Pickens County “Thrives” Even in Hard Times
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009Last week the Small Business Council that I chair for the Chamber of Commerce co-sponsored a very successful seminar here in Pickens Couny. The following article is the one I submitted to the Pickens Progress for publication.
Chamber Seminar a Rousing Success
Over 80 local community and business leaders gathered at the Appalachian Campus of Chattahoochee Tech last Tuesday for a day long business seminar entitled Surviving and Thriving in Hard Times. The attendees were treated to Key Note addresses by Dr. Roger Tutterow, Professor of Economics at Mercer University and Dr. Betty Siegel, President Emeritus of Kennesaw State University as well as 6 Breakout Sessions and a Business Expo with 12 local vendors. The reviews from attendees identified the program as a rousing success and plans and discussions will begin immediately to determine the time line for a future seminar.
The Key Note speakers, Drs. Tutterow and Siegel, are both nationally known speakers and they brought both their thoughtful insights and personal knowledge of the area to bear in their presentations.
Dr. Tutterow, whose undergraduate degree is from Berry College and MA and Ph.D in Economics are from Georgia State University, delivered a lively presentation peppered with statistics (and insights based on them) that narrowed the national economic news right down to very local impacts. Dr. Tutterow’s analysis confirmed what many local businesses owners had believed to be true – during most of the recession Pickens County and Jasper have fared better than the state and national level in measurable areas such as sales tax revenues, home sales and home values. This trend was evident until just a few months ago when local activity suddenly caught up with those unfortunate state and national trends. The good news is that the same factors that led to our lagging on the way down, may well lead to our leading on the way back up. (In fact, Pickens County is now reporting that sales tax revenue has started back up and local Realtors® will confirm that since mid-August the volume of traffic, offers and closings has increased significantly.) Dr. Tutterow’s clear message to business owners – and we all heard it loud and clear – was that we appear to be at the inflexion point and any gain in market share right now will only be amplified as the market improves.
Dr. Siegel, currently the Distinguished Chair of the Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics and Character, provided a warm and thoughtful primer on the value of leadership in solving problems at all levels of our lives. Dr. Siegel’s personable delivery style is so effective that one quickly forgets her national stature and settles in to listen to a personal mentor holding forth on some concepts that one intuitively knows are true and some that may not have been properly considered. There are hundreds of definitions of leaders and leadership, but Dr. Siegel’s contention that “leaders enroll others in their mission,” rings true. Dr. Siegel’s presentation was filled with personal stories and insights into living and leading that left no doubt why she remains in demand world-wide. It was an educational blessing just to be in the same room with her for an hour.
The two keynote speakers were supported by a strong cast of subject matter experts delivering 6 breakout sessions during the course of the day. Randy Reidrich from the UGA Small Business Development Center presented on Managing Change. Dave Garner of ETC and Albert Grassia from Micah Apparel provided an introduction to Social Media. Mike McCalip of Herdt Consulting talked about Applying Leadership to Your Business. North Georgia Cellular’s Randy Maynard gave an overview of Using New Technology. Kary Kilkerson, from host & co-sponsor Chattahoochee Technical College, served up a session on Providing Exceptional Customer Service while James Schuster from Visual Marketing Group, Inc. developed some Approaches to Fresh Marketing.
The seminar was organized by the Chamber’s Business Council and the county’s informal Leadership Council, headed by Ardis McCain and Larry Toney. Denise Duncan, the Executive President of the Pickens County Chamber of Commerce was the glue that held process together and provided the leadership to bring off such a successful event in such challenging times. The Chamber and Chattahoochee Tech were the primary sponsors and the Corporate Sponsor was “The Mountains of Big Canoe.” Vendors participating in the Expo were: Chattahoochee Tech, Community Bank of Pickens County, Crescent Bank, ETC Communications, Julia Jorns, CPA, LLC, Micah Apparel, New Beginnings Therapeutic Services, North Georgia Cellular, Strategic Analytic Solutions, Torrey Mountain Properties, Inc., Unites Community Bank and the University of Georgia, Small Business Development Center. Both breakfast and lunch were provided by Bojangles.
The sponsors and attendees agreed that the seminar was a valuable addition to the community business calendar. Business Council Chair, Don Martin, indicated that “the only way to make a significant improvement would be to have 200-300 business leaders attend next year – we’ll just have to get right to work on that.”
