Shift Across America

Daryl Zwicker – General Manager, Lamprey Brothers – Northampton NH

Age
48

Political Orientation
I view myself as an independent

Religious Affiliation
I would call myself a Christian

Job Title
General Manager @ Lamprey Bros

Role in Community
My role is to help us move from an oil company (which we’ve been for 85 years) to a sustainable energy company, educate our customers, our marketplace and our neighbors.

We think we have a wonderful leadership role to play to help our customers reduce carbon footprint.

I asked Daryl to repeat the company slogan: To help our customers burn less oil

Talk about your relationship with your Local Independent community.
Its absolutely critical that we support our local products, and as a business we try to as well. We feel that anyone can do our job from 8-5 Monday-Friday but it’s in a snowstorm on a Friday evening, or 2:00 AM on a Sunday, its that local connection its that local relationship that’s going to allow us to basically win.

I think the movement of buy local and the 10% Shift is just so important and so timely. All the sudden, decisions we make to try to stay closer to home make so much sense.

If your Local Indie community was an animal, what animal would it be and why?
(Daryl related a story about the history of Lamprey Bros and Belgian Horses)
…Golden retrievers: They appear to be very loyal, very obedient…but they’re just real friends and I think that’s symbolic to the relationship we have with the community….we’re neighbors and friends. We like to think that they’re not customers, that they’re friends.

Which one Local Independent would you and your community miss the most if they were gone? Why?
There’s a wonderful bookstore in town, River Run Books. They take a leadership role in our community around the buy local concept. What’s interesting is that they compete with a Big Box store a couple miles down. They bring authors in on a weekly basis to differentiate themselves from their competition…and I would really miss them. Then typically when we visit River Run, there’ss Breaking Grounds Coffee Shop and to me you feel the connection, you feel part of the community, you feel alive when you visit these facilities….they would be greatly missed.

What’s one lesson you can share from your entrepreneurship and organizing?
That business need to take their message to the people who are moving in that direction. We realized that there are dozens, hundreds, THOUSANDS of people in our community that share similar values. Its kinda cool that when you start throwing yourself out into the community and talking about your values theres many ppl that think the way you think and they want to support people who have those like values.

What’s one message you’d like to share with anyone who might interact with this project?
The little guy can make a difference…sometimes we think that change is happening on a grand scale, but they don’t. If you truly believe in something, to shift that attitude….that’s the cool thing. If theres naysayers out there? My Grandma used to say about people who were negative “You gotta run away from them”. I think if you translate that to today you gotta run like HELL from them.

Follow your beliefs, follow what you really want and you’re going to draw that success to you.