A Source of Pride (and Customers):
A Historian's Guide to Doing Your Business History
 | | You will love digging in to your business history! |
Excerpt from the forthcoming book
by Bonnie Hurd Smith
Introduction What awaits you through this work is a deep sense of pride in your business, meaningful connections to your community, and dozens of new ideas for your marketing and public relations. You will attract attention, make friends, and expand your customer base and your existing customers' loyalty. I know that ALL of these things are important to you, because I know that you are already a successful business owner, CEO, or leader of your organization. Achieving business goals is essential for your continued success, but the personal fulfillment that comes from being connected to something "more" and ensuring your legacy also matters. Am I right? And the good news is that you don't need to have a Ph.D. in history to do what I'm about to teach you. Neither does your team. What you do need is a desire to find information, stick-to-it-iveness, and the ability to network with people. Once you've found the information you're searching for, then you need the ability to implement - and I give you some specific ideas at the end of the book about what you can do. This work is fun and incredibly rewarding, albeit a bit tedious while you're in the trenches. But the rewards outweigh the tedium - I promise you - and the pride you will feel - for yourself and your business - is well worth the effort. You, your team, and your customers will have an emotional connection to your business that wasn't there before. And if you know marketing, which I'm sure you do, "emotional connection" is everything. Here are some other reasons why your decision to do this work is a good one! · You want control of your story No matter how old your company is, at some point you will celebrate a milestone event in your history and someone will tell your story. You want that someone to be you, even if the media does its own digging. You will have the documentation ("evidence") to back up your story, and you will already be telling it on your website, in your brochure, and so on. You do not want members of your local media to dig up facts you didn't know. You need to be knowledgeable, on top of it, and THE resource for information about your company. (To be continued in the book!)
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