Laura Capes Terry (00:01.762)
What if the key to growing your business isn't more followers, but deeper roots? Welcome to Be Locally Loved, the podcast that celebrates the people, places, and ideas that help communities thrive. I'm your host, Laura Capes Terry. I'm a local publisher, a marketing strategist, and someone who believes deeply that when a business becomes trusted in its own backyard,
growth stops feeling like a chase and it starts feeling like momentum. So in each episode of Be Locally Loved, we're going to explore how great businesses build real relationships, earn trust, and become the kind of brand that people talk about at dinner tables and at school pickups. Because being locally loved isn't accidental, it's intentional.
And today I want to welcome my co-host from the Unbridled Creative, Trent Soles, so we can dive in with you today, what it means to become locally loved. Welcome Trent.
Trent Soles (01:04.65)
Hi there, thanks for having me on.
Laura Capes Terry (01:06.888)
Absolutely. So great to have you here. So what I want to do today, Trent, is just dive into the inspiration behind this podcast. It's meant to be a limited series that dives into the people, places and ideas that help communities thrive. One of those ideas is something that we both love and are very close to. A media company called Be Local.
I own a Be Local in Georgetown, you own a Be Local in Southwest Columbus, but there are over 125 Be Locals serving the most desirable places to live in the country. And I want to dive today into what is Be Local? Why are we passionate about Be Local? How does Be Local help a local business? And how does Be Local help a community thrive?
Trent Soles (02:06.186)
Yeah, this is a great subject to talk about because it's something personally I've been always passionate about and why I started a Be Local over seven years ago because we I think we were the number four Be Local in the country when we established ours and we all all four of us or at least three of us additional had started around the same time and it's expanded significantly.
Laura Capes Terry (02:30.68)
Can you speak to why Be Local started? Like, where did it even come from? I'm not sure I totally know all of the history.
Trent Soles (02:40.392)
Yeah, I could do that. right now. Okay, well, you can tell we just, you hey, let's start talking about this. And what's great about that is, is to just have natural conversation like this, which is what we do on the Umbretto Creative Podcast.
Laura Capes Terry (02:44.488)
Right now. Let's go. Tell me the history of Be Local.
Trent Soles (03:09.056)
To give you a kind of a background of Be Local, it was born out of an effort that one of our team members had on the East Coast. He was working with lot of realtors, and those realtors owned homes in an area, quite a significant amount of homes, hundreds, and they wanted to inform people of what there was in the area. Well, those realtors thought, wait a second, we rent these things to visitors, but...
What about new homeowners we sell homes to? What do they have? And they realized they don't have anything. So Be Local was born out of filling the need for helping guide people to the local resources that are most important to them. And then to be financed by the preferred local businesses in the area. And it came from simple roots of that concept of solving that big, big problem that new homeowners have. And by the way, it's a problem that most
especially business owners are completely unaware of unless they have moved themselves to a new area and a brand new area completely and they have no clue what's in the area. If someone gets on a social media group and if you get on there and say, Hey, what's the best plumber to use in town? You get about 50 choices from people that you don't know. And so, and some people say just Google it. Well, you get another 50 or a hundred choices.
Laura Capes Terry (04:27.391)
Right, right, right.
Trent Soles (04:36.854)
Who's better? Who's worse? You don't know who says that they're better or worse. So where does that leave you? And what about the additional local resources that aren't just businesses, they're just resources in the area you want to take advantage of? Where do I take my dog to a park that allows dogs in a park? know, things like that.
Laura Capes Terry (04:56.81)
Right. So I love a great story of a business that stepped up to solve a problem. You those are the most successful business when they find a problem that the bigger, the bigger the problem, the bigger the pain, the bigger the payoff. Right. So this one person saw this need from the realtors saying, wait a minute, like we want to give our new homeowners
Trent Soles (05:12.672)
Yeah.
Laura Capes Terry (05:25.73)
Let's just call it the Yellowbrook Road. We want to give our new homeowners the Yellowbrook Road to their new hometown, their new backyard, like where to go, what to do, who to trust. And can you help us create almost like a Bible kind of a resource, you know, an essential local resource that we can give them as a gift that helps them discover.
