MyEntre.Net Iowa Small Business Blog - Entrepreneurship Research & Policy

10 Million Americans moved in '08- Want to know where?

Rob Williams — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:08:00 -3650

The other day Dan Beenken shared with me a link to Forbs Magazine’s interactive county migration map for 2008. What an incredible tool! I only wish that you could look through years 2009 and as much as 2010 as possible to really begin to see longer term trends- but the information captured here in just this year alone is very interesting. I would recommend watching the below video from CBS that recaps what was going on in 2008 before continuing on with the blog.

As you may or may not recall, there was a whole lot going on in the U.S. during 2008. I went through some of the counties in Iowa and found a few worthy of note. First off, Monona County in west-central Iowa did a good job of keeping and even slightly growing their population base. I called Sara Struble, Executive Director of Monona County Economic Development about what she attributed the growth in ’08 to. Sara said that she has been noticing a lot of 30-somethings moving back to Monona County to raise their families. That the community’s safety and high quality education are a big draw to young or expectant parents. She even mentioned local High School Whiting High’s honor of being awarded by U.S. News & World Report as being in the top 8 percent of schools in the US! Sara also said that the county’s proximity to Sioux City makes it an ideal location for many commuters.

Dallas County also had tremendous growth, but this isn’t as surprising given its proximity to Des Moines and the general growth pattern they have been experiencing the past few years. According to their annual 07-08 report, “the [Economic Development] Alliance assisted with new business locations and expansions creating and retaining over 2,400 jobs […]" and “activity looks promising for continued growth, as we continue to work with 28 active projects with high interest in our service territory and nearly 150 projects pending at this time;" this all taken from the opening letter from Clyde Evans, President of the Greater Dallas County Development Alliance.

Not only did we have some major county successes in Iowa, we obviously had some big migrations out of the state as well. If you click on Polk County, you can’t help but be struck by the large streaks of red that seem to flow mostly out to our coasts- California, Florida, New Jersey, Virginia, Texas and Washington (State).

While talking to another co-worker, Courtney Schwitzer, she mentioned that it was interesting to her to find the counties where little movement was present because it probably signaled that people are comfortable with where they are. While thinking about this, I became equally struck with the fact that most people, at least in 2008, only moved a county or two away from where they were originally. It's strange that people who were obviously willing to move, did not move further away where they could presumably get a whole new or higher paying job (this happened all across the Midwest- not just Iowa).

Please checkout Forbe's Interactive Map of Migration for 2008 for yourself and tell us what you think!

Networking, Marketing, in the Heartland, Oh My!

Rob Williams — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:20:00 -3650

The Heartland Economic Development Conference continues… Our very own Amy Kuhlers with the Regional Business Center MyEntre.Net program started us off this morning. She started off with a discussion of the Midwest and the changing demographics. She also reviewed the various types of entrepreneurs that we as economic developers may run into and how to tailor how we approach each type to deliver the most relevant assistance. I hate to admit this since I should know all of this already, but I learned quite a bit from Amy this morning. One of Amy’s points was that it is our responsibility not to just refer entrepreneurs who we serve back to another agency for assistance, but to rather take a more proactive approach in how we offer help to every entrepreneur who walks through our door. As regional economic developers, we must realize that we carry a lot of contacts with us (whether we are cognizant of this or not). When an entrepreneur approaches us it is our responsibility to do more than just write down the name and number of our local SBDC and send the entrepreneur on their way. We should call over to the SBDC Director and schedule an appointment with the client and the SBDC Director on the spot. Seems like simple advice, but far too often (and I know this from personal experience) the entrepreneur will call me and say so-and-so referred me on to you to discuss my business plan. It would be a much welcome change to have the developer call my office and say, ‘Hi Rob, I’ve got a client here who is looking for business plan advice, do you have any time this afternoon to meet with him/her?’ Not only does that signal to me that this developer is going to be a strong partner who I can count on- but it also builds trust with the entrepreneur and reinforces one of the things Amy touched on- a network with no shut doors. That simple action can illustrate to that potential future business owner that each of us as service providers are a tight community ready to help anyone who approaches us and that their idea is valuable enough that we will make a personal phone call to someone who we know can help them achieve their goals.

