S6:E1 - Microbusiness Development in Small Towns with Marci Goodwin, Katie Kelly, and Leigh Ann Brown

You are listening to the Growing Small Towns Show, a podcast dedicated to supporting you, the person who really cares about the future of your small town. We believe when people get better, everything gets better, and our episodes offer the ideas and actions that prioritize people and small communities. Thank you for listening. We're so glad you're here. Well, hey everybody, welcome to season 6 of the Growing Small Towns show. We have very much appreciated this quick hiatus. Gave us some time to meet and talk to all the amazing people that you're going to get to listen to and learn from in the season. It's a, it's a new year. It's a, it's And with that, of course, comes that energy of just what are we, what are we creating? And in fact, because I like to share a bit about what this journey looks like from my perspective for me, because I too am just a rural person living in a very small town, trying to run a business, trying to do something meaningful, trying to make an impact. The question, what am I creating? Out of kind of a series of journaling prompts and some reflection on 2025. And I like to do this reflection prompt of what am I leaving behind? So what do I want less of? And then what do I want to bring in or bring forward? And so what do I want more of? So I do a whole series of journaling of just like, so like an example would be less digital interactions and more in real life interactions. I want less silencing of my thoughts and opinions and more voicing of my thoughts and opinions, like that kind of a thing. And working hand in hand with my trusty therapist, she's the best. She was like, okay, I feel like instead of a word of the year, she said, I feel like we should, maybe there's a question we could orient. And so we ended up, as we really looked at it, we ended up orienting the entire question around my year is what am I creating? And so that's actually been really helpful as we prepare for this season. Because you know, if you were to ask me, what are you creating with the Growing Small Town show? There's a few things that I'm hoping we accomplish. It's to elevate voices of really great people doing really great things in their communities because they're everywhere. You people are everywhere. And we want to remind every single one of you listening to this show, A, that you're not nuts for wanting great things in your community. In fact, you deserve nice things and great things in your community. We want to buck some of the status quo. We want to buck some of the trends of like rural is dying and nobody wants to move there. It's like, that's not what we're experiencing. And so, you know, how do we make our, how do we elevate the people that are trying to make that happen for one? How do we remind you that you're not alone? How do we invite you into this so you feel like you belong with us? Because you do. If you're listening to this show, you belong with me and you belong with all the guests that we bring on this program. We want to bring rural Resources, tools, tricks. We want to bring the people. I've spent the last— now since we started this company, I started it in 2019 technically, bought the building 2020, right? Open the doors in 2021. I have truly just met some incredible people. And so part of the goal of this is how do we bring those people to you? And this is one of the ways that we do that. So that's what I hope we're creating with the podcast. And I want to welcome you to 2023. 6 and Season 6. We are kicking off this season with a first ever for the show. It's a trio. It's a trio of rad ladies. I'm excited to introduce you to the co-founders of a company, a business called Smart Start, Katie Kelly and Marcy Goodwin. And then we also are joined by their director of next steps, LeeAnn Brown. And what you're going to hear us talk about is a bunch of stuff per, per use, right? They're awesome women. And again, I say, what I have found myself saying at the end of a lot of episodes or conversations is like, oh, we've gotta get you to North Dakota. I swear to you all, if we figure out a way to get some of these practitioners to our community, you're all invited. You'll have to just keep following along. Follow us on Facebook, follow me on LinkedIn, like find us and we'll make sure that you at least get in the know about it. But these women, Smart Start is a platform, actually a digital platform, but it's also, activated with in-person services and programming. The coolest thing about these three, Marci and I just connected over LinkedIn. That's how I found them. And this conversation just gives me so much hope because we talk about the idea of a microbusiness. That's what I think is the future for our communities. We talk about the fact that economic development still really prioritizes big business attraction. And we express some frustration over that. You'll hear that. It's not that that doesn't matter. It's not that it's not important. It's just that we don't want anybody in a rural community, especially to forget about the value of elevating and supporting microbusinesses. And that's what these women come on to talk about. They're amazing platform. Um, they are just really launching what it looks like to work in a community at a community level. But after listening to this, uh, if you decide you wanna reach out to them, all of the information is in the show notes. Um, sorry, this was like the longest intro ever. Plus I do, I listened back to this episode. I have fact-check myself. So I reference Jessica Meyers from, and I will tell you now, it was season 5, episode 8. That's a really fun episode if you haven't caught that one. Jessica had just kind of offhandedly shared this comment, and I remember it hit me really hard. I was like, "God, is that true?" And then I had looked it up. It is true, but I misquoted it. So the Census Bureau, The quote, the stat that Jessica shared is that 75%, and this is according to the Census Bureau, 75% of incorporated cities in the United States are under 5,000 people. And in this episode that you're about to listen to, I say 2,500 people. There's a good portion of those that are under 2,500, but the 75% is 5,000 people or fewer. So I wanted to fact-check myself. I don't want to just offhandedly say incorrect things.

And of course, I don't have a professional fact-checker.

So by all means, that's another thing you'll remember, that we are very amenable to audience feedback, listener feedback. If you send us a note, we may highlight it. If you tell us we want to shout out your community, that's true. We want to help you work through your challenges, that's true. But if I ever say something that you're like, Rebecca, that is not true, go ahead, send me a note. I will thank you publicly because I'm not infallible. We're just trying to create good stuff here, friends. So with that 7-minute intro, sorry, Brody, our podcast producer. I'm sure he's like, good Lord, Rebecca, could you just tighten it up? I can't, guys. That's what you signed on for. Welcome to season 6. Welcome to the Growing Small Town Show and welcome to this amazing kickoff episode with our new friends from Smart Start. Enjoy. Well, welcome ladies. I think you're my first trio of guests to be on our podcast. What an awesome—

well, I was wondering how this was gonna work with 3 chatty women. Wow.

4, 4.

Now 4.

You gotta, you gotta include me in there. So the one thing I'll ask is, you know, maybe as you go, uh, just if, if it's important or you wanna make sure that it's your, your point of view that's heard is that you just say, so this is Katie. And then share your, your piece, right? Um, but again, everybody will have already heard about the three of you and we're just here to talk about not even just small businesses, I hear, but micro, micro businesses. So whoever wants to start, um, we, I will, I would love to start as much at the kind of like air quotes beginning as we can. Where, where did the idea for SmartStart come from? And welcome to the show. Very excited to have all three of you.

