Chris Brogan recently shared a story of a local bookstore in his hometown. He asked them to order a specific book for him that wasn’t in stock. The owner wrote down his name and phone number and told him she’d order it.

The next week, when he walked in the store, she looked up and said, “Hi, Chris!”

That simple act of remembering his name, earned her a customer for life.

Books sign. Photo CC by Joshua Kirby on Flickr

The COVID-19 quarantine has crushed so many small businesses and the economy at large. It’s truly been the worst financial crisis unfurling in this country since the 1930s. And while some measures are in place to help this not reach that level of despair, many people are finding themselves out of a job.

But is there a silver lining? Heck yes!

“Work From Home” Will Invite More People to Experience Small Town Life

The whole “work from home” part of quarantine has shown a lot of employers and employees a path to choosing where they want to live. In a system that no longer requires “butt in chair” management, why would someone choose some of the big cities out there? Would you rather look out on some fields or forests, or listen to cars honking all night long?

But when some of these folks come to a small town setting, they’ll get exposed (maybe for the first time) to the power of a small town localized community. Maybe they won’t be able to visit the opera every weekend and maybe the little grocery store doesn’t have a big selection of quinoa (how many quinoa choices do we need?), but the sense that everyone is working together and everyone knows each other is a very alluring opportunity.

This Will Drive More Small Business Opportunities

The easy example is that delivery businesses thrive when city types show up at a small town. People are used to convenience living, and if those services don’t quite exist in the small town setting, you can step in and fill a gap.

Another way to serve this relocation migration that may come 3/4 of the way into 2020 or maybe at the start of 2021 is to find and adapt coworking spaces, even if they’re more “six feet apart” than they would have been a few months ago. These spaces will need great wifi, space to spread out and work, and a little kitchen space. Not a lot of investment really.

Small Town Sourcing

The other BIG opportunity is that right now several call centers are being pulled back from other countries and re-sourced to small US towns. So are software development jobs (you can learn several languages for free online and those jobs pay around 80K to start). Someone has to house these people. Someone has to prepare all the wiring and materials. Someone has to feed and do other services for them.

Big cities were the way to go for a while. Then suburbs (ugh). Small towns were “unsexy” for some time.* But it’s the right time to show off the power of the small town brand and how you can help grow the world not that far from your front porch.

*Editor’s note: We disagree, but who’s counting?

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Guest post by Chris Brogan

The whole quarantine and COVID-19 situation has impacted small businesses even more than the big guys because it’s not like anyone has massive reserves of cash around so that you could deal with shutting down for months at a time. And now, as different areas go into different versions of reopening, we’re seeing signs that maybe this won’t go as well as we wanted it to, either. This post is about what to do with the whole mask-wearing situation. As such, you might think of it as a political issue, but I’m a business person. This is about revenue.

Masks Are a Feature of Revenue and Branding

At this point, if you open your business and have an anti-mask stance, you’re instructing your customers and prospects as to how you feel about their public safety. This goes a layer deeper. If you run a business with multiple employees, everyone has to be on the same page with this. Example: I went to my local gas station and the pump was not taking payment (convenient during a pandemic), so I had to go inside. Every customer in the place had a mask on, and magically – they were wearing their masks correctly.

The employees, however, were a mixed bag. Three people had their masks on just right. Two were wearing chin guards. This gives me the sense that these people, who were in charge of restocking the shelves, were at liberty to breathe all over the items I was thinking about picking up while getting my gas. Oddly, I just paid for the fuel. Would you blame me?

Your revenue walks out the door every time your employee “just can’t deal with it.”

Training is Only Part of the Picture

Look, you can order your employees to comply, but we both know that when the day gets long, people are going to do what they want to do. This can’t be a facet of your operations going forward. Cleaning and protocols around resetting places of business in between certain numbers of customers will become (more or less, this is already being written in) rules of the business road. Places like restaurants and grocery stores have already set their systems up. And sadly, you get to watch them be ignored every few visits.

This has to become part of the culture. It has to be like smoking was at the end of the 80s. Right before that time, smoking was a reasonably optional thing inside restaurants and offices and all kinds of places. And then, as laws and social norms took over together, this changed. Masks and cleaning protocols are the new no-smoking. 

Nobody Wants More Rules (But You Want Money, Don’t You?)

Again. This isn’t a political statement. It’s a revenue statement. You lose money if people don’t trust you. You lose trust if you flaunt the rules which have been put in place for your health. Health is a pretty key part of business success. Don’t you agree?

And in case you want to project your “brand” to be about ignoring the rules and living fearlessly, I can point you to several dozen articles showing you the death rates associated with those choices. Just like smoking. And again, I love money. Dead customers spend far less on your products and services.

