Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan & John DeCicco.
So Megan please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My background is in hospitality, and for many years my dream was to own my own bed and breakfast. This dream led me to join the opening team of a 106-room resort hotel for a local casino, and I loved every minute of it. As I was promoted within the operation, I attended a supervisor training class – like many companies provide – and was doing an exercise with one of my colleagues that involved him dictating instructions on a Lego creation I was supposed to make, without me being able to see the picture. In a moment of exasperation, I jokingly told my partner I was just going to build whatever I wanted, and that was an a-ha moment for me. I knew I needed to expand my skill set and get out of this comfort zone if I was ever going to evolve.
I spent the next 11 years (yes, 11) accepting every new opportunity I could within the same organization. I built the internal training department that would replace the training consultants the company used for the infamous Lego workshop that inspired this major life change. I ran a property-wide guest service training initiative, including customized five-diamond service strategies for each of the 20+ departments within the organization. I ran employee engagement programs. And I eventually landed in the brand new Marketing department, where I would find my true passion.
I love marketing. I love storytelling, I love the design process, and I love discovering new things. About three years into my marketing career, I was tasked with seeking local businesses to partner with the casino to offer extended rewards for casino club members within the broader community. Internally, the expectation for participation was low. But within three months, I had signed on more than 60 local businesses and more than 100 after the first six months.
I wanted it to be a true partnership, beneficial to both, so I spent the time to go and meet each local business owner at their location. I learned about each of their marketing challenges, their unique business models and got to understand the passion and dreams that made each business a reality. I was intrigued by how creative small business owners had to be with marketing expenses; because every dollar had to count.
I wanted to know more and do more for these incredible businesses. So I joined the board for my local chamber to learn more about small businesses and local government. Every business has a budget to follow, so I was familiar with the need for ROI and post-forma on marketing spend. But the reality of a casino’s marketing budget against the marketing budget for my town’s visitors bureau at the time was – in a word – shocking. Their entire annual advertising budget was less than the bill for a single department dinner. And because it had to last a full year, the bureau had to get incredibly creative with how they spent each dollar.
It was this creativity I fell in love with. The out-of-the-box thinking, the ability to take small, calculated risks trying something new because they couldn’t afford to pay big-ticket prices for what larger destinations were doing. With all of this passion and energy, I knew I didn’t want to be a casino marketing person for the rest of my career. I wanted to apply my marketing skills and knowledge to other industries. So after 11 years, I retired from the casino industry and joined a wine production company. This is where things got interesting.
One day I was talking with a colleague from the Sales department about a trip she was going to take to Europe with her husband. She was passionately and animatedly talking about the cork forest they planned to visit, and like the Lego incident, I was hit broadside with another a-ha moment. I didn’t love wine the way most people in the industry do. This amazing and talented woman loves the wine industry so much she wants to visit the place a packaging component comes from. So I started thinking, “What do I love so much I even care about where the packaging comes from?”
Less than four months later, I resigned from my VP position without a plan for what I would do next. (Thank goodness I have an incredible and supportive spouse!) Two months later, I got sick. After 12 days in the hospital and no diagnosis, I was able to go home but struggled daily with full-body hives and zero energy. I slept 14 hours or more each day, and my usable time came in 30-60 minute blocks. Our life had come to a screeching halt.
With the help of an awesome allergy/immunology specialist, after eight months of this misery, we found a medication that helped but didn’t fully relieve the symptoms. But I was finally feeling a bit more like myself. Around this time, my local chamber had just completed a Marketing Action Plan for the visitor’s bureau and were interested in contracting with someone to help implement the plan. I still struggled with odd and inconsistent “good hours” and was looking for an opportunity to work from home with flexible hours, so I threw my hat in the ring! I knew they wouldn’t be able to afford a big salary, so John had the idea of setting up a consulting company so I could do this dream work (I love my town) and take on a few more clients to help make a bit more money.
Solutions On 2nd, LLC was born. One of the things that we do a bit differently is we don’t take on more than one active client per industry at a time. We have our destination client, plus a winery, restaurant, veterinary clinic, a variety of unique nonprofits, and have worked with retail and online merchants and a number of other small businesses since we started in August 2017.
In many instances, we’ve found fun and unique overlapping concepts that we’ve been able to bring to our clients from other industries, and because of the creative freedoms that come from working with small businesses, we’ve been able to try a number of new and exciting things. We also like to help small business owners with the occasional pro bono work because we know how hard navigating the marketing landscape can be when you can’t afford to hire a professional marketing person and you are the business owner/housekeeper/facilities manager/chef/winemaker/accountant. Small business owners wear so many hats; that’s why we say it’s “your vision + our support.”
It’s been this intimate understanding of small businesses across the spectrum that inspired us to start the #buysmallsavesmall movement. We live in a small area that is heavily reliant on tourism to support our independently-owned businesses. Like so many communities across the country, if we wait until travel resumes to pre-pandemic levels, we might lose even more of our local small businesses than we already have. But what if people didn’t necessarily wait for their next visit to the area before making purchases with our local businesses? And what if we made purchases in communities we haven’t visited before and find a shop we love so much we decide to add it to our list for future travel plans?
