When I first moved back from the big smoke to Wagga to start my first business almost 10 years ago, I told myself I’d be there for one year, two at the max. I had all these grand plans and figured I’d get my small business web design company up and running in Wagga then relocate to Melbourne, get a funky warehouse office and make it bigger than Ben Hur! Lesson number one: You don’t need to be in a big city to make it big. As time went by, I started to enjoy the slower pace. The two hour Sydney commute I was accustomed to listening to 3-4 different CD’s in my car, instead became 5-10 minutes drive and 1-2 songs max! People smiled and said ‘hello’ when you went shopping. Overheads were lower. Word of mouth was more powerful than ever. And I suddenly felt I had time to stop and smell the roses. It wasn’t long before I settled into rural life, met a nice bloke and started to ponder about whether Melbourne was still for me. Every trip down there, with all the hustle and bustle of city life, made me question whether I really wanted to go back to that. Back to that dreaded two hour commute; up at 6am, in the car at 7am, home at 9pm, bed at 11pm and up at 6am to do it all again. It’s not much of a life really. It really got me thinking about work life balance and what was most important. Lesson number two: A great work life balance is way easier to achieve in a country town. (aka life is for living, don’t spend it stuck in city traffic!) After a few more years, I came to the conclusion that Wagga wasn’t where I wanted to be for the long-term but I also knew I didn’t want to go back to the city. My solution? Let’s go wandering! My partner and I took a break and went on an extended road trip around Australia and, along the way, we discovered somewhere truly breathtaking: Airlie Beach, the gateway to the Whitsundays. It was beautiful and the people were the friendly regional/rural types I loved, and it felt like home… only prettier (no offence Wagga!). So, now I call Airlie Beach home. Some days I still have to pinch myself because I’m really ‘living the dream’. We work from home in Airlie Beach and commute for one week a month to our Melbourne office to keep personal contact and take meetings, etc. It also gives me the chance to go shopping so I feel like I get the best of both worlds! I get my monthly dose of creative juice, culture, great food, suits and hustle bustle, then I get to take a deep breath and float back up to my idyllic lifestyle. Don’t get jealous now, but I’ve become very accustomed to pina coladas by the pool, blogging by the beach and cruising the islands on our little boat on weekends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not working a 4-hour working week (I wish!) and there’s always a lot of productive work hours in my week, but ultimately, a great lifestyle is what it’s all about for me now. It’s what I call living and at 34, I’m pretty proud of where I’m at! It hasn’t come without sacrifices though and a lot of drive, planning and hard work. But boy was it worth it! Would you like to do what I’ve done? You can, you just have to follow a plan! I’m going to reveal some of the lessons I’ve learned in my almost 10 years of living rural and doing business in a technology-driven world…
Here’s my 7 Tips for Country Chicks to stay ahead of your game in a regional market and not just become part of Hicksville:
- Work hard at your work life balance. Try not to work more than 40 hours per week. I wish I had listened to my first mentor years ago when he told me this. I laughed it off, then I got caught in the trap of racing for the finish line and working 100+ hours a week. It was plain stupid. I burnt out a lot, I got sick regularly, I had no life. I couldn’t switch off and it put a strain on my friendships and relationship.Looking back, I think I did this because I didn’t feel like there was much else to do in Wagga, but I was wrong. I just didn’t make the effort to keep that balance in toe.As hard as it is to switch off at 5pm, it’s worth it. You need to reward yourself with time for you. You’ll be more productive the next day, you’ll achieve your goals sooner and you’ll have much more clarity in your decisions, big and small.
- Read and learn something new for at least 1 hour per day. It’s easy to get lost down the rabbit hole when you live a country town. When I have my morning cuppa, I’m cruising through Google Reader and my email accounts picking out and reading whatever takes my fancy. When I go for my morning walks I’m listening to Podcasts and audio courses.All it takes is a slight shift in your routine and an hour a day really adds up. Try it. Knowledge really does set you free! Switch an hour a day of Facebook for RSS feeds to your favourite industry blogs and see the difference in your output and ideas!
- Stay connected. Use technology to your advantage. With Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbledUpon, Flickr, Instagram and millions of Apps out there, the world really is your oyster. Find what appeals to you, where your tribe hangs out and make it part of your daily routine to frequent there. Networking doesn’t have to be face to face (but there’s always webcams if you want that!).
- Educate yourself, become a ‘thought leader’ and word will spread. You really have an opportunity to own your region and be a big fish in a small pond. Throw yourself into as many online courses as you can handle and start to on-sell your knowledge. Don’t solely rely on the local events provided to you.When I did this my business really started to boom. I would suggest you budget for one big major event/course that is out of town each year, either in a metro city (or overseas if you can afford it), then immerse yourself in online courses. Currently I’m studying about six different courses at once which ensures I don’t fall behind like a lot do being in a regional environment.
- Get out of town regularly or you’ll go stale. I used to have a goal of going overseas at least once a year because I felt like when I did it enabled me to really take a step back and look at my business from afar. It was strange. I’d buy a notepad for the flight home and after recharging the batteries, I’d have a book full of ideas for the next phase. If you can’t go overseas, just make sure you go away regularly, at least every quarter. It really does help keep the juices flowing and ensures you don’t go stale.
- Use local markets to test your products and services. When we launched Web123, we thought everyone would want to use our shiny new software to build their own website. How wrong we were! We tested, listened and adapted quickly to what people actually wanted which was someone to hold their hand and help them through the maze of building a website and marketing themselves online. Then we came up with a free website starter kit that was packed full of value and it teaches you how to start a website(whether you buy a site from Web123 or not). And boy, did our business explode after that!If we hadn’t have been in a regional market and so close to all our clients, I don’t know if we would have had the same success. I guess we’ll never know for sure, but my gut tells me that regional is where it’s at! Take advantage of the community you’re in and use it to refine your product and services, perfect it, then roll them out to a wider audience. We got it right in Wagga first, then started marketing on a national scale. It works (and that’s why I’m able to write this from the poolside!).
- Network locally but don’t forget to network online. When I first started I was so hungry to network I’d even to a letter opening! But that got old pretty quickly. Maybe it’s because I have a voracious appetite for learning and getting things done that I felt like I was outgrowing a lot of the people I’d looked up to only a few short months before… I felt like my wings were being clipped by the local networks, so I started to see what else was out there. It’s amazing what you can find if you look hard enough. Consider joining mastermind groups too to give your business a real steroid injection (without the side effects!).I’ve made connections in Facebook groups and various forums I frequent, I have memberships to content sites like MarketingProfs and Digital Marketer and I have colleagues all over Australia who I love working with but have never actually met face-to-face.
To sum things up, one final word of advice would be to draw on the positives of where you are, don’t focus on the negatives. I used to think it was a disadvantage being based in Wagga and I had a quiet cringe whenever a new prospect from Sydney asked me where I was. That’s not fair to yourself (and it’s not fair to your town) because it really isn’t like it used to be. I think regional living is awesome once you learn how to overcome some of its limitations. Regional towns can be hotbeds of innovation and inventiveness, embrace it and promote it… just make sure you’re ahead of the curve!! I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, and I’m proud I’m still a true country girl… and you should be too. I really hope this has helped you think outside the box and perhaps put the seed of an idea into your mind about where you’d like to be in 2, 5, or 10 years time. Remember a work life balance should have more ‘life’ than ‘work’! Just don’t all move up to Airlie Beach cos we like it small and quiet up here!
