S6:E9 - Growing Entrepreneurs in Small Towns with Andrew Button

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. Our guest on today's episode is Andrew Button. He is the founder of Mashup Lab, and it's an organization that helps rural communities grow their, we're going to say, quote unquote, entrepreneurial ecosystem. But he does it in ways that reach a population of people that are overlooked and the untapped potential in all of our communities. We have a long winding, beautiful conversation about how and why he founded this, why he pursued this this particular path after 15 years in traditional economic development positions and roles. It's so fun to meet somebody that has such a heart for the human side of, and the potential that, that can get unleashed in communities like ours, like mine, that are small, right, in nature. And just like what happens when people tap into what they were maybe innately given or they have a dream or a hope or a vision for something that they want to do. And whether it fully ends up in a business model or it becomes a business that makes a bunch of money or not, it's— we talk a lot about just the ripple effect of investing in humans that way. I haven't— I've met a lot of people over the years doing this work, and I haven't met anybody that seemed to have such an alignment with me about that piece of it. I really enjoyed this conversation. It's really fun to meet somebody. He happens to be in Canada, but his programs are being rolled out in communities in the United States as well. And so this is something that for every single one of you, whether you are an entrepreneur looking for some support to unlock your dream, or you're a community/economic development person that's looking to build more of this capacity in your own communities, there's something here for you. I think you're really going to enjoy Andrew's passion, his heart, and just the tenacity that he's shown in bringing this idea to the market. So enjoy this conversation with Andrew Button. Hey Andrew, welcome to the show. So happy to have you here.

Rebecca, I've been looking forward to this conversation all week. I'm so excited we finally get a chance to, to connect and chat.

Same, same. So we were kind of talking, um, in the intro I talked about kind of how you and I— I think you said it earlier, like we've We've kind of been rotating around each other's universes. And so for, for our listeners that maybe aren't familiar with, with you, with Mashup Lab, why don't we just start wherever you wanna start? And like I said, I know we'll, we'll take it in the direction it needs to go.

Yeah. So maybe it'll just be helpful to give you a little bit of backstory of like where the idea for Mashup Lab came from, why we're here today.

Please do.

Yeah. So, I had spent about 15 years in various kind of economic development roles before starting Mashup Lab, and I'm based here in a little town called Wildville in Nova Scotia in Canada. So most of those roles were here in the province of Nova Scotia, but my last real job as an economic developer, Rebecca, I was executive director of a regional development agency.

Oh, great.

2-county region here on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, population of about 50,000 people scattered like matchsticks across the countryside. And right, we were just doing a massive amount of things to help people start and grow businesses in our community. Like we were holding pitch competitions. Our local, I guess, would be the equivalent of the SBA, was doing lots of training and they had federal grant programs that people could access and they were issuing loans. Our local community college was opening up space for like prototyping. A little known fact for your listeners and yourself, if you ever find yourself on Jeopardy, Nova Scotia has the most academic institutions per capita than any other province in Canada. So we just have a lot of universities and research here that happens.

Well, that is a fun fact. Thank you for that. Yes. You know, That's also just good for like cocktail hour fodder, you know? So yeah, love that.

It's a great, great crowd opener. And we're a population of about a million people, right? So it's, it's a relatively small population but scattered across.

Right.

But, but like we had memorandums of understanding with some of those institutions to bring research and academia to our community. I had agreements with other business accelerators and incubators to make services available. I was also involved in like coworking spaces and stuff, my own. And like, so we had this whole ecosystem of things, you know, business retention expansion program, all that stuff. And through a whole sequence of events, I won't bore you with the details of what I realized and began to learn was that despite all of those efforts and despite all of the successes we were having in that space, I was super proud of— what I was learning is that there was a huge pool of people sitting on the sidelines of that whole ecosystem in my community with really great ideas for potentially awesome businesses, not plugging into all of this great stuff we were doing and building, creating, and designing for them.

Okay.

And I just got obsessively curious about why that was. Like, we were being welcoming, we were being inclusive. So I thought we were doing all of the things that I thought would bring and attract all of those entrepreneurial, innovative people into this ecosystem. But we weren't. We were missing the mark. And that's—

Can I ask a quick question of clarification? Just like, you're missing the mark in terms of just they simply weren't showing up? Like they weren't— those people weren't engaging. Is that pretty much it? That was the mark that you felt like you were missing?

That's exact, that's exactly, exactly it. And what we're still like, this is 12 years I'll, I'll have started Mashup Lab. We've been running the core program that we've run across, you know, 700 communities now in Canada and the, and the US with entrepreneurs in, in those communities since 2015. But what I was noticing and seeing in my economic development role, like, is holding true in the work. So I can talk a little bit more about that. But yeah, they were feeling like all of the stuff that we were building and designing for people with ideas in our community was for somebody that wasn't them.

