Nov 23rd

Human Business in a Small Town

I just spent the weekend in my hometown of Massillon, Ohio, population somewhere in the area of 50,000.

On Saturday, the kids, grandparents, Sarah and I walked the mile to Lincoln Way and 8th St. to watch the annual Thanksgiving Day parade.  When I was in high school, I used to be in that parade every year, riding on various floats for extra circular groups like choir, sports teams and even church youth groups.

After more than 25 years of visiting the parade, I noticed that the same local businesses who have staked their claim in the community since I was a kid, still support the parade with floats full of candy-throwers who chuck treats at wide-eyed little kids.

Local businesses like Moyer’s Nursery, Christine’s Dance Studio, Studer Signs, Jeff’s Motorcars and a slew of others always claim their niche in the community by being visible in the parade.  These entrepreneur families have built their businesses by first embracing the community to become “One of Us“.  That’s allowed them to focus on establishing human relationships and adding value, sometimes one customer at a time.

So, have you noticed a trend in the company brand names?

Each brand reflects the name of the family – the people – who own the business.  That’s pretty commonplace for businesses in small towns.  Now consider that some of these families have sent generations to school in the Massillon City public school system.  A lot of my friends were these kids, and have since grown up to take over the daily operations of the family shop, building upon the relationships and brand stories that have been established over generations.  Over time, the customer-base that is fueled by human relationships simply continues to grow.  Eventually, the small business gets bigger.

Doing Human Business
In a small town, businesses that thrive do so as a result of focusing on relationships.  But now more than ever, the village has become global and the definitions of a small town have started to change.  The world is tied together by a web that is now populated by living, breathing people, all with the potential to be human brands and all with a basic human need for someone to go the extra mile and care about them.

Are you doing human business?  And if so, where in the village have you decided to set up shop?

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Comments (7)

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  • Nicholas Riggs

    Great article Nate. You’re making a very interesting distinction here between the ‘real’ village and the Global Village- one that I feel needs to be explored for greater understanding. It is the common signification of this word ‘global’ as indicating a ‘spatially enourmous area’ that gets misconstrued in our understanding of the web. Is the Global Village larger than a small town? Really think about this.

    Certainly there are more people in the Global Village. Certainly there are more places to visit. Storefronts like Amazon and Ebay, parks and community centers like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. When we look at the web as analogous of a ‘real’ village (extracting the word ‘Global’) our personal computers can become our Homes and our laptops and phones turn into Apartments and Winnebagos in digital space. Online consumers become ‘iPeople’ and are arguably spatially closer to others who inhabit the virtual world than people who live 10 miles apart on different sides railroad tracks in a ‘real’ village. In this analogy, the roads that connect different virtual dwellings are shorter than any avenue or parkway in the ‘real’ world.

    So understood in this way, is it the village that has become global or the globe that has become a village? If we rework our thinking to favor the latter, what we are left with is a different framework for approaching online business. I would argue that adopting such an framework is essential to ‘humanize’ business.

    This leads me to more questions.

    How do our personal brands define us as ‘iPeople’? Where do we need to set up shop in this Global Village? Since everywhere on the web is just as easy to get to as everywhere else, how do we signify our proximity to other places of business that will attract the right consumers? Can your business be in a ‘bad neighborhood’ of the Global Village? Finally, what cultural staples (like the parade) does your business participate in that creates tradition, evokes nostalgia, and promotes camaraderie with members of the Global Village?

  • Nicholas Riggs

    Great article Nate. You’re making a very interesting distinction here between the ‘real’ village and the Global Village- one that I feel needs to be explored for greater understanding. It is the common signification of this word ‘global’ as indicating a ‘spatially enourmous area’ that gets misconstrued in our understanding of the web. Is the Global Village larger than a small town? Really think about this.

    Certainly there are more people in the Global Village. Certainly there are more places to visit. Storefronts like Amazon and Ebay, parks and community centers like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. When we look at the web as analogous of a ‘real’ village (extracting the word ‘Global’) our personal computers can become our Homes and our laptops and phones turn into Apartments and Winnebagos in digital space. Online consumers become ‘iPeople’ and are arguably spatially closer to others who inhabit the virtual world than people who live 10 miles apart on different sides railroad tracks in a ‘real’ village. In this analogy, the roads that connect different virtual dwellings are shorter than any avenue or parkway in the ‘real’ world.

    So understood in this way, is it the village that has become global or the globe that has become a village? If we rework our thinking to favor the latter, what we are left with is a different framework for approaching online business. I would argue that adopting such an framework is essential to ‘humanize’ business.

    This leads me to more questions.

    How do our personal brands define us as ‘iPeople’? Where do we need to set up shop in this Global Village? Since everywhere on the web is just as easy to get to as everywhere else, how do we signify our proximity to other places of business that will attract the right consumers? Can your business be in a ‘bad neighborhood’ of the Global Village? Finally, what cultural staples (like the parade) does your business participate in that creates tradition, evokes nostalgia, and promotes camaraderie with members of the Global Village?

  • http://nateriggs.com/ Nate Riggs

    I like this thinking Nick, and thanks for the comment. The idea of iPeople is intriguing and this specifically peaks my ineterst. “Can your business be in a ‘bad neighborhood’ of the Global Village?”

    What would define a “bad neighborhood”? Lack of productivity or profit? Could it be defined as poor publicity of an online brand. I need to noodle on this for a while. Great stuff!

  • http://nateriggs.com Nate Riggs

    I like this thinking Nick, and thanks for the comment. The idea of iPeople is intriguing and this specifically peaks my ineterst. “Can your business be in a ‘bad neighborhood’ of the Global Village?”

    What would define a “bad neighborhood”? Lack of productivity or profit? Could it be defined as poor publicity of an online brand. I need to noodle on this for a while. Great stuff!

  • Berto Bandeira

    Guys, was now late in my office, and was researching a scientific paper Legal. With that, I hit a certain nostalgia of times that reside in the United States, especially with you. I decided to give, to search for the names of my fellow Americans, and ended up finding this magnificent site, and to my greatest happiness, I discovered that it was my brother American Nate Riggs. Brothers, get in touch, I need to know how you guys are, I am now a lawyer, I’m getting married in 2011, and already have my office. Come on contact, love you guys, and want to know how to walk and Peter Germaine. I just have MSN, I dont have any FaceBook, I´ll make soon, and dont have Orkut.

  • http://nateriggs.com nateriggs

    It’s good to find you Berto :) Been way too long, and glad to hear how things are going in Brazil! Congrats on your career in law. Your English is still really good as well! Let’s hook up on FB when you have a profile :)