Thanks for having us. It's been a very interesting and organic development with the three of us actually kind of baby stepping together to what we have now. So this is Katie, and I like to say that I am a bureaucrat turned entrepreneur or recovering bureaucrat these days. My background is in local government. And I became an entrepreneur by accident, like a lot of other people. Um, I was laid off from my job, but I had been working on an idea where I was employed. And with my job being cut, they also returned the grant funding that I had written to build the idea. And so after a few months of recovery and kind of recalibrating myself, I decided that I wanted to build that product. Um, originally something related to helping people navigate the social service ecosystem. And while I began building that product and that business, I realized, oh my gosh, the entrepreneur ecosystem is just as redundant and complicated and frankly agency-focused as the social service ecosystem. And so I built a second product the SmartStart dashboard, which is meant for business owners to actually track their own information as they go from alphabet soup agency to alphabet soup agency. They can keep track of their own goals, their own progress, and actually have their own unique roadmap to getting their business from point A to wherever they want to take it. So it started with just a platform, um, reached out to Leanne in a neighboring rural community to launch. She believed in the idea. She wanted this for her community. So we took off together and then we realized, okay, this is an if you build it, they will come proof situation where we realized people, especially in rural communities, need more guidance and more coaxing to jump into the ecosystem, particularly the businesses that we serve, which are microbusinesses. Justice.

That was okay.

No, I love that.

So that's the, the other thing is, Marcy, I think, uh, Katie, you're the first person I've ever had on the show to identify as a bureaucrat, like of any, of any kind. And especially now you're recovered, which is even better. Um, okay.

Proud of it.

Yeah, I loved it.

Yeah.

Yes, I work for the government. This is great. I was Leslie Knope.

I love that. I, I actually— this tracks. I mean, I— we've just met, but your entire being is like Hope, hope and optimism. I can see it. It's fantastic.

I love it.

Okay.

Can't help myself.

So then Marcy, maybe we'll cut to Marcy, um, where, and then we'll come back to Leanne of course too. But Marcy, when did, when and how did you engage?

So I've been an entrepreneur for, well, actually my first business was my first job since I was in high school. Mm-hmm. Um, I took a short break from entrepreneurship after I graduated college and I worked in scientific research for a few years. But came back not long after. So I ran a softball pitching clinic in high school and college. That was my job. And I realized that, wow, I can work a few hours a week making the same money that my friends do at working 40 hours at the restaurant or whatever in town. I grew up in a small town with 1,700 people in rural Illinois. So I've been an entrepreneur, been in the entrepreneur ecosystem in in the Peoria area and has spent a lot of that time as an entrepreneur helping other entrepreneurs, especially women entrepreneurs. I had a heart for women who wanted to stay home and raise their kids. And so how could— in this new digital age, how can we do that? I worked with some other women. We actually did a conference for 9 years out in DC that brought women and digital creators and experts in to teach people how to run businesses at home. So I done that on a nationwide scale and then here in town. And so when Katie realized that, wow, we need this connection piece, my heart is in connecting the dots and connecting people and to get them engaged and to see like progress and the light bulbs go off. And so we were connected. We knew of each other in the ecosystem but hadn't been like, didn't know, hadn't met each other yet. So someone in the ecosystem actually put us together and said, hey, Marcy could be the part that you're missing. And we got together, and I remember our first ride to— we were working, um, in Muscatine, Iowa at the time, and it was our first drive to Muscatine, Iowa, which is 90 minutes. By the time we got there, we're like, we're gonna do this, we're, we're gonna, we can, we can do this, this is gonna be awesome.

That's like my favorite, it's one of my favorite feelings. It's like brain sparks and heart swells. I call them both of those things. Like, yeah, we're— and especially when it's connection, right? It's based connection. So, so Leanne, how about you? So you were— so Katie kind of alluded to the fact that you were in like sister cities or sister towns, and, and so what were you doing at the time? Yes, that made you say, yeah, let's do this.

Yeah, at that time I was running a Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Council organization, small team, two organizations. Small community within the, the broader ecosystem. And I knew as a small team, you know, our team couldn't be available 24/7. We had an entrepreneurial community, we had local owner companies, and we weren't into the national chains. So I'm like, this— we need to help grow from within. And so when I met with Katie and I'm like, tell me where you're at and what, what are you building? And I just her passion and the systematic approach and truly the meaningful platform and work behind it made so much sense. I'm like, let's go for this. This is a tool, a resource that our community needs. And I think this can really help bring people and resources together is what I've always said. And so What I liked about it, it was a local driver because I could put local existing businesses in there as the subject matter experts. And then it was also a platform and program and support to those micro businesses and entrepreneurs. So it hit both buckets of Chamber of Commerce, build and support existing members, yep, and our economic development drivers of growing and expanding business. And we jumped right in, and that's where we just took off. And we're like, wow, the platform is great, but now let's also build those connecting pieces and let's have the mixers and the workshops. And, and then we'll get into the other areas that it's expanded to. But You know, my background, uh, entrepreneurial, uh, mindset. I too had a business going into college, um, Bitty Bottom Boat Cleaning. Um, probably not the best marketing, but a really good marketing.

I kind of dig it. It's the only challenge is like saying it more than a couple times fast or at all, right? That's, that's awesome. I love that.

I love it. It works.

Okay.

Yeah, I bet it did. Okay, so Katie, I'm gonna come back to you real quick. Can you, can you round out for me a little bit? Can you explain the dashboard?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I wanted to build something that would help myself as someone who knew nothing about business, never been to business school, never had an inkling of wanting to run a business. I wanted to work for the man. Um, I was like, this is what I need and I wish I had. And so basically it is meant for the entrepreneur and it allows you to go on and answer a series of questions. Um, we have broken out into 4 phases of business development. So the, uh, customer development, idea validation component, um, what we call the nuts and bolts, so the basics of business formation, the boring stuff of the financials that you have to have, and then getting out there, or how to launch in marketing. So it's really meant to guide people through those early stages Um, it's kind of like a choose your own adventure. You answer a series of questions and then the platform will provide for you the task that you need to accomplish, um, in order to have met all of the appropriate steps to build your business correctly and sustainably. We kept hearing from so many people, and quite frankly, there's so much pressure if you want to start a business to like jump to building your pitch deck. And so you're buying a domain, you're making a website, you're picking a business name without truly understanding your customers first.

Mm-hmm.

Customer revenue is the best money in. That's our, one of our root philosophies. So really building out the steps, even though people are impatient and social media and the world are pressuring people to just jump full on and ask someone for a million dollars for 20% of their business, like, If you just wanna open a hair salon, that doesn't make sense.

Mm-hmm.

