On this episode, Joe and Chauncey talk about Project Hometown and how the community can work together to help Shasta County businesses succeed online.
“Project Hometown is a movement to face this challenge together, by putting our products and services online.”
Joe: You’re listening to the Being Found Show, which if you’re listening to this show I guess we have been found so good for us.
Real quick. I was just checking in on the sign-ups for the WordPress class and we’ve got seven people signed up for the class in November and we have looked like four of them will be up for the scholarship.
So that class is officially going to happen and we’ll probably have filled up by the time we start the class but there’s always room for more let’s not discourage. They can call if they’re interested or go to cloudwiseacademy.com but most of them are millennials anyway. They’re going to the website or you can text us.
Right. OK, I want to talk about another thing going on in the community and listeners please don’t tune me out. It takes me a minute to explain this one but I’m telling you this is a big deal. I don’t know about six or eight months ago maybe a year ago we had Jake Mangas on the show ( Listen to the interview with Jake here ). He’s the president of the Chamber of Commerce here in Redding. He and I were talking about after the show what would happen if all of the local businesses in our county, not just got their websites up online, but actually got their products and services online the way people want to buy. What would happen if 17000 registered businesses were all selling in this new e-commerce economy the way people want to buy. What would happen if you’re a business or you’re someone who sells or works with the business to step back and think how your consumer life works.
How do you shop? Do you look for products online to compare prices? Do you compare features? Do you look to see if it’s in stock? Do you look to see if they’re shipping? Do you know how you shop? Well, how many businesses in our county do you think have their products available in that way and it’s not very many, maybe 5 I don’t know. Not very many. It really isn’t very many.
Chauncey: Just give a realistic number. Not a lot. And there needs to be more. We’re all short-sighted. Well, how does this help my business directly and stuff? But if you think about like industry lobbyists they’re like going out to help their industry and our industry here is or in this environment is your local town. The more money flowing through your local town, the more success flowing through your local town, the more money that’s coming to you.
Joe: And so that’s the idea essentially. I’ve been speaking about this a lot. I’ve talked to a lot of big organizations who are now helping. And the way I’ve been describing it is we are in a new economy something like there was an industrial revolution. 150 years ago or whatever was there was a change of how business is done and how consumers buy. We’re in one of those now. And just like that in the Industrial Revolution businesses and communities who were able to transition or who accepted a railroad line to come through their town were the ones that thrived while the ones who said we don’t need that railroad spur to come through our town or we’re not able to adjust went the way of the buggy whip. I’m sorry there are winners and losers in business and there.
And so this is the idea: What if this county embraced this new industrial revolution which is really the e-commerce economy. There’s this new economy that we can tap into both to save dollars in our county. Imagine if your customers could find out if you had stock in inventory or if you had products that were in stock or what your prices were or they could say gosh I’m looking for this product right now who’s got it in town and they could go buy it. Imagine if they could do that. That’s how you want to shop. So imagine if if-if this community could actually operate that way. So that’s a challenge that came up when I was talking to Jake Mangus. Now, this has come a long way since that talk so the whole idea here is Project Hometown. The idea is Project Hometown is bringing this community together and that’s its goal to bring this community together to train and equip our companies so that they’re thriving in the e-commerce economy. This is a big deal. We’re going to speak about this at a Chamber event on the 26th of October so get with the chamber. We’re also doing a giant event, a half-day event, which we call Amplify where we’re going to talk about this in December.
But let me talk to you about what kind of involvement is going on. Redding Chamber of Commerce , The Smart Center , the Shasta EDC , Nortec , which supports the grant and the funding for like 17 smart centers they’re all behind this. They’re giving funds they’re giving resources for this to happen. Then there’s also this whole community of our local tech developers, Pacific Sky and companies like that, who are getting involved to help make this happen. They’re all doing this to help you Businesses make it in e-commerce economy. Project Hometown is not for profit. It’s not a business idea. It’s like Switzerland to try to organize a bunch of people and organizations together to get this done.
But there’s even more. Reach Higher Shasta , which helps interns from high school find businesses to intern with, has actually donated money to Cloud Wise Academy so that we can train high school kids to help local businesses get their websites online. We’re developing a mentoring program so local high school kids will actually be able to go to work for Project Hometown partners like Chauncey, like my marketing company, like Pacific Sky and others. They’re all coming together and these high school kids are going to go work with them to help add the resources to get the 17000 businesses in Shasta County online. Imagine what that would do to this economy if we were actually offering all of these products that you see and all of your stores and all of your warehouses.
We were offering them the way people want to buy. How many more sales would we get locally? How much more would we get from other communities who find the products they want from us. What kind of what would this community look like two years from now if we pull this off. Eight months after one little discussion they’re all coming together under Project Hometown to help make this happen. All we’re missing now is your local businesses this year.
Chauncey: Here’s one thing that they’re realizing and that is that a lot of this online purchases going out to these big box stores these big box websites. And you keep that here locally.
Joe: Well that was my original thought. My original thought was you know everyone keeps saying well you can’t compete with Amazon. No one company cannot compete with Amazon but 17000 businesses can compete with Amazon. Those same products, Amazon does not necessarily sell cheaper. I manage several e-commerce companies and I own three and I’m telling you right now we find products that are the same price or more on Amazon all the time. So what Amazon does is it lets people shop the way they want to. That’s it. Amazon works really hard to make a shopping experience that people want with reviews and comparing features and showing multiple products and recommending products and is getting him into all those kind of things. So you want to compete with Amazon you want to quit whining about whether Amazon is kicking your butt or not.
Well just do this. Go to Project Hometown. Let us know that you want to be involved with all of these organizations. These students were training, these tech companies, they’re all going to release in December and they’re going to start doing the things that you need as a local community. And I’m talking free and cheap and low cost for a lot of things so that’s an easy on-ramp for you as a business to get selling your products online. Now to your point Chauncy. You know the Amazon is real and all these things are real but we can beat them as a community and that’s what Project Hometown is. Let us know you want to be in there because the students, the tech companies, are going to partake in local companies and when to get you online the way customers want to buy.
Listen to the full episode : Being Found Show
