Jay Rayford
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Rep Your City
Jay + Rep Your City
It was the ‘coming into my own’ time spent in the summer of 10th grade where I had my very first experience truly connecting with a local business. I had my first job and was finally able to make my own decision on where I’d buy my clothes. Fortunately I was able to balance school and work life pretty well without it affecting my grades. Long story short, I was able to take my report card to a local clothing store and because it was a certain GPA, was rewarded with a discount off of anything I wanted. This made me want to come back regardless if it was to get a discount or to pay full price. I felt valued at that local business. That’s what we hope to reignite through the My City Loyalty program- where citizens are rewarded for their loyalty to local places and events. Our goal is to develop relationships with the big local brands to power the rewards for the loyalty of local businesses. Another part of the project I’m excited about is where we’ll take X amount of dollars out of the business memberships to put into a pot for local organizations to compete via YouTube videos; winner chosen by the public. This is just one way for local businesses to effortlessly give back while getting valuable marketing services through our program.
Building His Business
Speaking on the feeling of value, there’s the Build program. As a participant in the program I was able to dive deeply into this new concept for eight weeks. I think it’s a critically important phase that anyone with an idea should undertake as it propels you to consider every aspect of your business plan. With managing the efforts of RepYourCity.com, it’s sometimes difficult to really sit down and solely focus on a new project. This program gave me the ability to do that while also getting feedback from class members. The relationships you Build (just a little pun intended) in this program itself are worth the time and effort. One of the things that really stood out for me in the program was the effort to demystify professional services. As you may know, there are countless businesses that start up with no lawyer, no accountant, etc. and pay sorely for it later on down the road. So they brought in different individuals representing several areas in the professional services realm and we were able to ask questions, debunk previous thoughts as to cost, willingness to work with startups and more.
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