Sharing Stories of Resilience
Editorial
At the top of this issue’s cover story, Ryan Voiland says something striking.
“If I was a smart businessperson, I’d be out of this business.”
Striking, because the casual reader might ask, “then why are you still in it?”
It’s a question he quickly answers as he tells the story of Red Fire Farm in Granby, the fire that ravaged its historic barn in February, and the efforts he and his wife, Sarah, are making to keep the farm running and build a new structure.
The answer is simple and poignant. He does it because he loves it, and because it’s important.
Elaborating, this “labor of love,” as he calls it, is driven by a belief that locally grown food is critical to this region at a time when support for the Community Supported Agriculture model is on the decline.
The story is also a lesson in pivoting — a word everyone got tired of during the pandemic years, but a word that truly does apply to the experiences of so many businesses in myriad sectors, at any time in history.
Take this issue of BusinessWest alone. In the page 15 story, Val Francis goes in-depth on her winding journey to HUB International New England, where she’s vice president of Employee Benefits — a role she achieved without a college education, following a long series of career stops where she kept learning, kept adapting, and kept seizing opportunities. It’s a story well worth reading for anyone who goes to work every day wondering if there’s something better on the horizon — and how they might get there.
In the page 46 story, Ray Berry, owner of White Lion Brewing Co., talks about his original business plan, which included setting up shop in downtown Springfield based on a volume of workers in the office towers that has dramatically shrunk since — and how forging connections through community events has become even more critical.
Even on page 52, where several area auto dealers express optimism about the current state of business, they also talk about a couple years when manufacturing and supply issues emptied their lots of much of their usual inventory.
The point is, almost every story in BusinessWest — you’ll be hard-pressed to find exceptions — touches on challenges and often-sudden economic or personal changes that caused a business owner (or many of them) to doubt themselves, lose a little confidence in that original business plan, even contemplate giving up on their goals or dreams altogether.
There are no direct paths to business success. Everyone struggles. Maybe not with a fire, but with something, and usually something unexpected.
And that’s what makes writing these stories so gratifying — because that struggle is so often followed by perseverance, a few well-timed pivots, and eventual recovery and growth. That’s business. That’s life. And we’ve been relating that idea at BusinessWest for 40 years, in every issue.
The Voilands have a long way to go, and some nagging insurance woes to grapple with as well. But grapple they will on their road to rebuilding at Red Fire Farm.
Why? Because it’s important. And it’s a labor of love.
