah, we're doing this and we're doing this together. And I think that that is important. And I There's a guy that I worked with in Virginia, Todd Christianson. He was a legend in the world of their DHCD, Housing Community Development, and he preached for 30 years about identifying the community spark plug. And, you know, every community has a spark plug. You have to figure out what the spark plug is because it doesn't matter how big the engine is, doesn't matter how much money you put into it, literally, if you don't have the spark plug, it will never start. And those people, they're the ones that are hungry, they're the ones that are undeterred, they're the ones that operate under the mindset of anything could happen. Typically, they do tend to be a little younger. You're not seeing a huge wave of small town revitalization being led by retirees. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means that there's a different mindset once you get to a certain point in your career and a certain point in your life. And, and, you know, you kind of want somebody who's naive enough that maybe they don't even have the full ability to do a risk analysis. It's like, it is, yeah, be willing to be a little risky. Like, it's okay.

Yeah. And I think that— oh my gosh, like, that's the rub, I think, because a lot of our elected official positions— in Oaks, we may be— I see some things definitely shifting in that regard. But a lot of our kind of tenured organizations or committees or groups or, um, civic clubs and those kinds of things, they get just very so established that they're extremely set in the way that they do things. It's awfully hard to bring new and progressive— there's air quotes around that, you know, ideas to those people. And it isn't a criticism. It's because they actually are in a stage of their lives where maintenance is all they're trying to do. Like, they don't— my dad is a fifth generation or fourth generation farmer. When land comes up for sale, I mean, he's in his late 70s. Like, he doesn't get excited about the idea of taking out an enormous bank loan. I mean, that's just, it's just, you know, and then we are, we're the fifth generation. We're the ones that'll be like, well, you know, and you have to actually, like you said, do risk analysis, but it's a whole different set of parameters when you're closer to retirement than not. And so, I mean, it's, it's a challenging conversation because I have, we have a fairly aging community, but that's also trending down, which is great. I mean, we're trending younger, but I think what can happen is I think you said it, depending on what you try to bite off right out of the gate, that initial experience can be absolutely— I use the analogy of like you get this little spark, you got this little flame, and basically it's a wet blanket, right? It just continues. And ever you continue, like you relight that little flame, and then the next group just throws a wet blanket on it and you can't get that momentum back.

Absolutely. And the thing that I feel like— you know, we talked about Jeff. One of the things that Jeff is really good at is like he's good at identifying the wet blanket sources, you know, like the parking conversations and stuff like that. But it's funny, even things that aren't really like at surface level, you wouldn't think that they would be a wet blanket topic. I actually posed a question. Right, right, right. You know, one of the topics that has really started to get to me is every community I go in, people say, we need something for the kids. And then invariably it's like, you know, when I was growing up, we had a skating rink and we had a bowling alley. And it's like, well, guess what? Those were private ventures. So profit, you know, they were there to make profit. So why do the bowling alleys and skating rinks not exist? Are you saying it's because there's just not the entrepreneurial spirit to start a skating rink? Or maybe it's just— maybe what you are saying that we need is not what we need. But it's a great answer. Like, who's gonna sit there and say, no, we don't need things for our kids, right? But, you know, I posed it to our Facebook group and had some—

and I saw some of the answers that came.

Oh, some of the answers were so good. And this idea of, you know what, we need to quit treating kids like they're not people and instead simply create places that people love being, right? Yeah.

And that's where Jeff's work really comes— I mean, he's so, again, like hell-bent on the fact that like we're building places that humans don't want to hang out in.

Yeah. Yeah. And I give him a hard time because he'll sometimes he'll be like, especially when he and Amber will go on a vacation and they'll go to, you know, to the Mediterranean. And it's like, you know, it's like, dude, you really can't put a plaza built in the 1400s and be like, America, you should feel real bad that you didn't build it like this. It's like, well, I mean, they got a little head start on us, But at the same time, you know, the big message is spot on. This idea that we have gotten to the point— and it's funny, you used the term progressive a little while ago, and you and I both know that— guess what? Pride. You can't talk about Pride anymore because that's become politically charged. Can't talk about progressive anymore, that's politically charged. And then some communities tend to be— I like to think that when you get down to a local level, they're less political and they're more just, they more tend to have, they're either risk adverse or they're a little bit more willing to kind of try things out. They're a little more creative versus a little bit more, you know, restrained. And how can you make these arguments to people who think that they're doing right by their constituencies by making sure they're being fiscally responsible, making sure that they're, you know, they're going through this list that logically they're being good elected officials. But realistically, the things that you're investing in maybe are not— they're not smart investments. I mean, they're not— we're restoring a 1929 school building in our town right now. The amount of effort that it took to be able to get the state to allow funding to go into restoring a building instead of building a brand new building. And finally, somebody in the community was like, do you hear what you're saying? You are complaining about being able to reuse a 100-year-old building, and you would rather build a building that'll be obsolete in 22 to 24 years. Makes no sense. Like, we should not have to jump through hoops to protect and, you know, take care of things that were built the right way the first time, right?

Yeah. Oh, that conversation is fascinating. I mean, my— the building I'm sitting in is— it'll be 100 years old next year, and it's the one that we bought and restored. And right when I was on the little circuit trying to get some support for this whole idea, I was at a, a county-level job development authority meeting. The gentleman said, well, this just seems kind of like a waste of money in a lot of respects because you're going to put tons, like hundreds of thousands of dollars into this building. When you're done, you're just still going to have a 100-year-old building. And, and he said that, and I looked at him and I said, And isn't that great? That's not what he was expecting me to say, but I thought, what are you talking— I think for me, what I really struggle with, I think we throw up the, well, that sounds expensive. That's like any idea, no matter what it is, it's like, well, people say, well, that's going to be a lot of money. And then depending on who in the room makes that statement, sometimes it's just full stop. We're done. Like a concrete wall goes up and we can't move forward.

Absolutely.

I just think, well, of course, but let's talk about what the cost will be if we do nothing.

You know what, you're nailing it. And those are, whether we call them the wet blankets, whether we call it the concrete walls, it's like the best thing, in my opinion, one of the best things that we can do when, you know, people like you and I find each other and we know that we're passionate about what we do and we know that we're watching communities every day. Get these blankets thrown on them. How do you get past that wall? How do you throw off the blanket as quickly as possible? And, you know, it is funny. I mean, to sit there and have him say, at the end of the day, you're still going to have a 100-year-old building. And it's like, okay, so what you just told me is new is more valuable than old. So how long is a new building new?

That's a great question. That's a great question.

Right? Because then it's like, so when it's 7 years old, does it become lame?

Right. Yep.

