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Canwest News Service
Every ambitious entrepreneur faces the same challenge: How to get good advice for growing your business and fixing its shortcomings, on an annual budget of zilch.
Victor Fedeli of North Bay, Ont., found a unique solution by tapping into a resource no one knew he had. And on Boxing Day, no less! But you'd expect out-of-the-box thinking from a guy who founded his own marketing firm and then sold it to "retire" at age 35.
For Fedeli, the stakes are now higher than for most entrepreneurs. In 2003 he was elected mayor of North Bay. The city of 55,000 people 340 kilometres north of Toronto had been stung by the decline of Ontario's mining industry and the collapse of the Cold War (North Bay was a centre for continental defence). Like many commodity-based communities in our post-industrial age, the city needed a new economic vision.
One of Fedeli's campaign promises was to convene a think-tank of former North Bay residents to discuss the city's future — and how it might lure them back. But how do you tap into a resource that by definition is someplace else?
Fedeli found a way. This month, for the seventh straight year, he is asking all the young business professionals who will be coming home for Christmas to give some time to their town on Dec. 26.
He's inviting them to City Hall at noon to share ideas on how North Bay can become a better place to do business –and thus lure them back.
In a local newspaper ad he asks residents: "Are your corporate kids coming home for the holidays? I want to borrow them for two hours." He says these former residents include bankers, brokers, lawyers, manufacturers, executives and entrepreneurs around the world, all of them with unique insight into companies looking to expand or relocate. "They know where the opportunities are," Fedeli says.
Last year, 16 people took up his offer. They suggested a range of initiatives, such as building a conference centre on the Lake Nipissing waterfront, encouraging development of a local garlic farm, installing a "zipline" for summer fun on a local ski hill, protecting heritage homes, creating a policy for urban infill development and building more recreation facilities to attract big-name sports events.
That was probably too many ideas for one year. Fedeli admits the city's main achievement this year was to get on Facebook and Twitter. Previous years' proposals have generated more concrete results, such as a 2004 suggestion from Global TV personality Susan Hay that the city try to attract film production; this year, three shows were filmed in North Bay, including a new Kids in the Hall TV series. "Susan planted the seed that got us started," Fedeli says.
Another suggestion, to encourage immigrants to settle in North Bay, led to the opening of a multicultural settlement office. Then there's the business retention and expansion program, in which economic-development staff, instead of focusing on attracting outside companies, approach local business owners to see how they can help them grow. "That program was a really, really good idea," Fedeli says. "We found a lot of easy fixes that we had never understood before."
Thanks to the "corporate kids," the city is also harnessing local brainpower. Fedeli now forms one-off SWAT teams, composed of executives from different industries, to work on urgent projects. One group helped the local railyard win an $80-million contract to refurbish the double-decker commuter trains of Torontobased GO Transit.
Fedeli also uses LinkedIn to stay in touch with his alumni year-round. For instance, as a regional hospital nears completion, the city has to figure out what to do with its two old ones. Fedeli asked his team what kind of redevelopment projects they are seeing in cities across Canada, the United States, France and Switzerland. "It's like having an unpaid army of consultants," he says.
Fedeli's entrepreneurial approach, using a resource most people overlook, is an initiative other cities could copy (you have 19 days till Boxing Day). However, similar resources such as alumni employee groups, customer groups, or even SWAT teams of local business owners could also be leveraged by business owners. Whether you run a city or a business, the challenge is to build stronger relationships to get more done. As Fedeli proved, it starts with asking.
Chris Ferron, a 29-year-old account executive with Toronto-based Berkeley Payment Solutions, took part in last year's think-tank and calls it "an awesome, innovative event." He met old friends, made new ones, and learned once again why North Bay "rocks" (Fedeli holds the meeting in a boardroom with windows that look out on the lake and the ski hill).
Although the brain trust produced no sure-fire ideas for attracting new businesses, Ferron says it turned participants into hometown champions. "I would love it if someday something came out of the think-tank that brought me home." – Rick Spence is a writer, consultant and speaker specializing in entrepreneurship. His column appears Mondays in the Financial Post. He can be reached at
rick@rickspence.ca