Amy also talked about the MyEntre.Net program, but if you are reading this chances are you are already familiar with our team and what we do so I won’t get into that. After Amy’s presentation we had Ronnie Bryant with the Charlotte Regional Alliance come and speak to our group. By far and away he was one of the most engaging speakers we have had come talk to us thus far. His teaching style was different in that he walked out into where we were sitting and specifically asked us to engage him in conversation about what he was talking about (Marketing for Economic Developers. He, like many other presenters we have hear from so far, really emphasized that we need to know our communities inside and out before we can really become effective at what we do. One of my favorite lines from him was, “nobody knows more about my community than I do.” That simple statement was the most important lesson I took away from Ronnie’s presentation. I realized that I don’t even really have a good grasp on my own community. I know some of the players, but I don’t know enough to be effective. One of the first things I am going to do when I get home is run a full demographic and psychographic profile of the Cedar Valley community. I am also going to approach the staff about taking a few days to get out into the Waterloo/Cedar Falls community to meet with entrepreneurs and let them know about our services here at the Regional Business Center.

Finally, Jenny Overhue with Nebraska Public Power District came to talk to us about building our web presence. Now, I need to give a slight disclaimer here before proceeding. Right now, one of my primary responsibilities is building and maintaining web content for our website at MyEntre.Net. Also, I have been certified in Social Media Marketing. I really don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I was a little skeptical about how much her presentation could benefit me or my business owner clients. To anyone who has not attended a Heartland Economic Development training course, please be sure to maintain an open mind. Hands down, I was floored by Jenny’s dedication and knowledge in this subject area. I think her presentation was actually the most meaningful for me because she went out of her way to make sure she did her research to learn as much about us as she could before coming.

Jenny started off talking about website best practices- and there were a few good points here that I want to hit on. First, she talked about the 9^th level test. What is going to happen when a user lands on part of your website far away from your homepage- i.e. they land on your ‘available buildings page’ on your economic development website? Will they know where these buildings are located? Will they know your STATE? If the page only says ‘Howard County Building Sites’ how is a potential developer going to know what state Howard is in? Furthermore, will that user be able to easily navigate your site to get to the homepage or to other areas that may be of interest to them? Another test she talked about was the ‘grandpa test.’ Is someone who is uncomfortable with technology and unfamiliar with your area going to be able to navigate your site to learn more about your community? She suggested asking a third party to review your site and give you feedback for areas to improve upon. Great advice!

What really blew me away however, was what Jenny did before the actual presentation. Two weeks ago she went and visited all of our economic development homepages with a keen eye for areas to improve. She was able to give real-world examples of websites from people in our class on areas they should review and revamp. She went beyond providing this customized feedback for each of us; she even sent an e-mail to whoever was listed as the contact person on our site. Of all of the people who she contacted- a significant number never responded (or received) her message! If you have a contact e-mail address on your website or a feedback form, TEST IT! As she so correctly pointed out, developers are going to do their research on your community in advance and if they have questions and attempt to contact your office, you had better be ready or risk losing that potential client. I have a profound respect for Jenny taking the time to review each of our sites and testing our contact chain for us. Heck, she even had one person who replied with something to the effect of, ‘keep searching online for more information.’ You absolutely need to know if you have a broken link in your contact chain so that you can take immediate action to rectify any of these types of mistakes. Out of fifty developers, many with outstanding websites, every single one of us had areas to improve. You can bet it’s worth your time to take a peek and see what’s happening on your own website.

Well graduation is tomorrow, and I’m excited to see what the final day brings. As far as today is concerned, as you can see it was another day jam-packed full of great learning.

As an aside, if you are a fellow Economic Developer here at the Heartland Economic Development Course and would like more information on how to build your own social media presence, please do not hesitate to seek me out. I am more than happy to sit down with you and share some of the tactics we have used on our own social media outlets to gain community support and online presence. It’s one of the areas I am very passionate about. Can’t wait for tomorrow!

A Good Balance Today at Heartland – Day 3

Rob Williams — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:26:00 -3650

LaDene Bowen started the day right off this morning with Strategic Planning. This was a topic that I thought I knew a lot about- turns out I was wrong. LaDene really opened my eyes to the power of transforming your strategic plan into a living document. For some reason, I always equated strategic planning with something that you do every five years because everyone tells you it’s a good idea and about the time it begins to grow mold in your desk drawer (or five years later, whichever comes first) you pull it out and review it. It seems silly but even while studying this in college, we never discussed the ‘how’ part of implementing your strategic goals to achieve real-world positive outcomes. The very bottom of the strategic planning structure was always lost on me. One of the take home messages I learned was that once you get down to the objective level, it is absolutely critical to assign those objectives to specific people or agencies who can then become accountable for the successful deployment of that directive utilizing the plan as intended- as a roadmap.