Train Often. Check Often. Use Small Words.

Make this easy. You don’t have to teach your staff to be biohazard engineers. You have to educate people on the right way to use a spray bottle and a paper towel, the right time to wear gloves, the right way to wear masks, and that sort of thing. And then you have to reinforce it at all turns. Until we hear otherwise.

There’s money in this advice. And to flaunt it, and go without a mask is to make you the bandito in this situation. And we don’t want that.

When businesses reopen for customers after lockdown, it’s not going back to the way business used to be. Chris has 5 shifts for you to consider.

As different places begin to allow local businesses to open up, you’re not alone if you’re breathing a sigh of relief mixed with a gasp of worry. We all need the money. We all want to get back to being useful for the people we serve. And some or most of us are worried about what happens next. Let’s talk about some of it.

OPEN UP! It’s the Customers!

Remember this above all else: everyone is tense. No one will likely be their most courteous and their best behaved. No matter how grown up and strong we all our, this really counts as actual real mental trauma. It’s going to take a bit to get over it, and that means you as the business owner will have to smother their customers and prospects with kindness, but there’s a lot more.

1. Clean Up

Customers are going to want to understand how you’re handing a clean work environment after this pandemic. Even if you personally think it’s silly in some cases, don’t discount your customer’s vote on this one. Make it clear and obvious and explain how you are handling everything, even things you can’t imagine someone wondering about like whether you disinfect your cardboard before boxing up their product. (Turns out this is a big and common question now when people consider purchasing something online.)

2. Sell Online

Even after the big bad bug is finally vanquished enough for us not to care about it, people are used to ordering and buying online for many products and services you can’t even imagine people getting remotely. I have a friend who sells hay and the moment he got the web store live on his website, he had orders.

3. Communicate More

Partly because of online sales and definitely because of this “If I can’t see it, how do I know what’s going on?” mindset, people are looking for more “touches” between themselves and companies, even in B2B situations. If the order typically takes a week to build and ship, then give people updates every day or two. When I ordered DoorDash to get a burger sent to me during lockdown, I received five or six texts from the app, telling me the food was being made, the food was ready for pickup, the driver picked up the food, the driver is two minutes away, and the driver is here. Do something like that.

4. Consider New Payment Options in Two Ways

On the one hand, if you’re not using things like PayPal, Stripe, Venmo, and Cashapp, you might want to get some accounts setup. People are sending money through multiple channels. Second, you might realize that with nearly 30 million people unemployed in the US on the day I wrote this to you, cash is tight. You might have to sell “smaller bites” versions of what you offer, so that people can afford you. There are many creative ways to work on this.

5. Reach Out

It’s no surprise that this is my advice. I’ve spent twenty years begging companies to use tools like video and audio and good email marketing to reach potential customers. There’s a lot to this, it seems, but at the root of it all is the same goal: communicate and connect with the people you hope to help and earn the right to sell and serve.

Here’s help

To that end, Becky and Deb have a whole new program about learning to restart your local shopping. If that’s your kind of small town business, then it’s pretty important you check that out.

If not, realize that all businesses are going through some form of what you’re experiencing and that it’s important to accept that it won’t be perfect. But know this, also: people are really getting behind “shop local” in a way they’ve never expressed it before. This might be an ideal time to change up some of your work and really earn their money and customer longevity.

You ready?

Two small town guys, Scott Duehlmeier and Chris Brogan. Don’t check your accent at the door. Photo by Chris Brogan.

By Chris Brogan

I’m originally from Maine. Accents up there come through the nose. Most famously, people from Maine are supposed to say “Ayuh” when we mean “yes.” Midway through high school, I moved to Massachusetts, where you lose the nasal thing, but you also lose all “r’s” from conversation. “It’s hahd to sound smaht with a Boston accent.”

Like all people of a certain age and worldly intentions, I hid any trace of an accent in my professional life. Some people even guessed that I was from Canada. (I’ll take it!)

It Might Be Time to Drag Our Accents Back Out of Hiding

Listen, if you’ve heard Becky talk even once, you know she’s from Oklahoma. And unlike me, Becky has been proud of her accent every step of the way. She’s probably better suited for this next spin of the earth. Why? Because the world seems to be poised to want everything smaller again. At long last.

Small town and local purchases have been on the rise since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, that comes from necessity. On the other, it’s a concerted effort of people wanting to put their small town dollars back to work in the small town where they’re from to keep people in business and keep workers on the job.

Who you are and where you’re from just became a selling point again for the foreseeable future.

