Friday, June 27, 2008

CDC leader: Economy can be revived

Rapport advocates business coaches


By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Jima Rice

"Twenty years from now, Ketchum's going to be an older community with no life," said Ketchum Community Development Corporation Executive Director Gary Rapport. "But we can stop it."

Rapport spoke to a group of about a dozen local business interests at the Wood River Community YMCA on Thursday as part of a series of presentations offered by Jigsaw, a local nonprofit business advocacy organization.

Rapport, hired in May, has worked for more than two decades with stressed economies in war-torn Israel, tsunami-devastated Indonesia and most recently with Native American tribes in Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming.

He said the Ketchum CDC is one of the organizations that can help revive the Wood River Valley with economic vitality, and among the ideas he suggested to helping with that revival is creating and offering a service to coach budding businesses on some fundamental, though perhaps not intuitive, business basics.

"We can bring the kind of businesses that will make Ketchum a shining light," he said. "Ketchum could be known for a community bike program that we want to do. Ketchum could be known for geothermal development."

Rapport said the spirit of a budding entrepreneur involves three key elements: an idea, commitment and means.

Idea is self explanatory, he said, but commitment is one of the key problem areas for many budding entrepreneurs.

"They've got a great idea, and they can see what it might be in the future, but they don't know how to get there," he said.

Entrepreneurs must be aware that they will be faced with difficult choices, choices that pit, for example, family life against business success.

"Will you run your business or take care of family problems when they come up?" he asked. "An entrepreneur has to be prepared that he or she is going to have to make those choices sometimes."

Means, he said, involve the financial resources not just to start but to sustain a business until a stable business platform is achieved. Means also involve technical advice and expertise in marketing, loans, banking, employee issues, credit and insurance.

"That's where I see the CDC coming in and other groups like Jigsaw," Rapport said. "We want to start a business counselor/coach program. The whole business coach program is meant to help a business get started and sustain it until it is on its feet."

Rapport said the charge facing the Wood River Valley is clear. It's time to implement measures that will facilitate change.

"I don't want to sound Pollyanna-ish, but we don't need to keep studying problems we've studied before," he said. "Everyone knows what the problems are. We just need to fix them."

Jima Rice, founder and director of Jigsaw, said she's been talking with Rapport about instituting just such a business coach, or success coaching, program.

"He has a model we can build on," Rice said. "He's at the core of what we can do here, and his ideas are very developed ideas of what Jigsaw has been looking for and has been hoping to support."

Among those who attended the Thursday meeting, consensus was generally reached that economic stimulation efforts need to be conducted regionally, and not just focus on Ketchum.

"It's clear that the communities affect each other," Rice said.

And she said it seems clear that Rapport can play a crucial role.

"His experience is so broad, and his energy so stimulating that I think things can move forward more quickly than I imagined because of his abilities," she said.




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