Megan Rickerson of Someday Bar has deep experience with hospitality advocacy. One of the most important take homes she's shared with us is that you just have to get started, and once you do it's all down hill from there.
But how do you actually get started? What's the first thing you should do?
Here's advice from Megan on that front:
Figure out who your reps are. Who is your city council person? Do you already know? If not, look it up online. It'll only take a minute.
Find their contact info and save it in your contacts. Email address at minimum.
Do this even if you're not ready to contact them yet. If you do, it'll be that much easier to do when the time comes. It's like going to the gym—if you've already got your workout bag packed and in the car, it's a lot easier to go.
Send your rep/council person an email. Do this even if you don't have anything to contact them about yet. You'll be meeting this person eventually, so you might as well introduce yourself. Of course, if there is something bothering you, bring it up with them.
In the video clip Megan also discusses her strategy on how to get a lot of people involved—specifically, if you want to advocate for something, create stuff that folks can easily re-share, re-post, or regurgitate.
You want to go for ease here because every single person has low bandwidth. If you make it easy and quick to get involved, they're more likely to do so than if they have to create something themselves.
Check out the video interview for more from Megan about all this stuff:
And if you'd like to hear more from Megan, check out these links: