Joe: Welcome to the Being Found Show. We are your guide to being found by more buying customers online.
I want to update our audience on Project Hometown. So Project Hometown is the project we’re taking part in, which is to gather all local businesses in Shasta County, 17,000 of them, and get their products and services online on an e-commerce site and in a way customers want them to be.
The idea is to come together as a community, to shift the impact the Internet has on our community. Customers are going online at an incredible rate. We have never seen anything like this. The “find X near me” phenomenon, just for starters, is an unprecedented opportunity.
One of the things we’re doing is training high school kids to build these sites and partner or be mentored by local web development companies through Cloud Wise Academy. The idea here is to not only help our young people get talent but also to help local businesses get these sites done. So we’re starting another class. Here’s the thing, if you’ve got a high school kid, it’s free. This class has already been paid for by Reach Higher Shasta.
Chauncey: I remember growing up here in Redding, which is smaller town and everybody always said that we’re five years behind the trends, but since the internet, none of that exists.
There are no boundaries. We could be the leaders. It doesn’t have to be the bay area or some big city. Redding and Shasta County could be the start of small businesses getting online the way they should be. Nothing is holding us back.
Joe: We can lead the horse, but we can’t make them drink. So businesses, you do have to reach out. So how do you reach out? How do you pair up with these kids? Well, you can go to cloudwiseacademy.com, and it’ll tell you more about this, and you can sign up right there at the very top. We’ll start sending you information. We are ready to take our first applicants of businesses that we’re going to help get their websites online.
There is a cost, but at just $750 it is so minimal. Half that goes to the student and half that goes to the mentor business that’s helping that student. It’s nothing. The web development company and the student are following set criteria that have been developed by Project Hometown and the committee. So you know, you’re going to get the right thing, you know you’re going to get quality, you’re going to get what you’re supposed to.
Local Business: If you’re a business, if you know anybody in business and they don’t have a website or they don’t have a really good website that’s doing what it’s supposed to, go to www.ProjectHometown.com and let us know you’re interested in participating.
Local Students: If you know of high school students who are interested, go to www.CloudWiseAcademy.com and sign up.
The classes are starting soon, and they are in the afternoon so the students can go to the class after school, two classes a week and 2-3 hours long for six weeks. These kids will build a website and launch it themselves. They get to learn how to do it in real time and learn how to do it well. They get to see what works, what doesn’t and have instructors to guide them through it.
In the past, people were worried about kids growing up to dive into all the wrong things like drugs. Now they are worried about unemployment due to lack of opportunity. This is their chance to get into the world of nearly endless opportunity due to the internet. There is a shift in how our economy operates and who knows where that’s going and this is just one the ways we can help kids find their place in this new economy.
Thank you for listening to this segment of the Being Found Show, to hear the full show listen here: Being Found Show Episode #46 or subscribe to our podcast.
