By Dave Terry
President Pickens Small Business Development Council
On Tuesday, November 18 the city of Jasper’s Downtown Development Authority (DDA) hosted the first ever community and visioning meeting that approximately 50 people attended, many of whom were locally owned, small business owners. As the Pickens Progress reported, the vibe from the attendees was sobering.
Several small business owners expressed how they were struggling and concerned about sustaining their future operations. The challenges ranged from uncertainty with the national economy to feeling like there is a lack of awareness around the obstacles facing many locally owned businesses.
For context, I’m a Jasper-resident, small-scale real estate developer and President of the Pickens Small Business Development Council (SBDC). The mission of our 501c3 non-profit is to help provide entrepreneurs and small business owners with the knowledge, tools and resources they need to be sustainable.
To solve any problem, ex-addicts and experts will tell you that one must be willing to admit and recognize that you even have a problem in the first place. Swallowing your pride and asking for help can be incredibly hard for entrepreneurs and company founders.
The feeling I got at the Nov. 18 meeting was that we have formally entered the “recognition” phase and need all hands on deck to change the direction of our local economy. This aligns with state and national trends around consumer and small business confidence being at five-year lows as we head into the holiday shopping season. The broader question becomes what do we do about it?
Here are nine solutions, thoughts and ideas about what we can do as a community to support locally owned, small businesses:
1. Educate on the importance and “why” of supporting local owned businesses year round and how this creates resilience, less taxes, and a better quality of life for residents. Short-term holiday hype or “support local” campaigns needs to be permanently replaced with long-term help.
2. Let’s work together to define what success looks like? In order to improve, we need a starting point and baseline. Small business owners rely on data to make informed decisions from everything to which location is best, to where marketing dollars should be focused.
3. Create a shared vision – recently, the City of Jasper completed a 20 year survey which generated a wide sampling size of responses. Let’ be sure to leverage this data as a guide and road map to create a strategic plan.
4. Monitor and track business permits to advise entrepreneurs, and start up companies particularly, on where there may already be an abundance of the same business concept or where voids exist. If our local municipalities do not do this, we end up setting the business up for failure and in a constant loop of turnover and vacancies.
5. Work together and unite to scale the Nov 18 meeting to occur on a more consistent basis. These town-hall style gatherings can be hosted at a small business venue and hold community leaders accountable to follow-up. Consistent gatherings also lead to empathy, shared experiences and community pride.
6. Dedicate and fund resources that attract quality JOBS and promote local economic development. Currently, Pickens County has ZERO economic development staff and not had anyone in the role since 2022. By comparison, Gilmer County has a team of economic development professionals that regularly meet and just won a large grant for affordable, workforce housing. This includes partnerships between the private and public sectors.
7. Reach out to neighboring counties or towns with similar demographics and ask for their knowledge and inspirational examples to creatively fund non-SPLOST projects.
8. Invest heavily in marketing and advertising campaigns. For example, how can we increase our website optimization for events and festivals to better compete against other North Georgia towns that are all vying for more tourism and visitors?
How can we fund more billboards on highway 515 to draw awareness to particularly downtown Jasper and Talking Rock businesses. The knee-jerk reaction can always be, “we don’t have any money or time” to do this or “we’ve tried that before.”
9. Change the culture and mindset to “we” v. “them” – supporting small businesses begins with rebuilding trust and must be a collective goal led by servant-based leaders. For example, when we say “let’s work together” what does that truly look like and mean?
Finally, now is the time for us to have honest conversations and be open-minded. In my experience, when ideas like this are brought up they are met with a range of emotions from skepticism, distrust, blank stares, avoidance, passion, existing bias, and immense fear of the unknown and change. These are all natural reactions, but we must be “comfortable being uncomfortable,” and discuss with civility to achieve prosperity and progress.
Ready to help make a difference and help? On Wednesday, Dec 10th from 11:30 a.m. -1 p.m. we will be meeting at the Pickens County Library to further discuss and keep the conversation going. This meeting is open to everyone, and we hope to see you there.
