The Story Behind the Business: Honoring Entreprenuers, Services and Impact
Why Business Historical Preservation is Important?
Have you ever thought about what will happen to your business after you retire or make a decision to dissolve your business? Will the community know that your business ever existed? I believe it is so important for organizations, nonprofits, for profits, even families, to preserve their history and to schedule time to plan for the legacy that they want to leave. Legacy planning for your business is the gateway to ensuring that the story that you want to be told is told—--your authentic story is unveiled.
One idea to uncover and to document your organizational history and impact is to make sure that you are collecting and archiving special moments in your local library, university and/or state archives. This includes, but is not limited to interviews, news articles, awards, professional affiliations, impact reports, photos and any other public recognition that you want to be preserved and archived for others to learn more about your business and the impact that it had on the lives of the broader community. We must not forget that as we continue to be recognized for the services that we offer to our communities, that we preserve our history, and that we use these archival resources to our benefit, so that our others will know for generations to come that our businesses were vibrant and thriving.
Oral histories are yet another way to document the history and the impact of your business. At times we share knowledge informally with our families, friends, coworkers, and colleagues however, are we talking to these same individuals about the importance of passing down business knowledge? Not only passing down knowledge verbally, but being intentional about recording factual information from the founder’s mouth so that you don’t have to guess what this organization meant to its customers and clients. Oral histories also remind us to keep in mind that everyone's not interested in organizational preservation. While some are interested, others may not understand why it is important to leave a legacy. To make oral histories fun and engaging, don’t hesitate to take out your cell phones or Ipads and record and or video your sessions so that you have saved audio and visual recordings and interviews about your organization to share with future generations.
Capturing Stories as a Proactive Response to Gentrification
Archival documents and oral histories are powerful resources to utilize as many communities, where your business may reside, are changing rapidly due to gentrification. Specifically, historically African American neighborhoods are becoming more ethnically and economically diverse. Many of the residents and businesses that were once there, are no longer. As a result it is up to community leaders, organizers, family members and friends to safeguard this history in some type of way. Questions that may be asked of business owners and organizational leaders are as follows:
Why did you choose this business name?
Why did you choose this site/location for your business?
Why did you choose this mission for your business?
What other businesses existed in the community and what was their mission?
How did your business or organization build relationships with other businesses? with the community?
What were the traditions of your business? Community members
What were the traditions of the community members and the community?
As a business or organization, what impact did you have in the community?
These are thought provoking questions that business owners and organizational leaders should reflect on to capture stories that can be shared for a lifetime. We want the entrepreneurs and leaders who come after us to know what we did and how we served our community. As you think about the question, “what legacy do I want to leave? You also should be thinking about how I am going to preserve that legacy?
Creating Spaces Where Our Stories Live On
important stories and accomplishments should move beyond memories and oral traditions into something visible, documented, accessible, and preserved for future generations. For example, finding a location or planning and developing an event, where you can simply tell your story—your lived experience. This may be creating a website, establishing a mobile exhibit or museum, establishing a scholarship, a gala or a fundraiser or renovating a community space, room or house where you can showcase your organization’s accomplishments as well as highlight the experiences of other community trailblazers and leaders who have had just as much impact. One personal experience is my community has a community center, which is a historical site, the original Billingsville School, a Rosenwald School and includes a Wall of Fame. This Wall of Fame includes the names, photos and titles of community members and leaders who made an impact since the late 1800s, however in terms of the history of our historical community as well as the leaders on this wall, that very important information resides in the oral stories of the families in the community. (Very limited history is even included in the local newspaper and the local library, so more work must be done to expand this exhibit).
The Time is Now
Although I began to address “the time is now” in capturing our stories due to gentrification above, I want to reiterate the importance of upholding our legacy and our history. As I scrolled through Instagram and I truly believe AI hears everything and is lurking everywhere. On my Instagram feed, AI began to bring up a service that included a flat screen that you can post in your schools, even your churches, where you tell your businesses’ story. Even though this was advanced and this company would do the work for you, it's just a flat screen TV that loops your story based on the information that you share with their business about your business.
If you were to take the time to do this on your own, I believe that you could do it yourself. It might not be as technologically advanced as this company’s offerings, but you could use Google Slides, Power Point, Canva or any other presentation software to insert your content and set the slide deck to loop to tell your story. My point is that it does not have to be complex to share your story, “the time is now” to start somewhere. This is one way to get started, to begin your legacy, one slide at a time, creating a presentation of content and photos that tells the story of your business and expanding beyond the oral stories and histories.
Remember tools are available to support your project, however, Anaya Enterprises, is available to move this support into action, creating a memento that truly shares with the world your businesses’ impact. You put so much hard work into your businesses, so let’s work together to keep the legacy alive. At Anaya Enterprises, we lead with C.A.R.E., walking with you every step of the way in conserving the history of your business. By helping you to complete your “legacy asset map," together we can develop a solid foundation to preserve and to document your business history, impact and legacy.