Because, you know, nobody is sitting there saying, oh, well, our building's only 27 years old. Well, it's like, well, debt service isn't done on it yet, but it's already done the cool factor. So that is the thing. It's like you have two choices. It's either new or it's old. Well, guess what? Old continues to be old. And if we build value in old, then you're investing in something that will retain its value. If I buy a brand new Land Cruiser, which they just came out with new ones and they're— they dropped the price, which is weird, you know, but still it's an expensive car, right? So you buy a $50,000 Land Cruiser and in 6 years It's not going to be $50,000 anymore. But if you buy a 1978 Land Cruiser for $50,000, in 10 years, it's going to be worth $60,000. We get it with cars and we don't get it with buildings. And it boggles my mind.

Right. The other, the other big thing is, you know, to me, expense, cost. Money is a seriously relative conversation. Because again, if we say, okay, so like for a building, right? If you say we need to invest in this building or we want to invest in this building and people say, well, that sounds expensive. And have you thought about building new? Because it got this guy, actually, that was his fault question. Have you thought about building new? And I looked right at him and I said, that thought never once crossed my mind. Because this building exists. It's right in the heart of Main Street. And I said, if I don't do this to this building and nobody comes along after me to do this to this building, this building's going to fall in on itself and it'll be a hole in the middle of Main Street. So you could absolutely make the argument that the cost of doing nothing financially would be less, right? Because there's maybe no cost involved with letting a building go to ruin. But what does that do to the sense of pride of the people that used to shop in that building? One of the things that I have in this building, so when you come to North Dakota and you come down to my little town, we ask the community for their memories, their best memories of all the different things that this building has been in her almost 100-year history. And we had, I worked with an artist and they're just written in text. On the walls. They wrapped the back wall back here. So, so cool. So like it was originally a JCPenney, right? So you've got— it's JCPenney. It's got the years that it was those things. It is generations of memories, right? People have— this building shaped humans.

Absolutely.

And so to let it fall in on itself, it's just like, that's like mourning That's mourning so much. It's so much more than money. It is so much more than a financial discussion. And I'm telling you, like, I talk like this, you get it. I can clearly see that you get it. And to a lot of people, it's just like, oh, you know, there she is being all feelsy again and like emotional. And I'm like, but it's not though.

And here's the thing. Let's talk about the other side of it. Let's talk about kind of the, the financial side of it.

It.

Let's talk about the— like, what is the currency of 2023? Like, it's social media reach. It's like stickability. It's interest. So my wife and I, we bought our house in 2016, just like your building. Next year it turns 100. And it is a colonial revival. It's right in our downtown. The owner that had it before us had, you know, not really done maintenance for the 30 years that he owned it. It was originally built by a man named M.B. Downing. He owned the door and sash factory in town. He built it for his oldest son. He built the house next door for his next oldest son. So you got sibling rivalry. Ours managed the facility, so it's got great trim. His little brother next door, a little bit plainer, you know, I mean, Great story. Then from there, it was bought from the Downings by the Hammond family. Well, Mr. Old Man Hammond owned the Cadillac dealership. He built our two-car garage and he built it so wide that he could parallel park one of the old '60s-era Cadillacs in the front and keep it until it was unveiled. You know, you fast forward again to the Draper family that lived here, and Mariah Draper is one of the founders of Dogfish Head Brewing, which has been purchased by Sam Adams and is a huge You know, so it's like story after story after story. The Pikus family, who owned Lou's Bootery, who every kid in the state of Delaware went to Lou's Bootery to get their first pair of shoes. And so it is this, like, it's story after story. And so we wanted to restore it, and my wife decided to start an Instagram account to document the restoration of it. We've had this Instagram account for 5, 6 years. She's posted 80 times in 6 years. So not a whole lot. We have 17,500 followers. Yeah. That's cool. Our Ben and Erin Napier from Hometown, uh, Erin just published a new book called Heirloom Rooms. We're featured in the book. Like how—

That's awesome, Ben. That's so cool.

It's all— but people are interested. Young people are interested. If you listen to the narrative in public meetings, they say that young people don't care about old stuff.

That's exactly what they say. It's not true.

There's no data. There's like literally there's nothing that says that what they're saying is true. Yet it's the narrative. It's the, oh, well, yeah, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. And it's like, well, actually, you didn't even ask them first.

Well, so this is an interesting thing to touch on. So that mindset that kids, younger people don't care about old stuff. They also would argue that they don't care about the communities the way that they should. They're not volunteering, they're not getting involved. And I always push back on that, or at least depending on who I'm standing in front of. But just to say, like, how are we— are we making it easy for them to become a part of it? You know, are there things that as an organization, a committee, a club, a group, a project, whatever— I mean, whatever it is, right? Because it inevitably happens that something goes for so long, and if nothing really materially changes with it, right? And then we keep telling ourselves, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And then I, I want to say, it might be broke. Like, well, it might be broke. Like, you don't think it's broke, but you're mad because nobody wants to come along and get involved, right? There's room to give. Like, there's room to give. And we just everything is so tightly wound, like, in our hands, and we like it exactly the way that it is.

Yeah.

And so that's— it's such a challenge, but I'm sure you run into that. That's—

oh, absolutely.

Of just like, okay, I said something the other day that reminds a bit—

yeah, I said something the other day to somebody who I probably should not have said it, but they—

well, I can relate.

They're firmly in the baby boomer generation, and, and they made a comment about how They were like, you know, kids these days, they never get out of their phones. That's all they care about. And I was like, when you went to school, they literally had smoking lounges in high schools.

Right.

I was like, so like, guess what? Every generation's got some ups and downs. You chill out, just chill out. And it is—

what does that adeptness with technology do for you, because it's tremendous power.

Yeah.

I don't get it. I just wanna, I say it all the time, so I don't know if you really know this, my background, like the approach that I bring to this work. And again, I told you like I'm totally a reluctant economic developer, but I do organizational development.

Right.

So I go into companies and I have these conversations and it's all about how the humans in the place function. And it's, it's a lot easier frankly, in that environment because there's a boss and you can hire and fire. And in a community, you don't have control, right?

There's control.

You don't have those same controls. But I continue to argue and just, you know, try to prove out that so many of the things that make a workplace a great place to work translate to the things that make a community a great place to live.

So you're gonna love this because I— the exact same thing. I mean, When people talk to me about community branding and what makes community branding different from corporate branding, it's the exact same thing. The absence of control. Like when you develop a brand, a brand message, a brand personality, a feel, you are literally paying people to deliver the personality. And if they don't, you have the ability to fire them. In a community, that simply does not exist. So whether you are building place or whether you're building and sharing brand, you are doing it through inspiration. It's the only way to win. Connecting people, making them feel part of something, getting them excited, excited about where they could be excited about. You know, I'm from Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville, born and raised in Greenville. Our company is based in Greenville. Greenville is probably one of the single best success stories of downtown revitalization in a medium-sized town in America. And when I was a kid, you did not go downtown. We were ashamed of it. Well, you know, we were ashamed of it. It had fallen in the late '70s, early '80s. We had an amazing mayor named Max Heller. Max crafted the Vision 2000 plan. He systematically went through and just did project after project after project. And I distinctly remember that in the short time from when I graduated high school and went away to college, when I left in 1996 to go to college, in my mind I said to myself, I don't care where I end up as long as I don't go back to Greenville.

