Greg Gianforte

High wage jobs are few and far between in Montana. One recent report placed Montana 49^th in the country in average wages. Here are a few ways you can increase your high wage job prospects in Montana.

1. Consider A Job In The Montana High Tech Sector

2. Acquire A Manufacturing or Construction Skill

3. Natural Resources

4. Think About Telecommuting And Remote Work

5. Start A Business

6. Innovate In Agriculture

Over the next few weeks I will be expounding on each of these topics in individual posts.  I welcome your input along the way.

Do you have other ideas on how to bring high wage jobs to Montana? Please let me know your thoughts!

Check out today’s story on NPR about our telecommuting initiative in Montana!

Last year, we started the Montana High Tech Business Alliance, the first-ever organization dedicated to representing high tech and high tech manufacturing businesses in the state.  In just over a year, the alliance has reached 200 member firms and currently represents about 10% – 15% of our state economy, according to BBER at the University of Montana. That is a long way from the humble beginnings of RightNow in an extra bedroom of our Bozeman home almost 20 years ago.

 The high tech and manufacturing sector is the fastest growing industry sector in Montana, creating job opportunities for Montanans that are twice the state median salary at just over $50,000 each. And at the current growth rate of 8 – 10 times the state average, high tech and manufacturing will pass both agriculture and tourism in less than five years to add more diversity and robustness to our economy.

Although “Montana high tech” (not an oxymoron!) started in Bozeman, it is spreading across the state, with two thirds of Alliance members in Missoula, Lewistown, Helena, Dillon, Kalispell, Livingston, Great Falls, Billings, and other communities.

Plus high tech is not just for techies!  Most tech companies need more sales people, marketing staff, and accountants than techies.  And when high wage jobs are created in a community, home construction is sparked.  In Gallatin county alone there was $104M increase in payroll last year (almost 40% of the state total) and $27M of that total was an increase in construction payroll.

As founder and Chairman of the MHTBA Board of Directors, I get to see firsthand the growth and success of the Alliance.  We meet yesterday with CEOs of member firms to celebrate our progress and to discuss how to accelerate growth. You can learn more about the Alliance at mthightech.org. Jobs with member firms are listed on the site as well.

This week Rocky Mountain College joined us in our venture to Bring Our Families Back!  Through them we mailed our telecommuting guides to thousands of their graduates who have moved out of state, opening the door for more opportunities to get Montanans back home to work.

The guide was produced in collaboration with Better Montana Jobs, the Montana Chamber of Commerce, the Montana High Tech Alliance, Mitchell’s Garage, and WhyTele.com as a means of promoting telecommuting to friends and families who have had to leave the state for work.  Telecommuting offers a way to both bring back our loved ones to work in-state, and boost the local economies that host telecommuters by bringing more income dollars to their areas.  Returning families buy homes, creating construction jobs; enroll their kids in schools, boosting school funding; and otherwise invigorate our local economies.  Montana State University has already helped us share the guide with over 15,000 of their alum who have moved out of state, and we’re thrilled to have Rocky join us as well.  Together we can make Montana’s economy stronger for our families and communities.

Many people who have moved away want to return, and now they can use telecommuting to return home and bring a job with them.  Use the telecommuting guide to invite your family and friends to return to Montana, and let’s bring our families back together.

 Telecommute to a telecommuting roundtable!  We had so many positive responses from our roundtables around the state that we are offering a virtual roundtable for those who weren’t able to attend one in person.  This will take place Thursday, July 2 at 4:00 p.m. MST.

Email bettermontanajobs@gmail.com to request registration for the virtual roundtable. Spots are limited, so request today!

A couple of weeks ago Susan and I wrapped up the main part of our Bring Our Families Back telecommuting tour.  Over two weeks we drove about 4,000 miles and met with people in over 35 communities in Montana, including our larger towns, a reservation, and many rural areas.  We loved getting to know more of the wonderful people in our state!

Here is some of what we learned:

• We found telecommuters in every Montana community we visited. Plus, the opportunity to bring more families and friends back to Montana got people excited.
• Sufficiently fast Internet connections exist in most Montana towns to support telecommuting, and many rural communities have better connections than larger towns.
• Telecommuting is not just for Techies. We discovered people telecommuting as travel agents, event planners, insurance agents, project managers, medical transcriptionists and other non-Techie jobs. Basically any desk job where you only need an Internet-connected computer and a phone can be done via telecommuting.
• Many Montanans want to come home, and telecommuting now makes it possible.
• People were generally unaware that there are thousands of high wage jobs open today that can be filled from any community in Montana (some of the companies are listed in our guide).

In addition to bringing our families and friends back, telecommuting benefits an entire community. Each telecommuter builds or buys a home, creating construction and real estate jobs. They enroll their kids in our schools, making them stronger.  Also their higher wages make the local economic pie bigger to support local restaurants and retailers.

