🌾 Ring the Bell

May 24, 2023 | Sign Up | Support Us

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning, Wichita!

I hope you brought your snorkel because we about to dive in the deep end.

In today's Wichita Life Update

Ring the Bell
Music, Internet, Sports
Business

Let's get to it!

- Landon Huslig

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Ring the Bell

I had lunch with an entrepreneur last week who mentioned a line that stuck with me:

“Wichita does not do a good job of ringing our own bell.”

What does it mean to ring our own bell?

Toot our horn. Brag about ourselves. Pat ourselves on the back.

There are so many people doing really cool things in Wichita, but we’re too quick to jump on the failures rather than celebrate successes.

Our conversation was specifically about entrepreneurs (which I definitely want to focus on), but there are a lot of others in town we need to build up.

I’m not talking about a specific lane like social media, music, or athletics - I am talking about everything and everyone. We have people in and from Wichita that are doing things at the highest level and people barely know about them.

Music

Why is that no one knew about Dibesh Pokheral aka Arthur Gunn before he went viral for his audition on American Idol before going on to win runner-up that year (and should have won if we’re being honest)?

He was performing at R Coffeehouse on a regular basis, but his name never got out there. Sure some people knew him, but everyone in Wichita should know his name.

He isn't the only one. Just to name a few others who had success on American Idol:

Injoy Fountain also made a run on The Voice. That is not even to mention musicians like Rudy Love Jr or The Cavves that are making national waves alrady.

How can we help elevate these individuals even further so that they are household names nationwide, not just in Wichita (although it all starts here).

Internet

One of the best ways to break out of a geographic area is to use a little thing called the internet.

Wichita has its fair share of big time youtubers and social media stars, but how many people know about these people. I’ll keep this short because these people are worth a deep dive of their own.

Lisa Nguyen - She no longer lives in Wichita (KC now), but we still claim her. 4.41 million Youtube, 209k on Instagram, 3.1 million on Tiktok
D’aydrian Harding - 7.9 million on Tiktok, 1.87 million on Youtube, 371k on Instagram
Hoovie’s Garage - 1.51 million on Youtube
Tanner Braungardt - 4.42 million on Youtube, 701k on Tiktok

Sports

We have a number of people from Wichita who have played or are currently playing professional sports. I won’t go into a full list, but the #1 running back of all time is from Wichita!

Why isn’t there a Barry Sanders statue somewhere? Why aren’t half the kids wearing Barry Sanders jerseys?

Or Lynette Woodard, one of the all-time great women basketball players.

That’s not to mention the people currently playing professional sports like Davante Harris, Jaylyn Agnew, Jordan Phillips, Blake Bell and more.

Business

Each year there is a (admittedly dumb) Twitter competition for Midwest Startups. It is essentially a popularity contest to see who is the “best” midwest startup. We have done fairly well in the past, but it is 100% meaningless.

What we need to do is actually support the true startups in our community. Other cities are doing a much better job at this than we are.

Why can’t we harness the energy we spend on things like a dumb twi and focus it on people actively building something to make our community better?

How can we collectively band together to build up each other in Wichita?

Wichita has a large enough population that if we all banded together we could build serious momentum for individuals and businesses that could then go on to make an impact regionally, nationally, or internationally. If we honed in the spotlight, we could easily help out a business generate a record day of sales which could snowball and make all the difference for that business, that individual, and even our city.

NXTUS is an entrepreneur organization that host pilot competitions across Fintech, health tech, and more. The goal is to make Wichita the ‘Pilot Capital of the World’ where people can bring their companies or products to test them out, learn lessons and ultimately improve the world.

Imagine a world where we can regularly amplify the people and businesses in Wichita to truly put Wichita on the map.

“Okay, Landon. Cool. We get it. But what does that actually look like in practice?”

Example: Pinole Blue has gone viral on TikTok, been on Shark Tank, and runs a REAL business (with a delicious product).

What if we all rallied around them to continue to build them up by:

Buying their products or service
Following and engaging with their social accounts
Telling your friends. Word of mouth is the best marketing

We can each use the platform we have whether that be a text group message with old friends, large social media accounts, or just on your own personal social accounts. There is no amount of “influence” that is "too small”.

I can think of at least a dozen entrepreneurs who have very successful companies that we hear nothing about.

Wichita does a great job of jumping from new shiny thing to new shiny thing (much of which is for great reason) like Chicken N Pickle to Top Golf and so forth. We need to show love to the existing businesses and gems that make Wichita a great place already. We need to build up the entrepreneurs that have been grinding (and succeeding).

What do you say Wichita? Is it time to start Ringing our own Bell?