My first career position, was in Asheville, North Carolina.
And, uh, I moved to Asheville when, um, I was in my early twenties.
And, my first position there was with a chamber of commerce.
Which is like a business league.
And Asheville, North Carolina, is in the western part of the state.
And it sits in the Great Smoky Mountains.
And it is an absolutely beautiful location.
And, one of the things that, um, I was asked to do when I was there was, Asheville, as beautiful of a city it is, surrounded by the mountains.
Had an inferiority complex as a community.
And you would just see this, this beautiful community.
And you couldn't imagine why in the world a, a city that was so beautiful.
Surrounded by these Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains and Pisca National Forest sitting on a Plateau.
Had an inferiority complex.
And it seemed at that time in the seventies that, um, many of the communities that it was competing with for business.
Especially for tourism, um, had discovered air conditioning.
So people did not have to go to the mountains any longer to cool off in the summer months.
And they found themselves competing with Atlanta, and Miami, and other Florida_state of Florida destinations.
So it was, um, it was kind of interesting to me.
So my challenge was to position, this beautiful mountain city of Asheville in a national marketplace.
So, in order to do that, I of course had to do my homework, and find out what was unique about Ashville, other than its physical location.
And it turned out that it had a, uh, uh, very rich history of Scottish and English, uh, settlers who settled in the mountains.
And they had, uh, brought their traditions with them.
Of the dancing, the folk music and the folk dancing.
And, there were fiddlers, which are of course are violinists who just sort of pick at the fiddle.
And guitar players and banjo and mandolin players.
And they had, again, this wo-wonderful music.
And there were artisans who did crafts by hand.
Whether they were um the, the bowls, you know, making bowls from clay or glass blowing or things like that.
And it seemed like there were_ all these artisans and this rich talent of, uh, music, uh, uh, performers and dancers.
And it was just sort of, swept under the carpet.
So I was very fortunate in those early days that, um, I suggested that we sweep_ we get it out and lift up that carpet and sweep off all of that history of that area.
And package it, uh, into a nice package for marketing purposes.
And, um, rather than competing with Atlanta, and some of the other larger cities.
That it should look at its own personality, and perhaps position itself against other mountain resort areas.
Um, in the, in the Colorado Mountains or in, the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.
And that, that was more of its competition.
It would never be a huge metropolitan city like, uh, a New York City or Washington D-C, or anything like that.
So my thoughts at the time were that, everything that was natural and innate to that area, was what we should be promoting and packaging.
And an interesting thing happened when we did that.
It just created a tremendous sense of pride in the community.
And all of a sudden this community that had this terrible inferiority complex, found itself reborn.
With a new sense of pride and enthusiasm for who they were.
And, um, so that was pretty much my first challenge in Ashville, North Carolina.
And, uh, it turned out to be one of my very favorite cities.
Uh, the people there are very warm and accepting.
And they had very, um, very good business sense about them.
And of course they were very thrifty, being with that, uh, Scottish heritage that they had.
And, um, so they were just wonderful people, uh, to work with.
And to get to know.
And, uh, and again they just felt so_ uh, the pride that they felt from this approach and, just looking at who they are.
And being proud of who they are and their heritage.
And it turned out to be a magnificent success, uh, and a marketing story for business purposes.