As a result of the tour, many of the communities we visited have decided to incorporate telecommuting into their economic development efforts to strengthen their towns.  Perhaps your community can incorporate some of these ideas!

1. Multiple communities committed to include the telecommuting guides in welcome packs for thousands of attendees at high school reunions this summer to encourage them to come home.
2. Many communities are working to catalog their local telecommuters and tell their stories on the chamber or town web site, so others know they can work nationally, but live back home.
3. Some are looking to post stories of local telecommuters on high school Facebook and other social media sites.
4. Numerous moms and grandmothers took extra telecommuting guides to mail to their kids and grandkids to bring them back home. You can also email a link to a PDF version of the guide.
5. Many towns discussed starting with our telecommuting guide, but adapting it with local stories and pictures to create a town-specific version to hand out at reunions, the chamber and in hotel rooms. Mitchell’s Garage in Kalispell, who designed the guide, can help if you are interested.
6. Journalists were encouraged to write up local telecommuting success stories in their newspapers to inspire family members to come home and stay there. All were sure the local moms and grandmas would clip the articles and send them to their kids and grandkids who have moved away.
7. MT Job Service saw telecommuting as a way to help the spouse of a candidate continue a career in a smaller community.
8. Some communities discussed a central telecommuting space or coffee shop where telecommuters can work, especially if their home has insufficient bandwidth.
9. Real estate agents wanted materials about where sufficient bandwidth is available in communities so they can sell to potential telecommuters. Local internet service providers agreed to supply it.
10. In addition to targeting Montanans who have moved away, communities with tourist traffic wanted to entice returning visitors to make Montana their home by promoting telecommuting in airports, hotels, and lodges.

Do you have other suggestions for promoting telecommuting and bringing back our families?  Please share them with us!  Leave a comment below or contact us.

Finally I want to thank the Montana Chamber of Commerce, all the local chambers, economic development and Job Service offices, the MSU Alumni Foundation, the Montana High Tech Business Alliance, and Mitchell’s Garage for all your work to make this tour possible.

Don’t forget to request a registration to the virtual roundtable on July 2!  Also, if your local community would still like to host a roundtable, contact us!

We just mailed out over 15,000 invitations to Montana State graduates who no longer live in the state, inviting them to come home and bring their job with them via telecommuting.  We have been exporting our kids for too long and we need to create opportunities so that they can return home.  This project is a joint collaboration with the Montana Chamber of Commerce, the Montana High Tech Alliance, the MSU Alumni Foundation, Mitchell’s Garage, and BetterMontanaJobs.  The invitations include Montana telecommuting success stories and tips for making telecommuting possible here – even how to talk to your boss about transitioning to a telecommuting job.  You can view a digital version of the invitation and guide here. Consider sending it to your kids or grandkids who don’t live in Montana anymore.

In conjunction with the invitations, I’m about to embark on a journey, to share in-person the opportunities that telecommuting brings to our communities around the state.  I’m calling it the “Bring our Families Back” tour, and it will focus on the ability to have a high-wage job in any Montana community through telecommuting.  These jobs mean that our kids and grandkids (or other friends and family) who have had to leave the state to find good-paying jobs can explore the opportunity to come back to this great state, and bring their jobs with them.

Oracle alone has over 1,300 jobs open today that can be filled from any Montana community, and that is just one company.  Others national companies that are willing to allow their employees to work from anywhere are listed in the telecommuting guide as well.

Over the next two weeks I plan on visiting communities all over Montana, sharing and discussing with them how telecommuting can work in their area.  The areas I will visit include Missoula, Polson, Lakeside and Somers, Kalispell, Columbia Falls, Thompson Falls, Superior, Hamilton, Deer Lodge, Helena, Butte, Dillon, Three Forks, Boulder, Townsend, White Sulphur Springs, Harlowtown, Lewistown, Conrad, Shelby, Havre, Glasgow, Wolf Point, Sidney, Glendive, Miles City, Billings, Livingston, Laurel and Red Lodge.  Please join me for a discussion at one of the events in your area – we have over 30 scheduled so far!

For too long we’ve been exporting our most precious resources, our kids and grandkids.  Raising the awareness of telecommuting will show that our graduates can live virtually anywhere in Montana and work for Fortune 500 companies with global client-bases.  This tour will make the opportunity for bringing them back front and center – showing that, with the internet, our kids can make a good wage and still live here, in Montana, by their families.

A year ago I published a post on telecommuting.  Almost twelve months later, it’s still a passion of mine for ways to bring high-paying jobs to Montana.  Think about it.  With telecommuting:

• You can make a national wage, while living in Montana.
• You can live where you want.
• The internet makes it possible.
• It’s one of the best ways we can get our kids and grandkids to move back to Montana – have them bring their job with them!

