Will Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods potentially affect us in the Heartland? We don't know how it will affect us in the future or not too distant future; it's too soon to tell. What we do need to pay attention to is how could it impact our local communities and businesses? Will it affect us in South Dakota? I know it is already affecting us in the heartland; with all the online business our state is not seeing a dime in taxes or are just beginning. Not Good. Some communities have amazing community support of local businesses. How can we help our communities be more pro-active in this manner? Is this something we think about; to make our communities economically healthy? It is a "ripple down effect" if we keep money in our local economies feeding privately-owned businesses that hire local employees, or distribute products from our farms to stores and more. It all matters. That's the bottom line. It's a "ripple down effect." Personally, I believe we can help: 1) Avoid "Amazoning" if possible, and keep our ecosystem of local businesses strong and growing. 2) Teach your children now and let them see first hand your shopping at home when possible. 3) What's good for the goose is good for the gander; for example, don't support shopping at home, but turn around and purchase mail-order pre-packaged foods that deliver to your door. Buy your products locally. 4) If you cannot find it in your community, you're still better off going to the next community, versus buying online. We can be pro-active for our communities, Joan Travel Backroads P.S. I welcome your comments; I love food for thought!
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"Driving the Passion to Go Local" "Follow your Passion" passion, Passion, PASSION! I have found a passion since living rural in my adult life. I now feel a passion for our businesses, our communities, and youth. I want to have passion for what I believe. For me it's supporting local. I do the best I can. Can I do better? I hear it all over the place now--radio ads, my own Ads, TV Ads and plastered online. It is like a trend or a fad perhaps, and it is definitely everywhere you turn. Adding my own two cents, for the business owner downtown or in rural America it has to be more than a catch phrase. It has to be a reality. You can be hanging by a thread or swinging from a rope. You can also be basking in the sunlight. A business does not get too many chances to 'make it'. Nor do our communities... In a conversation recently, with a gentleman vendor in his 70's (not that age matters), he replied to a comment I made in visiting, "all the purchasing we do online; we have to bring taxes back to our state. We need to do more shopping at home too". His reply to me (thinking he'd agree) was "We are dying (rural towns), who cares?" Strong local businesses,big and small = continued growth, attraction to families, and professionals and making our communities a great place to live. It is my passion. It is why I began Travel Backroads. It is why I pursue sharing local businesses with others on my directory and mapping the customers' way, through their doors. Do you share a similar passion? I'd love to read your comments if you would care to share! Joan Travel Backroads Just a personal sidenote: I'm heading west next week to the Black Hills! I'd love to visit about a video and an annual listing, if you're available! Just drop me a line! Let's make it happen! Since my email address is not MY domain name...it can go to your spam. Please ok my email. Thank you! I just finished attending a seminar with Pat McGill, (www.patmcgill.net) who presented to a wide variety of women in positions of business and leadership. Thanks to Pat, many sponsors, and my organization Deuel Area Development, it was possible and affordable, to bring Pat to our little area of South Dakota. Taking full advantage, women from South Dakota and Minnesota attended this great opportunity to hear Pat. Many had heard her before, but I had not. Because of my position as an Economic Development Director, I am able to attend many conferences and seminars and I’m always learning. I find it very difficult to bring information back to a community, to pass on what I’ve learned and get the information to the right person. What I am finding is many of the conferences and seminars are formatted much the same; breakout sessions, small groups and speakers. They are great and provide a learning environment. However, Pat’s style and presentation is totally different from what I have been experiencing. Her uniqueness, her enthusiasm, and zest is contagious. She comes from an angle that is ‘uniquely hers talking about uniquely you,’ as that business owner and leader. It’s a viewpoint of caring for yourself before you can care for your business or customer. It’s a viewpoint of knowing yourself and loving yourself, and your personal uniqueness and style that helps you lead, manage or deal with others. What comes across boldly as well, is her years of experience and how it is integrated in her seminar. She has KNOWN and has LIVED a multitude of experiences and her passion to promote, teach and help others just spills out of her. It was refreshing to be a part of a totally different type of seminar, a very personal one where you feel astonished that a ‘one-on-one is taking place in a room filled with women’. A take-away that I took from this seminar after all these years of working a multitude of jobs is I have found my passion in this new business I have begun, my online business directory. I absolutely love and want to bring people to “local” businesses; to anyone’s local business, be it on a city street, home or a rural highway. I want to promote destinations, a group or cluster of businesses that are uniquely their own and not big box stores, or a large franchise that runs amuck in so many of our larger communities. Those 'big businesses' in bigger cities that economic development organizations want to bring to their communities because economic development, in most people’s minds, means 200 plus jobs with big wages and more, and should be thought of as ‘the target’. But what about your communities of 200, 700, 1500, 3000? What about those communities where the last remaining business is hanging by a thread? Or what about that community where the grocery store just closed, or those local stores that cannot compete with the whole “out-shopping experience”? I am concerned and challenged to instill in our citizens the need to "go local”. My passion grows for local businesses and promoting them. How do we instill in our youth and adults to spend at home as much as possible? In a rural community, how to get the citizens to take ownership of their ‘ruralness’ and to think of how their community is going to survive the next 10, 25, 50 years? There are rural and city businesses that need “Pat McGill” to assess and personally coach one-on-one with communities and individuals. Local businesses also need the dedicated Travel Backroads Directory. I truly believe my directory can promote your local business. I LOVE this directory and I LOVE promoting business. It is a great realization that I discovered, with enthusiasm and through Pat’s seminar, that I am finally, right where I need and want to be! Seeking out rural areas (I’m including our whole plains region) while travelling or taking a trip can be incredibly rewarding. We want travellers to abandon the big populations and head for the plains.
