Neighborhood News was started in 1996 on the floor of my living room. Wait, let me back up a bit…
Back in 1996 I was married and had a son starting kindergarten and was staying home with my 2 year old daughter. My husband was in the oil and gas business, a “wild catter” if you will. This basically meant that we were either doing OK financially or were flat broke.
Not taking anything away from John as he is a great salesperson. I mean anyone who can sell holes in the ground for upwards of $300,000 has to have some skills. It was his passion and I was ok with that. But I wanted to contribute to the family purse. The kids and I had very little money to do much of anything, No McDonalds, zoo or lunches out.
So, each day when he came home from work I would run by my latest idea of starting a business. I had so many ideas. I even had an idea of helping other people come up with idea on what business they should start!
Each day he thought about it and said nah.. I don’t think that will work for these reasons…
At this time we were both involved in our neighborhood. John was on the Board of directors and I did our neighborhood newsletter. At the time I was also working as a freelance writer and published Special Sections for the newspaper, like Bridal Guides, Gardening Sections, etc.
One day after visiting with an advertiser from the paper who was wanting to get more local (this was 1996), 2 and 2 came together and the idea was born.
I told John about it as soon as he came home, I had already made up my mind anyway, and he loved the idea. He made me an offer.
“For every day that you tell me that you had a “good day” I will give you 20 bucks”, he told me.
WOW! I was so excited. This could buy McDonalds, the Zoo, as much as a mom and a 2 small children can handle!
I set out each day to make my 20 bucks. The hitch was that I had to have a “good day” which to me meant something positive had to happen. Mainly, someone had to say YES.
I’ll admit that somedays that YES came before 9 am and the kids and I took off for the day but there were many, many, other days that YES didn’t come until 5 or 6 or even 7. If I couldn’t get an actual YES I would try to accomplish something positive for the day so I could honestly collect my 20 dollars.
By the end of 30 days of positive outcomes I had a business to run.
I had recruited 3 neighborhoods, sold many ads, lined up printing and researched mailing. I had made commitments. I had made sales. There were neighborhoods out there expecting to get their newsletters in the mail.
Since then we’ve just been lucky. The business grew by Word of Mouth. We went into other cities by Word of Mouth! It is still our primary method of growth.
It has been a fantastic business and is an asset to the community and the small businesses that are a part of it. Now we are ready to share this concept with you.
There are many more stories to tell about Neighborhood News. Amazing, tragic, happy, sad, scary and everything you can imagine that small businesses go through when your employees are your family and your customers and vendors are your friends.
We hope you will love this business as much as we do.