Albuquerque, N.M. – As publisher and editor of a year- old business magazine, George Joe admits he has an agenda, and it’s a daunting one: He’s trying to spur business development across an American Indian reservation where running water and electricity are luxuries and unemployment is near 50 percent.
On the sprawling Navajo reservation, residents live far apart, the communities are small, and it can be nearly impossible to start a business, Joe says.
It’s not like America’s urban neighborhoods, where children get their start with lemonade stands on the street corner.
“There are no street corners on the rez,” says Joe, a Navajo. “It’s hard to be a small entrepreneur.”
Joe, a few freelance writers, a designer and some of his friends have been working to change that with Rez Biz, a monthly magazine aimed at igniting the Indian entrepreneurial spirit.
The magazine connects Indians interested in running their own businesses by providing a road map made up of the experiences of others.
A year and a few bumps and bruises later, Rez Biz (www.rez-biz.com) is celebrating its first anniversary.
Its anniversary issue is being printed this week.
“Incredible,” Joe says of the magazine’s success.
He says the more than 61,000 hits received by the Rez Biz website offer evidence that readership has more than tripled in the past six months. Magazine figures also show that for each printed copy, more than three people take a look.
It’s distributed at grocery stores and other businesses across the Navajo Nation and in Albuquerque, Gallup, Flagstaff and Phoenix.
It’s also used as a teaching tool at a couple of Navajo schools and at the University of New Mexico’s Gallup campus.
“Reader stats just keep going up and up and up,” says Joe. “They want to know about the ups and downs, the decisions, the hardships, the day-to-day.”
Rez Biz nearly folded after the first issue because financing hadn’t been secured, an issue that led to a rift between Joe and his former partner.
Joe, the only full-time employee, was also stretching himself thin between the demands of the publication and graduate school.