And so we build out these steps for people to follow. If you've already done one of those steps, then you don't have a task related to it. So it's very, very personalized. And with each task is a link to the appropriate resource where you can actually do what you need to do. And in each phase you can find help. So this is that local network that Leanne referenced. We collect and vet local providers along that journey. So for example, accountants, attorneys, marketing experts, all of those things that you can spend hours with a phone book on the internet calling. We found a lot of these entities do not serve small microbusinesses that don't intend to scale. They are serving large companies. And so by curating that list, we help you. These people have agreed to help you. If you send them an email through the platform, they will respond and they will help you because they are open to working with you. And so, yeah, you can track your own progress. You can see who you've connected with. And then the community administrator. So in the case of Morton, Illinois, with Leanne, she could monitor her community's progress. So it served multiple levels directly. The entrepreneur, but then also that community administrator can start collecting data. Who are my business owners? Is anyone getting stuck at a certain point? Do I think I have providers, but they're not actually available at certain times? Can I help overcome these stopgaps and report that to their stakeholders higher up? Say, listen, we are having an influx of people who are interested in aesthetics, a bunch of people want to start nail salon, permanent jewelry, for example, giving that grassroots level information to the board members of your Chamber of Commerce, of your EDC, of your city, of your county is so important. And it can help that community allocate resources as well. So we get the top-down and bottom-up support with the SmartStart dashboard.

Okay, so I have so many questions. I'm just going to start asking questions and whoever wants to take the lead, take the lead. Okay. So my first question is, who's actually your client? Because I'm hearing— what I'm hearing— and then this is maybe a follow-up question to this as well. So using Leanne as a chamber of commerce, like a chamber of commerce, is that the ultimate purchaser of this platform and then the deployment of that platform? And so then does that determine the scope of what regional, and there's air quotes on that. Again, I have to narrate that because you guys can see me, our lovely audience can't, right?

Like all of our nodding along.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. Sometimes we have to narrate it. But is that what then determines local providers or local resources? Is basically, is the scope determined by the client and is the client actually the purchaser? That's, I want to know how that works.

Yeah, business model-wise.

Great question.

Yeah. And girls, jump in anytime. Basically, our ideal customer is the buyer is going to be some entity in the community, whether that's a Main Street, a chamber, an EDC, a county government. We have had all of those support us. That's really important for us because we want these services to be free to the business owners. Okay, got it. So we do not charge the actual business owners. So the, the programming and the platform are supported by an outside entity like that whose mission aligns with ours.

Mm-hmm.

From a funding perspective, that does ultimately to some extent determine who the providers in the platform are, right? Whether that's a town or a county, for example, it's going to vary how broadly we cast the net. But even when it's a smaller town, we often look a little bit further because sometimes there just aren't the providers, right, that we need in that.

Okay.

Right. And a lot of times we can ask, or ask the entrepreneurs or the city. In the case of Delavan, Illinois, we couldn't find an accountant. So I'm like, okay, who do you guys use for your taxes? I asked the restaurant owner in town, who does your taxes? And they recommended, and we call them and he's like, oh yeah, I do a lot of the taxes for businesses around. He's in a town, you know, 15 miles away.

Right.

That's fine. He's already working there. That is—

he is part of the ecosystem. Yeah.

Yeah, that is it.

So that's really common. It's really common in rural communities.

Okay, absolutely.

Awesome. Leanne, anything you want to add to this part of the conversation?

I think the nice thing is, is there's so many partners that there is the return on investment. So there's a lot of opportunities for multiple partners, buyers to be a part of that process. So it can be a combination of, you know, a chamber and the EDC and maybe the municipality, and they can all put investment dollars towards building businesses and be our key partners.

It's—

oh, go ahead, Marci. Go ahead.

Honestly, we like it better that way because if we have— the more stakeholders we have in the community, the more buy-in we're going to get, the more—

right.

They're going to get the word out better. We are big into no silos. We don't want to be the silo. We want to— we've been in communities before where we had to let them know that, okay, Main Street members who aren't chamber members can still be involved even though the chamber paid for it. Like they paid for it for the whole community. There was that whole like, can we get all the entities together and do a partnership?

That's what we want, right?

So is this a scaled payment system? Is the cost or the investment scaled to the number of users for an entity or what? And again, you don't have to get into like deep specifics because obviously I don't, I don't know what your, what your transparency in your pricing model looks like. And I would never ask you, you know, if you're not willing to share that, that's okay. But I'm just, again, trying to think about, because I think my My bigger question, the reason I'm asking is just, so is this, is this a platform that if I wanted to bring to my community here in North Dakota, like we have listeners all over the country and the world, which is kind of incredible, you know, as they're listening, as everyone's listening to this, what's their opportunity to potentially have Smart Start be a part of their ecosystem?

Yeah, that's a great question. We, as Leanne said at the beginning, we are a startup too, so we are constantly evolving and learning. And we've gotten some feedback recently about kind of tiered pricing based on community population. Yeah, but what we have right now is an annual license for all of our services because it's a platform plus support services that we haven't dived into yet.

But right, and we will, we'll go back to it for sure.

Yes.

The license is based on right now what we have is the level of complexity of the providers involved. So we have like a county level. So if you want to serve all of the communities, which means we're calling all the providers in all the towns in your county, that's one level. If it's a city or, you know, I mean, a single municipality, that's one level. And then for our smaller communities that don't have the support from a broader entity, we have what we call our hometown license. And so that is not going to include specific providers, but it will still say, okay, at this point you need to talk to an accountant to help you prepare for taxes, to understand if you need to be paying quarterly taxes, quarterly estimated taxes, to help you get your books together, to help you with your financial projections. We will tell you what questions you need to ask, but you will need to find your own account. So it's less personalized to the community, but it's more accessible to those small rural places that we love. And in the digital age, you might have connected with an accountant that's across the country because you just do services online. So we did want to have a platform that recognizes that, yeah, but still helps you understand all the steps you need to take in the order that you should take them, and what questions you should ask the expert that you're connecting with to make sure that they actually know what they're talking about, that they can actually help you at the business level you're at. Because we've experienced, uh, 2 years ago, our first— when we were first a formal entity together, our accountant was asking us all these questions that do not relate to a first-year, zero expenses but also very little revenue company, wanting to know all these complex things from us. It's like, that's not where we're at. That, that's overly complicated, it's confusing. And thankfully we knew that we didn't need to go down that rabbit hole. But other people might not know that, and they're scrambling to pull together documents and prepare reports for things that just don't exist.

This is so— I think this is so interesting because I've been in business for myself, well, for a long time now. And I just think— I think of how handy it would have been to have something that would have guided me through, because I, I have had lots of conversations like that You know, you're vetting your own resource and support providers. You're, you're doing that vetting yourself and you don't even know what questions you ought to be asking. You know, you don't even, you don't know what you don't know. And that's everybody. And I think that's the other thing too, is it also kind of, I think the idea of this, it takes the, it takes the stigma out of this. Cuz I think, I think the biggest, one of the biggest challenge I, can you imagine the number of people that have had really great ideas and have quit? I mean, can you even imagine? Like, I don't know if there's— there's probably no way to get a statistic on that. Yeah, reported. But yeah, millions of people probably, because at any point you hit a wall of a limit of your own experience, understanding, skill set, and you just think, well, I'm an idiot. I— like, I'm, I'm the only one that's ever felt this way and I can't do this. Especially if you're being peppered with questions that you think you should know the answers to. There's just so many steps along the way when you're especially— and it's not even just when you're starting, it's when you're scaling. Basically every next level, right, unlocks this whole new set of stuff where you're like, I don't know what I'm doing.

