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Posts Tagged ‘Localism’
Just another typical Millennial
January 20th, 2009
Should we be surprised when a seventeen year-old high school student buys a grocery store in his rural community? We assume all young people just want to get out of town, go to college, and then get a good paying job in the city? But is that really the case?
After watching this CBS News story about Nick Graham, a young entrepreneur from Truman, MN (pop. 1,259 ), I had to stop and rethink that assumption. Hopefully after watching it, you will too.
Before going further, I want to credit the Blog for Rural America for bringing the story to my attention. The video is a year old, and I missed their original post a year ago January. Luckily their latest update caught my attention.
What’s happened in the last year
The Blog for Rural America’s post is worth checking out, but here are a few brief highlights about what’s happened with Nick during the last year. First, Nick purchased two more grocery stores in rural communities. Sounds like things were going well, but he recently sold all three to another grocer who gave him a good offer. Nick has since moved on to a sales career and is currently helping out a struggling daycare center.
While some people probably think Nick is the exception among young people today, I don’t. If we step back and examine the Characteristics of Gen Y, we see that Nick fits the mold of his generation:
- He wants to make a difference, and believes he can. (Nick even has plans for additional business ideas for Truman.)
- He’s tech savvy. (Apparently, he’s written a software program to help the daycare.)
- He thinks like an entrepreneur. (I don’t think any additional comment is needed on this subject.)
So if Nick is not the exception, why aren’t more Millennials jumping into business in our rural communities? And if they have a natural inclination to be entrepreneurs, is there something rural communities can do to encourage them to start businesses in rural communities?
This needs more study
Admittedly, I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I’ve already started digging into some research. I’ll share whatever I find, and I hope you’ll help me out by sharing what you think. Because I can’t stop thinking about it, however, I’m going to throw out some ideas that I have on the subject.
My List of Recommendations
- First, make sure Millennials know that your community needs them. To quote Nick “I’m here hopefully to make a profit, but I’m not here for that in and of itself. I’m here because this community needs me to be here.” (from the CBS video) We hear Millennials are motivated to help change the world. Spread the message that saving the world can begin with saving their hometowns.
- Second, celebrate young entrepreneurs. I’d highly recommend that you forward Nick’s story to every high school teacher and administrator you know. Encourage them to have a conversation with their students about what Nick has done. But don’t just leave it to educators. Take the responsibility yourself to seek out young people in your community and engage them in a conversation. You could be the spark they need.
- Third, be ready to step up to the plate financially. You may not personally be in a situation to help out financially, but someone in the community surely is. In Nick’s case, the Truman Development Corporation lent him $22,000. I’m sure it was scary lending that much money to a 17-year old, but somebody has to do it or there’s no sense in encouraging young people.
I arrived at these ideas without any “deep thinking”, so feel free to criticize or clarify them. Like the topic of “third places,” I believe we need to build a deeper conversation on this subject. I hope you’ll add to this by identifying other ways rural communities can encourage the development of entrepreneurs like Nick. After all, the futures of our rural communities may depend on it.
Other resources on Nick Graham
- “Stocking Shelves, Restoring Hope“ at American Profile
- “17 year old reopens Truman’s Main Street Market“ at The Free Press, Mankato
- “Teen sells Truman store he saved“ at The Free Press, Mankato
- “Graham moves on to other ventures” at The Fairmont Sentinel
Tags: cbs news, entrepreneurship, Gen Y, grocery stores, Localism, millennials, retail, Truman MN, Youth
Posted in Economic Development, Gen Y, In the News, Quality of Life, Rural | Comments (2)
Intentional Communities
January 13th, 2009
A friend and fellow blogger recently turned me on to a post at New Geography titled “A Local Graduation: How Small Towns Can Come Back.” Under the banner of “Localism“, the author, Sylvia L. Lovely, argues that towns need to turn their energies inward and make the best of the resources at hand.
I love that the author celebrates this inward focus. Engaging the local citizenry and the developing local assets are critical to future of our rural communities. But Lovely make an additional statement that I believe warrants further discussion:
What you need to build is an intentional city. The intentional city is the middle way — where both the need to attract creative people and the need to sustain traditional economic and social bases co-exist.
Jim Beddow, of the Rural Learning Center, has been calling on communities to “be intentional” for years. This effort derives from the observation that most rural communities in the Upper Midwest were born organically to support farmers in the countryside. Since the time of their founding, however, few communities have been intentional about their futures.
It’s this lack of intentionality that has prevented rural communities in the Upper Midwest from adapting to a new economy- one where farms don’t exist on every section of land.
Lovely apparently believes that being intentional means that communities need to balance the creative economy Richard Florida has identified with the traditional economy and society that currently exists in communities. Not bad advice, but I’ll let each community decide for itself what it wants for its future. What’s more important is that communities are intentional and develop the strategies that will enable them to achieve whatever future they envision.
Tags: creative economy, intentional city, Localism, Richard Florida, Rural Learning Center
Posted in Community Development, Rural | Comments (0)