Right.

And by the time I graduated in 2000, might have taken an extra semester, gave myself a little extra time, but by the time I graduated, I could not wait to move back to Greenville. That's how much it changed.

That's a huge story.

And like, and what happened is the moment that the naysayers turn into the docents, the tour guides, you know, it's like, it is the nature of community. They will tell you that you are stupid. And that you're making horrible decisions all the way up to the day that they tell you that it was their idea all along. And that's just the way it works. So if you decide that you're going to change great plans just because someone has said it's not a good idea, you've got to find that fortitude to stick through it. And, you know, so true, having that vision plan. I mean, one of the beautiful things about it was That vision plan was created in 1980. It was determined to be a 20-year plan. They literally kept copies. They never updated it. They kept it originally like it was so everybody could see what they had done. And I'm talking about the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that in 1981, the mayor decided that we really needed an anchor hotel, but not just any hotel. He wanted a big name hotel, a hotel that at the time denoted quality. So he went out, he literally met one-on-one with representatives from Hyatt Regency, and he said, we want a Hyatt in our downtown, and here's what I'm willing to do. I'm willing to make your lobby and atrium a city park. We'll pay for it. We'll maintain it. It will be the first public-private partnership that the city's ever seen, but we want to make sure that we can deliver on an experience.

Well, and that is in 1981, right?

Right.

I mean, yeah, so incredibly forward-thinking.

It is, it is. And this idea of planting those seeds, and, and, you know, South Carolina, I don't know I don't know how much people know, but between Max Heller, Knox White, who is our mayor now, and of course a lot of people know Joe Riley, who was the mayor for decades in Charleston, probably one of the most influential mayors in American history. And the things that can happen on that local level and that creativity of how do you make a project work— and granted, I get it, I just said Hyatt Regency, and that is so far out of reach for most places. But guess what? In a lot of small towns, you have one person who buys two downtown buildings and decides to turn them into upper floor Airbnbs or condo them out so that members of the community can own spaces that they host their own family and friends. And then, you know, like we see some of the coolest ideas St. Paul, Virginia built a hotel, a boutique hotel called the Western Front, that is purely targeted at ATV riders who are coming to the local Spearhead Trail system. And so they have ATV truck and trailer parking in the back. They have a clean station so you can wash down your, um, vehicles. Like, they get it, they get it. This is a community of maybe 4,000 people, right?

See, yeah. And locally we've got, um, several, several really— and again, they're so enterprising, and unless you speak to them and pay any attention, what they've built are lodging accommodations that were designed for hunters.

Absolutely.

Fishers, right? Fishermen and women and hunters. We have a really— that's a huge catalyst for visitorship for this community. And so, yeah, just being really thoughtful and building it for them. Now, other people can stay there when the season— it's off-season, but it was built for that purpose.

And so, and you know, that's such a great example because I think about communities I've worked in all across the country. And if a consultant had come in with their button-up shirt and said, you know what you guys need to do? You need to create some niche lodging solutions to attract hunters. The community would have been like, no, we don't. We're not telling anybody about our honey. We don't want to share. And, but when it's developed by the people, when it comes from your love for the place and for your desire to be there, it's a very different thing. And being able to, and again, I think that is one of the biggest jobs of a consultant is knowing what not to say. Instead of just you throw everything out there, you try to justify your value and justify your worth by overloading on recommendations and throwing so many things out there instead of being able to say, you know what, this is how this needs to go. And if you tell somebody this, it's going to dig their heels in and they're going to do the opposite. Or if you tell them they need to work on this, they're all going to flock to this. And in 3 months, they are going to be so off-put by how hard it is to implement this that this community will never get anything done. So, you know, I think there's, there's scrutiny that kind of comes from that, the planning industry and even just the term plans, but they are not all created equal. Like there are people who are in this industry who passionately care about helping places. And, you know, I told you before, I've got 5 kids. I really like my spouse and I really like my children. And if I'm going to have to be away from them, yeah, I wanted to be for a good reason. I have to be able to justify. I mean, you know how kids are, like kids value their parents' time more than anything else. And if I'm going to deny them of that, I have got to feel like I'm justifying it with making a difference. And I think being able to go through that process and, and I'd be interested from your standpoint in the help that you provide to communities. I mean, how often do you find they simply are looking or they need help on how do we find help? How do we find, like, the help that can help a community our size?

I honestly think that that is the crux of the problem most of the time, because if they're asking that question, they've got the people involved that want to make things better, right? They aren't lacking the spark plugs or the creative minds. Finding out where to get the help And that's part of what we tried to do locally is be a connector of those things. And so I do, I spend a lot of my time out of the four walls of this community for sure. I do. And I have that same feeling of like, if it's not worth that time away, I only have 3 children. I'm not as ambitious as you and your spouse.

You know what? It's the same level of crazy. You hit 3 and it doesn't matter. Fast.

That's what they say. Yeah. I should have just kept going, I guess. But, um, You know, I, and I, I just think, how do we make it easier?

Mm-hmm.

Because again, talking about all of this, if you're the person that has an idea and you wanna see something happen and you just hit wall after wall after wall locally, it can be really defeating and it can feel like I'm never gonna make this happen. And so can we give a few practical, like, here's what to do next if you're a person listening to this. And I would say, You know, you mentioned really influential mayors. You know, what if the person listening to this is like, I can't go to my elected officials? You know, they're not part of the movement, let's say, right? They're not going to start clapping. They're going to look at me slow clapping and say, what an idiot. What are they clapping for? Because that's right. And you know that that happens, right?

So, oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

So how do they kind of maneuver? What's their next step? What's their most important step, do you think?

All right, so I'll throw a couple things out, and they're not in a particular order, but just things that I feel like I have learned over time. First of all, small town— become friends with the town clerk.

Okay, or administrator, whoever. Yeah, I mean, like, what, what is the crux of this job in your mind?

So a lot of times in a small town especially when we're talking small town, small town, there isn't anybody who is an administrator or a manager. There is the elected officials, and everybody knows the mayor and thinks the mayor's in charge, and then the town clerk is just the chief administrative officer. But at the end of the day, nothing happens without the clerk, right? The clerk is the sun. And everything revolves around the clerk. And they are oftentimes— you can even tell by the name clerk. If you work in a town that has a town clerk, be friends with the clerk because it is understated by definition and they are overworked. And being friendly with them is, if nothing else, you're simply spreading some love to somebody who is in the middle of everything that's going on in the community. The next thing is just figure out what you want to accomplish. Not short-term, like long-term. You know, with me, I want to be able to eat Thai food in my town. I'm not going to open a Thai restaurant. I don't have the knowledge to open a Thai restaurant, but I want a Thai restaurant. Like that is, that is the thing that will help me to be real happy here, you know? So what needs to happen? Is it, do I need to identify a space? What role can I play in that whole process? You know, I have gotten to the point where with my city government and my Main Street organization, every year I will kind of think through a list of businesses that I want and I'll just kind of tell them, hey, If anybody ever comes to you with an interest in this, I will donate free branding for them.