And so it's also dangerous.

It is.

It's not only like potentially discouraging, it's dangerous. Like you can lose what little money that you have saved going to someone who completely unintentionally might be wasting your money. Right, or intentionally, right? You never know.

Yeah, right, right.

So we just want people to be prepared.

So we're big on stats around here, and you mentioned something— this stat might be good. It's actually on our Smart Start LinkedIn page. We found a stat that says 61% of Americans would start a business if they knew where to go for help.

Yeah, that's— isn't that just a crazy number? And I think, I think what's also so fascinating about this is the fact that you're focusing on what I really think is the most underserved group of business owners around, and it's micro businesses. And again, is there, do you have a specific definition of what you identify as a micro business?

So yeah, it's, the SBA has a definition.

Yeah. So actually this definition started, so we noticed when we were, when we first launched, so we launched the dashboard, but then we were kind of, all the other resources out there were like the business model canvas, the pitch decks, the accelerators, and we were trying to like shoehorn that into, yeah, these businesses that were showing up.

And we're like, I so get this.

You're not this business. And I'm thinking back to businesses I started. I never went to the SBDC. I never went to an accelerator because we had mentors that just showed us how to do this thing, right? So then we realized, oh my gosh, these are geared toward bigger businesses. And we're thinking, I remember Katie and I were like, we're gonna come up with the Smart Start Business Canvas that is for these tiny businesses. And then I started doing research. Well, then about that time, because the SBA says that you can be a small business and depending on the industry, can be up to 1,500 employees and $38 million in revenue.

Well, I think, I think literally just yesterday I was on, I was on a webinar. I hosted a webinar on generational discussions. And like the most recent stat I found from the SBA was small, small businesses, again, air quotes, under 500 employees and $7.5 million in revenue. Still, it's not 1,538 million. It's still completely asinine.

That's crazy.

Yeah, it's like, you've got to be kidding me, you know? And then, and then, yeah, if you're a young— a young— or even doesn't matter your age, you're new, okay? Because it's not about age, but like you're a young business owner in terms of just understanding, and you look at that and you think, oh my God, right away you just feel like, well, and why should that be the aim either? I don't want 500 employees, ladies. I don't.

There's so many businesses that don't want to scale. And so when they go to the entrepreneur, the innovation centers or the entrepreneur groups, they're like, you don't want to scale? Well, then we don't, I don't know how to help you. So when we were, when we were doing our research about the same time as Katie and I were like, oh my gosh, this is, we're serving these businesses and there's no tools to help them. GoDaddy just put out the Venture Forward research project where they, it's a multinational research project where they actually identified microbusinesses that were— what is it like? I think it's 96% of all small businesses are microbusinesses. So they have less than 10 employees, usually one, the employer. So I just noticed— so I just noticed the SBA, as Katie said, has started to adopt that language. Okay. But when we saw that, we saw the research results and we're like, this is exactly— it lined up with what we were seeing in the communities. I'm like, oh my gosh. This gives us validation that what we are seeing is true. And now we had this name, this microbusiness name, this category that these are the people that we could serve. And so it added just like I said, that validation and that proof. And then the stats behind it are incredible that we use in all our presentations now. But that's, that's why we, that's why we do the microbusiness, the less than 10. But it's usually one.

And it proves to be true in these rural communities because they want to show up for the market fair at the local church. They want to be a vendor at the local festival.

Right.

I just want to sell a little bit online. I just have this— they don't want to be this massive storefront company. And those are the ones that Yeah.

So they just want to stay home.

Yeah. No, you're good. Go ahead, Marcy.

Go ahead. These are the people that sometimes, like, the businesses that we were dealing with, like, the moms just want to stay at home. They don't have to earn as much as they did. They just need enough to be able to stay home. They need enough to make a car payment. They need enough to have that spending money for vacations. They need that money. And if they can do that, they can stay in their communities, right? So they don't have to go outside the communities. They don't have to. A lot of these communities don't have daycare. They don't have the resources, don't have the jobs available. So it keeps people in those locations and helps money circulate. When you live and work in the community, you're going to spend money in the community. And like Leanne said, it may just be they just need to be at the vendor fair a couple of times a month, or they need to supply the boutique in town with earrings, or, you know, they just need to run the lawn care system. Those are the people that They are the life of the towns. They're keeping the towns alive, but they're not getting the, the attention and the, um, the love that they need.

The Growing Small Towns show is recorded locally at the Growing Small Towns podcast studio located in Oakes, North Dakota. It's produced by Pheasant Canteen Studio in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with marketing support from Cassidy Johnston in Canyon City, Colorado. Our intro music was created and produced exclusively for Growing Small Towns by James Bergman, singer and songwriter from Fargo, North Dakota. Local and small, it's what we support and it's who we love. Get your community a shout out on the podcast. Call 701-203- 8337 and share your small town success that you just don't feel is being celebrated quite enough and let us shout you out. You can also share your biggest people challenge and we'll dedicate an episode to offering ideas to help. Hell, you can basically tell us anything and we'll do what we can to answer. We can't wait to hear from you.

You know the hardest part about community work? It's not the funding or the planning. It's the people stuff. The burnout, the resistance to change, the "we've always done it this way" people. And that's why we started the Growing Small Towns Club, a place where community doers and dreamers can bring their toughest challenges, share what's working, and feel a little less alone. It's part think tank, part pep talk, rock and 100% heart. Join us for just $30 a month at growingsmalltowns.org/club because communities thrive when their people do.

Today's small town shout out is Watford City, North Dakota. In 2010, the population of Watford City was 1,200 people. Fast forward just 10 quick years to 2020, their population population had risen to 8,400 people due to the incredible oil boom in the Bakken in the western part of North Dakota. This is— this deserves a shout out. While we all might be in our respective small towns praying for a few additional people, Watford City has had to deal with tremendous growth in a tremendously short time period. And I was just out there to visit about a year ago, and It is an incredible little town with very resilient people, and they are learning in very real time how to open their arms and open their minds and their hearts to people from all different walks of life. And I know it hasn't been easy, Watford City, but we see you, we, we're watching you, and we're cheering you on as you learn to adapt to a completely shifting environment in your community. So way to go, Watford City! North Dakota, right? So, so there's another stat that's been, uh, that was dropped on our, on our podcast. Uh, it was Jessica Myers who said it, and I, I went and found it. So it's a U.S. Census Bureau stat that, um, 75% of the United States communities are under 2,500 people. So, so like, that's incredible. That's—

and that's—

those are small, small towns, right? And so What you, what you ladies are talking about are actually in large, to a large degree, the lifebloods of those communities.

Mm-hmm.