The again, the people, the places, the ideas, where to shop, where to eat, where to take your kid, where to take your pet. And that's how Be Local was born. And now it's in over 125 cities across the US and we're growing like crazy. So I love that.
Trent Soles (06:06.058)
Yeah. And you, and you know what I found that is the commonality of the most successful B locals around the country is when they have had cities and chambers and organizations, downtown organizations come to the B local director and say, Hey, we want to partner with you. We, because we know that what your goal is and what your, what your system is that we can't do ourselves.
Laura Capes Terry (06:26.389)
Yes.
Trent Soles (06:33.586)
is essential to our community and welcoming the new people into our area, the newcomers. And if we don't have that, we don't have the time or capacity to create it ourselves. So those cities and organizations who've partnered, who've come to that be local director, those are the most successful economically speaking. And you can speak to that as well. Important.
Laura Capes Terry (06:58.092)
Yeah, I mean, I could just tell you my own story of that. It's exactly what happened. I had opened my first B-Local in Cedar Park. We opened during the pandemic, of all things. I mean, we were in ramp up. We were about ready to go to print. The pandemic happened. And I thought, my gosh, we're out of business. Who is going to want to advertise in a pandemic? But guess what? In a pandemic, when people can't
shake hands, they can't meet up, they can't connect. It was more important than ever that these businesses advertise and be local, allowed them to get into a home. Because of the quality of the resource guide, it was able to get into a home, pass the trash can.
onto a coffee table, onto a countertop, onto a nightstand. It did not get thrown away. It got treasured. It got dog eared. It got post-it noted. It got circled. Like the value of it from a resource standpoint was so high that we nominated Be Local in Cedar Park.
for small business of the year. I never thought in a million years we'd have a chance of winning, but we were runner up and we lost to one of our clients. So who was advertising with us with a double truck. So I was like, we're okay with that. We can lose to one of our clients. So I knew in Cedar Park that we were onto something special. This was about seven years ago. So it's like 2019, 2020 that we were ramping up and launched.
Trent Soles (08:24.042)
Great. Yeah.
Laura Capes Terry (08:42.306)
And then a couple years later, I had moved to Georgetown to be near my parents and I had enrolled in the Leadership Georgetown program at the local Chamber of Commerce. And if you've never done the Leadership program in your city, I highly recommend that. It's a pull behind the curtain of how the city runs. You meet city leaders, police, fire, hospital.
charities, economic development. You meet everybody that's running the city and it's such an eye opener to what it takes. And that's one of the goals of this podcast is what does it take to create a community that thrives, to be a place that people wanna live and work? So I saw that happening in Georgetown and I also heard...
the mayor and the city manager talking about the challenges that the city was facing because Georgetown had really gotten on people's radar in central Texas during the pandemic. People were moving out of California and to Texas like by, it's crazy. And they were choosing to live outside of the Austin Metro and Georgetown's about a half hour north of the Austin Metro. So people were coming here like crazy. And the...
the city manager and the mayor were talking about the challenges that that was facing for the city from water conservation and walkability and parking and public safety and all these city resources and how to keep the city affordable. I went to the city with the local Cedar Park and I said, keep hearing about
all the challenges that the city's facing related to the booming population. Would it be helpful to you if I brought Be Local to Georgetown? Here's what we're doing in Cedar Park and it just won runner up for Small Business of the Year. Maybe it could be helpful to Georgetown if we created this resource and proactively mailed it to the new families moving here. And you know what they said? They said,
Laura Capes Terry (10:45.834)
We have known for decades that the future of our town is the new homeowner.
that's coming in, they're buying a home, they're putting their kids in the school, and they're plugging in as community leaders and community contributors. And we've just never had the time, energy, resources, staff, budget, like you name it. We haven't been able to proactively welcome them in the way that you can. So can we just partner with you? Can we love this? Can we do this with you? And they partnered up with us. They took a full page ad and they still have it to this day.
And then we push out five articles for them. We push out a welcome letter from the mayor. We push out a letter from the mayor pro tem casting a vision of the next 10 years. It's called the future of Georgetown where he's talking about how the city is handling those things I mentioned, water and.
