Guest blog by Sarah Hale, Mason Koch, Violet Sanderson, Devin J Simpson
The SOAR Team selected Business Sustainability as their project for the 12-week course. Our goal was to figure out what was needed in order for area businesses in Star Valley, Wyoming to not only survive (a difficult task in its own right), but thrive!
Our first step was to create a survey and distribute it to area businesses. The goal of the survey was to gather information on what area businesses saw as their biggest struggles as well as what they felt were their biggest strengths. Through the discovery process, it became very apparent that area businesses did not know what sort of marketing resources were available to them; nor what type of marketing worked best for their products and services. Education and awareness in the area of marketing seems to be the overall common issue among businesses. With that in mind, the SOAR team set out to create a marketing toolkit that would provide information on marketing resources as wel l as a “how to” when it came to marketing.
We learned several fascinated things while we worked through the process. We learned that summer in Star Valley is not the ideal time to be reaching out to businesses – as they are busy making money. They have to have enough profit in the summer months to last through the fall and winter (slower seasons). With that in mind, we will be working to get marketing classes started just after the New Year with the idea that we will not interfere with the summer season. We also learned that a mentorship program between successful businesses and new businesses was a popular idea.
The process of dissecting a problem to see all of the different parts and then tackling what was doable gave us some early wins – people were excited to see what we were doing and decided to share that information with their business peers. Area schools were also excited to give their students hands on experience in the business world and support area businesses with marketing plans and their social media/websites. Through the process we learned several things that might be helpful to groups that embark on something similar in the future.
Our best advice is to Be Bold! People are ready and willing to join a team and move something forward – they just need to be asked and feel like they are heard. It is also critical to remember that we are people working with people to solve problems. Doing acts of kindness and truly caring about the people you reach out to during the process is what makes the whole thing worthwhile. In the end, it is all about building relationships.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the PDIA for Economic Development in Wyoming Program. 15 Participants successfully completed this hybrid program in August 2024. These are their learning journey stories.