And so isn't it, isn't it weird? I mean, like really, let's just stop for a second and think about the fact that we're talking about communities that represent the majority of the communities. We're talking about businesses that represent the majority of the businesses, and yet nobody else cares about them. The way that you do, or the way that I actually in my heart do, right?

It's really frustrating.

It is, it is. And it's because the money doesn't follow them, right? Um, right. No, it's not sexy. I say, I say this all the time, and, and I love, I love working with scrappy entrepreneurs. I do, because they're the ones, they pivot quickly, you know, they can pivot quickly. And the other thing too, I don't know if you listened, if I would recommend you listen to an episode that we just launched, um, her name is Tessa Klein. I had asked her the question because she runs a really cool boutique business in a really unique kind of way. She's just doing it completely her own way in a very small town. And I said, do you ever get sick of that like condescending, almost pat on the head, like, oh, you and your cute little business? That's, that's what you're— those are the business owners that you are talking about. And let's just let the record show through the, through our voices that there is nothing cute, trite, unimportant, or insignificant about a microbusiness.

Amen.

If it keeps you at home, if it keeps you in your community, if it fills your soul, for heaven's sake.

Absolutely.

That showcases your talent. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, on a bigger picture, like I'm a macro thinker, even though we work so closely with individual business owners, which is so fun. But from that macro scale and from the economic development perspective, honestly, sometimes it feels like we're pushing against a wall because the big buckets of economic development and the big money focuses is on attraction. They want to bring a massive corporation from another state or another country to the small community for the jobs. And that's what's sexy. Or they want to help the high-growth startup. They want to help the next Airbnb.

Yep.

Which is great, but how few of those actually take off after infusing so much money into them? When we have seen the businesses that we work with, as little as $500, $1,000, $5,000— $5,000 is huge— goes so far. It helps them execute their marketing strategy and actually get customers. It helps them actually produce on a little larger scale. What they're already doing, it makes such more tangible difference in the business. And it's local. Like, I want to get my earrings from the local woman who's making these awesome clay earrings in her house rather than going to, what, another Dollar General, right? And buying—

don't get me started on the Dollar General.

While we do focus so much on, you know, helping people achieve what they want to achieve, We do also have a pathway and we just really started this in 2025. Our, um, we call it the Growth Challenge, helping people take from their kitchen table, if they want, from their kitchen table to their garage, from the garage to the annual fair, from the fair to the local empty vacant storefront that no big company is going to fill, but that would be absolutely perfect for that locally curated craft store, right? So we are also kind of helping people take those baby steps for growth that is still achievable and comfortable for them, not making them mortgage their house, not asking them to take a pitch deck to an investor, or— well, their coffee shop.

Yeah, this— I think it's, it's so— I just think it's so interesting, um, because the other thing that they need— and so let's dovetail into your support, like your other services that are a part of the dashboard, cuz the dashboard makes so much sense. And I, I would love, I, you're gonna have to demo it for me or something. I just wanna like get my hands on it and look at it and see it. Cuz I, I think about all the entrepreneurs that I've, that we've supported in right here in our little community. And one of the questions we talk about a lot is just that feeling of like, well, Does my business matter enough if I don't scale? And I push back against that all the time because legitimately it's like, well, it's your business. What do you want? What do you want? It doesn't matter. It, it doesn't. And this idea of like, that's what success looks like. I just think it's outdated. It's boring and it doesn't matter and it doesn't work. The other thing I wanna just, before it falls outta my head, the biggest thing that I think you said a macro level. So when I zoom out and I think about a community, I would rather live in a community filled with a bunch of people that have figured out an innovative and creative way to bring their, the best of themselves through a product or a service or whatever it is that they're, that they're doing in their business. Because people that give the best of themselves, it's almost, I've, I've actually tried to lay this out. Like I can imagine closing my eyes and seeing people become more of who they were created to be and just like little lights, you know, sparking and your whole community gets brighter. Your whole community gets better. You know, when people are, are happy and fulfilled and contented and making enough money that they're happy with it. And that's a completely movable target for every single human. Like we don't, that's not something anybody else gets to define but us. Right. Um, but then just being, being, feeling like there's purpose and meaning connected to what they're doing. I would take a community filled with entrepreneurs like that any day over a biz, a community that just has a bunch of big businesses with, you know, 100-people workforces.

Right.

And I, I get it. Like, so that's why this is exactly why I don't do economic development anymore because I'm not, it's not right for me. I'm just like, that doesn't, makes sense. It's that fine, but it's also this, like, you need them all. 100%. Yeah, 100%. And I just—

yeah, they thought about that. They forgot about the grow their own part.

They did. Well, it's because they're not incentivized to, Marcy.

Right.

So it's just so true. So I just love that this is the conversation we're having. I knew I was gonna like you three. I just— it's exciting. It's exciting.

Okay. We, we just get so like— we geek out about this stuff because truly, like, the lights in us also activate when we're meeting and helping these business owners. And Marcy can tell you story after story after story. Marcy, you have to tell this, but this poor woman was like the laughingstock of the establishment. What? Like literally poo-pooed, not just patted on her head, but like poo-pooed. And now she is just this like economic ripple effect that is so cool. On so many levels. And it's because she was brave enough to show up to an event despite the attitude that she had gotten for years out of this community. But because she was brave enough and then jumped in with both feet and followed the steps, like, seems to be living exactly what she dreamed her business would be. You want to tell about—

so I was told by several people that, um, that's crazy, Tommy, I don't know what she's talking about, she thinks she wants to own a business, whatever. Here are the people that we have chosen that should start a business. Meanwhile, those people they have chosen have not done anything. Never show, have not done anything in 3 years. They did take some grant money.

Just talk anyway.

Oh, probably said too much.

No, this is just— it's like just my nerve endings are kind of like on fire. Like, I just can't think—

every community has this. 100%. So Tommy shows up and she has this great idea. So I said, So I went to her. I'm like, give me the scrappy, crazy people that are dreamers. That's who I want to deal with. I don't want to deal with these people that you have chosen that aren't excited. Like, she's on the edge of her seat. These people are like, like, not even engaged.

Entitled.

They've been annoyed. They've been somehow anointed, but they don't— they don't have the inner fire.