Trent Soles (11:23.222)
Thank
Laura Capes Terry (11:42.319)
and parking and public safety and all of that. And it also includes all of the things that we as locals want new movers to know about. know, it's where to shop and where to eat and where to go with your kids and where to go with your pets. Like all of those essential guides that I just call, it's the word of mouth from the community.
packaged in a box with a bow on it, and we call that Be Local. So we launched my second Be Local back in 2022. We're in our fourth year right now. And the city of Georgetown took Be Local in front of the Texas Downtown Association back in, I think it was 2023, and said,
Hey, we've got something kind of cool here in Georgetown that we think other cities across Texas, and I'd say across the nation, could benefit from because look what it does for the economic vitality of our city. When you proactively welcome a new homeowner into town, not only is that good for the culture of your city, like you're saying,
We noticed you're here. We care about you. We welcome you. We want you to have an easier go of it because moving is exciting, but it's also really overwhelming. And this is a way to cut years off the process of settling in. In fact, I remember when I moved to Georgetown, it was right before the pandemic. I didn't even know we had a visitor center.
It took me two years to find the visitor center and I think you the visitor center is very well known by tourists people that come into the city for a day to eat or shop but as a new resident and a new local I didn't know we had a visitor center and the fact that it took me two years to find it is not good. So we put an article in Be Local Georgetown that says
Trent Soles (13:16.967)
Hahaha
Trent Soles (13:39.904)
Yes.
Laura Capes Terry (13:44.819)
the top 10 things you should do when you move to Georgetown. And it's everything from get the city's newsletter that comes out every week via email. Go to the chamber and get the chamber's membership guide because it's full of thousands of local businesses that can help you.
Go get your library card. Go to the Palace Theater and see the history of that beautiful place. Like we point and go to the visitor center and get all the little brochures of all the places around the city that would be fun for your family. By packaging all of that up into one essential resource, we cut years off the amount of time it takes someone.
to get plugged in. And when you do that, you shorten the amount of time it takes for them to start spending money with those local businesses. When they enroll their kids in an aftercare program or they take their dog to a dog trainer or they...
You know shop at the boutique or they there are events events was another big thing that people were hungry for like the new Homeowners are like what's going on in town? So events is a big thing for be locals. So we ended up winning the best downtown partner award because of
our contribution to the economic vitality of Georgetown. And what I love about that is it just celebrates Be Local, the brand nationwide to say, this is who we are, this is what we do, this is the mission of Be Local is to help our communities thrive by proactively welcoming those new movers and quickly connecting them to
Laura Capes Terry (15:36.611)
preferred local businesses, businesses that are beloved in the community, businesses that people know, like, and trust. But these new homeowners, they don't yet know these businesses exist. So these businesses have to do something to extend that olive branch to these new homeowners and say, hey, welcome. We're glad you're here. And by the way, we've been here for 30 years and we're happy you're here, right?
Trent Soles (15:47.648)
Yeah.
Trent Soles (16:03.722)
Yeah. And even the one thing that we do with Be Local is not only the print platform, which is a keepsake, a keepable thing, and people respond to it differently than they do online, right? Online ads, they look at them differently. There's something about print that is more lasting in our minds when we look at it and credible. And then online, to be able to interview for
us interview a business and have them provide helpful tips to that new homeowner, which really reaches everybody else in the community. That's the person they want to actually go to because they're the most helpful. And by the way, I wanted to reference back to something you said about what Georgetown did that was so, so smart. the multiple cities have done this throughout the nation is the new homeowner, when you train them,
There's a better word for that. When you guide them and educate them and help them understand the premise of the community and the people and the places and the ideas within the community, they come in as a community member and they can thrive even more because they understand what they're coming to. They understand what they're part of. Because if they don't have that understanding, they're going to just
Laura Capes Terry (17:24.867)
That's right.
Trent Soles (17:30.742)
come in with their own ideas and try to change what's already established, right?
Laura Capes Terry (17:36.095)
You are absolutely right. And let me add to that. When I decided to bring Be Local to Georgetown, I got to say, some of the locals were not excited because the idea was we were going to proactively welcome these new movers. But the locals that have lived here for decades were not excited about the new movers. They did not want their city to grow. They did not want their city to change.
