The secret of New York’s post-1970 reinvention was that smart people, who knew each other and learned from each, innovated in ways that made billions in financial services.

(Looking at the last 4 words of the sentence may bring doubt to its wisdom.)

Regardless, the truth remains that smart people who know each other and can learn from each other will innovate ways that will make us…hundreds of thousands, or millions or billions or…trillions. Trillions is what we need to rejuvenate our economy.

Ok. So how’s this wisdom applied for small business in small towns? ( NY City is not included in the universe of small towns. )

What about trust? Small business in small towns know each other. And they have skills and talents and resources to help each other. They also share the most important, and most undefinable, element: trust.

However, the universe of potential resources may be limited.

And now with social media….blogs and twitter and youtube and rss feeds and google reader…our community of smart people grows exponentially into a global community of resources we need and those who need the resources we can provide.

The secret to surviving downturns…is to surround ourselves with other smart people, get to know each other, learn from each other and innovate ways to make billions in [something other than financial services…].

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About the Author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operationsí excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small telecom service provider in rural Iowa. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit. His radio show can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. And he twitters at zanesafrit.

Same ol’. Same ol’. Month in; month out. No biggie, right?

That’s what you do to survive. You face a cash-flow issue; you dodge it by finding a new product, a new service, a way to offer more to your customers and/or you find ways to streamline your business operations and cut expenses, do more with less.

And every once in awhile you take a breath and celebrate it.

And if you use a resource like Twitter…you can share it with a global audience. Maybe find others who’ve done the same: dodge a cash-flow bullet or found a new revenue stream or a way to cut costs.

And you reach out and connect with them. And now you have one more resource for ideas or partnerships or support or commiserating or resources or tools to help you get to the next month. And a few more people to help or be helped by.

That’s what small business does. We help each other. That’s what social media does. It helps us…help each other. It helps us far more than it does big corporations where the approval process to use a tool like Twitter compares with an elephant’s gestation cycles. ( No. I don’t know how long. But I could ask on Twitter and someone would tell me and I would have a new friend, resource. Imagine if you asked a question about business or answered a question about business every month…? After awhile, you’d have a network of 100-200-300 people or more, all helping each other. You might even have a new product, a new service, a new partner or vendor. You might even skip a month or two in between crises. )

Anyway, take a minute and share your story with someone who could benefit from it. They might have one you could use to hear, too. Then you might both be able to help each other or others. And grow your business, too.

How cool would that be…?

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About the Author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operationsí excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small telecom service provider in rural Iowa. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit. His radio show can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. He tweets at twitter under the username: zanesafrit

It’s not to swagger with false confidence as BMOC’s did in the past. No. The point is to understand…we’re driving this economy moving forward.

Here’s why: On average, small business generates 60% of new jobs created in this country. Year-in, year-out. Boom or bust economy. Inflationary, deflationary, growth or recession, bear or bull market. 60% of all new jobs are created by small businesses.

But wait, we’re not in an average economy today. ( Some of you are thinking “You’re right, Sherlock. Thanks for reminding us.”) There’s no denial now that we’re in a recession. Maybe we’ve been in one since…Q1. And maybe it will continue for another quarter or two.

It doesn’t really matter.
Recessions are great for small business. According to Bob Graboyes, Senior Health Advisor at National Federation of Independent Business, and economics professor at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University, 100% of new jobs are created by small business in a recession. We discussed this in our conversation on health care and small business. You can listen here.

That’s right. 100% of new jobs are created by small business in a recession. And where are we right now? A recession.

(The logic’s fairly obvious to support this data. Recessions are an economy’s way of cleaning itself of excesses in behaviors or industries. And large corporations have built themselves to exploit these excesses. They suffer the most in a recession. Or their employees, do, as their companies first dump the products, then their business models and then the infrastructure and employees who built it.)

Back to the point: YOU…we, are the drivers now. You, we, have moved from the backseat to the driver’s seat.