Recently I read on of a travel site that ‘domestic leisure travel’ will continue to be the main driver for growth in the U.S. travel industry. In 2016, domestic travelers spent $836.6 billion in the United States—representing 84 percent of total travel expenditures. Assumedly South Dakota and the neighboring states are a part of that. Unfortunately, and maybe I did not look in the right place, but SD Tourism does not list Fast Facts after 2010. I’m assuming we might be off of the beaten path for a large portion of that $836 billion, but we are here and not going a way. Our region is a great target for “domestic leisure travel.” We know where to find Mt. Rushmore, where to camp, motels, which highway to view the Needle’s Highway, the Black Hills Play House, or the Corn Palace. If you were to ask a travel agent where to go on the back roads, or city streets to find local “out-of-this-world” chicken, or that amazing ice cream parlor that boasts “the most awesome chocolate malts,” could they tell you? Could they tell you where the locals go for the best fishing holes, or how about an artists’ ride? Could they tell you that the pie is amazing at the Alpine Inn in Hill City, or that there’s this amazing little greenhouse “Forget-Me-Not” in the country on the Minnesota, South Dakota border? How about tell you the history of Harding County and the Petroglyphs, or the local winery in Rosholt or the best little steakhouse in Ward? Doubtful. I’m willing to bet on it. But. We. Can. When I moved to Clear Lake 7 years ago, a friend introduced me to some amazing little stores and the towns in which they were located. Since that time I have been exploring and looking for more. We are giving it our best shot and working to gather them one by one or together. Our rural roads and downtown city streets have shops, unique services, special locations, or outstanding food that others should know about. Destinations. Domestic Leisure Travel We are working and prepared to get the word out. We are in for the long haul, we truly believe in local. We believe in the entrepreneur. Our passion is to list destination clusters (See website's SERVICES), chamber members, businesses, museums, and events so others can find them too. To advertise with us for a year is so inexpensive that one can't afford not to; $25 for a basic listing for a year. There are all kinds of packages however, “A la Carte” to help work with a budget. In closing, we now are offering additional services and that is managing business owner's social media. Let us tell your story, Joan This is exciting! I've had a few inquiries lately from individuals that are asking for advice. They're planning a weekend getaway. They cannot go far, but they want to travel to a location where they can do some things in an area for 2-3 days. Maybe these destinations include a nice steak dinner and church on Sunday morning. Maybe it's dancing, coffee shop and rolls in the morning, a movie at night. Maybe it even includes shopping, an auction, or some music in the park or concert or a petrified forest, a grotto, or some historical markers. They are asking us for information. We'd love nothing better than to give them some destinations for their weekend or week away.
We also have women and men that want to take bus tours. They would love nothing better than for us to choose the itinerary for the trip and all they have to do is get on board; let the driver do the rest. What does your area have that others want to see and visit? Personally, I grew up in the Black Hills. I later worked for Grayline Bus Tours and worked in hotels during the summers to visit with tourists and to sell them tours for the northern or southern hills or the Passion Play. Years before that, we always showed family or visitors all there was to see in the Black Hills. Promoting came early on to me. There is however, a great deal more out there than the Black Hills. There are towns, parks, events, art, golf courses that you may see everyday, but others have yet to see them. There is much to learn about all the destinations out there; in South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota or other states that the Travel Backroads Directory covers. This is where co-opetition works it's magic. Create a Destination Cluster. Get your area together and and let us write your story. Travel Backroads will work hard to promote your destination and get the word out. We are doing it tirelessly already and are committed to you, going local and we'll continue to do so. This is an exciting new development for us. Let's work together! Joan Travel Backroads One thing we need to always remember, and I tell this to others as well as school children in a classroom, is "Going Local" isn't a fad or the latest "trend." It's what we all need to focus our attention on, as much as possible. For rural communities especially, buying local helps with our town's infrastructure-- we complain that our cities seem to ignore fixing pot holes, and other things. It costs money, and if you buy local it supports the tax base to get those things done. It also helps our school systems and teacher's salaries.
The second part of "going local" is it supports entrepreneurs and their visions. A friend told me that a particular dollar store brand was in the southern part of the United States and eventually ran out many locally owned stores. When they went belly up and bankrupt, they moved out with NO thought or LOYALTY to the community they were leaving. In doing so, they left the communities high and dry and with another empty building. Entrepreneurs invest in their communities. They are risk takers taking huge chances, and they've chosen to invest in their communities. Yesterday, I spoke at length with an entrepreneur in one of the communities. She had told me that she has owned her store for many years and has little support from the local people let alone the city governing agencies in town. She said that it's all the outside people on trips that stop in and give her business or those looking at destinations trips that come and support her. She barely can make ends meet now, but is following her dream and providing a service to the community. The local economic development offices look to fill their lil strip malls because of investors and little else is done for commercial businesses. We all or most of us live on budgets. That is a given. But we'll drive and spend gas to save a couple dollars. We are still going to do that but think first. Can I buy that at home or eat there and help our local economy and help a local business? Just think first is all I'm asking. We've got to encourage others and our children to #golocal if we want our communities to survive and thrive. Food for thought today, Joan |
Travel Backroads
February 2022
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