So my promise to the longtime local by creating the local was that look, part of my job is to capture the history, the heart, the culture of this town and pay it forward to these new residents because I can't stop them from coming. You know, the city, the city leaders, I heard them say that in leadership. They said we can't stop the growth, but we can manage it well.
So be local is one of those ways that we can help the city manage the growth well. And by using part of our content, part of our platform to pass on the history, heart and culture of our town, we do let people know who we are so that they can step into it and become a part of who we are and not come and change it. And I'll tell you that one of the most popular articles
Beside the dining guide, the designing guide, the dining guide is like, everyone wants to see like these 90 local restaurants that people love that are, yeah, they're locally owned, locally operated. But one of our most popular articles is called Charities We Love because Georgetown is a very giving heart community. Like when you're a business owner in Georgetown and I, know, any businesses in Georgetown that are listening to me right now, hear me when I say.
Trent Soles (19:06.29)
Right. Everybody wants food.
Trent Soles (19:15.968)
Hmm. Yeah.
Laura Capes Terry (19:29.582)
People wanna do business with you when they know how you give back. So that's exactly right. So if you're gonna do business in Georgetown, you need to find a charity partner to give back to because we expect that of our businesses in Georgetown. And to share that with the residents and say to the new homeowners, we are a giving city and we all have charities that we're passionate about. And here's a list of 60 local charities
Trent Soles (19:33.898)
Yes, how much you care.
Laura Capes Terry (19:59.321)
where you can donate your time, your talents, your treasure. Like this is a part of what it means to live in Georgetown. That's when the locals started to relax a little bit and say, yes, we'd like what you're doing with Be Local.
Trent Soles (20:12.308)
Yeah, that's an important distinction. If you're welcoming people into an area that cares, you want the new people to know that you care and that they can care too. And then all of a sudden you've got a whole community, even with new people caring about each other. Such a great concept, but it's something that cities, have a hard time knowing how to do.
Because I understand the challenges that residents have that locals have when they don't want change. What they what they're really saying is not that they don't want change. What they're really saying is that I don't want the change to go bad. I don't want it to be bad for us. I don't want riffraff coming in my community. You hear these terms. I don't want change that doesn't reflect our community. So I get that and I don't think city manager
Laura Capes Terry (20:55.758)
Right, right, right.
Trent Soles (21:09.062)
municipalities want the bad change either. They want the good change, by like, for example, Georgetown, providing what the future vision is and educating people on that, the new homeowners and having articles in Be Local that reflect that, that's genius because that's a way to connect with the community members. Otherwise they wouldn't know we're there. And by the way, cities don't necessarily know.
who's moving in. It's not like they get this message and an email like, John Smith just moved in. They have to go search for these things. They don't even have mailing lists like we do that have been vetted. They're just like going to the auditor's website, which isn't going to give them all accurate data. And so they're at a disadvantage.
Laura Capes Terry (21:48.216)
Right.
Right.
Laura Capes Terry (22:00.409)
That's actually a really important point to make is that, you know, we've seen other companies like Welcome Wagon and places like that buy lists from the Deeds and Records Office and mail coupons. Like that's been around for decades. Here's a problem with that. When you buy a list from the Deeds and Records Office, that list is at least 90 days old.
So that person has already settled in. They've already started Googling. You know, they're finding their way. They're hiring the painter to paint their house. They're building a pool. They're putting in new floors. They're remodeling their kitchen. They're doing whatever they're doing. So that's the first thing is you're late. The second thing is when you're mailing,
coupons and groupons and direct response postcards to a new homeowner, which by the way, they get slammed with when they first buy a home. Now all you are is a solicitor. Like, do you want to be seen as the community solicitor?
buy now, buy today, price off? No, you want to be seen for who you are, which is someone that's been in the community for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and you give back to these charities and you've served on these boards and you've got thousands of local residents that love you. You want to be seen as a trusted local resource and you want to make that
great first impression when someone moves here. You don't want to just solicit them, right? So that's exactly, so we're pivoting from this idea of a transaction to this idea of a new relationship. And a new relationship takes time to develop. often joke people will be like, well, I...
