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Locally-Owned Businesses a Key to a Community’s Sustainability

June 12, 2012 by Paul Edwards Leave a Comment

A story in USA Today titled Oregon, N.D. able to spread their wealth across USA presents the paradox that while Oregon is an economic powerhouse producing with wealth-producing high tech industry, the billions of dollars they produce are going largely to investors around the world and retirees in places like Arizona while Oregon has an unemployment rate above the national average.

While communities welcome national and multi-national corporations that provide jobs, communities must have locally owned businesses. The numbers demonstrate why: If you spend a dollar at a locally-owned business – 67 cents stays in the community. If you spend a dollar at a non-locally owned business, this ratio is reversed –57 cents leaves the community.

This dynamic is explained by David Morris, Vice President of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit economic research and development organization based in Minneapolis and Washington, D C.   “If you’re buying local and not at a chain or branch store, chances are that store is not making a huge profit.” “That means more goes into input costs—supplies and upkeep, printing, advertising, paying employees—which puts that money right back in the community.”

David Boyle of the New Economic Foundation puts it more colorfully, “Money is like blood. It needs to keep moving around to keep the economy going,” he says, noting that when money is spent elsewhere—at big supermarkets, non-locally owned utilities and other services such as on-line retailers—”it flows out, like a wound.”

Even big businesses think well of localization.  65% of multinational enterprises believe localization is either important or very important for achieving higher company revenues, according to a 2007 study by California State University at Chico, 2007.

An additional factor is the velocity of money – the speed and number of times money passes from one person or business to another, each benefiting.  Starting in the 1980’s velocity has decreased as more money has been diverted to the financial sector and it’s worsened in recent years. More money is being printed, but it’s not going into circulation.”  Why?  Wall Street found more profit in leveraging money than doing the business than in making and producing. The problem is moving money creates nothing.

To start and operate a locally-owned business not only can provide a sustainable livelihood for you, but it also benefits the community by generating money that helps nurture other locally-owned businesses, each providing one or more sustainable livelihoods.  People like locally owned businesses – the popularity of locally grown food,  local restaurants, your handyman and on and on.

If you think we can help, we offer consulting and counseling.  [maxbutton id=”1″]

Comments and questions on the substance of this blogs are welcome. If you have other questions about this website, please contact me directly for a consulting appointment.

Filed Under: Sustainable Home Businesses, The Future Tagged With: community, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, localization, locally-owned business, money, Oregon, sustainability. New Economic Foundation, sustainable livelihood, USA Today, velocity

Is Your Strategy on Hold?

May 17, 2012 by Paul Edwards Leave a Comment

More people get hung up on implementing their strategy than at any other stage in changing directions. It’s the moment of truth, the point at which we move past talking and planning into actually doing.  We should be able to move ahead when we have a clear direction, but sometimes our progress gets blocked.

Common Blocks to Change

Here are the top most common blocks to change: 

  • Fear – can you commit with confidence to making the changes you want?
  • Money – do you have the financial resources to support yourself while you make changes?
  • Being overwhelmed – can you organize, coordinate and manage the many elements of your daily life along with changes in your life?
  • Self- Doubt – do you believe you can maintain a confident, positive attitude?
  • Time –do you have the time to devote to the activities you need to undertake to effect change?
  • Energy – do you have the energy to carry on and institute the changes you want make?
  • Confusion – do you have a clear vision as to where you want to go next?
  • Discounting – are you able to remove negative and harmful elements from your life that take you off track?
  • Support – do you have the support of family, friends and colleagues?

These blocks plague us all from time to time and can usually be overcome. But for some they become major blocks to action.

Procrastination

Often procrastination is one of the underlying causes that turn common problems into major roadblocks. We put off taking action on what we know we want do, but usually we don’t know why we keep procrastinating. To get past our inaction, we have to track down the cause. Here are some typical reasons people procrastinate:

  • Fear – whether it’s fear of success, failure, or change, when we’re afraid to act, we procrastinate. Determining if the fear is realistic, and how we could handle things if our worst fears came true, can free us to take action.
  • Perfectionism – if our standards are unrealistic, we are likely to put off what we doubt can be accomplished. Think performance, not perfection and set reasonable standards.
  • Overwhelming Tasks – we need to break our goals down into shorter milestones that we can carry out successfully.
  • Unpleasant Tasks – change takes effort and sometimes that effort involves doing things we don’t enjoy.  We have to focus on the outcome and how good we’re going to feel once we’ve made the changes that we’re seeking.
  • Creating Pressure to Perform – some people are motivated by crisis and pressure and procrastinate until the last minute. Motivating ourselves to meet mini-deadlines at a reasonable pace is far less stressful than doing it all in one last-ditch effort.
  • Waiting for the right moment – usually there is no “right moment.” If we tell ourselves we can’t get started until something else has happened, it probably won’t happen. Now is not only the right moment, it’s the only moment. Tomorrow has a way of never coming, so we must start today.
  • A Red Flag – sometimes procrastination is a signal that what we thought we wanted to do is not the right thing to do after all. We may need to reassess our plans.

Is procrastination holding you back?  If you are avoiding important tasks, identify what you’re doing instead, and cut off your escape routes so you can discover why you’re stuck and get your show on the road.

If you think we can help, we offer counseling.

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Comments and questions on the substance of this blogs are welcome. If you have other questions about this website, please contact me directly for a consulting appointment.

Filed Under: Counseling Tagged With: being overwhelmed, blocks to change, change, discounting, fear, lack of support, money, Pressure to Perform, procrastination, self- doubt, strategy, time energy confusion

About Me

Paul with his wife, Sarah Edwards, are award-winning authors of 17 books with over 2,000,000 books in print.

Paul provides local marketing consulting through the Small Business Development Center. He is co-founder of a new website: DigitalDocumentPros.com.

Prior to becoming an author, I practiced law, served as CEO of a non-profit, and operated a public affairs consulting practice. [Read more...]

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