Don’t let others keep you from your success.

Letter to the Downtown Everett Business Owners

Don’t let others keep you from your success.

In discussing speeding up our revitalization of downtown, several people have mentioned being uncomfortable being the first in, because they consider that a business next door might not contribute to the effort and thus mooch off everyone else’s hard work and capitol. I’d like to address that feeling and talk about why that sentiment should not hinder any business from putting some of their marketing budget into our team effort.

The most important thing to consider is we have a growing team of business that want to work together to help all of us become more successful. That means they want to partner with you, to help you leverage your marketing budget to help you succeed. As you put your share into in the group marketing budget and become part of the team, you’ll reap rewards that you wouldn’t have, with your individual budget. That’s going to happen regardless of the businesses on the sideline who don’t join us.

In a business community, every business generally reaps a benefit of being near other businesses. So to an extent, the business down the street that does no marketing at all, is already relying on your marketing efforts to survive. Your already paying for customers to find them and there’s no way to make that situation fair. But, through working together as a team, we can help encourage the businesses sitting on the sidelines, to see the benefit of joining with us to move our downtown into greater prosperity. When they see more and more people walking in your business from the activities you helped pay for, and those people are walking past their business, I can tell you, they’ll get interested in our team real fast.

Now, the branding, marketing and event designs we are bringing to the downtown area are designed to benefit the individual business participants in the team. In other words, businesses that sit on the sidelines and fail to help the downtown prosper will not benefit like you will. Although they will likely see some minor benefit from people we help bring in to downtown, we are actively working on ways to make sure the new customers we bring into town, engage with participating businesses. And we’ll show you positive ways to talk to your customers, to encourage them participate with YOUR team.

And lets take a real honest look at our foot traffic, we all need more plain and simple. Why would any business stay on the sidelines when greater profitability is clearly mapped out in front of them in a cohesive branding, marketing and activity plan. Who cares if a business down the street wants to sit on the sidelines, your business is going to be better off for being part of the downtown team. Your business will get more customer opportunities, more exposure and the satisfaction of being one of the forerunners who changed Everett permanently for the better.

Let the side-liners do their thing, mooch off your customer base all they want, they already have and are, but don’t let someone else’s lack of vision and commitment to success prevent your business from being a blessing to you, your employees and your community. Lets make the commitment and all work together to grow, and when we start reaping the benefits, lets encourage the slow adopters to get on board and commit to our community.

I’m not waiting on the sidelines, and many business owners downtown don’t want to either, but we need you to join our team so we can begin the marketing, branding and events. The sooner you join the sooner we’ll all benefit.

Thanks again for building this community.

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