The person: Jim Glover is a father. He is also the founding partner of the company The Idea Group of Santa Fe, is involved in a program with the state of New Mexico called Live Work New Mexico, and has recently launched a marketing advice video blog called Once a Day Marketing. “I’ve been in New Mexico 20 years, and for 10 years while I was here, I commuted every week to LA because I had an entertainment company in Santa Monica,” Glover says. “When my girls got old enough to know who Dad was, I decided to form The Idea Group and stay here all of the time.” The Idea Group works with leading companies and nonprofits to develop strategic marketing and branding plans. Glover created Once a Day because he feels that, when businesses fail, it’s often because they are not marketing enough. “I thought, ‘Why don’t I try to pat them on the back with inspiration and give them a video blog every day to look at to try to get them thinking about marketing?’” he says.
The plan: Encourage a local, home-based economy based on the strategies pioneered by Live Work New Mexico.
How it works: Glover feels that, by incorporating more of the Live Work’s strategy in Santa Fe, the local economy would be stimulated. “It bucks the traditional system; Live Work says, ‘Throw everything away that you used to do.’” Live Work is about supporting and expanding home-based jobs and businesses; recruiting high-income, home-based workers from out of state; and helping some local unemployed and under-employed people to have jobs in the home-based community.
Some examples of action the city’s Economic Development Department and Live Work should take, according to Glover, are:
• Attract high-income people working out of their homes in other cities and states to move to Santa Fe. For example, offer them assistance with their home-based jobs or businesses by offering to pick up any moving costs and lower tax rates and interest rates on their homes for a period of time.
• Offer project work to those working out of their homes who have little experience finding work in their field. “It’s like a placement agency, but you’re placing projects and hourly work,” Glover says. He cites Los Alamos National Laboratory’s recent decision to cut its workforce by several hundred employees, many of whom live in Santa Fe. “What if we were able to say to those people, ‘Oh, by the way, we’ve got an economic development program where we’re going to find you project work that you can do out of your home’?”
• Ask home-based businesses where they need help. Going to these businesses and offering assistance would make them stronger and give them the support they need to expand and excel.
• Create a place where home-based workers can network. “We have something called the success center, where all the home-based workers go to network, shoot the shit, find new project work or maybe there’s business support services there for them to use,” Glover says.
Bottom line: If the city encourages home-based jobs and businesses, people with demanding schedules will have an easier time contributing to the local economy; carbon footprints will be lower; and new networks will arise. The Live Work strategy can help boost Santa Fe’s economy overall, Glover says, by encouraging people to move here and generating jobs.
Again, the first agenda item is to grant selected persons special incentives to relocate to SF with cash or tax credits. Buy their interest in SF. This is an admission that SF isn't attractive on its own, so some sugar has to get spread around, with the taxpayer funding the sugar. The "greater good" and access to other people's money seem to go hand in hand in the mind of those who would alter the landscape. Er, I repeat myself, but why don't you bet your own money, clever person?
A company located a factory in AL some years ago. They got a 10 year tax holiday. Ten years to the day, they closed the shop. Not economic without the holiday.
Further, what about businesses already located in SF? Outsiders get incentives while those who have stuck it out and tried to build in SF foot the bill? Where is the economic justice in that? This is CA thinking, and it fails here. Why would NM want to emulate a failed model?
I throw no rocks at working from home, but a couple of things have to be said.
First, the collateral jobs coming out of a home-based enterprise tend on the low side. What I mean is that a Wendy's franchise supports 2-3 collateral jobs in a community. A heavy manufacturing op supports 5-9. A lot of academic work has gone into this analysis.
I don't advocate Santa Fe to welcome an op buidling heavy construction equipment, if one were offered. The point is that overall employment is going to grow slowly if home-based, individually creative businesses are going to be the base. I want to inject some realism into the solution.
Now, CA is expecting a huge tax windfall out of the Facebook IPO and subsequent capital gains taxation as those lucky ones sell FB stock and diversify. Maybe SF could find itself with another FB out of its creative community. It can happen. It doesn't happen very often, but it can.
Second, home-based businesses by their nature are dependent on the creativity/tenacity of the individual plying his/her trade. All the responsibilty lands on the person selling their skills or pushing a product, making cold calls while mostly impervious to those who hang up 20 seconds into the conversation. I sympathize with such people even when I hang up on them. Is SF a place for such a driven person?
I recall an article in SFR about an eatery that had closed. The lady running it was from NYC, and was the last person standing in SF of the four friends from NYC who came out looking to make their future. The others had returned to NYC. SF didn't have a "buzz" was one rationale, and it seems obvious to me. NM has a feel to it, and you like it or don't, like NYC. I like NYC about once a decade. SF I could live in, maybe.
Third, "special deals for special people" never works in the long run. If you want to build something sustainable, everyone plays by the same rules and the rules are so attractive, compared to alternatives, that people vote with their feet and come to enjoy a superior environment.
The cold reality is that such an attractive situation may be a bridge too far for the SF. Dreams of being a tech center for the nation may simply be good dreams, utterly unattainable. One can dream, I do, but reality is where we live. Sometimes reality is disappointing.
All the dreaming, coulda woulda shoulda...it ain't going to happen. SF is not Palo Alto, which is not a slam but an observation. SF should not try to be Palo Alto or Santa Monica CA. Vive le differance!
Grow, sure. One has to. How, within one's identity...which might change a lot slower than is preferred?