3 Lessons the 2017 Smithfield Ham & Yam Festival Can Teach About Business Disputes

The 2017 Smithfield Ham & Yam Festival is almost here. The event takes place in downtown Smithfield on Saturday, May 6.

The Ham & Yam Festival offers a little bit of everything, including vendors with a wide range of food and crafts as well as music, a barbecue competition, 5K race, rubber duck race and the “What’s That Yam Thing?” contest. The festival also will feature a petting zoo for children.

In addition to offering these food and entertainment options, the event serves as a great way for local small business owners and community organizations to connect and learn more about one another.

If you are a member of our local business community, we hope you take away these three lessons from the Ham & Yam Festival and use them to avoid or work through your business disputes in the days ahead:

  1. Festivals offer a fun time and make future commercial transactions and business relationships less tricky to navigate.

As a business owner, you  know how stressful and complicated it can be to navigate business relationships and commercial transactions. The great thing about a festival is that it brings together diverse groups and businesses and allows them to connect with each other outside of the office in a casual, stress-free atmosphere. At a festival, business owners can get to know each other on a personal level, which may alleviate tensions in future business interactions.

  1. When you share good times with business owners at a festival, it can reduce tensions and avoid arguments down the road.

When you get into a festival setting, you will find that the relaxed atmosphere allows you to forge friendly relationships with other business owners. Instead of talking about contracts, you can enjoy food, music and laughter together. If you should ever get into a contract dispute or face another type of business conflict with a business owner you meet at the festival, you can draw on those friendlier times. Your relationship may allow you to resolve your disagreement through a time-efficient, cost-effective method such as mediation and avoid the costs and complications of protracted litigation.

  1. You will find it rewarding to take time to enjoy local vendors and small businesses.

When you take a few moments and you get to know more about local vendors and companies at the Ham & Yam Festival or at any one of the other events in Johnston County which take place throughout the year, you will find it to be highly rewarding. You will learn how your local business community works together and, in turn, develop a sense of civic pride. The event may reshape your opinions about how to do business with others in the community and reduce tensions you may have with other business owners now or in the future.

Unfortunately, we cannot resolve all business disputes through the lessons we learn from a festival. If you find yourself in a complicated business dispute, contact the experienced Eastern North Carolina business dispute lawyers at The Armstrong Law Firm, P.A. We can provide the skilled and experienced legal counsel that you need.