Okay, I got— I'm going to stop you. I got to stop you because there's two things. This is so fun, by the way, like to hear— to have met you, to have only seen you peripherally and then to hear you saying things that I literally say out loud. It's just incredible. I actually, I speak tonight for a women's— it's a women's leadership program. But it's all about making an impact. And I just recorded a solo cast that'll go live on Monday. And several of the things that you just said are things that I've said, namely that I think we sometimes— people, any of us that are in our communities— we feel the pushback against an idea just because we'd like to see it, and we don't feel that that's enough of a reason to advocate for it. And I'm simply saying, if you want to see it happen, you're a resident of your town. Therefore, the community wants it.

Right?

It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. So I love so much that you said that, because I have had thoughts like, is that accurate, Rebecca? Like, or, but that was this thing with the building that I'm sitting in. I've been asked, I share what it looked like. I shared the process of it. I share that. That's what I share when I speak a lot. And oftentimes people will raise their hand. Usually it's a guy. I mean, it's usually a man who might be an elected official, might be like a county commissioner. The last time I got asked this, it was a county commissioner said, um, what kind of market feasibility study did you do to prove that your community needed this space? And I said, how would I have gone about even doing that when coworking as a concept was pretty foreign to everybody in my community anyway. I said, you know, the truth is, I live here, and I needed this space.

Right. Well, and I love that. Yeah, I love that. It's like, when you demand something, it means the community demands it. And if we can allow, if we can allow so many things to be shut down, by the proverbial they. How do we empower the small town we, right? How do we make, make you we? Yeah, absolutely. Because like, and I love that. And I think that it's interesting. I don't know how long you want the podcast to go, but I don't even watch the time, just so you know. What you just said, I mean, it opens up a can of worms because you were asking a little bit about personalities and you know, what kind of personalities I see. I will tell you this, I see a dramatically different catalyst in small towns when they're female than when they're male.

And, um, well, so how and in what way do you see that?

So the overwhelming majority of my work is with females. I find that there are far, far, far exponentially more females in the world of small town and medium-sized town economic development. And I think part of that is because most of the time communities don't have budgets for what a man identifying as an economic developer— can I say it like that? You know what I mean? Like, like, it's like they either don't have the budget for the salary or they don't have the golf course close enough for them to feel like they can conduct their business. And I think that what happens in, in a small town when you see a female or a group of females— and that's the thing that's funny— is, is you are far more likely to see a group of females or a group that was organized by a female in a small town than you are to see a group of men who have decided to make a change. Why is that? I don't know, but it's something that I've noticed. So females tend to be more wave makers and change makers from kind of a let's all get on this together, where a lot of times with a man who's making a change in a small town, if I'm being honest, and I'm not sure that I ever recognized it before this conversation, it seems like a lot of times those people lived somewhere else, got disgruntled with something about where they were, and decided to bring their resources and expertise to a different location.

Yeah. And that's interesting.

So I think that it's really interesting when you're talking about speaking to a group of women. I have never been to a community where anybody has ever said, oh, we've got this really cool project where a small group of men just decided they wanted to get together and do something great for the community. But I can start the list and keep going. I mean, there's a group of women in Oskaloosa, Iowa that get together and they do this event where everybody throws, I think, $100 in the ring, and then they generate ideas and everybody votes on what they want to use the money for. And they created one of the coolest activated alleys around. And it was this— it was people getting together that way. And so I think that there's something interesting there. I wish I was smarter. I wish I could say more about why that's the case, but I'll tell you If I'm trying to deconstruct the DNA of what I come across the most, females have become the changemakers in our communities more often than not. And one of the biggest fears there is in America, we are still expecting so much. We have opened the doors to some things without lightening the load to others. And, you know, I feel blessed to have gone through a situation where my wife decided that she wanted to go back to school and get a second bachelor's and now pursue a doctorate. So, you know, between me being a traveling consultant, her owning a landscape architecture firm and being a full-time student and having 5 children, like We have figured out how to throw everything on the table and say, there is no implied responsibility. This is the work that needs to be done. Who has the time? Who has the expertise? And who has the mental capacity to get it done?

Oh, that's, that's beautiful. I feel like where I live, I was just talking about this with my two female colleagues today, or yesterday, we were talking about it. And then you question, you know, what's at the root of that, of this, like you said, just, oh, this is such a challenging part of our conversation, just in terms of how well it will be received. And yet you're speaking from a place only of observation, which I think is really helpful. This isn't conjecture. This is what you've actually seen across communities. I speak about this from a place of lived experience. Right. Take it or leave it. But I feel like, again, being the 5th generation of a farming family, there is just entrenched ideas about roles and responsibilities within a household. And I'm sorry to say that some of those carried over into my household. And as I've taken on more professionally in the last 3 years, it's really just been the last 3 years. Those conversations, we have to be having them at home because I can't do it all. And literally, I'm like, I'm not trying to be a hero here, but I have to actually give heroic levels of effort to hold it all. And so it's just interesting. And this is absolutely— this isn't any sort of disparagement towards my spouse or towards the generations of amazing people that I came from.

Sure.

Just having that conversation about Okay, where do we need to maybe be open to the discussion of something shifting?

Well, and the other side of it is, it's funny because I guess from, from both the male perspective and the, the witnessed perspective, you know, it's like there's certain things where it's like, I don't want to presume how I can fix anything. We try to find solutions. We have a an employee in our company that has worked with us for probably 8 years now. She is a planner. She wanted to be able to keep her mind in the industry, but it also was unbelievably important that she be more of a stay-at-home mom than a planner. And, you know, we were able to figure out a way that she could essentially just craft her schedule. And it's like, if you only want to do 10 hours this week, do 10 hours this week. That's fine. We love having you. We love being able to have you be part of the team. But it's interesting because it's like, take your comment, fifth generation farm family. You know, my family has been on the same land since the 1700s. You know, now I was never a farmer. My dad, you know, participated as a boy and then you know, went off and became a process engineer for pulp and paper industry. But when you look at America historically, it's like you had a farmer and then you had the farmer's wife, and the farmer's wife was a singular name that meant boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, all these things that you did. But the farmer was the farmer. You know, and there has been this kind of singular focus from a male perspective where a forced— and you said it beautifully, I'm not trying to be a hero, except for there are heroic level expectations to juggle all the other parts. And the question is, maybe Having to constantly wear the weight of an expectation of constantly juggling so many non-congruent skill sets is the very thing that makes females so successful at being able to help a community move forward. You're not looking for a singular definition or that singular focus. You understand that literally at the end of the day, you will have been chauffeur, cook, maid, like counselor, therapist, referee, you know, all of these things over the course of the day. And it is just, it's really interesting to me. And that's, I feel like one of the big things that I have tried to do. I do a lot of work with Main Street organizations and Main Street directors across America are overwhelmingly female. Like when you look at— interesting, you know, you look at the number of people in America who carry the economic development director title, overwhelmingly male. Main Street director and chamber director, overwhelmingly female.