Besides the duh moment I had during LaDene’s presentation, I also came away with some outstanding resource material- in fact, the best offered thus far. Included with her handouts was a sheet on consensus building exercises. Here are three great ideas for activities economic developers can use with their staff, or that you can use with your business staff to help you with your strategic planning efforts.

Idea Writing- Here you start with posing a trigger question such as: What are you most proud of in our community? Everyone participating writes down their thoughts on a sheet of paper, then after a couple of minutes passes it to the person next to them. Once you receive the other person’s response to the trigger question, you can edit, add, or highlight points that you think are valuable. You continue to pass the sheet all around then when you get your original response back, the moderator can launch into a discussion of what everyone wrote and why.
Mind Mapping – Similar to the Idea Writing exercise, you start with a trigger question and everyone responds with a very short sentence written on a notecard. Once collected, the moderator sticks the notes up on the wall and with yarn connects the various responses to try to determine ideas through the mapping process. This very visual process can be great if you have a very creative group, but does require much more time and creativity on the part of the moderator.
Nominal Group – Once again discussion here is started with a trigger question. Once the trigger question is posed, everyone gets to state their response in 7 or 8 words (very short sentence) which is then written up on a bulletin board. The moderator, once done, then takes time out to review everyone’s response to ensure that their idea is being clearly conveyed to everyone else in the group. It is important to note that the moderator must lay down the rules that this is NOT a time for lobbying why your idea is the best- simply a time to clairify your statement to make sure that what you have up on the board clearly conveys the message of the original author. Once all the ideas are up on the board- the group can begin to prioritize and vote on the top responses to determine which ideas best address the trigger question and ultimately, the overarching goal for the strategic plan.

Finally, LaDene hit on something that I really liked as far as process is concerned. She has been doing this for a long time- so she knows her stuff and I think her advice here serves as a great case-in-point. She said that it is absolutely imperative that the moderator, right at the start of the meeting, should lay down ground rules for how the discussion will go. Since she is someone who does practice what she preaches, she reminded us that at the start of this course, we were all told what the expectations and rules are for our attendance and participation here at Heartland. Indeed, right at the start she posited to the group that cell phone use would not be permitted, that we were free to come and go as needed, but that class would start and end promptly on time. She also gave us the opportunity to rebuke these ground rules- which none of us did- and then went on to say that since we have all agreed to these rules the expectation would be that we would police each other to make sure we were upholding the norms that we all agreed to establish. Boy what a great lesson! As I mentioned in my last blog article, it’s funny how different experiences here at Hearland all tie together. Later this afternoon we had a presentation by Steve Dust, Greater Cedar Valley Alliance and Tech Works President. I kid you not, right on his front slide he had the following, “Rules of Engagement.” Within the rules he asked that we hold our questions to the end. He was utilizing the very technique that LaDene had just talked about this morning by setting up the terms of his presentation to us all. Great Stuff!

We had a number of presentations today, and for time and energy’s sake, I won’t get into them all. Besides Steve Dust, we had Brien Starner, Blue Springs Economic Development Corp, and Mark Meyer, Mark Meyer Companies, Inc, present. The topics this afternoon all centered around real estate development. With that said however, I took away the most from our field trip excursion to the Haldex plant and our tour of Independence, Missouri (in particular, the Truman Presidential Museum Library).

At Haldex, they manufacture truck breaks. I was very grateful for Don Chaplin’s helpful advice on what to look for once inside the plant: cleanliness, technology-human interaction, location, outside appearance, neighborhood area, workflow/layout, and safety. Having worked in a distribution center before, I had some idea for what to watch for- but this was far beyond simply filling pallets and sorting them. At this plant, employees were being asked to conduct very complex tasks utilizing very expensive technology. First off, the human-technology interaction was absolutely mind blowing. Even though I truly believe manufacturing is in many ways dying here in the mid-west, after touring a facility like Haldex- I seriously have started to question this position. I now think that there may be a future for manufacturing, but that with the advancement of technology- it may not be the economic driver it once was. As way of example, consider that one of the newer machines that Haldex has installed now does the work of what used to take eight people and produces about 30 more units per hour on top of that.

The other technology based thing I noticed at Haldex was their intricate and detailed monitoring of all of their systems. They monitored everything from employee clock in times to noting when an employee accidently tripped and fell. All this information was sent to their plant operators who deconstruct the data and work with managers to improve productivity. At Haldex, they have gone so far as to install tv monitors above each station showing the production goal with the actual production numbers in real-time for all the employees and managers to see.

