taking responsibility for our economic future
Our mission is to assist people in transforming their passionate ideas into viable new or expanding businesses. Wallowa County Business Facilitation was founded by citizens who want to:
Every idea faces challenges, and starting new paths in business can be hard. Wallowa County Business Facilitation has employed a full-time, Wallowa County based business coach (Myron Kirkpatrick, who started work in January 2001). For free and in confidence, Myron will help connect an entrepreneur with the resources and skills she (or he) may need to create a successful business.
Based on our faith in the entrepreneurial spirit of our fellow citizens, and in our investigation of the Sirolli Institute’s community-centered approach and its results, we believe that we can help create at least 20 new or expanded businesses and at least 40 new jobs or self-employment opportunities in the first two years of our proposed project.
Traditionally, economic development activities focus on business attraction, retention, or expansion, either through recruitment or by building infrastructure such as highways, sidewalks, sewers, enterprise zones, revolving loan funds, tax relief programs, industrial parks and incubators, telecommunications, or tourism promotion. While infrastructure is necessary and important, you cannot create a diversified and resilient economy through infrastructure alone, especially in a rapidly changing, increasingly globalized economy. You need entrepreneurs.
The Sirolli Institute teaches an innovative set of practices, based on experience with over 200 communities, that increase the likelihood that an entrepreneur will succeed at transforming his or her idea into a viable business.
First and foremost is to let the ideas and the motivation come from the grassroots—the individual—by not initiating, planning, financing, or subsidizing projects or activities. It is not about telling people what they should do. It is about helping people succeed at what they really want to do, with sound business management.
Wallowa County Business Facilitation is a practical and grassroots effort to help people who are thinking and dreaming about starting or expanding a business. The Sirolli Institute’s method is working in depressed rural, prosperous suburban, and highly urban settings. These community-driven projects have helped start and expand agriculture and natural resources businesses, tourism businesses, retail, manufacturing, artistic, and service businesses of all types.
Our project consists of a volunteer board of directors—people who want to see people in their community succeed. Our large board reflects the fact that the primary function of the board is not to set policy or implement projects, but to act as a resource network for the project’s single staffer: the facilitator.
Our full-time facilitator’s mission is to coach committed people to help them start or expand a business. Myron Kirkpatrick, our Wallowa County Business Facilitator, has experience in business, is a good listener, and respects people. He is competent, professional, and dedicated, and has been trained by the Sirolli Institute. Board members refer people to the facilitator, and connect them to work space, capital, financial planning skills, marketing skills, and other resources as needed.
When someone comes to the facilitator with a business idea, the facilitator does not judge the idea as good or bad. The focus is on the person. The facilitator will first make sure that the person is genuinely committed, and is willing to put out effort on behalf of the idea.
No business can succeed for long without skills and commitment in three areas: (1) production of the goods or services, (2) marketing, and (3) financial management and planning. Rare indeed is the person who is likely to do all three things well. Few people have the passion and skill for both marketing and financial management, for example. Whether it is a husband-wife team or a large corporation, a successful business is built around teamwork and people skills.
The facilitator is trained to help the entrepreneur build a complementary team for the task—to help find someone who loves to do what the entrepreneur hates, and in this the local board is essential. The facilitator provides free and confidential management coaching, for as long as it takes. He or she helps find marketing information, capital, and other resources on a case-by-case basis, as needed. Facilitators help steer the boat, but do not row.
The reason this approach succeeds in developing so much new economic activity in a community for relatively little cost is that it is bottom-up and person-centered, based on the vision, passion (willingness to suffer for an idea),and creativity of individuals. It is not about planning, financing, or subsidizing projects from the top, or about modeling our economy on past circumstances. It is about allowing entrepreneurs to chart the economic future.
Most Sirolli Institute-trained projects are funded from a combination of federal, state, and local government grants, and contributions by local businesses, individuals, and local and regional foundations. Without local funding, it has proved difficult to sustain these projects, even with a record of outstanding and cost-effective results in turning people’s ideas into viable businesses and generating millions of dollars in annual wages.
Loyalty to our community and a practical concern for local business success are what we seek in funders. Organizational sponsors of our effort are Northeast Oregon Economic Development District (NEOEDD), a governmental entity that encompasses Wallowa, Union, and Baker counties, and Wallowa Resources, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization begun in 1996.
Wallowa County Business Facilitation is a public benefit corporation and expects to receive 501(c)3 status by the end of 2001.
Dr. Ernesto Sirolli visited Wallowa County on February 7, 1999 and spoke to a standing-room-only group of people in the Enterprise Library basement. Enthusiasm and discussion, and a series of meetings followed. About half of the people attending these meetings were business owners or potential business owners who were looking for assistance in developing their businesses. About half of the people were interested in being involved in a project that would help create businesses and jobs in Wallowa County by responding to the doers among us (self-motivated people). The initial meetings used the consensus model of exploring beliefs relating to economic development in Wallowa County and were attended by 30-40 people each.
A steering committee of a dozen people has been meeting since April. Entrepreneurial development is a good strategy for Wallowa County because we have a high rate of self-employment (21.5 percent of the workforce according to the 1990 census, about three times the average in Portland and in the nation). Several people expressed the belief that the creativity, intelligence, and motivation in our people would keep a full-time facilitator busy almost immediately.
We recognize that there are existing networks and services that provide business counseling and advice, but that a full-time, paid, Wallowa County based facilitator, trained by the Sirolli Institute, and supported by a local board dedicated to their community would be used by more people, and help build viable businesses better and faster. The experience of other communities that have funded these programs is that they complement the success of existing economic development programs and infrastructures.
The feeling was widespread that this type of bottom-up, responsive entrepreneurial development could not be carried out at this time without the training and support of the Sirolli Institute, which has 15 years experience operating these projects. By engaging the Sirolli Institute, we lower the risk of trying something different.
The steering committee identified the need to raise funds for the project and to find board members to carry out the work. On February 7, 2000, this group named itself Wallowa County Business Facilitation. In August 2000 Ernesto Sirolli gave a one-day training to 26 board members at the Buhler Ranch near Joseph. In November 2000, we offered Myron Kirkpatrick the facilitator contract, and he began work in January 2001.
A similar process has unfolded in Baker County, which Ernesto Sirolli also visited in February 1999. Baker City and Baker County both pledged support. BEGIN (Baker County Enterprise Growth Initiative) hired a Baker County facilitator, Ruth Townsend, in June 2000. As of this writing BEGIN has helped 13 business startups with management coaching and resources.
Our WCBF project requires a belief that intelligence, innovation, and creativity can come from people in Wallowa County, and that this intelligence and creativity is a key resource in developing a resilient and diversified local economy. It requires a belief in the power of private enterprise to transform people’s lives, and to create future possibilities.
Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of Local Economies is Ernesto Sirolli’s fast-paced book on how he came to do what he does, from his experiences working on international development in Africa to Australia, Canada, and the United States. Guaranteed to change your ideas on what development is. (A short review.) Available from The Bookloft in Enterprise, and there are copies in the Enterprise and Joseph libraries.
Quick links to some on-site reporting on other Enterprise Facilitation projects, Sirolli’s speech on the background and philosophy, and more.
This project requires a belief that intelligence, innovation, and creativity can come from people in Wallowa County, and that this intelligence and creativity is a key resource in developing a resilient and diversified local economy. It requires a belief in the power of private enterprise to transform people’s lives, and to create future possibilities.