There are so many more reasons, but that’s a start to get you thinking.  For more inspiration, check out this article from the Montana High Tech Alliance website on remote work in Montana.  Could your business do more to encourage telecommuting around the state?  The opportunities are out there!

If you are currently telecommuting in Montana, or know someone who is, we would love to hear your story!  Just comment below on this post, or email us.

In September of 2013 Rob Irizarry and I launched CodeMontana, a program designed to introduce high school students to computer programming.  In less than two years it has grown to over 1,200 students, expanded to both middle school and high school students, provided opportunities for scholarships, and even incorporated a way for students to earn college credit through the program.  Today we announced another advancement: the program will now be administered by Montana Tech.

Most young people are naturals with computers and technology.  It’s what they’ve grown up using, and I’m a firm believer that computers and technology are here to stay.  But we need to enable our kids to not just be consumers of digital devices, but to be masters, even authors, of digital devices. The kind of pre-college training CodeMontana provides prepares them for high-wage jobs and great careers. Entrusting CodeMontana to Montana Tech is a logical choice to retain these students for our thriving high-tech industry in Montana.

This new arrangement will allow CodeMontana to reach even more students across the state. A $220,000 gift from the Gianforte Family Foundation will allow Tech to hire a full-time coordinator to administer CodeMontana and recruit Computer Science students from Montana high schools.   And, though CodeMontana will continue as the same program, its new home will offer further mentorship for CodeMontana students from current Computer Science students at Tech. The added mentorship will encourage students to complete CodeMontana and motivate them to choose a career in Computer Science at Montana Tech.

Plus, the future increased turnout of computer science majors will provide high-tech firms across the state with qualified workers for their growing companies.  This means more high-paying jobs for our state, and the ability for our kids to get good, in-state jobs after college.  It’s a chance for us to give our next generation another tool to make their own opportunities.

At RightNow I visited 200 – 250 customers each year.  I loved it, but I had to get on an airplane each time, because unfortunately, in a tech business with global customers, not everyone was in Montana.  Traveling the state visiting Montanans is much more enjoyable.  So far this year I have had over 100 individual meetings with Montana business and community leaders.  My goal is to get to know folks that are driving our Montana economy.

What a joy it has been traveling the state and building relationships.

The unrealized potential in Montana is truly awesome. Montana has great folks willing to work hard, but there are barriers to creating more high-wage jobs here.  Each industry, whether it is farming, ranching, mining, timber, oil, tourism, manufacturing or high tech, has its own opportunities, dynamics and impediments to growth.

In these meetings I’m mostly listening, learning, and building relationships.

I’ve taken on the challenge to increase Montana wages so that our kids can prosper here and not have to leave Montana to find a good job. There is no reason we are 49^th nationally in wages (see this recent article from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle).

Here are some of the themes and ideas I have been hearing:

• Almost all of our growing industries mention hiring as a critical issue. We need to do more to expose Montanans to job opportunities available right here in the state. We also need to invest in education to be sure that Montanans have the skills necessary to get those jobs.
• Washington DC Federal over-reach and over-regulation are strangling our economy.  As a state we need to push back hard on Washington and tell them to keep their fingers and oppressive rules out of our state.
• Our state government is not always easy to work with.  For example, why does every small business in Montana have to go to multiple web sites with separate logins and passwords, just to pay payroll each month?  We should be making it easier – not harder – for businesses to do business in Montana.  Seems a more customer-focused approach, and a little technology enhancement, would benefit many.
• Everyone hates the Business Equipment Tax. Farmers, ranchers, high-tech execs and manufacturers.  Our legislature has done a good job of reducing the impact of this regressive tax; now is time to finally eliminate it.

What else should be on this list?  Please send me your items.  Also, if there are people in your community you think can help us solve Montana’s chronic state-wide wage problem, I would love to talk with them.  If there are people with different views, I’d like to talk to them too.  Only by pooling all the good ideas can we move forward together.

Imagine two days where people with different sets of skills get together to connect, dream, and launch products and businesses.  Add some successful local business people to provide volunteer mentoring, and you’ve got a Startup Weekend!

Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers, and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups.  Roughly 1/3 of startups from the weekend are still going strong after three months, and the learning, networking, and development that occur are priceless.

Entrepreneurs are the sparks that get the economy going.  Their motivation, hard work, and ideas create jobs in our communities, and Startup Weekends are a great place for them to get a foothold.

Past events in Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell, and the most recent one in Butte have already created local startups that are creating opportunities for Montanans.

If you’ve never been to a Startup Weekend, here is your chance!  I encourage you to attend, or participate in, a Startup Weekend in Montana this year.  Develop your own entrepreneurial skills, or encourage your neighbor!  Here are the events planned in Montana so far.

Startup Weekend Bozeman will be April 17-19 at Jake Jabs College of Business, MSU Bozeman

Startup Weekend Great Falls will be May 15-17 at the University of Great Falls