Boost your makers with MFG Day in October

Add it to what you're already doing

Howdy   Your town has some crafters, makers, artisans or small manufacturers. The perfect time to celebrate them is during October for MFG Day, aka Manufacturing Day: Creators Wanted! Officially MFG Day is October 1 this year, but you can celebrate anytime in October. The goal is to build our workforce of future creators.    Here's how even the smallest of towns can participate.  Pick an existing local event that happens anytime in October, then add a space for makers, crafters and manufacturers to all exhibit.  Invite all of your local manufacturers, makers, crafters, and artisans to exhibit what they make.   Here's how this is going to benefit your community.  You'll build connections between your makers because they'll all be in the same place. Maybe some of them will even work together in the future.  You're going to draw attention to your makers and manufacturers, and that will encourage more people to consider making things as a career.  You'll help your creators boost their local sales.    Build pride in what you build locally. Keep shaping the future of your town,  Becky PS -  Check out our video Crafters Create Prosperity. It will help you grow your own entrepreneurs with crafts, arts and making.      Want to forward this message to a friend via email? Use this button:  Forward to a Friend Want to share this message on social channels? Copy this link and paste it in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or HootSuite:  Link for Sharing   Do you have a new email address? Go here to update your profile Want off this list? Unsubscribe completely SaveYour.Town · PO Box 8 · Hopeton, OK 73746 · USA Powered by MailChimp

Can small towns have food halls and public markets?

Let's make one, #IdeaFriendly style

Howdy   I think every small town wishes they had a public food market or food hall. You know the kind: a big building with lots of small food related businesses from cafes to farm stands to bakeries to jams and jellies. We've visited them in big towns, and we want them for our town too.  But dang that would be a lot of work.  In a virtual workshop I led for North Carolina Small Businesses, Inge and Maggie shared that they were working on this kind of a market: bricks and mortar, year round market for produce and local foods, with a coffee and juice bar and a seating area. A lot of work!  How can they get started in an Idea Friendly Way? Take small steps. Step 1. Start with an empty lot and a tent.  Step 2. Pop up a temporary food market inside it with just a few booths. Step 3. Grow from there.  Actually, you don't even need the tent to start. You could start with a single booth of food, if you also use it as a chance to talk to everyone about starting a bigger market.  Set up booths to sell local foods at existing local events.  Set up in the parking lot of another business, or on sidewalks.  Equip a trailer or small truck to travel to nearby towns to sell food at their events. Never start with buying a building. Start with tiny and temporary steps first.  Creating a local foods market is just one part of a whole ecosystem of local food businesses. Find out more about creating a local food business ecosystem with this video we created for you. Keep shaping the future of your town,  Becky PS - See the food hall/public market photos and find out what else I told Maggie and Inge in How to grow a food and produce market business in a small town, the Idea Friendly Way.

Convince others, even when they won't listen to you

Find your version of the card table community dinner

Howdy   Convincing other people to try your ideas is hard. It's easier to entice people instead. I'm not sure what kind of ideas you have, but there's some way to do a tiny or temporary version of that idea that entices others to join you.  There's a woman in Elkhart, Kansas, who told me she dreams of closing down the main street for a community meal. She can imagine gathering everyone in town along a long table stretched right down the middle of the street, everyone talking and eating and really building community. She said she's been dreaming of that for 4 or 5 years now, but it would take so much work to organize it all, convince the whole community to join her and convince the city leaders to close the street and take a chance on her untested dream of an idea.  She could start next week by enjoying a meal with just a couple of friends at a folding table on a sidewalk or in a parking lot. Then maybe next time they can entice enough other people to fill two tables. Eventually, it could grow to be so enticing that even the city leaders say yes and close down main street and join the whole community for dinner.  It feels hard to convince others to listen to you or approve of your idea. It's so much easier to entice them to experience it in a way that doesn't feel like a big risk.  How could you do something tiny or temporary to entice others to try your idea with you? That's the Idea Friendly Method.  If you can't think of a tiny way to entice others, share your idea with me, and I bet between Deb and I we can come up with something small!  Keep shaping the future of your town,  Becky PS - Find out more ways to entice others using the Idea Friendly Method here.       Want to forward this message to a friend via email? Use this button:  Forward to a Friend Want to share this message on social channels? Copy this link and paste it in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or HootSuite:  Link for Sharing   Do you have a new email address? Go here to update your profile Want off this list? Unsubscribe completely SaveYour.Town · PO Box 8 · Hopeton, OK 73746 · USA Powered by MailChimp

Your next step to be Idea Friendly

Get 75% off and put "Idea Friendly" to work 

Howdy   The Idea Friendly Method sounds easy, but what's the next step? How do I actually use it?  Well, Deb and I have been working on the answer to that for 5 years. So we boiled it down into a 30 minute video for you. We called it "Idea Friendly Next Steps" and we just released it TODAY.  The video is $5, but only for one week. It goes up to $20 on July 8.  Writing the video got me thinking about how I came up with the Idea Friendly Method. Throughout my career (and yours, I'm sure) there were always a few people in power who told me I needed to work my way up the ranks, to pay my dues before they would listen to me. They slowed down my ideas, attacked, blocked and even dismantled my work as soon as they could.  So I started doing projects outside of the old formal structures.  The "shop small" project that rallied local merchants.  The wine tastings in an empty building during the arts festival.  The gatherings of hundreds of small town people who were using social media in new ways.  I also read a lot more about innovation, crowdsourcing, change science, community, rural development, behavioral motivation, social capital, and open networks. I listened to thousands of rural people in person, in my email and through our survey.  In fall of 2015, I shared the first draft of the Idea Friendly Method with an audience. They showed a 17% increase in optimism. This was when Deb Brown was still working as the director of a small town chamber of commerce. She started to make small Idea Friendly changes to the work she was already doing. She forced me to strip away complications and simplify. It was a perfect learning lab, and we're still learning.  The Idea Friendly Method is never "finished" because you keep giving us feedback that makes it better. There's more of this story at the bottom of the page here. Keep shaping the future of your town,  Becky PS - The Idea Friendly Next Steps video is 75% off, but only for one week. Don't miss out.     Want to forward this message to a friend via email? Use this button:  Forward to a Friend Want to share this message on social channels? Copy this link and paste it in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or HootSuite:  Link for Sharing   Do you have a new email address? Go here to update your profile Want off this list? Unsubscribe completely SaveYour.Town · PO Box 8 · Hopeton, OK 73746 · USA Powered by MailChimp