Yeah. So we went to her. So because of her, she actually started a storefront. Meetup because that we— she started part of our activation. We go into communities and so, oh, we have communities in the communities. So we have people that can start workshops or start meetups in the community that kind of rally around like, how do we get the entrepreneurs together? How can we do workshops, meetups? And so there was a meetup. She actually met another woman in town. She gave her— she got up and spoke in front of everyone. Everyone laughed. Or just didn't do anything. Another woman who said, I own a building downtown, I will give it to you rent-free for so many months if you want to try it out. Okay, first spark. First spark. So she had $300 on a prepaid credit card. She's like, this is all I have. She started this business and worked with us and worked with the SBDC because the SBDC, we plugged them in as well. Worked them out. She actually opened a storefront, and because of that storefront, she's actually now incubating 6 other local businesses in her store so they can try a storefront, see what works. She can— now she's teaching them how to price things. Like, she's gone through the Smart Start program, learned all the things, plugged in deeply, saw some success, is now helping other people. And we didn't have to open. We just talked to a community that wants to spent all this money on this incubator for small businesses and spend, you know, $200,000. Tommy did it in a free storefront. In a free storefront. She—

it was so cool. Like how she furnished it even is my favorite. Like put out the call and is taking people's old dressers because it's got this like vintage apothecary vibe.

It's beautiful.

And so she's like taking people's restored or older furniture that people are donating. So like community is buying into her. And it's just— and now her incubation is even reaching outside her community and touching other communities across the river where, like, in Peoria, you like, you're either on one side or you're on the other of the river. And like, mm-hmm. So it's just—

and those business owners, yeah, are now going into a subscription box that a girl in Peoria that we're helping with the Smart Start program in Peoria is doing a subscription box service, is looking for some local makers. And we're like, talk to Tommy. And Tommy hooked her up with these others. Other entrepreneurs in another— in Pekin, Illinois. Some of those are going to another business we just helped start. And so she wanted some vendors, and I'm like, well, we have them incubating all over. So we were able to— and from all parts of our Smart Start ecosystem, she plugged in the ecosystem and just asked, hey, I need somebody who does fiber art. And she got people who were on the dashboard who never even came to an event. No one knew about them. But they had just plugged into the dashboard. They were like what we call the, the, what do we call them, the people that they just like under the surface, they don't want to like get out there yet. They're just a little, little shy. They're still building under the, under the radar and they're coming out. So it's just like, how do you build this? And it doesn't have to be a half a million dollar incubator. It can be a free storefront, right? They just need the permission to do it.

And I think, don't you think too, they need encouragement. Like they need somebody to be in their corner. I, I, I am, I have said it and I'm not, I used to not feel like I shouldn't say this out loud about myself, but now I very proudly say like, I am actually the kind of person that you want in your corner. Like if I, if I believe in you and I wanna help you, like I, I really do. I, I cheer, I do connections, I do whatever I can to help people succeed, right? And I just think sometimes, um, that is, um, it's almost like we— nobody wants to put their neck out and like cheer too loudly for anybody in case they quote unquote fail. And I'm just like, let's cheer more people on to try. Cuz like, if you have a business on your Main Street and it only lasts 3 months, you had something on your Main Street for 3 months that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

Yes.

Somebody's learned something from that experience, right? There's learning and that's growth and that's forward momentum and that's all the things. And so I think it's, it's really, really cool. The ripple effect is a big thing that we talk about. Just, it's unbelievable how one, like you said, like a spark, how all of a sudden, and then like I said, they're just like sparks are popping up everywhere and it's almost, it's all, it was, it takes on a life of its own. They, it ends up be, it ends up creating things that you never would've guessed or never would've. Planned on, which is what makes it really cool. So, so what are— you alluded a few times to events and things. So what are some of the other kind of wraparound services that you, that you offer as a part of Smart Start?

Yeah.

So do— yeah, go ahead, Katie.

Well, Leigh Ann, you can start.

You go ahead, Leigh Ann.

Yeah, I want to start by— yeah, yeah. How about like you started in Morton? We started these in Morton. Like, how did that work in Morton?

Yeah, so we knew, you know, how do you create the momentum? And so we knew beyond the platform, great, through— we can promote that, we can, uh, as people come to us, we have a resource now. But how do we get the word out and how do we build that ecosystem now to really say, wow, we have this, and you can connect and keep them shopping local with good supportive next steps. And so, like, let's have a monthly workshop, let's have a mixer, and let's have a subject which aligns with the SmartStart platform. So we're keeping in line with our same curriculum, our same content, what you need to know. And then we're bringing in that local subject matter expert to provide knowledge and information. And a tangible exercise with homework. And it was so cool to see at these of, well, I know that, and I've been there, and I use this system, and I asked this, and I know so-and-so. And so you're just— they're making these connections on the fly, getting the homework, connecting in further, coming back the following month with more questions and excitement. And, oh, I get to go meet with my people because I'm down and I hit a roadblock and now, okay, but I can show up and I can get my next step and I can get rejuvenated and I can get motivated again. And so we were seeing this network build and we would rotate around, use different businesses. So people were getting immersed into the community, which would bring out different people and which even led to us hosting a conference because we had so many of these happening around Tazewell County. We're like, oh my gosh, let's bring all these people together. Think about the connections. And we can amplify the ecosystem and we can add more resources. And so we've done that a couple of times, which then really led us to the growth challenge that was mentioned earlier of, wow, now we're finding people are ready. I want to dive in. I want to make this happen. And so now we've got the 12-week of, yes, let's get you from A to Z in this 12 weeks, and we're going to get you up and going or advanced, um, and, and move, move your business forward.

It's like our little microbusiness accelerator program, right?

Right, right. So how many— so share, like, how many clients or how many communities, municipalities, excuse me, or counties are you serving today?

So right now it's 2 counties in Central Illinois, but it's multiple communities within the counties.

Okay.

Yeah, because it's a partnership. So there's all of Peoria County, there's Tazewell, they pay for it, but also there's in Delavan and Pekin. We were in Morton, we were in Muscatine, Iowa for a couple of years. So that's where we're at now. And we are actually launching into more states this year. We have got a model where we— they can, like Katie said, they license the program and so they make it their own. We still do the microbusiness, the growth challenge. So it's virtual and we'll still do that. But we have the ability now to expand and we'll teach people to do what we do here in central Illinois. And we're pretty excited about that because we've had some great results and it's fun.

It's so much fun.

It—

of course it is, because you're dealing with just very— they're the most human business owners. They're just Everything, it's just so human, you know, it's just so, it's so personal.

Yeah.

And yeah. And you're helping them.

I love it.

Yeah. You're helping them build and create a life that means something to them, adds value to their community, all the things, right? And this to me is exactly what, and the other thing that this does though too, I, and I talk about this a lot, I think, um, you're, you're also stretching the way that people think. So it's not just about their specific business, but once once you go through a process like this, I think it actually cha— it changes, it changes who you are. It changes how you think about things. It changes how you see problems. It changes everything, right? It's actually entrepreneurial thinking instead of just like, the goal is to start a business. Well, maybe, but maybe it's just, cuz I, I, I often say that like, that to me is something we all, every small community should be thinking about. How are we moving the needle forward in entrepreneurial thinking on the whole, not just for businesses, but every single thing that your little town needs is an idea that hasn't yet been launched, right?

Like, absolutely.