Finally, our trip to Independence was really interesting. We also went on a tour of the Truman Presidential Museum Library and had dinner at Ophelia’s in Independence. As has been the case with Heartland, the food was outstanding and company superb. I was able to meet a whole table of new faces and talk shop with all of them- fun times! I promised Courtney Schwitzer in our office that I would find the person from Cedar County for her- mission accomplished. Her name is Trisha Gottschalk from Cedar County Economic Development Commission. It was yet another great day of information and of networking. Until tomorrow, sleep tight!

“Your Community’s Best Companies…Are your Competitor’s Best Prospects!”

Rob Williams — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:22:00 -3650

As I am quickly learning, strategic economic development has a lot to do with keeping your companies in your region and recruiting outside companies to come join you. This is an area that I have very little expertise or understanding in- at least I didn’t before today. One of the foremost leaders in business retention and expansion, Eric Canada with Blane, Canada Ltd, was here this morning to talk on this topic. Eric really did an outstanding job talking about how to identify and develop your overall business community to really shine. He did not focus on the attraction part per se, but rather helped us all to understand that if we do not know what we have in our own backyards, we are very liable to lose the talent we have.

My favorite take home lesson from the presentation was when Eric showed an aerial view of a town and as a class we deconstructed a building that was visible on the map. We were pushed to look beyond the green trees and the building itself to figure out what was happening with this company’s local economy. It took me back to my urban geography and development classes in college. It was amazing what we could induct from a simple overhead view of this building within the industrial park of this town. As way of example, consider this. The roof appeared to have three different colors with fresh landscaping scars on the surface of the earth surrounding the most white portions. This indicated that the particular building we were looking at, presumably a distribution center (there were truck ports, large parking lot, etc), had recently undergone expansion. Also noticeable was one of the end points of the parking lot was left unfinished- potentially signaling further expansion plans in the near future. Later Eric showed the unassuming front view of the building from the ground and talked about how we as developers would never have known, without inside information, the wild transformations that were taking place within this business. More importantly, he showed that if we didn’t take stock of our best companies, how somewhere there would be a developer who you could bet was watching this and adding this particular company to their marking list. Being in market research myself, I know all too well how true his point was and deeply appreciated the lesson in how to analyze a community from a different vantage point.

Today was jammed packed full of GREAT information- I don’t have the time or the energy to review everything, but I wanted to be sure to hit on a bit about Eric’s presentation and also Mark Grey’s discussion on integrating immigrants into the local economy. In addition there was also Mike Downing who spoke on Economic Development Financing 101 and Bill Thompson who spoke about workforce development. The content in both of those particular presentations I was already familiar with, so I’m going to go ahead and move on to some of the things I learned from Dr. Grey.

Mark Grey is a professor at UNI who studies Sociology/Anthropology and serves as Director for the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration. I almost do not know where to start with his presentation. First it was great to see someone speak about something they are obviously so passionate about (not that the speakers haven’t been passionate about their topics- but with Mark it really came through). It’s funny how sometimes two radically different topics in economic development can merge so seamlessly. Mark’s presentation focused on the changing demographic/psychographics of the state of Iowa and of the Midwest in general. The thread that tied Mark’s presentation with Eric’s was the fact that not only businesses under threat of leaving Iowa- but so are one of our greatest assets- young professionals. One of the stats he shared with us is that more than half of all Iowa’s high school and college graduates are leaving Iowa to go to other states!

Dr. Grey’s presentation was much more than simply population flows- he also talked about the rapid boom of immigration and minority growth in Iowa (while he also spent time discussing the Midwest, I’m going to focus on the Iowa information as it’s more salient to this blog). The one take home message I want to be able to share with all of you back home is that if the trends continue on their current path, by 2030 Iowa’s population will be 10% Latino (many of whom will be young/middle aged) and a full quarter will be aged 65 or older and white. If you are not thinking for the future, now is the time to start. Service Providers need to start thinking about how to reach out to the Latino community and business succession should also be a key component of any economic strategic planning efforts for Iowa’s long term future. It’s not just the Latino community that we as economic developers need to be thinking about- according to all of the statistics that Dr. Grey shared, we need to be cognizant about how we can serve all of our non-native populations in our state (e.g. Russians, Bosnians, Somalis, Sudanese, and Ukrainians). As city planners, county economic developers, and service providers it is incumbent upon us to figure out how the next twenty years are going to play out so that we can provide economic security for everyone within our borders- whether it’s jobs, housing, or urban development/growth (another trend was the proportionate decline of population in our rural areas and drastic growth within our metros). His end message, which I think was well received, was that we need to exercise patience & understanding as we continue to learn and integrate this new workforce into our everyday lives.

