Greetings and happy Friday! Tomorrow marks the 244th birthday for the United States – hard to believe I still clearly remember all the hoopla (and those special quarters!) of the 1976 bicentennial.

Here’s our update from this week – lots going on! I had a ton to do, and wife Susan was working today, so I was in the office getting caught up today.

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Suzan’s week:

* Messages (staff, former director’s email & phone)
* Clean/disinfect office
* Post office/sort mail/mail thank you cards
* Staff meetings
* Bank – pick up check order, deposit memberships
* Enter payroll, deposits & Gusto in QuickBooks
* Do financial report and distribute to treasurer and exc dir
* Update database & xls
* Review completed 2019 taxes
* Various tasks for director
* Search for & meet w/electrician to install cable for Spectrum connection
* Get office supplies
* Thank you cards
* Made appointment w/bank manager to complete EDA credit card application
* File, organize, clear area for cable installation
* Friday list

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Paul’s week:

Meet and Greets – A sightly slower Zoom meet & greet schedule this week, since folks were busy getting things wrapped up for the long weekend, though it looks like another whirlwind schedule next week. Thanks to Linda for meeting me in her office on Monday – on the way back, we checked out the Otter Crest Scenic Viewpoint – holy yowza was that breathtaking!

Enterprise Zone – Rogue’s EZ certification application was approved by the county (after my approval last week) and is now off to the state. Got a ton of EZ research on my plate for next week.

Facebook – Looks like we may be out of luck on an easy recovery of our old organizational Facebook page. Both Suzan and I sleuthed out who may have been an old admin, and I had a number of calls and emails, but no luck. So on to “Plan B” next week – we’ll create a new business page and once we get it up and running, I’ll reach out to Facebook to claim ownership of the organization and request to merge the older page into our new one. That’s a long process, but we can at least be up and running ASAP.

Press Release – Created a news release template and boilerplate while working on our first release. Sent that initial release off early this week, so hopefully we’ll see it popping up in a few news outlets next week.

EDALC Internet – Suzan got an electrician in to look at the cable run for the new Internet service. Dave’s Electric will be on site Monday for the install, so hopefully we can reschedule the Spectrum install next week.

SWOT Analysis – One of the most challenging aspects of my interview was when Tracy asked me to do an off-the-cuff SWOT analysis of Lincoln County. Now I’m starting that process in earnest, under less sweat-inducing circumstances. I should have a draft to share in the coming weeks for board input and feedback.

Our New URL – We secured our new URL (BusinessLincolnConty.com) this week – thanks for all your input! With that in place, we can get MS Office 365 for the staff and set up our new email addresses. I’ll also secure our shared web hosting site. For those keeping tech score, we’ll be developing a WordPress site using the Avada theme building tool. Initially, I’ll get a nice “coming soon” page up, that will also direct folks to our old site, and then will begin the website plan and implementation project in earnest.

Lincoln City Chamber Directory (and some branding thoughts) – I pulled together an ad for the upcoming Lincoln City Chamber Directory (deadline July 8). We’ll do a 1/12th ad as last year, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, run the same ad. I’ve attached the new ad – it also shows one of the ways I think through branding and logo projects. I do quick drafts that help me nail down the key aspects of a new logo (Important note: I do NOT think the logo in this ad will be our real new logo, but it’ll work in this publication for now). Once I get a sense of the what and how of the logo, I’ll then engage a graphic designer – it’s a much more efficient process that way, I’ve found. I also had a call with Beth Severson this week – she was contracted by the EDALC to do some marketing and branding work in the spring of 2019. Not much work was done, but she acknowledges we’ve got some “marketing credit” with her, which we’ll sure utilize. She also shared with me some logo drafts she developed – not quite what I think we need, but some potentially good ideas.

So some homework for you all – I could use some input – for a new logo – modern, traditional or a hybrid? Should any graphic element of the logo represent something physical in Lincoln County? Example: woods and water, lighthouse, beach, iconic bridge, etc. Let me know your thoughts (and even wild ideas).

Learning and Mentoring – Next week I begin the RAINmaking digital marketing course facilitated by OregonRAIN. I’ll be both a student and a business mentor leading a cohort of students in discussion sessions during the course – looking forward to it!

Commercial Landlord Data Project – One of the most interesting thing to come out of this week was a recovery project idea that grew out of several calls and emails with Dave Price over at the SBDC. One of the things that came out of last week’s emergency session of the state legislature was a moratorium on evictions through September, plus an additional six months for renters to get caught up with past rent. We’re looking to do a survey of commercial landlords in the county to pull together data on their “renter’s health” – are they anticipating hardship because of the moratorium? How are they working with their commercial tenants? We’ve begin putting together a draft survey (which will be hosted by the SBDC’s JotForm tool) and a project scope and work list this week and hope to get it dialed in and rolling next week (starting with working with municipalities to get landlord contact info) – this will be a true collaboration between the EDALC and the SBDC and should (hopefully) give us some data to be proactive in discovering is a problem is coming down the pike (with some time to implement some solutions). I’ll keep you posted.

Some Interesting Reading – Here’s a link to an interesting article from Bloomberg CityLab on how social distancing is changing how we organize outside spaces, especially for bars and restaurants: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-06-29/what-happens-to-public-space-when-everything-moves-outside

Feeling Like a Teenager – Well, maybe not in a good way. Susan and I secured some hard-to-come-by DMV appointments on Thursday to deal with our car titles, registration and Oregon drivers licenses. Since we’re new residents to the state, we both had to take written tests, so we studied up on the rules of the road over the week. Felt like I was back in drivers-ed! Good news is that we both passed – woo hoo!

Have a great weekend, avoid dangerous fireworks, stay safe and wear those masks!

Cheers,

-Paul 🙂