Hyperbole and generalized statistics aside, here’s the standard competitive advantages of small business during a recession:

• Unburdened by legacy infrastructure. You’re not burdened with technology that’s now out of date. ( You may not have much of an infrastructure at all. And until now you thought that was a handicap. Turns out it was a smart decision on your part.)
• Unburdened by uninteresting, outdated, products.
• Simple, efficient decision-making. It’s just you or you and 2-3 others.
• Personal connection with your employees and your customers.
• Your products are unique. That stems in part from your personal connection with customers and employees. And it shows you were smart and you knew better than to chase sales against a corporate giant in a commoditized industry.

Their engagement and loyalty is far stronger.
Now, here’s more reasons.

• Innovation. It’s possible in a small company, nearly impossible in a big company. A small company has space to grow, people who want to grow, and a need to grow. Both candidates for president offered ideas on spurring innovation. Who knows what the future holds for manifesting these ideas? My point is that at the national level, the need for innovation is being heard and being spoken.
• Investment. See above point.
• Infrastructure -Yours. You’re one step ahead. Unlike corporate giants, you have no now outdated equipment, and the issue of what to do with it, blocking your view. You’re ready to bring on the new technology for this next new step.
• Infrastructure – Our country’s. We’ve heard promises of a renewed investment in our nation’s infrastructure is imminent. Here’s where increased innovation meets the road. New sources of energy, safer energy, will be created. And new businesses will be needed to bring these solutions to market.
• Prices are at their lowest. Equipment deals are plentiful in this soft economy. I recently bought a laptop and desktop workstation and both with 100 times the memory, 10 times the processing power, 10 times the ram, etc for what I paid 3 years ago for a laptop only. They’re smaller, lighter, brighter with more applications and thingies to help me move faster. And if I’d waited a few more months, I could have saved even more.
• Business Applications: More, cheaper, faster. There are more applications, cheaper applications, faster applications that make your business more efficient than those now dinosaur corporate giants.

Here are a few places to find them:

* SmallBiz Survival. Right here in River City, ok, Alva, Oklahoma is a site where you’ll find new applications and new ways to use them.
* Small Business Trends. Anita Campbell’s site where she and other experts in small business trends share tips and resources. (Disclaimer: I guest post there.)
* Lifehack. Solutions to life’s challenges, including running your own business, are offered daily. Most are free, or very inexpensive if you don’t mind learning.
* MySolutionSpot. Great community site with lots of user-generated tips and resources. (Disclaimer: I guest post there.)
* JumpUp

I’d concentrate on the first 3. There are many, many, excellent experts sharing their expertise and tips and advice…free. (My content accounts for less than 1% on these sites).

Remember: Our time is precious. Find the sites that offer tips, resources you can put to use…immediately, from people who’ve put them to use.

4 Steps to Drive Forward…Quickly

1). Go where they ain’t. Go where your competitors aren’t. They’re stuck, for now. You’re not. Get moving
2). Go where they are. Go where the innovations and their investments are taking place. Find a place for yourself there by offering your solutions.
3). Invest in your employees. Now’s the time to invest even more in your company’s greatest asset: your employees. (Warning: self-promotion. I blogged 16 ways you can invest in your employees…and it won’t cost you a dime.)
4). Start making some mistakes. You’ll get to your goals faster the faster you make some mistakes.

Sure. We’re a small business. We’re new to this idea we’re in the driver’s seat.

No problem.

Remember. We’re small, nimble, quick to decide, comfortable making mistakes and learning, realizing our mistakes won’t cost us much. And our successes will bring much to our companies and communities.

We’ll be the first ones out of this recession.

But remember, the country doesn’t come out of this recession until we do. We’re the driver for this economy, now. Our friends and family are depending on us.

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About the Author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operationsí excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small telecom service provider in rural Iowa. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit. His radio show can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit.

Why?

What makes people want to visit any store, any site, any business…linger and mingle, peruse and purchase, is unique content.

You as a small business are unique. You’re an original. That’s where you stand out. That’s how you survive. It’s why your customers care. It’s why your employees care.

You have direct relationships with your customers. You talk directly to them. And the same happens with your employees. You talk directly with each other.

