Mastering Buy Local - While Keeping it “Weird”

Rebecca Melancon stewarded one of the most successful, and often imitated local movements for 20 years.  If you’ve been to Austin you know it well—it’s the “Keep Austin Weird” Movement.

Watch this video to learn how changing one word “small” to “local” brought their community together, set the right tone with local government, and gave local consumers (and visitors to Austin) something they cherish and a great reason to support local business.  

Rebecca recently retired from leading the Austin Independent Business Alliance, is on the board of AMIBA, and is now focusing her time on her two passions: writing and local business advocacy.  

Why Buying Local Matters: What We Can Learn From Austin's Movement

Eric Groves:

Hello, this is Eric Groves, co-founder and CEO of Alignable. I'm here today with Rebecca Melancon who spent the last 20 years working tirelessly to redefine local economies. 

She's been a national leader on the forefront of bringing communities together, but most importantly was the executive director of the Austin Independent Business Alliance, where she stewarded one of the most successful and in many ways, most imitated local movements in the country. She did that for over 20 years. 

If you've been in Austin, you probably know it well. It's this whole movement around keeping Austin weird. One of its tenets is the incredibly unique and totally Austin vibe of the local business community there. It's been championed and supported in many ways by what Rebecca's been doing over the years.

Eric Groves:

So Rebecca, first of all, welcome, thank you so much for joining me today.

Rebecca Melancon:

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Eric Groves:

And Rebecca has been a long time friend of mine, and I really appreciate you spending some time with us, but for our 5 million small business owners, I would love for you just to share with them a little bit of your thoughts about what was it about this movement that actually made it sustain itself and work so well over the years?

What Makes The Local Movement in Austin Work So Well?

Rebecca Melancon:

I think in the beginning, a large part of it was right place and right time. But having said that, that was one time. This time is actually a better time than it was 20 years ago when we started AIBA. 

Austin has a unique culture, like a lot of cities do, had a thriving local business community. I think in a study that Civic Economics did, we have a higher ratio of local business per capita than any city our size. That local business isn't just about commerce, it's also about culture, because when you think about it, what represents any local culture is in a large part your local businesses. 

By the way, we consider every musician and every artist, a local business. If you take a dime for what you do, you are a local business.

Eric Groves:

Fantastic.

Rebecca Melancon:

It's creatives, it's the brick and mortar, it's the services and how we do things here. I think we were predisposed to receive this message, but there wasn't the continuity of the true buy local message. 

It was more the cool places. It was more defined as, "Oh, those are the fun places or the cool places." Or, "We love this because it's so us." And to coalesce all of that into, here's a definition, and here's why you value this.

Eric Groves:

Yep.

Rebecca Melancon:

It's not just telling people what it is. It's also telling people why they should care. And when we started, it was purely cultural. Your beloved, local businesses, right? All those places that you love to go and meet your neighbors and take your kids and spend your time. 

Yet, what we realized pretty early on, was that talking to local government, beloved was not a word in their vocabulary in a structured government way. There was no check box in economic development for beloved. 

So we realized that we had to start talking about local business in a very different way to attract the kind of policies that we wanted to see enacted. We were one of the first in the country to do that local policy advocacy.

Eric Groves:

Okay.

Rebecca Melancon:

It was inventing as we went, because to the best of my knowledge, nobody else was really doing anything about local business in regards to local policies that benefited them or removed roadblocks from them.

What Policies Did You Change to Help Keep the Movement Going?

Eric Groves:

So what were some of the, if you could look back in time and say, what were some of the impediments that you were able to get the local government to remove or support of systems to put in place that were the most effective in keeping the movement going?

Rebecca Melancon:

There's the in the weeds detail, but part of the bigger picture was changing the perspective and changing the conversation from small business to local business.

...part of the bigger picture was changing the perspective and changing the conversation from small business to local business.

Eric Groves:

Okay.

Rebecca Melancon:

That sounds like just a simple word change, but it's really a profound difference in perspective. My personal view is that small is derogatory. What I saw from government leaders was it's used in a derogatory way. You are a small business because you're not yet a big business. Or you're a small business because you don't know how to be a big business. 

But there's no value in being a small business. There's a value in being a big business. Part of this comes from economic development, at least in my lifetime, in our country has been based on job growth, pure job growth, that's the measurement. 

The reason everything focuses on big business is because there are more easily definable measurements of, this business brings a thousand jobs.

Rebecca Melancon:

Well, I spent a lot of time at City Hall, sometimes wooing, sometimes pounding on desk, saying, "But local business does that every day, every week, every month. Why are you focused on this one business when all of these businesses collectively do so much more?" 

I think that's one of the biggest things we were able to do, is change the dynamics of that conversation. We call small business small because of the feds call it small.

Eric Groves:

Right.

