Southern Oregon Business Journal - December 2023

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SouthernOregonBusiness.com WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM LONELINESS RESEARCH - PAGE 8

The Southern Oregon Business Journal is Sponsored by

The Journal for Business in Southern Oregon “BUILD THE LIFE YOU WANT”: A BLUEPRINT FOR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS- PAGE 4

December 2023

SOU’S NEW OFFICE OF STUDENT BELONGING AND ENGAGEMENT (BE) - PAGE 20

LONELINESS

The Southern Oregon Business Journal extends sincere thanks to the following companies for sponsoring the journal. Without their support we could not produce a FREE resource for Southern Oregon businesses.

A Few Words from Jim December 2023 According to Psychology Today, Loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one's desires for social connection and actual experiences of it.

I recently attended a technology conference and one of the key themes was that social networking and always connected technology has actually created a lonely society. I started to see more and more references to it as something negative about society that the tech industry exacerbated and somehow needs to x.

I thought it would be ok to start talking about it and learning about it together.

I remember during COVID lockdown seeing playgrounds taped off by police tape. We took away playing together and being together to protect ourselves from the spread of the virus. I have been curious about the future social implications from this.

You can read a published interview on the research behind loneliness on page 8.

Over the next several issues I’ll nd more material to share, so we can learn together.

Being an entrepreneur can be very lonely at times. I remember when I grew Project A to 50 employees, it was one of the loneliest periods of my life.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS AND ADVERTISERS

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Sometimes we grow our business and sometimes we shrink it or hit the pause button in order to survive. That can be very lonely as you face the stress of hard decisions.

I was at a Holiday Party the other night and someone said to me as I was leaving, “I love your business journal, I read it all the time” and I thought about it while driving home.

Putting the journal together, sharing it and learning along with you makes me feel a social connection to you and I appreciate you for it.

Happy Holidays to you and yours and I’ll see you next year.

Thanks for reading…

Jim Jim@SouthernOregonBusiness.com Photo by Karl Magnuson on Unsplash

Founder Greg Henderson ghenderson703@gmail.com Greg started the Southern Oregon Business Journal in 2015 and retired in 2020.

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Check out SOU’s new Of ce of Student Belonging and Engagement (BE) - it seems to attack loneliness head on by giving students a place to BE and maybe we should do that for our employees as well.

Thank you True South Solar for being a new advertiser.

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www.SouthernOregonBusiness.com

A JOURNAL FOR THE ECONOMICALLY CURIOUS, PROFESSIONALLY INSPIRED AND ACUTELY MOTIVATED

DECEMBER 2023 - TABLE OF CONTENTS

Reading List - “Build the Life You Want”: A Blueprint for Personal and Professional Success 4 Workforce Housing - Clatsop County tackles ‘urban scale’ housing issues 6 Loneliness - Interview: What We Can Learn From Loneliness Research 8 Marketing - Ask Lisa: How long does it take to brand a business? 12 Agriculture - America’s farmers are getting older, and young people aren’t rushing to join them 14 Non Pro ts Are Businesses Too - Wildlife Images is temporarily closing its doors to reorganize 16 Broadband - FCC Reaf rms Decision To Reject Starlink Application For Nearly $900 Million In Subsidies 17 Employment - Six Years After OregonSaves Launch, Workers Have Saved More than $200 Million for Retirement 18 Broadband - Hunter Communications Introduces the Family Safety Bundle this Holiday Season 19 Belonging and Engagement - SOU’s new Of ce of Student Belonging and Engagement (BE) 20 Innovation - SOU to help lead research initiative for undergraduate institutions 22 A Fine Line by Greg Anderson - Have We Become Better at Leading and Following? 24 SBDC - Building Resilience in Your Organization 26

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Community Banking - Oregon Bankers Association and Oregon Business Magazine Present 2023 Community Applause Award to Con-Vey of Roseburg 30

READING LIST A book review

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n the realm of self-help literature, a new book has emerged that promises to revolutionize the way we approach happiness and personal ful llment. “Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier” by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey is a transformative read that combines personal anecdotes with practical advice, making it a compelling guide for those seeking positive change.

“Build the Life You Want”: A Blueprint for Personal and Professional Success

designed to help individuals navigate their emotions effectively, leading to improved mental health and overall wellbeing

The book invites readers to embark on a journey toward greater happiness, regardless of their current circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of experience helping people translate ideas into action, Brooks and Winfrey show readers how to improve their lives right now, instead of waiting for the outside world to change.

Conclusion

Emotional Self-Management

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A Blueprint for a Better Life “Build the Life You Want” is more than just a self-help book; it’s a blueprint for a better life. By sharing hardearned wisdom from their own lives and careers, as well as the experiences of regular people who have found joy despite setbacks and hardship, Brooks and Winfrey inspire readers to take control of their present and future.

A New Approach to Happiness

A signi cant portion of the book is dedicated to the concept of emotional selfmanagement. Brooks and Winfrey provide practical, research-based practices that readers can apply in their daily lives. These tools are

research-based practices to build these pillars, equipping readers with the tools of emotional selfmanagement.

The Four Pillars of Happiness Central to the book’s philosophy is the concept of the four pillars of happiness: family, friendship, work, and faith. Brooks and Winfrey recommend practical,

“Build the Life You Want” is a testament to the power of emotional self-management and the importance of building strong relationships in our pursuit of happiness.

Its practical, research-based approach makes it a valuable resource for anyone looking to make positive changes in their life. As Brooks and Winfrey remind us, "You can get happier. And getting there will be the adventure of your lifetime".

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By Claire Carlson - December 14, 2023 https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/12/14/coastaloregon-county-tackles-urban-scale-housing-issues/

Clatsop County tackles ‘urban scale’ housing issues

CareOregon CEO Eric Hunter reveals the new logo of the affordable housing development that will take the place of the Red Lion Inn, to be called Hawk’s Eye Apartments. (Claire Carlson/Daily Yonder)

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loudy skies loomed over the small coastal town of Seaside on a November morning earlier this year, but the rain stayed away as a group of residents, health care workers, and city of cials gathered outside of what was, up until a few months ago, a Red Lion Inn.

“We have urban-scale problems in a rural area, but we only have rural-level resources to address it,” Elissa Gertler said in a Daily Yonder interview. Gertler was appointed housing manager for Clatsop County earlier this year.

Her position is newly made to tackle the region’s housing issues.

The group was gathered to celebrate the former hotel’s new role as an affordable housing development for people struggling with chronic homelessness and as transitional housing for the local hospital’s workforce.

Gertler says these “urban-scale problems” come in the form of tourism, which at its summer peak can nearly double the population of Clatsop County from 41,000 year-round to 80,000. Vacation homes dot the shoreline, and nding an affordable long-term rental is tough, locals say. The median home sale price in Clatsop County in October of 2023 was $539,000, according to data from the real estate company Red n.

While Seaside is one of several small towns in northwest Oregon’s Clatsop County that is known for its bucolic tourism industry, the region is struggling with a lesser-known but dire housing shortage where one out of every 40 individuals is homeless. This is the highest per capita homelessness rate of any county in the state of Oregon.

There are plenty of theories why this coastal county’s housing problem has gotten so bad, but of cials say it boils down to one key issue: a lack of money for rural affordable housing development.

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WORKFORCE HOUSING

Oregon also has some of the strictest building regulations in the country, which makes any new development dif cult. Building on the coast is even more challenging because of tsunami zones and national forest land that limit where new construction can occur.

This is where the Red Lion Inn comes into play.

The building, purchased earlier this year by the

state’s health care plan CareOregon that serves Oregonians on Medicaid, doesn’t face the construction challenges that other affordable housing projects contend with on the coast because it’s already built. The Red Lion Inn just needs renovation, which began in early November when the project’s leaders and county of cials gathered at a ceremonial “groundbreaking” event.

Once nished, 55 rooms will be available for rent: 37 for workforce housing and 18 for lowincome housing. The building should be movein ready by late spring of 2024, according to the project’s leaders. Rent hasn’t been determined yet, but the tentative number named at the groundbreaking event for workforce housing was $1,100 per month, utilities included. This number could change before next spring, project leaders emphasized.

The Red Lion Inn housing project is one glimmer of hope in a rural area that’s been struggling to gain access to resources to address their housing needs.

In March of 2023, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed into law a $200 million spending

package to address the state’s homelessness crisis. The state’s most populous counties – Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington – were granted between $4,000 and $6,000 for every unsheltered person. Even though Clatsop County has the highest rate of homelessness in the state, it received just $1,500 per unsheltered person.

Clatsop of cials petitioned the state for more money and in September were given $3.8 million, more than any other rural Oregon county. About one-third of this money went to Clatsop Community Action to convert the Columbia Inn in Astoria to a homeless shelter, one-third to LIFEBoat Services to pay for shelter beds, and the last third to fund a multi-agency coordination group for planning between local and state housing services.

But the struggle to get this money highlights an issue all too familiar to rural communities: inequitable access to state and federal grants. Learning about what grants are available is the rst hurdle that rural counties must overcome, then devoting the time and money to apply for them is its own struggle. In small counties with limited resources to devote to this process, it can be extremely dif cult to compete with metro areas for the same money.

Gertler, the Clatsop County housing manager, said Oregon Housing and Community Services has been working with Clatsop County to understand this issue and remove barriers to the grant application process, but nothing has changed yet, even though smaller counties depend on state money in a way cities don’t have to.

“We are dependent on our partnership with the state in a way that I think the large urban areas don’t have to be [because] they have more local tools,” Gertler said. These tools include nonpro t, faith-based, and other local organizations that organize around homelessness in cities.

These organizations exist in Clatsop County, too, but not to the same extent as in Oregon’s metro areas.

One resource that does operate in Clatsop County is Helping Hands, a non-pro t organization that provides low-barrier

emergency shelters and long-term recovery services to people struggling with homelessness, mental health issues, or addiction. They provide more than 350 beds to unsheltered people in ve Oregon counties, rural and urban. But they’ve struggled to get state funds, too. “[The state] makes all the [funding] decisions based off of the people who are on re, the people who need [help] the most,” said Alan Evans, president of Helping Hands, in a Daily Yonder interview. Evans said they’ve been left out of grant funding from the state because they prioritize a long-term recovery model versus short-term mental health and addiction solutions. Helping Hands relies primarily on donations and a limited number of grants to operate.

“We’re a community-based organization that believes investing in people to be sustainable in a community is the number one thing,” Evans said. “To nd out that the funding streams available don’t support that, [that points to] the deeper issue of why we’re having this [housing] problem.”

The Red Lion Inn project is an attempt to solve part of this problem, focusing mainly on housing for local health care providers and some housing for low-income people.

CareOregon CEO Eric Hunter reveals the new logo of the affordable housing development that will take the place of the Red Lion Inn, to be called Hawk’s Eye Apartments. (Claire Carlson/ Daily Yonder) The workforce housing will provide shortterm, motel-style rooms for health care workers moving to Clatsop County to work at Providence Hospital, located in Seaside. Like many rural communities, Clatsop County faces a dearth of health care providers, especially for specialty care like rheumatologists, gastroenterologists, and psychiatrists. The hospital recently hired its rst pediatrician, according to Pamela Cooper, director of nance at Providence Hospital. She is closely involved in the hospital’s hiring and onboarding process for new employees, and

has taken on a role her colleagues call the “landlord wrangler.”

“When [new employees] take on a job and they move to the area, they usually don’t have the money right away to buy a home,” Cooper said in a Daily Yonder interview. “And they don’t have the income history if they’re right out of school, or sometimes they have to sell another home, or maybe they don’t know exactly where they want to purchase. And so they need what we call transitional time to be in a rental.”

These rentals are extremely hard to nd on the Oregon coast, which is why Cooper’s role in establishing agreements with local landlords to rent to her employees is so essential. The Red Lion conversion project promises to add a signi cant number of rental properties available to the pool of options Cooper has already created, which should help improve the region’s access to quality health care.

As for the Red Lion Inn project’s 18 low-income housing rentals, they promise to provide stable housing to people struggling with mental health and addiction. On-site management from Clatsop Behavioral Health will be made available for the supportive housing tenants.

While the project won’t solve Clatsop County’s homelessness crisis, community members say it’s a step in the right direction, and addresses the adjacent issue of rural health care access.

“I think [the Red Lion project] is something that’s direly needed,” Evans from Helping Hands said. But without continued support for every level of Clatsop County’s housing crisis – from homelessness resources to providing more housing to middle-class residents – the area will continue to suffer, according to Evans.

“It is a small step in solving the problem, but it is going to get perpetually worse if we don’t support all the programs that provide [housing] services in the community,” he said.

This article rst appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 7

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Interview: What We Can Learn From Loneliness Research

LONELINESS

By DAN FALK This article was originally published on Undark.

Read the original article at https://undark.org/2023/11/24/interview-loneliness/

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ICHELLE PARSONS TRACES her interest in loneliness back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Parsons, who teaches at Northern Arizona University and describes herself a sociocultural medical anthropologist, was interested in how the collapse of Communism — a system that had held sway for more than 8 | Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023

Medical anthropologist Michelle Parsons says recent ndings show there’s much more to loneliness than just being alone.

seven decades — had affected people’s health. Why, for example, was there a spike in mortality among middle-aged people who had grown up under the old system and were now experiencing massive societal change?

“So I talked to that generation of Russians, based in Moscow, for a year, and tried to understand why that time was so life-threatening,” Parsons

said. “And they spoke a lot about being unneeded, and not having things to offer other people anymore.”

Recently, the problem of loneliness has received increased attention, with the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, describing loneliness this spring as a public health crisis, and even an epidemic.

And with loneliness comes negative health outcomes. As

the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has put it: “Disconnection fundamentally affects our mental, physical, and societal health.”

Back in 2018, the United Kingdom appointed its rst minister for loneliness. Not long after, the Covid-19 pandemic further increased levels of loneliness, with the American Psychological Association noting that the effects “could have implications for people’s long-term mental and physical health, longevity and well-being.”

For Parsons, a key nding in recent research is that there’s much more to loneliness than merely being alone.

Our interview was conducted over Zoom and by email, and has been edited for length and clarity.

Undark: I think many of us felt lonely during the pandemic, in part because we couldn’t be with our friends or attend events in person — but there’s obviously more to it than that. What are some of the other ways in which the pandemic caused loneliness?

Michelle Parsons: I’ve been working with data from an online journaling project called the Pandemic Journaling Project. That was created by anthropologist Sarah Willen and Katherine Mason. They

have journal entries from people all over the world; more than 55 countries have participated. And I was interested in U.S. participants, adults 25 to 64 years of age, and their journal entries.

So, looking for journal entries that mentioned loneliness — “lonely” or “alone” or “loneliness” — those key terms, I found that they’re not really talking about family and friends so much. And they’re not really talking about close relationships, because during the pandemic, we still had access to those, although in an attenuated form; we could Zoom with people.