Putting the Folksy Back in Folks

Maybe the world got too big for a minute. Have you seen those stunning photos of how rivers and streams and even cities look so much more beautiful and crisp and clear now that cars have been parked in driveways for a few months? Sure, we need to get back to work. But do we need to fly all over creation? Do we need to take every trip we used to, just to get bigger and “better?” If we don’t need to drive to an office in the big city to work every day, where do we want to live?

Tourism is very hard hit during the pandemic. Being from Maine originally, people head up there in summer for seafood, and in fall to see the leaves. Boston is a pretty busy tourist attraction year round because of its ties to the American Revolution and its five professional sports teams. All that business is shut down now, but it won’t be forever. And what will people want when they come to visit? They’ll want a very genuine (completely fake but the way people want to remember it) experience.

Should You “Y’all” in Your Email Marketing?

Ah, the $44.93 question. Our accents and our quirks need to always be the condiment and not the meal. No one goes to a restaurant to order a plate of ketchup. You can slip a little phrase or two into your business communications, but if your writing ends up looking like a long lost script for the Beverly Hillbillies, maybe take it back a notch or two.

In the end, I say yes. People want us to be a bit more personable and regional. But sprinkle it on, don’t dump the bag on it all. Because as we’d say in Maine, you can’t get theya from heeya. (Which means about as little as it sounds like it does.)

Restarting Local Shopping

If you’re working on restarting people’s local shopping habits, take a gander at the new SaveYour.Town video called Restarting Local Shopping.

Creating a warm welcome to your business can include sharing simple videos online. Here are some simple ways to get started. Photo by Chris Brogan.

By Chris Brogan

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes, it might be worth a thousand dollars, too. Over the last ten years, restaurants and bars who post their best dishes or drinks as photos on sites like Instagram have learned that people love seeing examples of what they’ll get if they drop by for a drink or a bite. As great as a photograph might be, I thought I’d talk a moment about why you should consider video as part of your selling toolkit, even if that feels a little scary to think about at first.

Video Shows People Your Business in Special Ways

No matter what you sell, a video goes a long way to giving your prospects and customers new opportunities to experience your business. If you have a service business, like plumbing or landscaping, spend time interviewing the team and give people a sense of the folks who work there. If you sell a product, show off that product, the making of, the behind the scenes. All that.

There are a few ways to do this. You can shoot videos that are somewhat generic to the business at large, which are great. But you might even consider putting together a few “for special customer” videos. Instead of a product video, it can be “Claire, I know you love when we get in new fabrics. You’re going to love this batch we just got from South Dakota.” My friend Mick sends kids that collect various comic books photos and videos of their specific Wednesday deliveries and that ups his sales a lot!

Is Video Hard to Make?

No. (Boy, I wish I could end this section right there.) You use a smartphone. There’s a video camera in there. If you practice even a little bit and learn to hold the phone sideways (landscape, they call it), you can probably shoot a video. There are free editor apps for iOS or Android aplenty. And you can upload it for free to YouTube (which is also free).

If you want to edit on your computer, Microsoft Photos has editing tools on a PC and iMovie works easily on a Mac. When I say “edit,” realize that most of the time, I don’t mean much more than learning how to cut and paste a little bit. That’s all. (You can search YouTube for “how to edit movies using ____” and you’ll see tons of free tutorials.)

Small Town Business Runs Better on Video

When I was a kid, my grandfather lived out on a farm in rural Maine. There was an old timey general store about two miles from the house, but any full-line stores were about 45 minutes away. “Going into town” was something of a pilgrimage. Sometimes, we’d be smart and call ahead to a store if we wanted something specific, like when we needed rock salt to make a hand churned ice cream turn out just right. Other times, we’d forget and drive all the way into town to find they didn’t have what we needed.

The world searches online before they go anywhere these days. And that means big companies try to take your customers at every turn. One way to compete is to get video of your products and of the people in your company up online so that people develop a relationship with you. If it’s a choice between some faceless corporation and “Old Alva’s Garden Supply,” there’s a chance you can win over buyers who will trust your advice over some faceless competition.

Let’s Run This Down Really Quick

Pretend I’ve convinced you. Here’s what to do:

1. Get a free YouTube account (name it after your business or yourself – either way.)
2. Practice shooting brief videos (1-3 minutes tops usually goes best)
3. OPTIONAL – If you’re you’re feeling clever, learn to edit a little, and turn a series of clips into one video.
4. Upload your videos to YouTube
5. Promote them by posting on your website where it makes sense, and/or by pointing to the videos through your email marketing efforts.

And that’s it. If you ever get stuck or have a question, you know you can always ask me. My email is chris@chrisbrogan.com . Feel free to drop me a line. And hey, show me your videos!