Marketwatch May 22, 2020

IT’S TIME TO BUILD…

We are open for business. Like many other essential businesses, we went home on the government orders but took with us our laptops, desktops and moved into our home offices. We’ve always been open, living in our homes and our offices in the cloud along with other North Georgian’s. Norton has powered through this adversity.

We recognize that others have not been so lucky.

It’s time to get out, venture forth, and to start back up like a bear venturing out of a long winters nap, squint eyed looking up at the sun stretching our arms out, disheveled, tattered, and thinner having used up the fat reserves previously stored up for the long winter (I only wish that part was true).

Some years back, the London Tube stopped city wide for a two-day strike. Millions of daily riders had to find another way to get to work, to go about their daily lives, a bit disrupted. When the strike was over, 6% of the riders never went back. Disruption had forced creativity and rethinking for thousands finding a new way.

What the disruption of our 65 days going to do?

IT’S TIME TO BUILD!

In his column in this April, Tech Pioneer Marc Andreessen wrote:

“Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. Our forefathers and foremothers-built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to honor their legacy and to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that’s to build.”

NORTON BUILDS COMMUNITY

It is time to start building a “Next Generation North Georgia.”

• Build back our healthcare reserves and a stronger healthcare network (the existing network was wonderful), full emergency and disaster response teams and inventory across public and private healthcare providers. That may require capital for more emergency rooms, lab testing and supplemental staff. A wise infrastructure investment.
• Build A Strong Healthcare Workforce. Before the pandemic, North Georgia was already experiencing a healthcare personnel shortage. Raise these hero’s compensation levels, unburden regulatory environments. Promote healthcare as a distinguished career choice. Brenau University has a broad array of Healthcare education opportunities; Physical Therapy, Nursing (Undergraduate, Masters, Doctorate), and a new Physician’s Assistant program launching in January 2021. We need this next generation workforce on all levels for the next pandemic for our aging population or other disaster “what ifs.”
• Build back America’s (on American Soil) Supply Chain. We now recognize our manufacturing’s dependency on foreign produced (China, Mexico, India and Korea) parts, supplies and pharmaceuticals can be disrupted. We need to pull back many of those supply chain components and see diversifications of essentials in a multiple continent strategy. When the need is 6 - provide one in Asia, one in Europe, one in South America and three in America.
• Build a WARP SPEED internet system reaching deep into rural American. We realize that we desperately need speed when three school age children are all sharing the same signal as well as both working parents who are now sequestered at home. Start by building fiber optic pipelines in the right of way along every American Interstate and State Road. Costa Rica in the 2000’s, build a nationwide telephone and internet system utilizing only strategic cell towers across all kinds of terrains.
• Build Housing create a post pandemic housing boom considering our shelter at home lessons and new family configurations. Multiple generation housing bringing in parents or older children under the same roof top. Creating multiple privately sound protected office or study areas in different parts of the home. Build larger family gathering spaces, game nooks, audio nooks and visual areas and quiet-time retreats. Emphasize outdoor living spaces. Everyone is looking for alternative views during a shelter – 18-hour days. That is outside, fresh air, a place to garden and a place to play. Everyone now recognizes the need for space and distance.

Instead of challenging our ideas of what to build, when to build, contrive your own. What do you think we should build? We will be glad to lend a hand and help you build along the way.

WE ARE N THIS TOGETHER…

NORTON NATIVE INTELLIGENCE

For More Information email info@gonorton.com