They were talking about strangers and casual acquaintances, and they were talking about places that they missed and practices that they missed. So, for example, a journaler would say, “I just want to go browse books at the library, but the library’s closed,” or “I just want to sit in a cafe with people around me.” So not necessarily any deep or meaningful social interaction as we tend to think of it — a close relationship — but just these casual relationships that we have in public places.

UD: It sounds like loneliness is about more than merely being alone, or being apart from friends and family.

Based on your research, how

might the de nition of loneliness be broadened?

MP: Loneliness is already recognized as different from social isolation. So instead of social isolation, many psychologists, and others who have written about loneliness, de ne it as perceived social isolation — so that you could be surrounded by people but still feel lonely, if you perceive that you are socially isolated.

So there’s that distinction. In terms of my own work — the anthropology of loneliness, so expanding beyond psychological or cognitive conceptions of loneliness — I think it would be important to think beyond relationships between people, but relationships between people and places, relationships between people and practices, and also relationships between people and nonhumans. So animals, for example.

UD: I’m thinking back to 2020, that rst wave, when you could go to city parks, but the playgrounds were roped off; children couldn’t play together. Or the washrooms were closed. So the experience of going to the park was just very different from what people were used to.

MP: You’re right, places also changed during the pandemic.

And people mourned the places that they remember, so

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 9

people would say things like, “The streets of Manhattan are so dead,” or “My workplace is like a ghost town now.” Or, like you said, “I miss the sound of children playing in the park.”

strangers or casual acquaintances. These kinds of people are known in the literature as “weak ties” or “nodding relationships” or “consequential strangers.”

UD: Do the tools that psychologists or other professionals use to measure loneliness need to be adjusted to re ect these broader de nitions? I’m wondering what types of loneliness the current measures might miss.

Those kinds of relationships are missing. For example, a loneliness scale would ask, “There are plenty of people I can rely on when I have problems” or “There are many people I can trust completely,” and “There are enough people I feel close to.” So they’re picking up on close relationships, but not so much about casual relationships, and de nitely not places and practices.

MP: De nitely. The current measures are not picking up on places and practices. And they’re not really even picking up on interactions with

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UD: Can you say a bit more about the interactions we have with strangers or with casual acquaintances, and why they matter?

MP: For a while now, researchers have noted the importance of casual acquaintances in our lives.

Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn report that minimal social interactions with strangers may provide cues of belonging and increase wellbeing. Karen Fingerman writes of the importance of consequential strangers in connecting us to larger social structures.

UD: What role can communities, or even states, play in reducing loneliness?

MP: If you think about entering this through places and practices, you can see that there would be potential for intervention in urban planning, in architectural design.

Recently, I spoke to a student doing a project in interior design, and thinking about even how the design of a living space for young professionals could foster connections. So what would that look like?

I think it’s possible to think about this on many different levels. In terms of places, like already mentioned, urban planning. In terms of practices, I think about community events, so the type of events where people who don’t necessarily know each other or would not necessarily interact in other ways, are brought together. And they might have just eeting interactions there.

But I think that’s still important for their sense of belonging to a larger social unit of people

that they might not ever encounter again, or have a close relationship to, but they did have this meeting. So you can think of festivals in terms of public events; you can think about open markets; you can think about public parks in which sporting events are held.

So all these kinds of practices in places which bring disparate people together.

UD: Is there evidence that that loneliness is becoming more of a problem? Or is it possible that it’s just our awareness of the issue that’s growing?

MP: I think it is likely that both of these are happening.

Attention to loneliness has grown, especially in the last 10 years. Although psychologists have written about loneliness since at least the 1950s, there is now more research, and more research in other disciplines such as geography and anthropology.

It is possible that loneliness has always been a problem and we are just paying more attention now. Some research on the prevalence of loneliness over time, however, suggests loneliness may be increasing. A recent meta-analysis of studies across countries suggests loneliness has increased in young adults since the 1970s, a phenomenon the authors attribute to mobility, technology, and the

fragmentation of social relations.

I think it is fair to say that we need more evidence from more areas of the world to understand both current prevalences of loneliness and changes over time.

UD: What do we know about how holidays — like Thanksgiving or Christmas, for example — affect feelings of loneliness?

MP: One thing that is clear from pandemic journal entries on loneliness is that loneliness is not a static characteristic of the individual but rather a uctuating one. The same individual who reports feeling lonely one week, may not feel lonely the next week.

Pandemic journalers wrote about feeling especially lonely when they could not celebrate birthdays and holidays with family and friends. I think this illustrates both that loneliness uctuates, sometimes day to day, and that loneliness is in uenced by cultural expectations.

If the cultural expectation is that birthdays and holidays are celebrated with others, then not being able to do so may be particularly lonely.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

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Pandemic journalers wrote about missing casual acquaintances and strangers, at the gym, in stores, in bars, or on the street. Why do these seemingly banal social connections matter? One possibility is the novelty and social stimulation they introduce in our lives, expanding our social world.

MARKETING

By Lisa Manyon WriteOnCreative.com https://writeoncreative.com/ask-lisa-long-take-brand-business/

Q: How long does it take to brand a business and how long does it usually take to get branding work done with a client from start to nish?

A: Your brand is the promise you make to the world. It's the overall essence of your business. So, everything you do must re ect this.

From image (logo), to identity packages (i.e. letterhead, envelopes, business cards, and all printed collateral material), to web design, to content, to customer service, to customer experience, overall strategy, and, most important, your marketing message.

Branding is an ongoing process and there are many phases of the brand process. I am guessing you might be asking about the time it takes to create brand identity (this includes logo, identity package, website etc). Often people think that a logo is the company brand and it's only part of it. The answer to how long it takes to create brand is, it depends.

Ask Lisa: How long does it take to brand a business?

2) Why is this branding rm making the recommendations they are making? (I've saved clients thousands upon thousands of dollars by assessing current brands and making small shifts to get big results without a re-brand) 3) Am I ready to commit to long-term success and invest in the constant evolution of my brand to create a lasting legacy?

Here are some elements of branding that might be helpful to consider.

Brand identity (logo, letterhead, envelopes, signage, website design, and even branded email addresses) Brand story (the story you tell to create your brand experience) Brand experience (how your customers and clients perceive you including overall look and feel)

My best advice is to do your due diligence, check references of any branding rms you consider playing with, and be clear on what you want to create. This is crucial because without some clarity is will be dif cult for any branding specialist to help you create a brand that will stand the test of time.

Brand loyalty (the dedication your customers/ clients show you based on brand experience)

Longevity, brand trust, and brand loyalty should be your goal.

Once you establish your brand every business decision you make should be based on your brand mission and vision. In short, branding is an ongoing process.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people making in this arena is NOT considering the long-term plan. A huge pet peeve is the reinvention and rebranding trend (often pushed by branding specialists to build their own business).

When engaging with a branding specialist or consultant, always ask these three questions: 1) How will this new brand or re-brand help sustain my business and increase income?

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Brand integrity (upholding your mission and ensuring you deliver upon your promises) Brand equity (the value of your brand over time that is built on consistency and trust)

I’d love to hear your thoughts? Feel free to weigh in by leaving a reply on the original post here. What advice would you give? How are you growing your brand?

Do you have questions about marketing? Submit your questions here and I might just blog the A to your Q.