It's idea, it's idea generation, then, you know, the seeding of that idea, the launching of that idea, the growing or scaling of that idea. Like that's, so this is a skillset that every person benefits from having, and not everyone's wired for it. I understand that. But the more people that we can say, but you might be wired for it and you've just been told that it only looks a certain way, right? So, Katie, you relate to that?

Oh yeah.

Raise your hand.

Yeah. Never in a million years thought I would be a business owner. Like, absolutely not. But I was constantly pushing boundaries in local government. Let's make this better. Let's make this work faster. Let's make these systems talk. And everyone's like, whoa, slow down, stay in your lane. I heard that every day. Turns out I just needed to work for myself.

Yeah, literally. And I'm like, the last place you belonged was the government.

Whoops.

No, bye-bye, y'all.

Now we work with government. Yes, we try to, of course, to help them. My, like, personal catchphrase— I developed this when I was an AmeriCorps VISTA, um, after college— was, I want to help people help people better. And it's a little bit like multi-step, but it's like that indirect work, which I have found myself doing the direct work now through the Growth Challenge, which is so fun. But just helping systems think, helping, like you said, helping people stretch the way that they think about entrepreneurship in their community. We don't even honestly like to use the word entrepreneur anymore as a team because it means something very specific to people when they hear it. And a lot of people that we wanna reach don't identify as an entrepreneur. Right?

Yeah.

Right.

It's similarly like artists, right?

Mm-hmm.

To me, it literally, this just, this just happened. So we have a, we have this little art space, like an art exhibit space in our building. And I said, hey, we're looking, we're looking for local artists. What I've realized is that what we're actually doing is a local creativity showcase, right? Like you're, it's, it's creative work. It's not necessarily art. Right. So I think I think some of those small reframes really do matter because I think people, they can, if they, if they feel like we're using language that's not meant for them or, you know, that they don't, they don't identify as, um, we're leaving people out unintentionally.

Yeah.

They don't, they don't connect with the work or the, the words.

So absolutely.

So yeah, that's really what we're trying to do with all of this. Like all of our support services are evolving. They're changing based on the feedback and also our own experiences, like the workshops that Leanne— and we change that word sometimes too. Like, is it a workshop? Is it a mixer? Is it like, what is it? But we knew what we didn't— what it should not be. And I had been to so many sessions that were just like a straight lecture for an hour and a half or just straight networking without purpose. And like when you are in the thick of it and trying to build your dream, like Ain't nobody got time for either of those. Like, if I'm doing this, I want you to help me do it for me. I don't want to just hear about taxes. I want you to look at my 1065 and tell me how to fill out these lines. That's what our session did. Yeah, we're talking about marketing. It's not just like faffing about, about marketing. It's like, this is your marketing plan based on this information. You're going to come away with this with a tangible, whether that's homework or now you know what you're going to do next. Next. And there's still space to network and talk with people, and it's not so constrained, but it's not just an hour of people complaining about their day at the office and drinking wine. Like, that's not going to move your business forward either.

And then they have people that they met there, or one of the resource providers that, um, or the maybe one of the lead, the community leaders is like, I, I'm an expert. If anyone needs help with this later, I can help you with this. Let's, let's make this happen. So they're not just alone anymore.

Right, not just alone anymore. And then speaking of like being left behind, I personally spent 2 and a half years trying to apply for Generator and G Beta programs for my other business that I originally started, you know, only finally at the end being told like, listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, you are not ready for investment. Like, people just said apply again next time, apply again next time, without being honest that your business doesn't fit you are not going to get our investors the return that they are looking for with your numbers. Like, so, so many people are wasting time putting their business idea forward for the wrong people. And so that's what our Growth Challenge is all about. It's— you're going to get that same level of intensive support that is claimed to be given by these big national programs, the Y Combinators, the Generators, that are great for a narrow type of business. These business owners deserve that intensive curated support for their goals too, even if their goal isn't to raise $5 million.

So in this last growth challenge, they apply. So people apply. So there's 8 in a growth challenge. We had a life coach, we had a maker that wanted to own us at the beginning, want to own a store. When she got done with this, she's like, I don't want to own a store. I want to make stuff for other stores. So now she's doing wholesale and doing things. Amazing. We had another woman who was just doing— who's doing vendor stores but had this amazing product that now we're working with her. How did— how she might want to scale. So here, move on to this group is going to help you scale. We had like a hair salon. She's about ready to quit because she's like, I can't get my people, my— or she was, she was attracting the wrong people. And then by the end of it, on the last day of our 12 weeks together, I gave them all like, okay, we have 10 minutes each. Just tell me what you, what you learned. Share what you learned. By the end of it, every one of them was working with each other on some other different project, have been referring to each other, have been talking to each other outside of our networking time or our class time. But every one of them said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm growing. But here's what happened. I learned about myself. I learned about that entrepreneur mindset. I learned that I could have never done this without you, without him, without her, without this. Like every, every time Katie made somebody else cry again, Katie wasn't on this, on that call. Every year or every growth challenge, we make someone cry because someone's so like emotional that they cry. And yeah, those are the things that we're like, yeah, wow, that is— how do you mark that when they, when the county or the EDC says I want the data. How— where's the crying entrepreneur data box? Is there like a number for that?

I want to check that one.

There should be.

I think there should be.

These are the things that these businesses are so personal to them. And it takes that personal touch that, that this community leaders that are already in your community, like your chamber director, your, your Main Street staff, your city council, who's ever running these, the Smart Start program in your community. They are part of that community, that personal touch. They have this amazing opportunity to, to be that personal, that, that, that one who changes their life, not just helps them start a business. And that's, that's probably why most of all, like what we do, what we do, we, we learned it from like Leanne and her town. She was like, she would walk the streets in her town like she was always talking to business owners, always connecting them. Oh, she cared deeply about that. And that's why we're like, when she left the chamber, we're like, come with, come with us. You are, you are, you are ours now.

Right.

Right.

And that's how I think we all feel that deeply about our community, about our business owners.

I think, um, listening to you talk about the programs that do exist, um, and it reminds me, it makes me feel a lot like how a lot of nonprofits, I think, feel with grant writing. So it's like you chase the money and you force fit ideas into something to get the money, which I think sometimes businesses do that too. They just go, okay, well, what kind, what kinds of businesses are, is my state funding or are there programs and support things for? And I, that's honestly the, the grab for cash is not a good mo— it's not a good motivator, not for sustainability, not for your own wellbeing. You will end up running a business that you hate. That I have seen that happen so many times and might as well have a job.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like, why?

Yeah, like if you, if you are going to do all the pain of doing it your own way and you still hate it, quit it and go work for somebody else. That just doesn't make any sense at all. So I just, I love this entire story. I think it's so exciting. Katie, what were you just going to say?

Oh, I was going to say that is the, you know, we have the financial space and we inevitably get the question like, okay, but where are the grants? And we have to control our faces.

I didn't just control mine.

I just like gently, right?

Just like shook my head and rolled my eyes.

They don't exist. Like you think they do. And then there are headlines that say that they're there. But the time, by the time you have put your application together, and the chances of you actually getting it, you have just wasted time that you could have been out there doing customer discovery, finding your customer and giving them exactly what they want and that they would pay you for.

And making the money.

And then tell other people to pay you for that same thing. And at the end of the day, if you spent that same amount of time looking for customers instead of chasing free money in quotation marks, mm-hmm, your business is gonna be that much more sustainable, that much more effective. And we have to break that news. And then I become like the most hated person in the room. And I'm like, as a grant writer, as a former grant writer, I'm telling you, don't bother. Yep. And, and like the, the grants that cities have available, that states have available, that come through, you know, the economic development pass-through, they're structural, they are facades. So if you don't even own your building and you're going after something to improve your facade, you just helped your landlord, not your own business. Right, right. Um, yeah, they're gonna say that you should focus on technology or agtech or for certain trendy industries that you might not naturally want to work in. Um, so I think it was the former director of the SBDC told me when I was starting my business and chasing after investment and all that, and he's like, okay, I have to tell you something really unpopular. The best money that you can get, the most valuable money that you can get, is customer revenue. Stop putting your pitch decks together for investors who don't understand what you're doing and go talk to your customers and put a pitch deck together that speaks to them that will result in the sale. And it completely changed my whole trajectory, my whole thought process. And I really want to help other people have that light bulb moment too, right? Find your true customer. You don't sell to everyone, right?

Right. And that's the thing. That's the thing too. You, you won't know how your service or product will change will morph, will adjust until you get a customer who uses it. And then you have that iterative back and forth, you know, like that's how, and that's the thing. It's like everybody, we all want it to be simpler. We all want it to be sexier.

Mm-hmm.

And that's, and those things are just, they're not consistent. They're not stable. They're not foundational. They don't actually last. They're not. And again, not, not to say that some of these businesses that pursue these routes, like they're probably doing fine. I don't know, but I just don't— they're not for most of us. I think again, it's that speaking to the majority instead of the exception.

They're the unicorns. They're the unicorns.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

Okay.

This is so fantastic. Okay, ladies. So as we will be, of course, putting all the links to all of the places where they can find everything about Smart Start in our show notes. If we could kind of summarize the thing you want our listeners— because again, we have listeners, we have people that are kind of community development folks, we have rural business owners all over the place. What do you want? What's kind of the last thing you want to leave everybody with? If it was like, what we really want you to know is this about either running a business or supporting a business.

I'll jump in with supporting a business. You know, this is the story that I was able to share over and over of the return on investment. These business owners, micro businesses, are the ones you want to build throughout your community because they are the creative, they're the problem solvers, they're the motivated, engaging people that will breathe life and opportunity and experiences and the unique product and lights on and will be able to retain people in your community, attract people to your community, and then yes, fuel the economic development model for business attraction. And being able to support microbusinesses is just a fulfilling— it just makes you smile. You're helping people with amazing talents and skills to achieve their dream, and what more would you want?

Mm-hmm. And that's just piggyback on—

go ahead.

Just, that's like a really deep sentiment, but I just want to tack on that for a much smaller investment, you can achieve that because smaller amounts mean a lot for these types of business owners.

Liam, right?

Because we like stats, the venture that we talked about before, the GoDaddy Venture Forward research project, they found that in each county, each new microbusiness adds 7 jobs in its county. And it's like countywide, so it adds not specifically that job, but because you kept a microbusiness in that community, those dollars circulated and caused 7 more jobs to be created. Um, another one is is, uh, where that one is. There's another one that for every microbusiness in a, in a, um, county, the median income for the whole county, not just microbusiness owners, the whole county raises almost over $400, around $400 a year just for one extra. Um, this— these are huge.

Yeah, they're not, they're not just cute. They're not just cute adorable little side hustles.

76% of all rural businesses are solopreneurs. These are, these are huge. Your friends and neighbors in your communities probably have a business or a side hustle or want to, want to start one. Like these are— they have an economic impact and we have ways that like you can, you know, support them, find ways in your community that you can support them.

What you've built is extraordinary. Thank you all, all three of you. Thank you for spending time with us. Thank you for sharing this story. And really just thank you for being a very clear, strong, supportive voice for microbusinesses, because it is what we need. It's what our communities need. It's what, it's what totally fuels my community, um, and it's a huge part of what we care about at Growing Small Towns. So thank you all so much. I, I always say, like, we're gonna have to find a way to get you to North Dakota. If I get all of podcast guest to North Dakota, that's going to be one hell of a party. That's all I'm going to say. Just—

it would be so fun.

It would be so fun. It would be so fun. And we need you.

We need—

we need people like you. So thank you for everything you've done. Thank you for everything you've shared. I wish you all the continued success. And now we're friends, so you guys won't be able to shake me, just so you know.

Absolutely. We're down.

We're good.

Wouldn't want to.

Okay.

Yeah, Rebecca, can I add one last thing to a small fraction of your listeners? Possibly. I hope we inspired the rural business owners, but for the community development and economic development folks locally, we ruffle some feathers and we genu— I mean, we kind of know why, but that's not our intention at all. And I just want to say that if that's your role, the things that we're saying are not meant to be offensive or to like tell you you're doing a terrible job. We really want to elevate the perspective of these business owners. And so when there's economic development workers out there, like working their tails off on their social media and they're trying to get these events together and just no one's showing up and they're trying to bring speakers and they, and like, you're doing your best, the problem is these types of business owners don't come out there. They don't feel safe, or they're not given the opportunity to share what it is they need. So when we say these things like this program doesn't meet their needs, it's, it's a critique, but it's one that we hope people will listen to honestly and genuinely, like, look inside and think, are we serving this full spectrum of business owners in our community? Because every— you can meet people with a menu of services. And this work that we do is just one of many because we aren't for your high-growth startup. We aren't for the corporation or the multi-generational family business that's doing fine because they've run a restaurant for 100 years. Like, we know that, and we just want to spread that message that there is this huge untapped potential of these business owners in your community, and the services that you may have historically been providing might just need a small tweak in order to be beneficial to them.

I love that. And I think that's a great reminder because there's untapped, hidden, latent talent. It abounds in all of our communities. And a program like this is a way to draw— is to draw them out because you are for them. So that's a, that's a really important note. And I think you're gonna ruffle feathers because you're, you're, you're talking about it in a way that you're just like, But don't forget, right? It's go ahead and do all of that. But also let's make sure that we're talking about these folks, right?

We're just, we're just another thing. We work for this segment. Everything else is work for these.

Exactly. Yep.

Let's go to the microbusinesses now.

Yeah. Okay. Awesome job, ladies. Thanks so much. We'll have you back soon, I'm sure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Rebecca.

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