Sure. Yep. And that's part of why I say I'm like a reluctant economic developer, because I see, feel, and know the need for that tourism lens and that quality— I mean, quality of life is an economic development topic. I just— absolutely, I won't ever veer from it. And it's all about just what makes this place a great place to both visit and more so a place that people love to call home.

It's so funny, in the economic development world, I get asked a lot, people are like, if you could only focus on one thing from an economic development arena, What would you do? And, and, you know, if you were to ask Jeff that, Jeff would probably say something that was very place-related. You know, he would— I have come to the point where if somebody asks me that, my answer is, if my job every day was to wake up and focus on economic development and I could only have one area of focus, I would focus on the schools. Everything that I would do would be to make the schools better, because then we're going to have better potential workforce. We're going to have a better place for people to live, which makes it a more attractive place for people to live, which makes it a more attractive place to recruit talent, which makes it a better place for people to come back to, a place that they're willing to come back to. Guess what? You want to be a retirement community? The best way to be a retirement community is to be the kind of place where grandkids can grow up. It's like we have created all of these other focuses when at the end of the day, create a place that is really good at— like, if your major production product is great people, then you're going to be a long-term sustainable economy. And it doesn't matter the size. And you can't fixate on— I mean, a lot of 22-year-olds don't want to move back home, and that's fine. And there are a lot of small towns out there that probably don't want to do what it takes to be interesting to a 22-year-old male, right? But when they're ready to settle down, when they're ready to have a family, when they're ready to raise kids, if you pop back into their mind as maybe this is a great— maybe we should think about going back home.

Well, we also— it's not demonizing the time away.

Absolutely.

It's understanding what an important aspect of their growth and development. And then, I mean, again, for me, I think like, then I wanna look at them and say on graduation day, like, hey, we're so proud of you. We hope that we did everything we could as a community to shape you, to give you a place that you felt safe and felt secured and felt loved and felt like you could grow and all the things. And we want you to go and gather whatever. You need to gather.

Even the Amish have Rumspringa.

Exactly, right? We just— and then, but the thing we don't say, and we need to continue to start saying, or say and then keep saying it is, but when you're ready, whenever you have that feeling of like, hmm, I wonder what it would be like to come back, then come back through the door and we'll talk about it and we'll figure out— because that's the other thing too. Like, I graduated from high school in 1999. The way that you and I are even having this conversation didn't exist then. And so living and having a full, meaningful career didn't seem possible to me because I didn't want to be a nurse or a teacher. I mean, it felt very limiting. And there is no limits. There's zero limits to what people can create from a— it's like the coolest time to be alive, I think. So when anybody ever says, like, oh, the best days are behind us, I'm like, whoo, disagree. Like, hard pass on that mentality.

It's—

well, everything.

And that's the other thing, it's, it's like, you know, you go into these communities, and especially from old-timers, you know, they'll sit there and they'll be like, you know what we need? We need more jobs. We need jobs for our kids to stay here. And it's like, okay, so does that mean that you want to throw a lot of money in incentives? I don't believe in incentives. And it's like, okay, so you don't want to give incentives. You do want to grow jobs. Can we invest in making the place nicer? And that's just fluff. Well, can we put money into schools? Can we create new schools? I went to that school. There's nothing wrong with that school. And it's like, wait, so how is it that— do you really think that economic development is just creating invitations? And it has been amazing to me how many people across America literally think that businesses have not located in your community simply because they haven't been invited.

Right.

It's like, that's not how that works. You know, it's not how that works. And I always tell folks, I was like, the greatest thing that your community can have is a cool factor. And I have seen gigantic corporations break every one of their own rules simply to exist in a cool place, right? I mean, you know, two-story all-brick CVSs in the heart of Cornelius, North Carolina. You know, you see McDonald's that look like clapboard cottages in Freeport, And like, and I'm not saying this—

that's a Jeff thing, right? When he talks about standards, he talks a lot about standards like that. We don't have to sell out our standards to meet their needs. If they want to come, they'll meet what we need. They'll meet our demands.

Absolutely. And that is kind of the thing. It's like we get into the mentality of we're so desperate to have somebody validate us. We're so desperate to have a national chain validate us by locating here. That we're willing to sell everything that we stand for short and we're willing to take business away from locals that already are in the market.

Right.

And it's like, well, I mean, that doesn't necessarily make sense, but yeah, there's a lot there. I love some of the things that you said when you were talking about the, the guy who asked you about the market assessment, the feasibility of my feasibility. And it's like I've done one feasibility study in my career, and it was interesting because the result was me saying, this is not feasible. And they're like, no, that's not how a feasibility study works. And I'm like, why not? And they're like, you're supposed to tell us how to make it feasible. I'm like, it's not feasible. It's not feasible. But what can we do to make it fee— no, you can't. Like the whole purpose is to pay someone to figure out some way on paper to make this look like it's going to work. That's not a feasibility. You're paying them to create a plan, not to say, yeah, this is a great idea, right?

Well, when I had this idea, I had this notion for what I wanted to build here. My husband said, you know, like, I'm gonna need to see a plan. I said, well, that's okay, because the bank will too, you know. So like, whatever, we'll put some numbers down and we'll see if we can make this thing work. And at some point, you know, you just have to be honest about a business plan. And it is absolutely the best intentions. There is no way of knowing once you start, because some of the way that I'm generating revenue now, I didn't have in my business plan, right? Because I couldn't have foreseen that being a thing. And so I— what I said to him was, here's the truth, sweetheart. I don't know if this is gonna work, but I do know that this is worth pursuing. Like, I know that this is a good idea. I don't know if how I'm looking at it right now, if it's gonna work, but what this is gonna take, it's just a lot of honest assessment and iteration as you go. Like, that's anything that you start that's new unless it's like super clear, right? I mean, this is an 8,000 square foot building, right? It's got multiple purposes. Like what I have in the front of my building right now is a couple of shelves that we stock with food that anybody in my community can come and access any time of the day. No questions asked. We don't sign anything up. That was not part of my business plan. Again, like that's because once you open, once you start something, and that's the idea of a catalyst or the slow clap, probably my favorite analogy ever, by the way, for what that feels like. Because to be the person to stand up in a crowd and clap first, really unnerving, like really vulnerable. You actually do have to be just a little bit crazy, probably, right, to be that person. But if nobody stands up and claps first, nothing changes.

Right.

And so to all the people that I know that are listening to this that feel like that person, and if you feel like you've clapped once and you've clapped twice and nobody's on board yet, I hope some of what we've talked about, even just from a make this connection, try this thing, you know, I spend a lot of time talking about who people surround themselves with.

Right.

Because it is massively important that you feel supported and encouraged and because you can only take inspired action if you actually feel capable.

So when you came up with the idea, I mean, I'm guessing the building was underutilized.

Yes. Yep.

And like you had this idea and it might have started just as a very high-level, I wish I could.

Totally.

At what point in your mind, did it change from daydream to, you know what, I think I actually want to act on this idea?

I can tell you exactly what happened. So, so for me, it was a little bit twofold. Like, it was the idea and the space and what I wanted to happen, but this building belonged to my grandparents.

Okay.

So there was also just this pull, like a legitimate magnetic pull to this space. Like, she talked to me, you know, like I'd walk by her and she'd like whisper to me. And I was like, that building, it's got so much history. And I spent so much of my youth there. Like, I just thought this building, something needs to happen, right? So it was a little bit both of those things for me. So I made a phone call. I made one phone call to a man named Matt Marshall. And I've said his name so many times on this podcast and kind of everywhere I speak, but It's just again to illustrate the power of one conversation. So early on I thought, okay, like I have this shell of an idea. I know how much the building costs. I have no idea what it's gonna cost to renovate it into what I wanna do. I wanna kind of see how many conversations does it take to get me to where I feel more buoyed, right? So I made this little chart, like this is one of the things I'll be talking about tonight. Like I literally made a physical chart and it had like stickers on it. It was like super silly, but I put it on my office wall because it was what I could do every single day. You know, I was in the middle, like I still had 3 kids. I still had another job.

Like I was working and I thought, okay, but you had the foresight at the beginning to do that.

Yes. Like every single day. Well, and I, by the way, the reason this came to be is because I was part of a, it was a mastermind group. So there was, I was one of 7 women from all over the country. And they said, Rebecca, focus on, like, let's figure out something you can do every single day, right? And so it was talking to people. So I had filled— there was like 64 squares on this thing, and I just, every day I would make sure that at least one square got filled in with a new name.

Okay.

So, you know, in my mind I was like, I need to probably raise about $300,000. You know, like I was like, well, let's just see what happens. So I started having conversations. Somebody said to me, you should really talk to Matt Marshall. And I said, who's Matt Marshall? They're like, oh, he's the economic developer. And at that time, for our local electric company— most electric companies, whether they're cooperatives, but they're, or, you know, they're just a big provider— they have somebody that actually is tasked with economic development internally. So that was his job. And so I start talking to him, and I start sharing this idea, and I said, I don't know if you know the building. He's like, I do, you know, I'm familiar with it. And I tell him what I want to do and hit the actual words that came out of his mouth were, where have you been all my life? And I said, huh? I was like, well, I said, well, I've been here in Oaks for the past whatever, you know. So we start talking. Matt said, I know that we can put dollars behind this. So Matt helped me apply to their foundation and 6 months later I had a $40,000 check.

Awesome.

Awesome. I didn't even own the building yet. And so just from a timing perspective, to give you and then anybody listening, if they haven't heard this, some perspective. I got that at the end of 2019. I hadn't bought my building yet. That I had all these plans for what I was going to do, you know, in March and April of 2020. And I had Matt's time, right? I had Matt's check in my hands. And then the pandemic happens and all that happens. Everything I had planned fell apart. And that, I swear, that check, I could have given it back and I could have just said, there's no way I can act on this. My husband was like, what do you think? Maybe you should just give it back. Seriously, you don't. And Matt, I would talk to Matt close to every week and he would just say, Rebecca, I know this is hard. I know this is scary, whatever. Just don't quit. Just try to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Well, we ended up closing on the building on October 29th, 2020. And it was legitimately because of— I had 40,000 reasons to not quit is how I kept looking at it. And so it's really, for me, it's just about— and this is what I'm speaking about tonight. It's like, how do you actually make a unique contribution in your community? What does showing up in a unique way look like for people? And some of it is simply saying, this is really what I want to see and having the fortitude to find those people. So then when you find your Matts, right, whatever your Matt Marshall is, Then you ask Matt Marshall, who else do I need to talk to? And he inevitably is going to be able to give you the next 2 or 3 people, right? And connect you to the next 2 or 3 people. And suddenly you've got an army of people that are behind you, right? You're never alone again.

And it's just interesting. It's interesting though, because from the other side of things, from the economic development side of things or whatever. There's this assumption that people like you are very easy to identify and find in terms of like, that's my job. My job is to find people like you to come in and reuse a building and make it contribute. But I mean, how many times have you said reluctant economic developer? Like most of the time entrepreneurs do not call themselves entrepreneurs. They don't self-describe as entrepreneurs, and if they do, right? Yeah, they're in like a flag, like, like a little cult or something, right? Right. So this idea, I mean, let me put you on the spot because everybody who is listening and me just as a person who is constantly with communities, like, let's say we have a chamber director, let's say we have a Main Street director who has a building that they're like, God, we have got to find someone. How can we pull the people out? How do we communicate? How do we say things that are going to resonate? And kind of like, is there anything that you wish you had heard in those early stages that would just be like, You know what? I got 40,000 reasons to not quit. And I also have people saying, we need this. You know what? This community is a risk worth taking. Like, what do we need to be doing better to prime more people that are willing to pour their passion into the place?

Oh, that's such a great question. I think there's a few things. I think, first of all, low stakes, low risk, and kind of low commitment gatherings is a great way to start. So, so if all you do is say— so I'm going to tell you, we like pulled this little group of people, and I was like, I just want to talk to the people that dream in scheme. That feels like you. If you're a person that has more ideas than time or money.

Yeah.

You're the kind of person, I just want to creatively brainstorm. And now I'm a professional facilitator. So like, this is what I do, right?

Yeah.

Then, then I think it's also really important. And this is actually something we'll be doing here in my space, hopefully, is actually hosting community conversations. And I will set some ground rules, like, and you can set temporary rules that just govern that one meeting, right? And it's right for things like we don't, we will not say out loud, that's never gonna work. Yeah. You know, we will not say out loud, that sounds expensive without a follow-up. And we can probably figure that out, right? Like you could set whatever rules you want and basically they would be the antithesis of whatever happens out on the streets.

Mm-hmm.

You know? Yeah. And you just say like, we want this to be like edifying. We want it to be supportive. We want it to be encouraging and we want it to be creative. And so in order to help us do that, here's how we're going to facilitate that. And then simply, I mean, because that's where it starts, is those people exist in your community. I am almost— I mean, that's a pretty strong statement. I get it. But I really do feel like if your town still exists, it's because there's at least a person in your town that's thinking about these things like this.

Right, right.

It's just not possible. If it's dying, then maybe you don't. Right. But if new businesses are starting or people are still moving back, there is life in that community.

Mm-hmm.

And so I think that means that's something to actually kind of double down on. And so if you're a chamber director, it's simply saying, you know, at 5 o'clock on Wednesday night, we are hosting an informal gathering. Bring your own beer or we'll bring pizza. Beer is always like, it just creates this like casualness. That people go, oh, okay, it's not stuffy and there's no agenda other than— and maybe it's just we're going to talk about the use of this one building. If you've ever walked by that building and thought, oh my gosh, wouldn't it be cool if this, this, or this were there? We want to hear those thoughts. If you're a person that—

I love the dreamin' scheme. You need to trademark that sucker right there. That's good.