Lisa Manyon is known as The Business Marketing Architect. She's the President and Founder of Write On Creative, host of the podcast Your Message Matters and a bestselling author.

She teaches, trains, and transforms on two core topics 1) Marketing With Integrity (it’s time to take the pain out of planning and the pain points out of your marketing message). Her strategies are known to create million-dollar results, and 2) Healing With Love (based on her bestselling book Spiritual Sugar: The Divine Ingredients to Heal Yourself With Love with a foreword by Dr. Joe Vitale and an afterword by Neale Donald Walsch.

Lisa lives in Magical Ashland, Oregon.

Visit WriteOnCreative.com to learn more. Feel free to ask questions via https://writeoncreative.com/ about/ask-lisa/ and be sure to let her know SOBJ sent you.

Southern Oregon Business Journal October 2023 | 13

By David R. Buys, John J. Green, Mary Nelson Robertson https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/12/07/ americas-farmers-are-getting-older-and-young-peoplearent-rushing-to-join-them/

America’s farmers are getting older, and young people aren’t rushing to join them

Farmers in the U.S. are aging. (Steve Smith/Tetra Images via Getty Images)

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ardworking American farmers keep the world fed and clothed. But the farming labor force has a problem: It’s aging rapidly.

The average American farmer is 57 and a half years old, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s up sharply from 1978, when the gure was just a smidge over 50.

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AGRICULTURE

As researchers who study wellbeing in rural areas, we wanted to understand this trend and its implications. So we dug into the data.

Amber waves of graying We found that the average age of farmers was fairly consistent across the country, even though the general

population’s age varies quite a bit from place to place.

For example, the average Maine farmer is just a few months older than the average farmer in Utah, even though the average Maine resident is more than a decade older than the average Utahn.

To be fair, we did nd some local differences. For example, in New York County – better

known as Manhattan – the average farmer is just north of 31. Next door in Hudson County, New Jersey, the average farmer is more than 72.

On the whole, though, America’s farming workforce is getting older. If the country doesn’t recruit new farmers or adapt to having fewer, older ones, it could put the nation’s food supply at risk. Before panicking, though, it’s worth asking: Why is this happening?

A tough eld To start, there are real barriers to entry for young people – at least those who weren’t born into multigenerational farming families. It takes money to buy the land, equipment and other stuff you need to run a farm, and younger people have less wealth than older ones.

Young people born into family farms may have fewer opportunities to take them over due to consolidation in agriculture. And those who do have the chance may not seize it, since they often report that rural life is more challenging than living in a city or suburb.

The overall stress of the agriculture industry is also a concern: Farmers are often at the mercy of weather, supply

shortages, volatile markets and other factors entirely out of their control.

In addition to understanding why fewer younger people want to go into agriculture, it’s important to consider aging farmers’ needs. Without younger people to leave the work to, farmers are left with intense labor — physically and mentally – to accomplish, on top of the ordinary challenges of aging.

In other words, the U.S. needs to increase opportunities for younger farmers while also supporting farmers as they age.

Opportunities to help The USDA already has programs to aid new farmers, as well as farmers of color and female farmers, and those who operate small farms.

Expanding these programs’ reach and impact could help bring new talent into the eld.

Congress could do just that when it reauthorizes the farm bill – a package of laws covering a wide range of food – and agriculture-related programs that get passed roughly every ve years.

The farm bill also includes nutrition aid and funds telehealth and training

and educational outreach for farmers, all of which could help meet the needs of young and aging farmers alike. Notably, the Cooperative Extension Service offers programs that range from 4-H and youth development, including introduction to agriculture, to providing on-site technical help.

Congress was supposed to reauthorize the farm bill by Sept. 30, 2023, but it missed that deadline. It now faces a new deadline of Dec. 31, but due to dysfunction in the House of Representatives, many expect the process to drag on into 2024.

Also in 2024, the USDA will release its next Census of Agriculture, giving researchers new insight into America’s farming workforce. We expect it will show that the average age of U.S. farmers has reached a new all-time high.

If you believe otherwise – well, we wouldn’t bet the farm.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Read the original article. https://theconversation.com/ americas-farmers-are-gettingolder-and-young-people-arentrushing-to-join-them-211330

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 15

NON PROFITS ARE BUSINESSES TOO

By Press Release via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WildlifeRehabEd/posts/ pfbid0262KF7pkKNXDy31LR46MNzJrwkVaYM9mCp8uyUAW81 89AJQLQDDBveKXVGB37D6sel

Wildlife Images is temporarily closing its doors to reorganize Amy is joining us as we regroup and hire a new front-of-house staff who embraces the new ideas and changes moving forward. The change in front of house staff is what forced us to close the park until February.

During this closure, our wildlife rehabilitation clinic is open for wild patient admissions seven days a week, with 100% of our animal services team still caring for our in-house residents and patients. This hiatus allows the animal services team to focus entirely on our mission of saving wildlife while we train a new frontof-house staff.

Press Release 12/11/23: Meet Our New Operations Director!

Wildlife Images is temporarily closing its doors to reorganize and improve internal systems and embrace new ideas we share with our partners at the Australia Zoo. To do this, we hired an amazing new Operations Director, Amy Webb.

With years of experience working for various non-pro ts and prior expertise in strategic partnerships, fundraising, and managing events, Amy brings knowledge and skills to steer Wildlife Images

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16 | Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023

toward success and growth. Her dedication to improving processes and streamlining work ows has led to signi cant cost savings and increased ef ciency in her previous roles and current role as Event Planner for Rogue Winterfest.

Amy will focus on creating a more sustainable operating structure.

She will also focus on building solid relationships within our community and expanding our reach to further the mission of Wildlife Images. We are con dent she will bring valuable insight and fresh ideas to enhance our operations, streamline processes, and fuel our conservation efforts.

Wildlife Images and the Siddon family have been pillars of the community for over 40 years.

Over the past few years, J. David Siddon's legacy has been removed from the park and discounted. The Siddon's legacy will again be celebrated at the park.

We will reopen again in February, better than ever! Those community members with memberships will receive a twomonth extension to make up for the time we are closed. Look for the grand re-opening announcement on our social media and website. We are grateful for the support of this community while we transition.

BROADBAND

By FCC Press Release https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reaf rms-rejectionnearly-900-million-subsidy-starlink

Applicant Failed to Meet Burden for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund WASHINGTON, December 12, 2023— The Federal Communications Commission today reaf rmed the Wireline Bureau’s prior decision to reject the long-form application of Starlink to receive public support through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program, based on the applicant’s failure to meet the program requirements. The program, which uses scarce universal service funding collected from consumers, sought to expand access to broadband networks in rural areas.

“The FCC is tasked with ensuring consumers everywhere have access to high-speed broadband that is reliable and affordable. The agency also has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that fail to meet

FCC Reaf rms Decision To Reject Starlink Application For Nearly $900 Million In Subsidies

basic program requirements,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

“The FCC followed a careful legal, technical and policy review to determine that this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.”

In the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program, the Commission followed a two-step process which requires applicants to submit a high-level, short-form application for funding which, among other things, does not require the applicant to determine speci c areas of service. If applicants receive a winning bid, the process is followed by an in-depth, long-form application used to verify that applicants meet the program requirements based on the speci c coverage locations. The agency quali ed Starlink at the short form stage, but at the long form stage, the

Commission determined that Starlink failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.

Funding these vast proposed networks would not be the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars to bring broadband to unserved areas across the United States, the Commission concluded.

In the initial auction results announced December 7, 2020, Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

(Starlink) was the winning bidder of $885,509,638.40.