Well I’m dead tired from today and have much more reading and digesting to do. With that, I’m going to sign off. I will write another blog at the conclusion of tomorrow with more fun information that I’m learning! For those of you who are interested; I am also tweeting key quotes from presenters on my twitter account. You can follow along with me at @_RobWilliams for the real-time scoop.

Heartland Economic Development Course - Day 1

Rob Williams — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:04:00 -3650

My attendance at this year’s Heartland Economic Development Course is an excellent opportunity to blog about my experiences. It will help me digest all the information we are getting, while educating other service providers with some of the key hot topics that we are discussing here in our great neighbor state of Missouri.

We started right away at four this afternoon with LaDene Bowen’s presentation on ‘Managing an Effective Economic Development Organization,’ and conference welcome. Working for the Iowa Small Business Development Center and assisting with the MyEntre.Net program has been absorbing. So much so, that I sometimes forget about all of our community partners who are also out in the field, working to build the local economies in their areas. One particularly helpful portion of this afternoon’s program was when we all went around the room and told each other what we are doing and where we are from. This year, fifty developers from 5 states are in attendance. The breakdown is as follows (as best I could catch): 13 Iowa, 11 Kansas, 13 Missouri, 9 Nebraska, and 3 from Oklahoma. From Iowa, I have been able to meet one developer in particular, Deb Storm– from Chariton’s Chamber of Commerce. Other cities represented today from Iowa are: Ely, Independence, Muscatine, Tipton, Rock Rapids, Centerville, and Newton.

I digress, let me get back to the topic at hand; I have been very impressed by the breadth of developers who are in attendance. Positions represented have included City Economic Developers, Chamber Presidents, County Economic Developers and Electric Utility Economic Developers, just to name a few. It’s great to be able to meet people from all these different fields who are all striving for the same thing- to help build their local economy through business development. If nothing else, it’s very encouraging to hear that so many of us are passionate about fostering a community atmosphere conductive to building and maintaining jobs and community wealth within each of our neighborhoods- both big and small.

The lineup for this week looks to be intense. I’ll blog as best I can (the goal is every night after class), and also twitter a bit when the opportunity arises. To that end, here are some of the topics covered today and some of the presenter’s comments.

LaDene Bowen – Managing an Effective Economic Development Organization

LaDene spoke to the nine competency areas of the International Economic Development Council and how the mission of the Heartland course is to train Economic Developers and provide the necessary stepping stone for the CEcD certification process. During her presentation there were a number of great conversations regarding team building and the role that economic development should play in our communities. She touched on a few really great topics- one of my favorites was Steven Covey’s Action Priority Matrix. I am glad that she discussed that and that as a class we were able to deconstruct what exactly it meant. She spoke to how to better manage and lead community partners to consensus and reach better outcomes through proper agenda setting and action-oriented purpose setting. One other topic I enjoyed was the overview of the different structural types of economic development organizations (Public Sector, Private Sector, and Public-Private Partnerships). One thing that has been great at this conference are the hand-outs. LaDene gave all of us a two page comparison sheet outlining the advantages and challenges to each of the different structure- very good information!

After LaDene’s presentation, we were put into our challenge lab groups. I am going to save the challenge lab discussion for tomorrow’s blog- needless to say our group is the best J. It was from the group activity where I met Deb (who I mentioned earlier) and four other great economic developers- Nancy Braden, Trish Carroll, John Citron, and Roger Sinclair. I think the group activities may be my favorite part so far.

Mike Kirchhoff – What the Heck is an Economic Developer?

Next on the docket was an evening presentation by Mike Kirchhoff, from the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City. Mike’s presentation was on the 8 P’s and 7 C’s of economic development. I found his personal experiences coupled with each of the p’s and c’s very helpful, and will review this section more carefully tonight before bed. He also talked about TED the Traditional Economic Developer and used a little humor to illustrate the ‘what not to do’ side of things.

As an aside, the Marriot Hotel here is very nice and the conference committee has done an outstanding job setting the stage for this conference. I can’t wait for the days to come!