006 - Update Your Website

And good morning Asheville. Today is October 28th, Monday. At the time of recording, we got about 50 degrees, highs in the mid-60s. Does not look like rain. Does look like an overcast fall day. Fall is definitely in the air. Leaves are definitely on the ground. We ended last week with a question like, what is open, what is closed? And some of y'all reached out and I think, you know, to be expected there was sort of a mixed bag. But more than most, the energy was at Asheville is open. And in looking through some resources about what's open, what's closed, what is available to visit, what is not, where you might come and spend money and where you know is still closed, admittedly the best resource I found was on Explorer Asheville and so can be contentious. I'll flag that explore Asheville. But they have done a really good job organizing a lot of information. So I'll flag they have like a travel advisory page which lets you know a how to get in and out and around Asheville and like what stuff is open. So massive list of the restaurants that are open and or opening again. Biltmore Estate, November 2nd, that's coming up next week. A bunch of the parks are linked to and then, you know. Yeah, I mean it's just, there's just so much here in terms of closures. Right. So all of the actual river parks are going to be closed for the foreseeable future. Mount Mitchell is closed. Gorgeous State park is closed. Most of the Blue Ridge Mountain, Blue Ridge Parkway is going to be closed. And again, there are links on all of that. The Asheville, Asheville Airport is open. Most highways are open. Got an email this morning from our friends of the podcast Wrong Way River Lodge and campgrounds and they're open for guests. And so you know, they're. And they're. They did an incredible job both acting fast post River Post Helene. But building multiple feet above the 100 year floodplain and you know, saved their business. So I think in a broad stroke you can say that, you know, Asheville is open in stages and pockets. Support for Asheville varies by who you are. But there's a number of things happening that I find compelling. One I will, as it becomes more concrete, I look forward to sharing more about it. But on the gift cards front, you have this love Asheville from afar concept which has been I think mostly celebrated by local businesses. And the idea here is you can donate or shop buy gift cards at over 600, 622 Asheville area businesses. And it's all organized on the Explore Asheville website. I'll have links on to all these things in the description and show notes for this page for this episode. But over 600 businesses are making it easy to shop and donate on their site. That's something. So when telling someone where to go, how to support, I mean, that's about as strong of a single spot that you could send someone short of, you know, come to Asheville and spend your money and then there are, you know, funds that are being created. Explore Asheville has this Always Asheville fund. What makes this different or better than, you know, the WNC Strong projects from Mountain Bizworks? I can't say just yet, but Explore Asheville, our 501C3 nonprofit, has established an Always Asheville Fund to help small independent travel and hospitality businesses throughout Asheville Buncombe county recover from the devastating impacts of the aftermath of Hurricane helene. They're transferring 300,000 from their earned revenue to the Always Actual fund to assist small businesses with emergency grants, not loans. Okay, so business application process on their site and donate pretty clean donate function on their site as well. Love or hate Explore Asheville, they have spun up a very clean, very helpful portion on their website and I'll have links to that outside of this as a list of what's open, what's closed and how to support Asheville. There are a bunch of, you know, other ways to solve for this. What I'll say is that as a business owner, I think it becomes incredibly important that your website is telling the truth, that your website has been updated. I'll shout back out to friend of the pod, Alyssa Phillips from Amped Design, who has generously offered, you know, services support with website and some graphic design for businesses, specifically businesses affected by Helene. I would reach out even if you think you're maybe sort of that your website is going to be a critical part of your business survival through the end of this year and into next year. Having your accurate hours of operation, having strong calls to action, having your here's how we were affected, here's what we need, here's what we're doing. Front and center on your website is going to be mission critical. And there are plenty of folks locally who can help you to make sure all those things are set up accurately so that when people put in Google or when people ask Alexa or whoever, hey, is this place open, not only do they get the right information, but they get a part of the story that you want to tell. We have some other projects coming up in Asheville that I think are going to be really compelling. I don't want to spill the beans slash speak without being properly brought up to speed, but I'm very interested in what I've heard some grumblings about specifically with businesses selling physical stuff products and how they might be able to support each other in Asheville. So what I'll say is if you are open or want to be open or not open yet, but are trying to figure out how to turn the revenue engine back on in your business, please reach out. Because by nature of my role and you know this podcast and in the community at large, I'm hearing some really interesting stuff. And if I can be helpful in helping you turn back on your revenue engine or accelerate your growth through the end of the year, I want to be that person. So reach out. This was Monday, October 28th continuation on the idea of open and closed and where you might find open businesses. And if you are not yet an open business but want to be an open business or you are open and not seeing numbers grow the way that you would like them to, let's, let's have some conversations because I think, well, perhaps it goes without saying, time is in a lot of ways of the essence and the way that we spring back in these early days, this is the beginning of the second month. The way we spring back now will effectively set the course for the rest of the year and for 2025. So here to help, here to be of service and until tomorrow, take care, be good to people.