That interaction is what creates your unique company. There’s no watered-down color-scheme for your brand or website. There’s no layers of management silencing the noise that makes your company unique.

You. Unique. You-nique.

Celebrate it with everyone. Exploit it. You’re doing everyone a favor. Everyone wants unique, not same, not boring, not safe, not anonymous. Share it. Express it.

Monetize it. Monetize? Make money on it. It’s not being unfair. People want unique. And they want it enough to pay for it. So…help them get what they want and you’ll get what you want.

Pep talks over. Now comes the work.

And Jeremiah lists all the means you can take your existing content, the YOU, in unique, and monetize it.

Read it.

Hurry up. Your audience, customers and employees, await…anxiously.

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About the Author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operationsí excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small telecom service provider in rural Iowa. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit. His radio show can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit.

I thought, Well, that’s cool. It’s well done. It fits Beck’s brand image and community.

But, don’t I wish that something like that is possible for a smaller brand, one with lesser budgets for their customer experience.

And then I thought…well what if a florist allowed you to mix and match your flowers to create a bouquet. What if ProFlowers (maybe they do) created a site that allowed you to create stem-by-stem, flower-by-flower, an arrangement of your own design.

And then share it on their site.

And what if customers, not so blessed with time or creativity, could vote on which one they really liked and then…what if these same customers could buy these arrangements and what if their creators were paid a nominal fee.

Now you have an army of designers, and a community of followers, all talking about THEIR designs and ideas using…YOUR service. Oh. And buying them and telling everyone about them.

That’s buzz. That’s customer engagement. That’s community. Now you’ve got a loyal and dedicated sales force AND designer team.

Ok. Great. I used ProFlowers, a large well-funded company, to illustrate another example of a digital community site which engages the customers in creating their brand experience. And have fun, and share their story and make a little money.

Ok. You’re not. You’re a brick and mortar company in a small town.

Let’s take the same example. What if you allowed your customers to create their own spring bouquet…AND…what if you photographed their creation and shared those photos on a board at your store?

And you included their name and their photo.

What if you named their design to honor them?

And what if you took those photos and put them up on the photo-sharing service called Flickr. It’s free. It’s easy.

And what if you created a blog (Forget that static website. It’s not doing anything anyway.) You uploaded those same photos you posted at Flickr to your blog, every 3-4 days. You wrote a little story to accompany each photo of how that design was created….The post can be a couple hundred words.

Ok. You’re busy. You don’t have the time to: A. learn this digital stuff. (Come on. That’s what you’re saying to your self: digital stuff.) B. Do this digital stuff.

Here’s the solution: Hire a high school student to intern and handle this digital stuff for you.

Here, in my rural community, it’s expected that high school students intern at local businesses as a graduation requirement. Oh. And they do this for class not for pay. (And no, I’ve not done it yet. Why? I’d never organized that data with a plan. And the high school is…well, I watch their marching band and football team practice from my house every day.)

Anyway.

The theme is the same with the bricks and mortar flower shop as the global brand and its digital site. It’s just more expensive with the global brand and its digital site.

Oh, and the community of users at the global digital brand remain a lot more anonymous. They’re known by ‘user names’; not real names.

And there is your HUGE advantage. Your customers aren’t anonymous. A personal relationship exists. You know them by THEIR…REAL…name, not user-name, and you know them by face. You know how their day is going just by their posture when they walk in your store.

It’s the connection the large global brands obsessively seek. And there you have it as part of your normal day. And all it costs is the time it takes to smile and say their name in greeting.

Hey Becky! Hey John. Hey TallDude. Hey Paul Chaney!

Bottomline. (What is the bottomline?) The bottomline is as a small business in a small town you have what the global brands lust for, pay a lot of money for to, in-effect… fake. And that’s a personal connection that’s created, a REAL community that’s created, all from your daily and personal 1-to-1 experiences, where you’re able to make a personal difference with very little expense: smile and say their name when they walk in your store. ( You can do more. But that’s where it starts.)

And now, with some free or inexpensive digital media, digital stuff, (Flickr, blogger ) and a high school or college intern, you can expand on your community without losing its foundation: the personal connections.