The RDOF program authorized more than $6 billion in funding to bring primarily ber gigabit broadband service to over 3,458,000 locations in 49 states and the Northern Mariana Islands. With support from this program, hundreds of carriers deployed these future-proof networks to connect unserved areas.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 17

EMPLOYMENT

By Press Release https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/six-years-afteroregonsaves-launch-workers-have-saved-more-than-200million-for-retirement-301853643.html

The Oregon Retirement Savings Board and State Treasurer Tobias Read today announced that OregonSaves, the state's auto-enrollment retirement savings program, has reached a signi cant milestone—$200 million saved for retirement. The occasion coincides with the rollout of the program to Oregon's smallest businesses.

Launched in July 2017, OregonSaves became the nation's rst state-based effort to address the retirement savings crisis by ensuring all private sector workers can save. Over time, the program expanded statewide in waves, starting with the largest employers, and culminating in this sixth (and nal) group of employers; those with four or fewer employees. Oregon is the rst state program to roll out to businesses of this size.

Six years ago, Oregon made history. Now every Oregonian has an easy way to save for their retirement at work.

"Six years ago, Oregon made history," said State Treasurer Tobias Read. "We started with the belief that everyone should have an easy way to save for their retirement at work. Every Oregonian now has that opportunity. OregonSaves is delivering,

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Six Years After OregonSaves Launch, Workers Have Saved More than $200 Million for Retirement

and it's more than a visionary Oregon idea—it has served as inspiration for other states—with more than $800M saved nationally for a more secure future."

The program, championed by Read during his service in the Oregon Legislature, gives working Oregonians the option to save their own money for retirement via payroll deductions, without requiring employers to create plans or pay fees.

The program was designed for workers without access to a retirement plan like a 401(k) through their employer.

Early market research found that about half of Oregon's workforce (one million workers) lacked access to a workplace-based retirement savings plan and would be eligible to participate in OregonSaves. And surveys by the AARP found that workers are 15 times more likely to save via payroll deductions.

Six years later, nearly 118,000 workers from more than 21,000 businesses statewide are saving with every paycheck in their own Individual Retirement Accounts. Approximately 75% of employees opt to stay in the program, saving an average of $171 per month.

OregonSaves was the rst program of its kind in the U.S. and continues to lead a national movement. Now 13 states have followed Oregon with similar programs for helping uncovered workers.

Oregon continues to blaze a trail, including being the rst state to welcome cannabis businesses, and opening its doors to the self-employed and gig economy workers—with more than 2,100 workers electing to independently take part— since 2018.

Continuing its efforts toward inclusivity for industries typically excluded from other programs and bene ts, OregonSaves recently welcomed SEIU represented Personal Support Workers, as well as Homecare Workers and Personal Care Attendants to the program. These steps demonstrate the program's continued commitment to retirement savings accessibility for every worker in Oregon.

OregonSaves is a simple way for Oregonians to save for retirement at work. Employees contribute part of their paycheck into their own personal IRAs that stay with them throughout their careers.

Visit www.oregonsaves.com.

By Kim Russo, HunterFiber.com Press Release

Get the gift of safe online experiences.

H

unter Communications, a local ber-optic internet service provider, unveils the Hunter Family Safety Bundle. This suite of services is designed to prioritize online safety for every user in the household.

Even during the holidays, concerns about safeguarding children online are top of mind. The Family Safety Bundle not only ensures swift and reliable internet access but also a protective shield for the ones you love.

"At this time of year, we understand the importance of online safety for families," said Anne Tetamore, VP of Marketing at Hunter Communications. "Many children may be unwrapping their rst smartphone or tablet, and we want to help families keep those devices protected.”

The Hunter Family Safety Bundle brings:

•

Symmetrical Fiber-Optic Internet Service: Rapid connectivity for uninterrupted online joy.

•

Hunter IQ App: Take the reins of your home Wi-Fi with an intuitive smartphone app.

•

Hunter Protect: Strengthen your network with top-tier security and virus protection.

•

Hunter Control: Prioritize traf c, block apps & sites, set tailored device time limits, and more.

•

Bark Parental Control App: The trusty guardian that watches over digital content, putting an end to cyberbullying, and other online dangers.

Tetamore, a mother of two with smart devices of their own, has rst-hand knowledge of the online

Get the Hunter Communications Family Safety Bundle today and safeguard your loved ones as they navigate the online realm this holiday season.

For additional information, please visit hunter ber.com/family.

About Hunter Communications Hunter is headquartered in Medford, Oregon, where the company has established a legacy of service excellence and commitment to local communities. With multi-gig speeds, no data caps, competitive pricing, and customer service representatives who genuinely care, Hunter’s 3,000-plus mile ber network is nationally recognized for performance and reliability.

dangers facing families and children. "It’s dif cult to constantly police everything our kids are doing

In 2022, PC Magazine recognized Hunter as the top internet service provider for gamers in the Northwest.

In 2020, BroadbandNow recognized Hunter with four Internet Service Provider Awards, including for fastest business internet speeds in Oregon and among the top ten nationwide.

online. At Hunter, we are on a mission to empower families to explore the digital world with con dence,

To learn more about our plans or to sign up for service, visit hunter ber.com or call us at 541-772-9282.

knowing they are protected." she added.

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 19 fi

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Hunter Communications Introduces the Family Safety Bundle this Holiday Season

BROADBAND

BELONGING AND ENGAGEMENT

By Press Release https://news.sou.edu/2023/12/sous-new-of ce-of-studentbelonging-and-engagement-be/

Southern Oregon University students searching for Student Activities, SJEC, ASSOU, New Student Programs, EPIC, the Food Pantry, Stevenson Union and information on general

focus on intersectionality to the pursuit of their shared goals.

campus involvement can now turn to a single source: the new Of ce of Student Belonging and Engagement, located in the former Student Activities suite (Stevenson Union 312).

from separate roles de ned by different subjects of focus, to a single, shared role. The new Belonging and Engagement Coordinator position is debuting with three team members: Familiar faces Marvin Woodard and Jess Haywood are continuing the great work they’ve done in the past as coordinators for, respectively, Racial Justice and Student

This uni cation was paralleled by the of ce’s staf ng model for coordinators, who have shifted

Belonging and Engagement, affectionately acronymized “BE,” has united these previously separate of ces, bringing a new

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20 | Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 fi

SOU’s new Of ce of Student Belonging and Engagement (BE) Organizations and Events; recent addition Sweets Underwood hit the ground running in early October and is already making wonderful waves in the SOU community.

“I am delighted to join this team and be in a position where I can build a bridge for students to feel more connected, engaged and, most importantly, like they belong,” Underwood said. “I look forward to supporting programs around community-building and creating educational opportunities outside the classroom for our students.”

Other additions to the BE team include Rachel Harris, who assists with a variety of BE projects and works closely with SOU’s student organizations, and Nathanael Worcester, who joined Kay Swader in Stevenson Union building management earlier this year. The SU is the home of student engagement on the SOU campus, so its management and operations were an obvious inclusion when Belonging and Engagement was formed.

Belonging and Engagement operates under the umbrella of SOU’s Student Life department, and comprises a variety of programs, services and spaces that support the campus community, including: student organizations and events, the Social Justice and Equity Center (SJEC), the Student Food Pantry and other basic needs resources, New Student programs, the Club Board of Advisors (CBA), Associated Students of Southern Oregon University (ASSOU), the Multicultural Commons, the Event Planning Involvement Committee (EP!C), and SU building management and custodial. BE leadership emphasizes that, while some rearranging has occurred – Sustainability operations and the Student Food Pantry, for example, have moved out of SU 310 (the new Career Connections location) and into the Belonging and Engagement Suite in SU 312 – none of the aforementioned programs and services have been lost.