Trent Soles (23:43.382)
Transactual.
Laura Capes Terry (23:58.219)
advertised and be local and I didn't get any calls my first month and I'm like would you walk into a coffee shop for a blind date and ask them to marry you the first time you make eye contact like no so let's just remember that new relationships are like planting seeds and those seeds need time to grow roots and bear fruit so
do not expect a transaction. And honestly, businesses that expect a transaction are really not a good fit for us at Be Local.
Trent Soles (24:33.088)
Yeah, that's true. You know, I helped a client recently through a process of, they have a process of tracking, right? You'll find this funny. And businesses and B-local directors will find this funny. So what we did was I looked at his tracking mechanism and on his form, he had all of these different places like
TV, radio, billboard, Oprah, magazine, right, Facebook, Instagram, Google, et cetera, right? So he said that invariably, every time he gets people clicking on TV and radio, which are the first two or first three, and here's the funny part of the story.
Laura Capes Terry (25:05.326)
Go.
Trent Soles (25:29.61)
He's a dentist who's never advertised ever.
Laura Capes Terry (25:33.368)
could have predicted that trend. You know why? People don't care about your tracking. They want to get on with their life. So if you give them a form like that, they're just going to choose the first thing. Right?
Trent Soles (25:46.036)
Now they were amazed he was on Oprah.
Just, you know.
Laura Capes Terry (25:51.519)
So years ago, I was the director of marketing for a large chain of fitness equipment stores and we ran a midnight madness sale. We spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on this massive media campaign and we had everything running except TV. We had radio, had direct mail, we had online, we had newspaper, we had it all.
And I was standing there that night. We were open till midnight and it was like waiting line at the cash register. I mean, it was insane. We set records. It was so cool. But anyway, I'm standing at the cash register watching the salespeople ring these people out. you know, they had been told to say, how did you hear about the midnight madness sale? And I literally witnessed a husband and a wife and the husband said, I don't know. We were just driving by.
And the wife said, because the salesperson would have just put in the computer drive by, right? Well, the wife hits him on the arm and she said, that's not true. We heard it on the radio and I have this postcard. And she pulled a postcard out of her purse. So the reason that I tell that story is that it takes more than one impression.
for a business owner to remember you. So you have to stay consistent. You have to hit them more than one way because one time one way is just not good enough. And that's why Be Local uses the power of print in the reach of digital to hit them multiple ways. We get in the home with the printed piece, which is the most trusted form of advertising. If you do your research on the power of magazines,
Trent Soles (27:07.819)
Yes.
Trent Soles (27:35.306)
Yeah, just Google it.
Laura Capes Terry (27:36.215)
especially luxury magazines is the most credible form of media. People believe what they read in a credible high-end magazine. So we use the power of print, but then we use the reach of digital. People see those ads on their phone, on their computer, on their social media. So our business sponsors can get four introductions.
with one marketing partner called Be Local. And that's a huge value to a business owner because they got four introductions without having to lift a finger because we're doing it for them. And I want to make the point, which I know you love to say, is that we're doing something for a business that they can't do for themselves. Because when we talk about you, we're...
giving you almost like an ambassador influencer kind of an endorsement, which is far more credible and far more powerful than you promoting yourself because people know that self-promotion is self-promotion. They want to hear third party credibility. They want to hear testimonials. They want to get referrals. They want to get recommendations, which is why we as Be Local Area Directors, we meet in person.
Trent Soles (28:35.037)
yeah. Yeah.
Laura Capes Terry (28:50.958)
with every potential sponsor because I don't know about you, but I've said no to businesses and said, I'm sorry you're not a fit for our audience. we're, that's exactly right. Like you coming into the Be Local family are a reflection on the rest of the sponsors. So I have to make sure that you're known by the company you keep. I have to make sure that you're a beloved local business, that the locals
Trent Soles (28:54.708)
Yeah. This is personal referral. Referral of ours.
Laura Capes Terry (29:18.048)
Know, like and trust because if you're not, you're just not a good fit for our platform.