And with social media connecting us with friends and family across the country, finding that small business to support is as easy as asking.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We’re just getting started! We set a budget of $20 per week per business, before tax and shipping. We felt it was important not to include shipping because – let’s be honest – many small businesses can’t afford to throw in free shipping, which most people have come to expect thanks to Amazon and other online retailers. Some of our purchases have included free shipping, but most do not because they fall below the business’s threshold for their free shipping minimum purchase.
So far, we’ve made 53 purchases in 21 states. All of them have either been from a business we already know and love or from a personal recommendation on our personal or @BuySmallSaveSmall accounts on social media from followers, friends, and family. We’ve even gotten a few people to make purchases inspired by our own, which is the dream! We aren’t sure if we can have a big impact as a single household spending $20 at a time, but if others join in the fun, we could potentially make a big difference for small businesses and communities across the country!
We welcome others to join us for #BuySmallSaveSmall and #ShopAll50 challenge! Set a budget that works for you and your family, and watch for other ways to save. Many sites have pop-up options and promotional offers for new email sign-ups so your budget can go a bit further.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
John is originally from Clinton, CT, and moved to California when he was 12. I was born and raised in Santa Maria, CA, where we met in high school and have pretty much been together ever since. Our lifestyle can be summed up by my favorite fortune cookie wisdom: “Enough is as good as a feast.” As a grip and lighting professional, John lost his primary job at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 and remains unemployed from that industry today. Fortunately, we were able to keep many of our clients on for communication services when everything shut down, so he pivoted from grip and lighting to small business marketing and joined me in our consulting business.
We let a few clients out of their contracts early because we couldn’t complete the work they hired us to do when in-person activities ceased, but because we were able to keep a bulk of our income intact, we decided we would use some of our available funds each month to make purchases from our favorite local businesses. We’d send random gifts to our family, usually wine or food for virtual gatherings. We’d send thinking of you gifts to friends having a hard time. We regularly donated to our town’s “Blessing Box,” a community pantry stocked with food for families in need. We also helped organize and sponsor drive-around events for our community, like a Fourth of July at-home event, and donated 200 gifts to the local church at Christmas for children whose families attended the weekly food distribution.
With my health issues, we haven’t been able to be out and about to help our community and our small businesses, so we’ve gotten really creative with how we can provide assistance remotely. #BuySmallSaveSmall was started with money we received from the economic stimulus bill passed earlier this year: it was money we hadn’t planned on, so we thought it would best be utilized supporting small businesses and their communities around the country.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
BuySmallSaveSmall is inspired largely because of the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone is familiar with the concept of shopping small and supporting your locally owned businesses. But with so many of these small businesses having to pivot to an online experience, there is a whole slew of new businesses that you can support online now who might not have had an online shopping experience before.
We are in California, and earlier this year, Visit California held a massive state of tourism event where they pretty much warned local destinations that it could be a year or more before travel normalizes to pre-pandemic levels. So many of our destinations will be competing with each other for road trippers in and around the state, and the small community we live in is heavily reliant on tourism.
That got us to thinking about all of the small towns and communities like ours who need a regular influx of tourists to help our small businesses survive and thrive. It’s hard for destinations to cut through the marketing clutter on minimal budgets against larger destinations like LA and San Francisco, just like it’s hard for a small business to stand out to new potential customers without a marketing budget or knowledge of how to advertise to them.
Taking that thought one step further, what if instead of focusing on building customers within their immediate community, small businesses cultivated customers around the country who could support them and make purchases online whenever they want? And what if people more regularly gave unsolicited shout-outs to their favorite small businesses on social media so more people could discover them?
Here’s one example: I’ve never been to Houston, TX. Maybe for a layover during a flight, but I think only Dallas. One of my friends on Facebook, Jen, posted about this great little shop called Good & Well Boutique so I decided to check them out. We were just at the very beginnings of #BuySmallSaveSmall, and I wanted to test the third way to participate: “If you see your friend share a business they love on social media, take the time to check out the online shop and make a purchase if able. You just might find your new favorite thing, and you’ll be showing your support for the dreams of a small business owner!”
Well, I bought some bread mixes called Soberdough. Then I learned more about the business (they are a mobile boutique that focuses on US products and highlights women-owned brands; what a fun and amazing idea!). Then I got my package, did the unboxing for it and found not only a handwritten note but a free sample of a solid perfume. The little touches with this simple order were amazing, and I was hooked! I’ve made two more purchases since then, after only discovering them through that one simple post I happened to see shared on my friend’s feed. See? It works!
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@buysmallsavesmall.com
- Website: https://www.buysmallsavesmall.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buysmallsavesmall/
- Other: https://www.solutionson2nd.com/
Image Credits
All images are by Megan DeCicco / #BuySmallSaveSmall
