A friend of mine in Columbus who started and grew a thriving small business there was interviewed once, and he was asked how (or if) the business had changed much from what he initially envisioned.
My friend probably chuckled when he said that they changed a lot of things in the first few years. Some decisions were driven by sales data or customer feedback, others in reaction to market forces or simply by intuition. I remember reading something to the effect that he said that they were always “turning the different dials” to find the right combination for their customers.
That makes a lot of sense, I think. No matter how completely one believes in the culture or vision of an organization (and we’re a bunch of true believers here at Richland Source), flexibility and an ear for the needs of the customer are important.
With that in mind, I want to take a few minutes to introduce you to some new features and faces here at Richland Source.
E-mail newsletters
We’re introducing this week another channel through which our readers can get their news — this time right in their inboxes. Starting this weekend Richland Source will deliver a weekly sports wrap up on Saturday mornings. Beginning next week, a synopsis of recent headlines will go out on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Breaking news alerts and other newsletters are in development.
Readers can sign up for any combination of newsletters by clicking here. It only takes a few minutes and – like all of our news products – the service is free.
New faces
We are pleased this week to welcome to Richland Source two new faces. Shawna Layland has joined team members Dianna Snell and Sharon Houghton in our sales department.
Shawna and Dianna (who has transferred from editorial) will join Sharon to work closely with existing customers and local businesses to help them be successful and reach their customers.
On the editorial side, Brittany Schock has come aboard as a staff reporter. Brittany is a graduate of the journalism school at OSU, and most recently worked at The Shelby Globe.
Richland County… meet TED
TED.com, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is one of those places on the internet that truly captures lightning in a bottle.
Their mission is simple: to spread ideas. They accomplish this by taking brilliant people of all ages, disciplines, and parts of the world and giving them a place where they can share with others what they have learned. This is done in the form of twenty minute “TED talks”.
Here’s how TED explains it on their web site: “We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. So we’re building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.”
That sounded pretty great to us. So we asked nicely and received permission from TED to integrate their talks into our editorial pieces. Why do this? The answer is simple. Why not?
The possibility of bringing a perspective from halfway around the world that might inform and elevate the conversation on a local issue in an inventive, novel, interesting, or funny way was too good to pass up. So meet TED, Richland County. We think you’ll like him.
There are more new, fun things coming in 2014 for the growing community of readers and advertisers at Richland Source. We’ll share more of them next time. But for now – as we begin a new year and many of us our trying to drop a few pounds, enjoy this talk from our new friend TED about how our brain helps us regulate our body weight, sometimes in ways we wish it wouldn’t.