The Student Food Pantry, in fact, is ourishing. Its new venue in

the BE Suite is signi cantly larger, and a recent push to expand its network of local partners has increased the amount and variety of donations it receives. The Pantry is available to all SOU students, and this much-needed growth in supply will allow it to match the continually growing demand for its services. It is always accepting donations, and new stock arrives throughout the week, so students are encouraged to visit regularly to see what has been added to the shelves.

SOU’s Queer Student Union is being similarly reinvigorated, after an extended period of inactivity. The student body’s response to this initiative has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic: With Underwood at the helm as its staff advisor, the new QSU quickly built a signi cant member base, and interest in QSU programming is high.

“The growth of the Food Pantry and the return of the QSU are just two examples of the many opportunities now available to us,” said John Johnstin, Director of Belonging and Engagement, and the Stevenson Union.

“Existing as separate of ces limited both our reach and our ef cacy. By pooling our resources and our goals, we’ll be able to support our students in new and greater ways going forward.”

The launch of HawkNEST, SOU’s new platform for “News, Engagement, Support, and Teamwork,” was an important

step toward BE’s goals. Its userfriendly interface and myriad engagement features – including a point system to track involvement and the ability to communicate via a built-in chat – are making it easier than ever for students to nd and build community on campus. Any student who has not yet visited the platform is encouraged to join using the Single Sign-On option on the HawkNEST homepage. After completing a short onboarding process, they can start exploring the many opportunities for engagement and connection on campus.

“Our purpose is, and has always been, to help every student nd their place in our community,” Johnstin said. “We want SOU to be a home to them, and we want them to feel like they belong here. We hope that they can see their identities and interests represented on campus—but we also need to re ect the fact that they are each more than the sum of their parts. As a single, united team, we in the Of ce of Student Belonging and Engagement can approach our work holistically, treating those identities and interests not as discrete concerns, but as facets of our larger purpose—just as they are facets of our students’ lives.”

To learn more about the Of ce of Student Belonging and Engagement, visit the Student Activities website, follow SOU Student Life on Instagram, or email the team at belong@sou.edu.

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 21

INNOVATION

By SOU News https://news.sou.edu/2023/11/sou-to-help-lead-researchinitiative-for-undergraduate-institutions/

S

outhern Oregon University is part of a consortium of 11 colleges and universities across the country that will use a new, $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to plan and host three regional workshops intended to advance research enterprises at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs).

The goal of NSF’s GRANTED initiative (Growing Research Access for Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity) is to “break down systemic barriers that hinder underrepresented investigators, students, and institutions typically overlooked as participants in NSF’s research funding programs.” The project is intended to increase research capacity and improve infrastructure at emerging research institutions.

Hala Schepmann, a chemistry professor at SOU, is one of six “principal investigators,” or project leaders, for the grant that will bring workshops to the Northwest, Midwest and Southeast regions of the country. Taylor Smith, SOU’s

22 | Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023

SOU to help lead research initiative for undergraduate institutions

assistant vice president for Advancement Services and Sponsored Programs, is serving as support staff for the Northwest regional workshop.

“It can be challenging to navigate the research funding and practice process at small- and midsize universities which often lack some of the resources available at larger research institutions,” Schepmann said. “This work will help SOU advance research activities both regionally and nationally, ultimately increasing faculty and student engagement in the nation’s research enterprise.”

All three of the inter-institutional, regional workshops are expected to take place in the fall of 2024, with the Northwest event taking place at the University of Portland because of its close proximity to several non-Ph.D.-granting institutions.

The other institutions taking part in the GRANTED project are Western Oregon

University and Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, John Carroll University in Ohio, University of Detroit Mercy in Michigan, Black Hills State University in South Dakota, Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, Gonzaga University in Washington, Furman University in South Carolina and the University of Idaho.

The regional workshops will bring together teams of research administrators, institutional leaders and faculty from predominantly undergraduate, emerging research and minority-serving institutions. Workshop participants will work together to discern and design interventions to common barriers.

Advancing research work at PUIs will promote faculty and student engagement and broaden participation in research nationwide. The workshops are expected to result in a set of best practices that will be part of a research toolkit for PUIs across the country.

Leadership Begins Here Empowering future leaders, shaping a sustainable world.

Join the University that sets the standard.

SOU.EDU

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8554703377 Southern Oregon Business Journal June 2022 | 23

Southern Oregon Business Journal November 2023 | 24

by Greg Henderson

T

he Leaning Tower of Pisa was constructed 1100 years ago. Its fame is that it is leaning, and tourists like to see it with their cameras in hand. That’s too bad, really. The natural message is that we can be interested in a potential collapse of a poorly planned building constructed in Italy and make it a tourist attraction... for centuries.

It’s bad because of the example it sets that concern for disaster is exaggerated. Expert warnings become monotonous and easily ignored. The public attitude is transferable to any warning. Why worry? Nothing is going to happen...

Words slipping from the keyboard to the computer screen tend to reveal a subconscious store of thoughts, worries, and optimism that outlines and original intentions would not reveal.

Unfortunately, the access to false or incomplete information is as exorbitant as factual information, often disguised extremely well.

Written articles not published are tucked in folders for another day because their time is not today, or the subject has been over published. Something new or better representing the thoughts or concerns of the public is needed. Headlines are seen and misunderstood while the de ning

message text goes unread, by the leaders and the followers.

What has Covid19, 2023, and the early stages of the 2024 political campaigns taught us? Are we learning or waiting for answers to the confusion of too much information machine gunning us in a twenty-four hour a day barrage of news and social media blather? The greatest advance in learning could be learning how to separate fact from ction.

If nothing else Covid19 taught us that pandemics can still happen.

And they can be extremely dangerous. Ignoring the wisdom of preparing for a pandemic should not be lost on us. The reach of a worldwide virus cannot be treated with a cavalier attitude, especially by the general public who needs to appreciate the seriousness, if the prevention of the infection spreading worldwide is expected.

2023 has humbled the biggest, wealthiest, and best of us in an array of countries, governments, militaries and optimistic regions. If we’re honest we will admit how little we truly know about just about everything. Leaders and followers both have more information than they can process to discern.

How much does the average voter know about the candidates they elect to lead them? Sadly, not much.

A look at recent election results will tell you that our elected of cials are placed into high-level of ces of signi cant importance by people who wouldn’t want them on any committee in their own small town. It isn’t blind faith either. They have simply been overwhelmed by the process and results of elections of the recent past. What are you going to do to correct this travesty? It may be the most important thing to learn.

Are we becoming better at leading? Or following? I’m afraid we are not. The amount of new information bombarding us every day is outrunning our abilities to absorb it. Computers, technology, arti cial intelligence are possibly going to become more important to us than anyone would have imagined a mere generation or two ago. Our con dence and trust in those science ction tools needs to be accepted before the majority will replace the gut instincts we are so used to.

Greg Henderson is the retired founder of the Southern Oregon Business Journal. A University of Oregon graduate and a six- year U.S. Air Force veteran.

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Photo by Karl Magnuson on Unsplash

Have We Become Better at Leading and Following?