It's pretty fun, isn't it? I mean, it's like, because that's what it takes. It's this weird audacity to dream bigger than what's happening. And the steaming is simply saying like, yeah, there's going to be barriers, but we're going to figure out a way around them.

I love that. I love that. My middle brother lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and they've got a really good kind of startup culture in the community. But one of the things that they did was they did a thing called Founders Ale. And Founders Ale was just, you know, it was an opportunity for people who are thinking about starting a business to meet with people that have started a business. But even with that, like, I always think about labels. I think about like how people identify and, you know, I've owned this business for 20+ years and I've never considered myself an entrepreneur. I've never considered or run a startup like any of those things that other people— I also didn't realize. Yeah, I didn't realize I was a professional artist. You know what I mean? It's like I had a photographer who was like, you literally get paid to take photos and design things. You're an artist. And I was like, but Dream and Scheme, like, that's a— it's like, yeah, it's low stakes. Yeah, it's got rhyming, which is always good.

Alliteration is kind of my favorite thing. It literally, though, I think— and this is why I think it's so important— I think it's less about the title or the label, and it's more about the way of being. That's, that's why we, I, you know, we like to say it's like an it factor or that person just has it. Well, what can we articulate something about what that is so other people can self-identify? Right. Because the challenge is if what often happens, and again, I've seen this across context, but where you just go, okay, well, who do we wanna invite to the meeting? And then we, like, hand-select specific people based on the roles that they play. And that's probably the least interesting thing about them.

Right?

Like, it's the inner worlds and it's the stuff people are doing in their spare time because they want to. Those are the things that we have to figure out how to tap into because that's the cool stuff that if we can give— there's so many, so many benefits of this. For the person, we give them an opportunity to contribute the best of themselves, and they get an enhanced sense of belonging from that, right? Then as a community, we are more likely to retain those people because they know that they're making this impact in this really specific way. And then from a community standpoint, we attract more humans that move through the world that way because they can see that they'd have a place there. So To me, it just all starts with an honest conversation, and you keep it as loose as you can so that it doesn't feel like, oh, I'm not supposed to be here.

Right, right.

Let people self-identify into your thing. I think we would get so many more people to raise their hand and help out, volunteer, share their ideas, give money, all the things, if we could be less focused on what we think we know and more open to letting it kind of evolve organically.

Love that. Love that.

Yeah, I think, you know, when I think about what I wish I would have heard more of when I was getting started locally would have just been like, gosh, I admire you for going after something that's never been done here before. Like, way to go. Kind of more of just even like, I don't get it, and I want you to succeed. I didn't get an overwhelming message of I want you to succeed.

Right. That's so interesting.

Because you don't need everybody's approval, but it sure would be nice to occasionally get just a pat on the back, like, I see how hard you're trying.

So let me throw something out there that I feel like I've kind of seen in communities, and I'd love to hear whether you kind of felt that as well. A lot, especially small towns in America, if you were to go out and talk to the old-timers, you'll probably hear the phrase, "I remember when you couldn't stir the people with the stick on Friday night." Friday was payday, everybody get their paycheck, and then they go downtown. They watched the community's heyday and then they lived its decline. And then it kind of hit bottom, and then it has started to stabilize and it started to improve. But still, in their minds, the thing that they look back to was the heyday, and they're always measuring the today against the romanticized heyday, and they do not match. And in their mind, there is no such thing as an exciting new downtown. There is only the quest recreate the heyday.

Right.

And yep, it is demoralizing to many of them to have witnessed the decline. And honestly, it is easier for them to simply be able to exist. It's almost like the mourning of what they have lost than it is to get their hopes up only to watch a business fail, to watch an effort not pan out, to watch this or that. And I think many times the reason why we're not getting the Rebecca, I am so excited for this. I am so glad. I want you to know that I see you and I appreciate that you are willing to take a risk for my community. They're too scared to say it because they're sitting there going, oh my God, can't watch another thing not work out.

So that's another to me. And I think you're absolutely right. And I think what we need to continue to do is discuss the value of trying. Like, like, and reframe. I mean, so a business doesn't stay open. Why are we calling it a failed business?

Right.

It didn't fail. Like, we only truly fail if we see challenges and we don't do anything. That's failure to me. And again, I— maybe it's kind of a romanticized thing, but like, legitimately, if we don't start to say, gosh, in our best effort with the best information we have at the time, we chose this direction and we didn't get the results we want, but think about how much smarter we are now. Because we did that, right? What would we change and what would we, you know, what would we do differently? And all of those questions. And that's why when you said entrepreneurs, that's an entrepreneurial mindset. That's that way of thinking where you're like, it's all trial and error and it's all iteration. And how much information do you have to have before it's good enough to say go? There's not a perfect answer to that, right?

It's like being financially ready to have kids.

100%, right?

Done. Absolutely.

Yeah. Or even emotionally ready. Right. Not quite ready. Well, the thing about it is the more that our communities, we sit and spin saying we just need a bit more information or everything's not quite perfect, the world continues to change and we fall further and further behind. Absolutely. Because even if you feel like, well, we haven't made any big changes, well, your status has changed because everything around you is changing. I get that that's maybe a little bit terrifying. I try really hard to hold grace and empathy for the folks that have seen so much. And so I'm more apt to ask a lot of questions. If I feel really triggered by somebody, I will try to ask questions to try to understand and draw out where they're coming from and then just share with them. And then this is how it looks and feels to me, not having that background, but having grown up at this time where when I graduated till now, an entire world of opportunity has opened up to us. Yeah, like we've been a part of that exact time. And I think that, that, by the way, I've said this before too, I just think there's an interesting role for Generation X to play in communities. We can absolutely be a bridge generation because We understand a bit of both.

My 10-year-old. Oh, you said X, not Z. Yeah, the X. Well, first of all, it is funny because I think you have probably seen this too. The baby boomer generation does. I don't think they've realized that millennials are like in their 40s now.

Exactly.

Like, it's like if you use a phone, you're a millennial. That has just become a label for everyone that's young. I am remarkably interested in the impacts of Generation Z, the hunger that they have for things. I mean, my 10-year-old, she and I were walking down the street the other day and she looked up at a tree. And then granted, I get it, she's surrounded by some nerdy adults, but she was just like, wow, that's a really beautiful tree. Is it? Do you think that's native? And it's like, well, Babe, that's not a native. But she's like, well, it's a nice ornamental. And I'm like, oh my God. Like, she knows about street trees. She knows about, like—

And again, I think there is so much to be encouraged by. And I think part of it is just the lens. I think really it's just the lens. This is something I said in the solo cast that I just recorded on Monday, that you will always find what you're looking for. And so if you wake up every day and you're scanning your environment for how the best days are behind us. Like, you're saying, like, I believe the best days are behind us. Like, that is a belief that I carry out into the world. And all day long, you're scanning for the proof that that's true, and you're going to find it. You're absolutely going to find it. At the same time, there's tons of evidence to show that the best days are yet to come. You just don't see it because you're not primed to look for it.