Trent Soles (29:18.538)
Yeah.
Trent Soles (29:22.966)
Yeah. And just to make one point clear, even more clear when you said that when you, I'm speaking to the business owner now, when you promote yourself on social media, it's impossible to do it outside of promoting yourself. It's coming from your own page and to have a local influencer. I don't care who it is. Could be a B local or it could be anything else. A local influencer talking about you from the outside.
Is them bragging about you rather than you bragging about yourself. That's a very, very important distinction because I've had businesses say, well, we do our own social media. We're fine. Not realizing that the power of just one post done by a B local director, a local influencer, B local influencer. The power of just that one post is a hundredfold compared to your own post.
Laura Capes Terry (30:11.214)
That's right.
Trent Soles (30:18.312)
of yourself on your own platform that only reaches your own people pretty much. Unless you do a sponsor ad, which that's a different story altogether.
Laura Capes Terry (30:26.412)
Well, and this podcast is called Be Locally Loved. So that's a great opportunity for us to pivot and say, does a business become locally loved? And we all know that one really important way is to have other people talking about you. It's called word of mouth.
Here's the problem with word of mouth is that word of mouth is not something a business can build a sales pipeline around. You can't look at your pipeline or your sales sheet and say to your salespeople, what are you going to do next month, guys? What are you going to do next quarter, guys? What are you going to do next year, guys? They're going to say, I don't know. We're waiting for the word of mouth to happen. Like you cannot control or direct or count on word of mouth.
Trent Soles (31:14.442)
with it.
Laura Capes Terry (31:20.086)
So we want business owners to understand that word of mouth is the byproduct of running a great business. It is not your marketing strategy. But a way to leverage the idea of word of mouth is to partner.
with local influencers in your community that when they have an audience and when they speak to their audience about you, you get implied credibility, implied endorsement, and you climb that no like and trust curve much faster. And I might say.
When you're only doing self-promotion, I'm not sure you're climbing the trust credibility curve at all. I think that you might even kind of be hurting yourself because people again will see you as a solicitor and not a trusted local resource. You have to lead with service. You have to lead with education. You have to help people. That is how you send out trust signals to your community.
Trent Soles (32:19.924)
You know, it's cool that I've recommended to a lot of, and a lot of the local directors recommended to their clients, their preferred local businesses is for those preferred local businesses, when they see a post from a B local director, from their page about another business, it may not be their competitor, but you know, another business, they share that post, you know, bragging about their fellow business.
in the community that's doing a great job serving people. And then guess what happens? They end up doing the same thing for themselves. So you get local influencers all over the place talking about each other. Well, guess who the pool of businesses that people will want to hire? They will want to be in that. I've had many people say that we have our Be Local. And if we can't find the Be Local, we just go on the website.
And we look for the preferred businesses because that's where we pick our businesses. We know you vetted them. We know you interviewed them. We know that they're accountable to you because, you know, if businesses are doing very bad with local residents, we won't partner with them anymore. We won't, we won't highlight them. So that's so important to local residents. It's not about, you know, how many Google reviews they got from all around the world, which they can control themselves. It's not about how many likes and
Laura Capes Terry (33:27.672)
Right.
Trent Soles (33:43.316)
Followers they have on social media. It's about what people are saying
Laura Capes Terry (33:47.96)
Right?
Well, and I mean, I'm a believer that a rising tide lifts all boats. So when I see B-local sponsors supporting other B-local sponsors, we're all in service to our community. We're all here to help our city and our community thrive. And when we celebrate local businesses as a thing, like that's good. These local businesses are the heartbeat of our community. If we didn't have
Trent Soles (33:54.069)
Mm-hmm.
Laura Capes Terry (34:18.858)
local businesses, our communities would be completely different. So we exist to help local businesses thrive. This podcast, Be Locally Loved, is here to help.
businesses understand how to become locally loved and be local is just one idea of many that can help a community thrive. So we thank you all today for joining us. We hope that you'll come back as we continue to interview people, places and ideas that are helping our communities thrive. Thanks for being with us. We'll see you next time.
Trent Soles (34:55.35)
Take care.
