If there was a key phrase that came out of the Business Innovation Summit that was held at the Carbon Events Center on May 19, it was “Think out of the box.” On top of that some presenters said that not even having a box would be a good idea.
The conference which was sponsored by Carbon County, the Department of Workforce Services, edc Utah and the World Trade Center was titled “Tapping into a World of Opportunities.”
“Sometimes when we put more into business we also need to re-evaluate it,” said Carbon County Economic Director Tami Ursenbach in the opening segment of the conference. “I am asking you to open your hearts and listen today.”
Probably the best thing about the conference, and something that many in audience agreed on, was that the majority of the speakers were business people, that operate in today’s marketplace, with today’s pressures, regulations and challenges.
“People who have stuck to and worked their business through the thick and thin of an economy are what make Utah businesses go,” said Marlin Eldred, who is CEO of Economic Development Planning Group LLC where he works with various entities in Utah and beyond.
He talked about companies not only having good internal teams to work out problems, something that is essential. He also said that firms need to be good corporate citizens in their communities. But he said to really succeed, business owners need to be able to do a lot of different things in the market today.
“Fix issues that are in your control, because you can’t do anything about those that are not,” he said. “Strategic planning is the key. Any plan should include input from the company’s employees where they can express their ideas in a safe environment. And you must be ready to pivot your business to adjust to new circumstances at any time.”
Innovation, gumption
That point about pivoting was made plain when local business owner Frank Peczuh spoke later in the morning. He told the story of how his father started Peczuh Printing and how everyone worried they would starve to death trying to make a go of it. But with innovation and gumption the company is now ranked 262nd in the nation in the size of printing businesses and today it is the third largest printing company in Utah.
“The need to sustain our business with changing times has forced us out of our comfort zone again and again,” he said. “Technology changes have interrupted our business many times. But we in Carbon County have always seen ourselves as underdogs and we at Peczuh have a never say die attitude in our business that fits that.”
While many people think print is dead, Peczuh disagrees and the figures show it.
“Print is a sleeping giant,” he said. Then he went on to talk about how print impacts the economy of the country more than the music business or video games.
He also related that being small to begin with wasn’t the only thing his family faced in growing the business. Some customers have wondered why Peczuh Printing is located where it is.
“We have had people who said to us ‘Why are you located in Price when most of your business in the urban areas.’ We say it’s because it is where we want to be. And we remain relevant with 95 percent of our business coming to us from outside southeastern Utah.”
Perseverance pays
Peczuh said the growth from the beginnings as a small printer doing local jobs and the transition to a large printing company were due to relationships with customers, aggressiveness in sales and stick-to-itive-ness.
“When IPP (Intermountain Power Plant) opened by Delta we wanted their business,” he said. “I went out there with a salesman we had and they showed us these plans and documents, volumes and volumes of them and they wanted 25 copies of each on special paper. That was in the 1980s and there was no digital technology. I told them we could do it. When we got out in the car the salesman asked me how we were going to do it despite the fact we only had three hours to come up with a way to accomplish it. I said I didn’t know but we would do it. After that they became a huge customer of ours.”
Four filters
One of the different ways that attendees were told to look at all business decisions was to put any consideration through a system of four filters. Dean Lundberg of Accelerant, a firm that is moving into the Price area, said that even at the start up of a business those filters should be used to evaluate decisions. And he said the answer might be to not even enter into that business.
“Put your values down on a piece of paper,” he said. “What do you really want out of a business? That’s the real key.”
Lundberg talked about the filter system he uses which includes values, ability, knowledge and willingness. He said that everything has its cost and the filter helps people to evaluate if they are up to the task of starting a business or up to making key decisions about a business.
“To make good decisions you must know about what is going on around you,” he said. “And if you are struggling to decide about something , find out what you don’t know.”
He also talked about how regulation can affect a business. He gave the analogy of a referee and that his son who plays sports is always complaining about a call an official makes during one of his games. He said that is much like the changing regulations that come about today. You can complain or you can figure it out.
“At some point some referee is going to change your business,” he said. “You need to be good enough, no matter what the call is.”
Exports important
At the noon keynote address Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox spoke and he talked about rural Utah and how businesses in those parts of the state should be exporting products to other countries. He said that he number of people in Utah is only .04 percent of the world’s population.
“Because of the size of our population if you counted the entire world’s population as the 65,000 people you can fit in Lavell Edwards Stadium in Provo, and you sold hot dogs to them, that would mean you would only sell 26 hot dogs to that group,” he said.
The point was that Utah has the chance to reach people that are not touched by the unique products produced in the state. Today there are 50,000 jobs in the state that are directly attributable to exports and there should be more, particularly in the rural areas. And he said there are some definite advantages to being a company that exports its product.
Surviving downturns
“The fact is that global exporting companies survive downturns in the economy better, they can take products that may not be used in the United States any more and sell them overseas, therefore extending the life of the product, and those same companies have more employees and pay those employees better too,” he said.
He also said that exporting was not for only large companies. He said that is proven by the fact that two thirds of the businesses in Utah that export have less than 20 employees.
Panels during the day were also informative and challenging. One panel described ways to work with the government on procurement and sales. Another, in the afternoon, dealt with exporting products. All four panelists in that group represented private companies that either presently do exports or work with companies that do.
All those that spoke at the meeting urged attendees to think further down the road and to see what is coming. The message at the end of the day was that changing technology, different demographics and an evolving world will not mean business as has been usual, but that those changes will provide many more opportunities.