Absolutely.

And so people like me and people like you that are really invested in community, part of it is we just have to choose what to look for, right?

Right. No, you're exactly right. And I think that's, you know, when I go through and when I do a branding process with the community, the bulk of what we're doing is looking at personality. And it's so funny, it's like I just think about, like, I can literally look out my front window, my neighbor Megan is walking down the street with her grandson Marcus They're looking at the pumpkins on our front fence, you know, and it's like, hey, wait, this neighborhood, that's like, they're like family. Marcus turned 3 last week and we went over to his house for a birthday. You know, like the way that everyone is connected is important and feeling connected is the thing that makes you part of a community. And it is easy to gripe about all the things that are wrong. But it is also easy to kind of get lost in all of the negatives. And, and I still have my first car, is a 1967 Mustang, and I remember every time it broke down on me. I know all the dents that are hidden underneath the Bondo, you know. I could write a list a mile long of all of the reasons why it was frustrating. I could make a list that would never make sense why I have spent that much money and put that much effort into maintaining it. Or I could take it out to a cruise-in and I could have other people enjoy it and tell me how beautiful it is. And when we're the stewards of a community, it's like owning a classic car. We can fixate Or we could take in that positive feedback loop. And a lot of times what's happened is in our communities, we have eliminated the positive feedback loop altogether. We are no longer exposed to the talk of potential, to the talk of beauty, to the talk of any of the positives. And we are only fixating on, we need to work on this, we need to spend on this, we need to invest on this. You know, I listened to a podcast earlier in the week that dug into homicide stats. And when you hear about homicide stats, and if you hear about a community that dramatically changed homicide stats, like a lot of times first instinct is, wow, I wonder what they did with their policing. Wow, I wonder what they did to kind of change that. Nobody ever says I bet they got a better hospital. Mm-hmm. It's like, you know, what are we doing to invest in ourselves in a good way? How are we taking care of ourselves? And, you know, giving yourself permission to take care of yourself in the Midwest, that is impossible because they really is. It's just a mentality where it's just like I spend a good majority of my time convincing people they're worth it.

Yeah, right. The idea of like, we can have nice things.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Why do we need all that? That seems fancy. It is a little fancy. And doesn't that feel good? Like, those are the things that I say when people come at me with that stuff, because absolutely we are worthy of that. Every— because it is.

How does your pickup truck, your $80,000 pickup truck You know, it's like, it's actually, it is okay to have nice things. You don't have to hide it. You don't have to camouflage it. You don't have to, like, it's okay to want nice things and have nice things. It's okay to invest in yourself.

Yeah, it is. It's, again, that ties back to Jeff's idea of civic self-esteem, just what that looks like and feels like. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. It has been so, so fun. Having this conversation with you. All I know is that after this gets released, we're going to have to figure out a way to get you to North Dakota for sure.

I would love it. I would absolutely love it. Anything I can do. I love to find like-minded spirit. And if you'd be game for a, for some sort of virtual dreamin' scheme, I would dig that.

Honestly, I mean, I'd be open to that. You bet.

I have never heard that before. I've never heard that phrase.

I don't know if that just came out of my brain. I mean, I assume it did, but I can't attribute it to anybody else. So I guess I'll steal it or take it.

You should absolutely take it. And, you know, I put a lot of weight— I know you were talking about as a facilitator, you know, the format, the way that you put an interaction together really helps to control it. But the way that you announce it and the way that you invite others is also really important. And the people who get excited about a very casual opportunity to just talk dreams and ideas, it is literally one of my favorite things to do. And I adore that. I love talking to somebody who has a new business idea and like, I just love being able to throw things their way. And this community this week, they did an event called Rolling the Balls. Rolling the balls. And literally all they did— I know exactly, that's a loaded one. I did have to ask that. So they roll tennis balls down this giant hill in their downtown, and whatever ball gets to the end first wins the pot of money. So everybody buys balls, you put the balls in there. So I had to make sure that they carried the balls in a box. I was sitting there and I was kind of thinking about this.. And I was, this is a community, this, um, 1800 rural farming community, do a lot of livestock and Smithfield pork processing and that kind of stuff. And they also recently have had a huge influx of Hispanic population. So they're at 40-some-odd percent Hispanic. And the Hispanic population is really getting involved in the business community and involved in the community as a whole. And I was just like, you know, rolling the balls, that's fun and all, but what if we called it the running of the balls? And like played off the running of the bulls, great, like Spanish tradition. And it was interesting how that one little idea turned into, oh my God, we could all wear like black pants and white shirt. We could wear red scarves.

Is that what they did?

Well, they're, I mean, I just gave them the idea this week. So like now they're like running for it. It's like, this is cool. Let's figure out how to make this more fun. And, you know, one of my favorite events that I ever came up with was we were working in Athens, Alabama, and they were looking for a big fundraiser. And I was like, well, you know, everybody knows Athens, Greece, but then in the South, everybody knows Athens, Georgia, because that's where University of Georgia is. And then not a lot of people know Athens, Alabama. I was like, well, what if we did an event that was a celebration of Southern culture combined with Greek culture? What if we had togas and deep fried food? Well, and so what we came up with was what we called the Athens Greece Festival, G-R-E-A-S, a celebration of all things deep fried. And literally, I mean, they were doing toga 5Ks, they were doing all this like deep fried food. And I mean, it's just, it was a really, really cool combination where you give people permission to have fun and they fall in love with their community all over again.

Right. And there's— that's— we don't emphasize enthusiasm enough.

Absolutely.

And it's such a magnetic thing to bring to the table, like a genuine joy and excitement about something. Like, it creates— it does. It creates a momentum all of its own, and it's just so much fun. And everybody can find their way into it. And they see themselves in it, you know, just— it's so, so cool. So, Ben, my God, like, you— I think you actually do win longest episode of all time. I think—

I'm sorry, listeners.

No, like, listen, I don't get overly— say it has to be under a half hour because I let the conversation go just until it kind of naturally has an end. And literally, we could have talked for— I'm turning into Joe Rogan. That's what I'm doing, apparently, just long-form 4-hour episodes.

I don't know if you know or not, but apparently he's very popular.

Yeah, right.

Apparently a lot of people watch those 4-hour shows.

That's all I need to do is just take him over. But it's been so much fun.

It's been a joy.

You bring a really human-centered approach to this work, and that's— it's people like you that make me think I can stay in it. That's the truth. Because it didn't feel like a natural fit. In a lot of ways, it's still not. But until I guess they kick me right out of it, I'll just continue to do it the way I do it. Right.

You know what? Nothing, nothing wrong with a little disruption. So.

Right. Well, you come on back. I mean it.

I would. Anytime. Anytime. Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure. And looking forward to getting an opportunity for our paths to cross in person.

Oh, it's going to be great. Thanks so much, Ben.

See ya.