Chop-Chop. What, or who, are you waiting for?

Ok. That could come across in writing as obnoxious. But…there’s nothing holding you back except that first step you haven’t taken. So, take it. Have fun. Show me the photos of your friends and customers.

Fantastic. One person is impressed. Maybe an influential.

Meanwhile, back-at-the-office…everyone’s answering that question with every phone call, email, invoice sent out, statement generated, commission paid.

Are they answering it the same way as you just answered the question? Or do they answer it in their own way…?

True, that would be authentic. But is it authentic for you and what you do?

In some respects, it doesn’t matter. The one person whose opinion does matter is your customer. And what you do, in their experience, is based solely on what nearly everyone else but you does for them.

It could be your answer’s the one that’s not authentic….Did you ever think about that?

So, back to the question. Can everyone at your company answer this question: What do You do? (And answer it in the same way, at least from the same page.)

Are you sure? Ask ‘em.

This post inspired from reading Art of the Start.

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Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations’ excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He blogs about health care issues each Monday at http://zanesafrit.typepad.com. There on the sidebar is a list of blogs and resources to educate yourself on the health care challenges you face, I face, we all face together. He also writes on small business, word of mouth, marketing, branding, innovation, and failure. He previously served as CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited.

And the business community is made up primarily of small companies with under 25 employees. Their customers are loyal. Their service is personal; it’s their neighbors they serve. Local charities and projects like the library expansion and a new civic center and a community rec center, depend on the support of these small businesses and their generous donations every year. The small businesses support them as they make their community what they are.

And yet…civic leaders in these communities, mine included, swoon like a teenager in the throes of first-love at the prospect of a big corporate company bringing their operations to town. Oh, they run after ‘em and buy them gifts and talk sweet nothings in their ear with offers of abatements and deferments and infrastructure investments and tax credits.

Like the steady and true girlfriend/boyfriend, the small locally-owned business stood by and for the town before the new one came to town. They made the town what it is, desirable in the eyes of the new one. And, they’ll be there when the new one leaves town for another richer, more gullible, community.

Small businesses provide diversity in industry and business-cycles. The risks on a small community from a diversified source of jobs is like that of a company where no single customer is responsible for a disproportionate share of revenues. They literally create the community’s quality of life from their business, those they hire, benefits they offer and how they support the local community. Job growth historically, and never more-so than now, comes from small business. Together, its those local, small businesses, who made the community enticing for the flashy, corporate, companies.

My dad always told me, At the end of the dance, you go home with the date that brung ya. Civic leaders: Small locally-owned businesses are the date that brung ya. They’re the ones that recognized your potential, stood by you when you were nobody, supported you as you grew, listened and held you accountable for being your best. They invested in making your small town its best. They voted for you and probably donated to your campaign. You owe them at least the same incentives and benefits, deferments and credits, infrastructure investments and all, you’re offering the flashy new-girl/guy that’s not even come to town yet. After all, they’ve already paid for them.

If you want your community to not only grow but maintain its character, then save the incentives and deferments, abatements and credits, for the businesses that made your community what it is, and will be there next year and the year after.

– Zane Safrit

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Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations’ excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He blogs about health care issues each Monday at http://zanesafrit.typepad.com. There on the sidebar is a list of blogs and resources to educate yourself on the health care challenges you face, I face, we all face together. He also writes on small business, word of mouth, marketing, branding, innovation, and failure. He previously served as CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited.

Our town has survived the farming crisis in the early 80’s, a few recessions and economic downturns, manufacturing layoffs and even grown in property valuations and jobs during this because of A. diversity in our job base. B. some really smart business leaders here; C. some significant changes in the telecommunications industry, nationally and globally.

That’s right. Global changes in the telecom industry, most notably the ending of monopolies here in the US and overseas, has brought hundreds of jobs to little, remote, Fairfield, Iowa. (Caveat: it’s not the only reason Fairfield has survived and grown. But it’s the one I’m most familiar with and it’s the one that can be connected to the most changes in Fairfield.)