Rebecca Melancon:

It's not a decision that any of us made. So to change that perspective also makes it ... When you go from small to local, local it's us. It's ownership. It's empowerment of our community. 

If you talk to small business, what you'll find is that they're small by diminutive. It's a classification, but they're proud of being local. They're proud of that position in the community, and that makes a huge difference. So changing that-

Eric Groves:

So it's really about pride in that word. Of just, the pride in local is so much stronger than pride in small.

Rebecca Melancon:

Absolutely. Absolutely. We were able then to get farther down in the weeds. We changed the purchasing vendors at the city. Now, when you put in a proposal for an RFP or something at the city, part of the weighted scale they use is, points for being local. 

Most often that's the decision maker, is that if you're equal with another company on all the other points that you're registered on, but you get these 10 extra points because you're local, so that has made a difference.

Eric Groves:

That's awesome.

Rebecca Melancon:

We shepherded programs. One of the issues with being a vendor for government is that most local businesses aren't big enough. 

We've been able to shepherd some programs that say, "Okay, in this department, every contract that goes out or every RFP that is under $50,000 or under a $100,000 dollars, first goes only to small local business. If we can't find what we need from that community, then we open it up to bigger businesses."

Rebecca Melancon:

But it goes back to, there was a politician in Texas, Ralph Yarborough who said, "Put the jam on the bottom shelf, so the little people can get it." That's exactly what this is. 

Again, in things like the development services department, which handles permitting and all kinds of building codes and things like that, all of those regulations are written for big business and small business just has to figure out how it needs to comply.

Eric Groves:

Right.

Rebecca Melancon:

And it's very difficult. So-

Eric Groves:

So if you create this local energy, and I think one of the interesting things in the name is Austin Independent Business Alliance, right? There's the strength in numbers that comes from bringing people together and a movement needs people, lots of people working hand in hand. 

You guys were really effective over the years in not only celebrating the unique independence of the business owners, but finding a way to bring them together in ways that other communities have struggled with. 

So, what was your secret sauce and in how you were able to get a diverse group of people to come together, work as an alliance for the better good in a way that kept the community so unique?

How Did You Bring Local Businesses Together?

Rebecca Melancon:

Building community is key, absolutely key. While technically we are a Chamber of Commerce, we are a 501 C (6). We're very, un-chamber like in many ways. 

One of the things about local business is, it's very isolating. Oftentimes you don't even have a manager that you can confide in or talk to. Whenever you run into difficulties, you think you're the only one. You look up and the rest of the world seems hugely successful. And, secret, they're not. They're struggling with the same things that you are, but nobody likes to talk about that.

So providing safe environments where you are meeting with your peers, with other business owners, a lot of networking groups. In most communities, you could do a networking group three times a day for a month and never repeat yourself. But, what makes it different?

Related content: How to Network and Build Business Relationships Online

Rebecca Melancon:

It's that when you would come to an AIBA event, you're meeting other business owners like yourself, where you can let your hair down and say, "Have you ever had an employee say that to you? What do you say when they say that?" And those kinds of things. That's building community. 

One of the things, I guess about 10 years ago, that I realized, and this is just fascinating to me, if I ask our members why they joined AIBA, I would get almost always get one of the answer was one of the reasons, that we told them to join. 

So it was marketing, it was advocacy, it was connecting, it was whatever. But if I asked him why they were members, almost 100% of the time, I got a completely different answer and it was, emotional. 

Every time it was, I love AIBA. I just love the connectivity. I love the people I've met and how I've been able to grow my business, just doing business with these lovely people that I had no other way to come in contact with and really meet.

Eric Groves:

Yeah. It was interesting. You remember early on when we came out and we were sharing a little bit about what we were doing on Alignable and you asked your members, would you rather do this on Facebook, LinkedIn, or this crazy place called Alignable, that at the time really didn't exist. 

The feedback that you got was "Well, that's all about business owners. I want to be there, let's do it there." 

And it was sort of how it kicked off the beautiful relationship between the grassroots efforts that you're doing and providing these people with a little bit of an online place where they could do the same thing.

Eric Groves:

We're seeing it even more so now, where business owners who are trying to figure out answers to things who literally can't go to a in-person networking session can actually do it online, right? 

I'm sure the AIBA is having meetings where they can get together and talk and they can do it on Alignable. But, we've all had to change significantly due to the coronavirus, but in many ways it's helping us innovate, right?

Related discussion: How has your networking changed since coronavirus?

Eric Groves:

I'm sure you've seen businesses there in Austin that have changed their business completely in a positive way or done something that they'd always wanted to do because of this outbreak. It's actually giving them a new path to pursue with their business.

How Can Businesses Innovate Now In Light of Coronavirus?

Rebecca Melancon:

Absolutely. It's painful and it's hard, but I've seen so many local businesses completely redefine their business in two weeks because they've had to. But now that the pain of doing that is easing just a little bit, there's a little bit of like, "Hmm." 