By Marshall Doak, SOU SBDC Director

A

s another year winds down, it is customary to take a look back at the year’s events and re ect on the meaning of them. In many instances, 2023 has been the rst year that I have heard people say that it is actually ‘post-COVID’ in their lives and businesses. Comments have ranged from relief to dealing with ‘normal’ issues to the struggles in rebuilding what was lost during the COVID Pandemic period. Some exhale a sigh of relief and state…

“Oh! I made it!”, articulating a mixture of determination and surprise at

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SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER

Building Resilience in Your Organization

having ongoing operations. The realization of having a measure of resilience in their businesses can be both an intended outcome and a shock at realizing it has happened.

So, what actually is business resilience? Is it an outcome or an intention?

In working with businesses, the concept of resilience frequently comes up. In the context of conversations, resilience comes to the forefront when discussing the business as a whole, and during

conversations regarding processes and procedures, in operations and in many other areas of the business as it continues on a daily basis. This leads to the obvious conclusion that the meaning of resilience is not necessarily a single strict de nition but more of a concept that can be used to structure a business to help steer it towards predetermined outcomes.

Researchers and authors have developed several models for the Business Lifecycle, typically being either in four or ve stages. Some include a ‘Valley of Death’ in their models – the precipitous drop in income often experienced by new businesses between the early adopters coming on board but before early majority clients have started utilizing your business.

Utilizing a ve-stage model adopted by the Oregon SBDC Network, we can state that the business lifecycle stages are: IDEA: Thinking about an idea and testing the concept with others around you LAUNCH: Going into business and dealing with the issues as they arrive until capability exists to plan ahead EXPANSION: Growing the business RENEWAL: A tug between nances, futuring, work-life balance, investment, strategic planning, and EXIT: Transferring the business to new ownership.

Many models have the last stages as maturity and decline, indicating an inevitable senescence in the company and its operations or market share with the resulting viability of the company being in question. The use of the word ‘renewal’ is an indicator that it is not an inevitability that a company needs to senesce but that it can be revived and remain resilient in a changing economy. This can also be an inevitability depending on the resilience strategies in place at any given time. The point being that businesses (and organizations in general) need to have resiliency strategies in place and are

performing in order to have resilience as an organization.

Different strategies are needed for different stages of the business lifecycle and for the various areas of an organization. The strategies need to be planned, executed well, and choreographed in order to produce the results that are expected. As many owners invest into their businesses on an ongoing basis in order to get the business to scale up to become pro table, the resiliency strategies employed to create the increasing stability and value need to be in place in order for the ownership to recover the years of investments.

Walking away from what is the largest investment in a lifetime for many entrepreneurs without recovering value is a tragedy needing to be avoided.

Resilience in Your Business As an entrepreneur, manager or owner, you get to determine what resilience means to you. Is it a feeling, a statement of success that you get to ll out another tax return this year as you have done in the past, or perhaps it is goal setting and achievement with process improvement as the catalyst for the success?

Whatever resilience means to you, it did not happen in a vacuum. There are many factors that make up resilience in an organization.

As an entrepreneur and leader, you need to have the personal energy and stamina to be a positive force in your organization, regardless of the organization’s performance. This can be taxing, but the symbolism of upbeat progress is infectious to your employees and managers. As an entrepreneur and leader, you are the strategist, the idea person, the

visionary who crafts the future through communicating ideas and developing the managerial talent to see the ideas become reality. No one else can do this, nor should anyone else be placed into the position of doing it, unless you have a Board of Directors and professional management ful lling those roles.

Resilience means benchmarking performance and measuring outputs and outcomes, comparing the results from time period to time period to determine if progress is being made, and taking the time to determine if the operation is trending towards or away from becoming more resilient.

Arriving at Speci c Actionable Items Building resilience in organizations is a team sport. Vesting responsibility in management and supervisors to perform responsibly for the organization with a thorough understanding of the goals is a preliminary step in building resilience. Responsibility alone does not carry the organization to the goals, but teaming responsibility for the outcomes with the authority to manage the conditions to produce the desired outcomes does. Smart managers and owners rely on SMART goals to form speci c outcomes that are desired to further the organization’s positioning, business operations and nancial performance to achieve a more resilient organization.

Several variations of SMART goals are used, with one common SMART goal set being: S: Speci c Is the goal stated succinctly, understandable and speaks to a speci c outcome?

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The Business Lifecycle

Can the goal be measured so that leadership knows when the goal is achieved?

A: Achievable Are we at the stage of development where we can achieve the stated goal?

R: Relevant Are we working on a goal that matters to the resiliency of the organization?

T: Time-bound Can we achieve the goal in a reasonable allotted timeframe?

Once a goal set has been formed by the team, what needs to be accomplished next in order to achieve the goals? In many ways, goals are like targets. Targets are placed way out there and once you aim and start travelling towards them, it can be pure luck you actually hit the target unless you have a method to guide the trajectory of travel.

Aligning Trajectories This is what you want isn’t it? Your team working in unison to achieve goals which solidify your organization, provide resiliency, and nancial and market stability? Are you surprised by the thought of this being possible?

The next step is to build Standard Operating Procedures into your operations so that consistent uniform results are produced, whether they be personal services, product manufacturing, customer service interactions or consumer experiences in shopping, dining or entertainment.

Each operation has speci c protocols and procedures that are needing to

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M: Measurable

be implemented so that the desired results are obtained in the most ef cient manner. The desired results translate to goal achievement which rolls up to building a more resilient organization.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are written, reviewed by the people working in those positions, and codi ed as best practices in organizations which facilitate the desired end result. They are reviewed regularly, amended as necessary, used to train new employees into the company or organization, are speci c and repeatable, and facilitate the lowest level employee in any position to be capable of providing consistent ef cient outputs.

Combining or sequencing SOPs in operations provides many favorable outcomes from product quality improvements, reduction in position overlap and resulting con icts, reduced training costs and higher employee retention, a de ned career pathway for employees, as well as the desired ef ciencies and cost reductions desired by ownership and management.

Co-developing Key Performance Indicators with SOPs will give management the necessary information to understand the effects that SOPs have on the operation.

These are the management tools needed to make the corrections in the aiming of the processes and procedures travelled in the quest to complete the goals of the organization, or to hit the desired targets.

Making the Effort Resilience in business is not going to happen without effort, attention, planning, execution, and great

decision-making. It does not happen in a vacuum or by itself as an earned reward for opening the door each morning. It is an intention, a deliberate building of the elements needed to achieve the excellence in operations at all levels that allow for goal achievement as a natural course of doing business. It seems more intimidating at the outset than it actually is, and once a new pattern of work is established (a SOP!), the work involved is minimal as compared to the results obtained.

If you are at the point of being convinced that adopting goals, KPI’s and SOPs are a good idea, and areas to work on that reinforce resiliency are: Employee management and hiring practices • Position Descriptions • Interview questions • Onboarding procedures • Acculturation of employees • Standards articulation and enforcement • Standardized discipline procedures “Better operations * attract better talent * which builds better operations * which improves career pathways * which increases opportunities to hire better people” Marketing outreach and sales conversion rates • Researching markets • Trends analyses – more or less resilient over time?

• Cost of acquisition of clients and customers • Retention of customers

•

Remember: Budgets are communications tools. Use them.

•

There are only two ways to affect the bottom line

Operations KPIs that measure actual operational elements that matter

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Add to revenues to increase the top line

SOPs to achieve the extraordinary through ordinary means

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Reduce expenses and make money on each transaction. [Losing only a little on each transaction can’t be changed with volume increases]

The gains in ef ciency, the reductions in absenteeism, the reduction in workplace con icts, and increased ef ciencies in operations justify investments of time to build standardized work tasks that interact and streamline to tasks.

“Are you investing a small amount on the front end to realize large gains over time throughout your operation?”

“Learn how to understand your nancial statements and use them to manage your business. Review them critically against benchmarks each month. This is a great starter SOP.” Ef ciency: •

Lowering the costs of doing business.

•

What does this speci cally mean to your business?

Leadership and vision Leadership attributes and incorporation of those into the daily culture or matrix of experiences each person realizes when they have contact with your company as an employee or customer uni es the goals

•

Where can you apply ef ciency principles?

•

“It is time to adopt lean practices in your business”

Creating a vision for the company that is achievable, measurable and uplifting helps set the culture in the direction you want the company to go and to be known for

Personal

“Question: Is it really that easy to build a vision to guide my company?”

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Toughing it out at rst

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Balance of work and life

“Answer: YES!”

The entrepreneur’s actions follow the business lifecycle

Finance

Roles you play as owner change over time depending on the stage of development you are in and the tools you have built to manage processes within the company’s con nes

As my dad mentioned to me decades ago: ‘Figure out how you are going to make money when your eyes are closed as well as open’

Continuous skill development is needed to remain at the cutting edge and have the ability to lift the company along the way

“Leadership is personal and ows from the top down. Model the behaviors you expect in your company and enable management and supervisors to do the same.”

Education is: •

A tool to create a culture of improvement

•

A manner to keep ahead of competition

•

An incentive to motivate employees

•

A needed resource to build management skills in your workforce – you will not be successful in shing for talent that ts your needs when you need it and at a cost you can afford on a continuous basis. You must have a talent development program.

A manner to build the capability to branch out to acquire markets, build volumes, introduce new products, etc.

“Keeping up with the changing technologies available, with the regulatory environment, and with strategy development for the future are three basic needs all businesses and organizations need to develop competencies with.”

—Marshall Doak is the Director of the Southern Oregon University Small Business Development Center and a huge supporter of innovation and the community that forms around innovation in the economy. In private practice, he works with businesses that plan to transition to new ownership within the next ve years, assisting them to build value that can be converted to retirement income when the business sells. He can be reached through: mdoak06@gmail.com or 541-646-4126.

Photo by Pedro Sanz on Unsplash

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 29 fi

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“Do you provide rewards to new customers or loyalty rewards for longterm customers?”

COMMUNITY BANKING

By Press Release https://web.oregonbankers.com/CWT/EXTERNAL/WCPAGES/WCNEWS/NEWSARTICLEDISPLAY.ASPX? ArticleID=1126

Oregon Bankers Association and Oregon Business Magazine Present 2023 Community Applause Award to Con-Vey of Roseburg

Con-Vey consistently demonstrates an outstanding commitment to the Roseburg community by actively participating or nancially supporting a wide range of charitable and community initiatives. Among them are the Boys & Girls Club, FFA and 4-H, Youth in Trades, Douglas County Partners for Student Success, Bright Futures Umpqua, and Umpqua Community College (UCC) courses and apprenticeships. Con-Vey has also designed and manufactured light displays for the Umpqua Valley Festival of Lights, provides educational tours around the Con-Vey campus to local students and teachers, supports shop classes at local high schools, and much more.

Nominating banker Matt Kowal, Oregon Paci c Bank, pictured with Con-Vey CEO Dave Larecy, OBA’s 2023 Community Applause Award winner.

The Oregon Bankers Association (OBA) in partnership with Oregon Business Magazine, has announced that Con-Vey of Roseburg, Oregon is the recipient of the 2023 Community Applause Award. The Community Applause Award, which is given to an Oregon business in acknowledgment of their signi cant service and contributions to their community, was presented to Con-Vey during a banking industry event held on Dec. 4 in Portland.

Founded in 1996, the Community Applause Award is a competition in which banks doing business in Oregon nominate a business customer that gives back to their community in signi cant ways. An independent panel of judges carefully reviews each nomination and votes on the winner. Since the award’s inception, 46 Oregon businesses have been recognized, including this year’s honoree.

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30 | Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023

Con-Vey opened its doors over 75 years ago as a fabrication and machine shop focusing on repair work for local wood mills. Since its founding in 1946, Con-Vey has shifted and combined forces with manufacturing professionals to become a world-class solutions company for industrial equipment. From steel fabrication to robotic automation, customers come to Con-Vey for highquality products at a competitive price.

Their commitment to innovation has facilitated their expansion into material handling and robotics for building products, automation technology, bulk and biomass handling, environmental projects and agricultural processing. They pride themselves on handling demanding projects, creating innovative custom machinery, and integrating effective solutions for their customers. Today, Con-Vey is a proven, highquality supplier with proprietary machinery in nearly 20 countries.

Con-Vey's commitment to their community extends beyond nancial contributions. The company fosters a culture of giving back to the community by encouraging and supporting employee volunteerism. Their team members have dedicated countless hours to various community service projects like the Umpqua Economic Development Partnership, Manufacturing Sector Partnership, Umpqua Growth Talks, Roseburg Area Chamber of Commerce, UCC’s Apprenticeship Board, and the UCC Advisory Committee. They have also donated time and materials to build displays for the Umpqua Valley Festival of Lights and Relay for Life.

Con-Vey was nominated for the Community Applause Award by Matt Kowal, senior vice president and commercial team leader at the Roseburg branch of Oregon Paci c Bank. In his nomination, Kowal stated, “Con-Vey consistently goes above and beyond to support local causes, demonstrating their belief in the power of

Con-Vey CEO Dave Larecy (center) pictured with members of the Oregon Paci c Bank team.

businesses to effect positive change. They have also made signi cant contributions to the betterment and development of our community, particularly in Roseburg. By creating jobs and fostering a thriving business environment, Con-Vey has played an instrumental role in enhancing the economic stability of our community.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=GvUFDhYP3HQ

2017 Oxford Hotel & Suites, Bend

About the Community Applause Award

2015 Hydro Flask, Bend

The Community Applause Award, co-sponsored by the Oregon Bankers Association and Oregon Business magazine since 1996, is an opportunity for member banks to acknowledge the efforts of their for-pro t Oregon business customers who play a signi cant role in their community.

As part of the award, OBA provided Con-Vey with a $1,000 check payable to the Boys & Girls Club of Umpqua Valley in their honor. The OBA also produced a video about Con-Vey and their community impact.

2016 Sybaris Bistro, Albany

2014 Florence Dental Clinic, Florence Paci cSource, Spring eld 2013 Hummingbird Wholesale, Eugene Hawes Financial Group, Spring eld 2012 Dutch Bros., Grants Pass Starker Forests, Corvallis

Prior Winners

2011 Isler CPA, Eugene

2022 A.R.E. Manufacturing, Newberg

Shem's Thunderbird & Food 4 Less, Medford

2021 Freres Lumber Co., Inc., Lyons

2010 Dari Mart, Lochmead Dairy & Lochmead Farms, Junction City

2020 Chambers Construction, Eugene 2019 Roby's Furniture & Appliance, Tillamook 2018 Essex General Construction, Eugene

Gnome in The Woods Construction, Oakridge 2009 Gresham Ford, Gresham Musgrove Family Mortuary, Eugene

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Southern Oregon Business Journal December 2023 | 31

Sponsors The Southern Oregon Business Journal extends sincere thanks to the following companies for their continued presence as important cogs in the wheels of industry in southern Oregon.

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