Up until the mid-1980’s ATT held a monopoly on local AND long-distance telephone services. The local part of our service was delivered with ‘bell operating companies’. And the long-distance part was handled by Ma Bell, ATT. It’s hard to imagine it these days with all the competition and options for making a long-distance phone call. But that’s the way it was until Judge Greene’s order to ATT to divest itself of its bell operating companies and then to open up its network to…competition, from the likes of Sprint and then MCI and also resellers.

Long story.

Lots of change and turbulence and new competitors with new services.

And that all meant opportunity. And a company here in Fairfield took that opportunity to resell ATT long-distance services. The thinking of the founder was he’d sell it out of …where?…yes, his bedroom/office. Quietly, he’d make enough to support his family. That’s all he wanted.

And as more of his friends and neighbors wanted to do the same with him, seeing the opportunity, he soon had a company of 6 people. He expected to make enough money to buy Australia, as he’d tell us; just the 6 of him. He was a dreamer and look what happened.

I was the 13th employee. Lucky 13. 7 years later there were 700 employees…in a town of 10,000. We had offices opening around the world. I opened our office in Germany. (What a story!) Our network operations center was here in Fairfield, for a worldwide telecommunications company.

(Interesting cultural clash. Our rural electric cooperative had a routine of regular maintenance on the weekends during off-peak hours. But for other parts of the world, and our customers who lived and worked there…these weren’t off-peak hours…)

We were pulling in employees from 2 other states as well as bringing in outside contractors to come work in a little town, far, far away from bright lights and big cities.

The company crashed and burned in bankruptcy discussed in the Wall Street Journal. (Hey, no one’s perfect.)

But all those people who eventually were laid off used their newly acquired skills to populate other companies in the area, either existing companies or startups. There spawned another surge in a new, more diversified, economy for the community.

And during this time, the internet became a force for business. This company was the first and only company at the time to allow for service orders to be entered and provisioned over the internet from the comfort of our independent sales agents’ home offices. (They expected to buy Fiji…)

That’s a huge advantage for attracting sales agents, improving cash-flows from faster conversion of orders and cutting personnel costs from manually entering orders.

And changes again in the telecom arena helped another company start and thrive here. That company was Conference Calls Unlimited. From little Fairfield, remote Fairfield, we competed against national brands and their services using the changes in telecommunications and the opportunities they presented: long-distance calling, toll free calls, toll calls, email, collaboration with web conference services, VOIP, chat, hosted service applications like Basecamp and payment-processing through online merchant accounts. We used 3rd party answering services at the beginning and before that an online answering service that emailed the voicemail as an enclosure.

And then we used blogs and podcasts and YouTube videos to help spread our message. Oh, and websites, too! All made possible by changes in telecommunications.

And we hired great people. Our neighbors and friends and those we knew that delivered great service every day.

And there’s your advantage. It’s our advantage, really, as businesses in rural, smaller, areas. As residents or rural communities we have the added advantage of working side-by-side with our neighbors and friends and maybe even family. That’s a huge factor for commitment, loyalty, dedication, passion. And we have all the advantages of access to a global marketplace through these changes in telecommunications without the high rents, high mortgages, high salaries and high overhead from being located in a larger city.

Not everyone is going to start a ‘telecom’ company. Even fewer will want to run a company of 700 employees 6 years after opening.

But the open infrastructure of telecom now with more and cheaper bandwidth becoming available, more calling services and options, more free hosted applications that allow any startup or small business from ANY location to reach millions in a professional and inexpensive manner is the great playing-field leveler for small business in general and in particular for small business in rural communities.

Get on the telephone. Your world’s waiting for you.

About the Author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations’ excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He blogs about health care issues each Monday at http://zanesafrit.typepad.com. There on the sidebar is a list of blogs and resources to educate yourself on the health care challenges you face, I face, we all face together. He also writes on small business, word of mouth, marketing, branding, innovation, and failure.

He previously served as CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited.

[Photo of Fairfield Art Walk by Zane Safrit, used by permission.]