I've got one pizza place that is doing so well on takeout, they're actually not sure they're going to open their dining room again.

Related content: 4 Ways to Pivot for Profits

Eric Groves:

Wow.

Rebecca Melancon:

It's a financial decision, and they're really assessing, here's the cost of running a dining room versus here's the cost of running the kitchen and a delivery operation. You know?

Eric Groves:

Right.

Rebecca Melancon:

And they're really looking at it saying, "Hmm, maybe we really don't need that dining room that we thought we needed." 

We have other retailers who are finding new ways. We were talking earlier about ... I'm fascinated by curb service because before the pandemic, what a luxury. I mean, who had that? That you could just pull up and they walk out and put it in your car, what you wanted. Now it's just the order of the day. 

Well, I'm not sure that's going to go away, and I don't think it should. I think looking at ... we've all had to explore so many different ways at reaching our customers and servicing our customers that a lot of those ways are going to stay because they're effective.

Eric Groves:

Right.

Rebecca Melancon:

And those are good things.

Eric Groves:

Yeah. And it's all about creating that customer experience, right? All you're doing is you're changing the way you're delivering a customer experience, but the beautiful thing about being an independent local business is that you have the ability to create an experience that no one online can do.

Rebecca Melancon:

Exactly.

How Do You Create Movements That Shift Customer Spending Back Into Local Businesses?

Eric Groves:

Maybe part of your business is online, but you also have that offline element. So, in closing on our chat, and I'd love to have you back to talk more about this. 

If you were to impart some wisdom on our members now, who at this point in time, we're starting to test the waters of reopening our businesses, and is thinking about, we need to create these massive local movements to shift people's behavior back to purchasing from local businesses. 

What advice or tips would you give to business owners as they think of, I've got to reopen my business, I'm concerned my customers are going to feel safe coming back." 

And really, how to do this in a really positive way that will actually help sustain the growth and the recovery of these local business economies.

Rebecca Melancon:

Yeah. I think be smart, which everyone is. Be nimble. Allow yourself to be innovative. Don't ... I mean, the customer service that you knew one way before this pandemic, re-invent it. Look at it a different way. And care for your customers. 

What I'm seeing across the nation is just an astounding appreciation from customers on many levels. One, maybe we took those local businesses for granted, but we're not now because maybe individual ones were threatened by something before, but we've never experienced where every local business is threatened. 

And, looking at values and saying, "This is what we value as human beings." We often talk about it, I've changed, I used to say B2B and B2C and everybody knows what you're talking about, but it's really H2H, human to human.

Eric Groves:

I love that.

Rebecca Melancon:

That's really what we do. This pandemic has amplified that to say, "I'm a human, you're a human, we're both in this community."

I'm a human, you're a human, we're both in this community.

Rebecca Melancon:

It's easy to say that pat, we're in this together, which we are, but more than that, I care about your safety.

Eric Groves:

Yep.

Rebecca Melancon:

I care about your health and the health of my employees. We're going to find a way to still be in your life and still be part of your world, but in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

Eric Groves:

Perfect.

Rebecca Melancon:

That's not only going to bring those customers in now, but when everything is reopened, and this will pass. We don't know when, but it will pass. 

Those customers are going to remember and appreciate you for what you did for them. So give them that baker's dozen, give them that little bit extra, step out there a little bit in safe ways, thank them. 

I mean, all the things we routinely do, but just ramp it up and that'll come back to you five fold.

Eric Groves:

Yeah. It's a wonderful way to end this segment and get people to realize small business owners are consumers too. 

In everything that we do, I know when I go out and we order in from restaurants or buy from local business, we go in with that human to human aspect lodged in our minds, and I'm trying to make sure that my kids see the same thing. 

It's like, look, we're all in this together. These are businesses that we want to survive, so what can we do to help?

Rebecca Melancon:

Right.

Eric Groves:

Whether it's just leaving a little bit of extra tip, or just being a little bit kinder to the people that are waiting in line to also pick up their food or pick up their bicycle or whatever, giving people that distance, but also just respecting each other. 

I love that notion of human to human. So thank you so much from human to human. I appreciate your time.

Rebecca Melancon:

Thank you.

Eric Groves:

And I look forward to our next discussion, because I think there are going to be many more in our future.

Rebecca Melancon:

Me too. Thanks so much for having me.

Eric Groves:

All right.

How can you bring people together in your area? What are you doing right now to build a stronger local business community? Share your ideas in the comments.

For more guidance from small business experts on how to help your business thrive during and after the pandemic, check out the below videos:

• Recovery Tips from Former SBA Chief Karen Mills
• How to Secure Small Business Funding with Regional SBA Director, Bob Nelson
• 4 Essential Steps Your Business Can Take to Kickstart Reopening