Our magazine’s mission

When I first had the idea to start Edmond Business, the concept was simple. I wanted to fill the hole that The Business Times left when the Edmond Sun shut down. I wanted to publish business-related articles pertaining to Edmond that I myself would want to read.

Even before our first issue was published, I had refined the idea. After multiple conversations with people much more experienced and smarter than me, I developed the following mission statement:

Our mission is to inform, educate, and uplift Edmond area businesses and business people that live in the Edmond area.

Let’s break that down. The first half of our mission statement includes what I call our three pillars:

1. Inform

While we are not a newspaper, current news pertaining to businesses in the Edmond area is a key part of the information we cover.

2. Educate

We want businesses and business people in the Edmond area to gain knowledge they can actually apply from qualified experts.

3. Uplift

With all the content we publish, we want to have a positive outlook. There’s enough negativity in the world, we uplift.

Those three pillars cover the type of content we publish. The second half specifies our target audience.

The geography

First, the geographic region is “Edmond area,” not just the Edmond city limits. I have lived two places that lived in the limbo of being in the Edmond area while technically being Oklahoma City.

I moved to the Edmond area in 1996 to attend college at Oklahoma Christian University. If you pull up a map of the Edmond city limits, you may be surprised to see that the university is just outside the limits. It’s technically in Oklahoma City.

In 1999 my wife and I purchased our first house, just northeast of Western and Memorial. This time, we were even further outside of the city limits, yet our mailing address was still in Edmond.

There is a place and time for being legalistic about where the Edmond city boundaries are, who is inside the boundaries, and who is outside the boundaries. Sharing content that is created to help people is not that time.

The people

Finally, we want to help everyone involved in business connected to the Edmond area. Whether you work in Edmond but live elsewhere or live in Edmond but work elsewhere, we want you to benefit from the content we’re publishing.

Hold us accountable to this mission statement. If you see us publishing something that doesn’t seem to align with this mission, please reach out and let me know. I’m happy to share my reasoning with you and listen to your viewpoint as well.