So can I ask, like, how did you find that out? Like, you know, I mean, like, how did you— okay, so they weren't coming to your stuff. So how did you even discover that there was this like whole undercurrent of the exact people you wanted in the seats and all the stuff? Because boy, like, let me just say, it's, um, you're my first meeting on a Monday morning, right? And I'm sitting in my co-working space and I, you know, literally like everything you just talked about, I think of all the different ways that we've tried to not only foster, kind of nurture, and in some cases, I think, develop a rural ecosystem for this kind of work. Because I don't even— I actually kind of struggle with the word ecosystem because it's, it's kind of been co-opted and it belongs like in urban centers in place in, in ways that I just think have not, have not translated to rural places. Um, but I care about it. I think it's so important. Um, and literally the partnerships with all the different places that you just talked about, I feel like we've done too. And I feel the, that exact same way. That like there's this core group of people that again, the idea of like, well, what if we just became— that's why like Becky and Deb, who, you know, they, they spoke, speak so highly of your work. This idea of like the idea-friendly thing, it's like people have ideas. And is it so, is it that we're in like pre-launch stage and that's what we need, you know? So anyway, I just think it's super interesting listening to you because I, I feel that even now, and I'm not even officially in economic development anymore, right? So how did you— so some of this will be just like peeking my own, scratching my own, that itch of my own curiosity on some of this stuff, um, but also just because it's fascinating, right? Like, you were doing all these things. Yeah. And you, it, like, by a lot of standards, you were probably considered successful, you know what I mean? But you still felt this, like, this gap. So how did you, how did you know that those people existed? Well, how'd you find out?

It came about relatively serendipitous serendipitously, but it was really based on the trust that I had started to build with entrepreneurs, not necessarily business owners. Sometimes they're the same person, sometimes they're two very different groups of people. And, um, but the trust I had built with them, and like, I was trying to figure out this puzzle of like, where— like, I know there are more, more people out there. It really became evident when I started to work work through a whole series of downsizing. We, it didn't make sense for us to have a permanent office on the, every, anymore. So I actually started working from one of the local coworking spaces that I eventually ended up buying from the, from the founders and folding into, to, you know, my own thing. But, um, but once I started hanging out there, I'm like, who are all of these other people like that are working from this coworking space 2 days a week? And I hear them over the lunch, you know, at the lunch counter or, you know, having a sandwich, talking about like ideas that they're working on. Like, I've been in this community working in this space for 10 years and I've never heard your name or seen your face. Like, you just never showed up on my radar. And they're there. I was like, why? Why? Like, where did we get this wrong? And we've asked that question so many times over these last 10 years, Rebecca, because well over 87% now of the people that we end up attracting through— I call it our virtual business incubator for my economic development friends. When we go to market it, we call it our Dream Business Program. So there's a very distinct reason why we call it two different things.

Right.

Audiences, right? That's, that's another, another thing that we've learned. But well over 85% of the folks that we've now attracted into that process never signed up for a business or entrepreneurship program ever before, despite the fact that they have access to literally dozens of things, awesome things that they could be plugging into, sometimes right in their own community. But they're signing up for this virtual thing from a guy on the other side of the country. So we like, we ask that question. It's like, why? Like, what was it about what we put in front of you, right? Got you to do something with this when you had all of these other things that were available to you? And in their own words, the message they give back to us time and time again is like, there are lots of things that are available. Some of it is even accessible to me. Not all of it felt approachable. To me. So there was an approachability challenge. And what they were really saying is like, yeah, I see myself in that program, or it wasn't quite what I was looking for right now, or I didn't think I was going to find people like me in that room or in that program. Or I just feel like I'm ready, right?

So do you think that kind of comes down to the distinction between the two groups of business owner and entrepreneur? And like, because I think it's so— language matters so much. I mean, I know, I I certainly know that. And I, I also know that I tend to— I like language. Like, I like, I like words, um, like a lot. And I, I think perhaps, um, I miss, I miss the mark because of the way that I, the way that I'm trying to articulate what I'm thinking, and I don't, um, simplify it enough maybe, right? So I, I think even entrepreneur is kind of a charged word. I don't know if you feel that way. I just feel like sometimes people don't see themselves as that. And I, what I, what I like to focus on is just like, how do we get more people thinking that way, that kind of agile, flexible, creative thinking? Because like I've said this and again, like I'm so passionate about this because I've said everything your town needs is just an idea that hasn't hatched yet. And everything, you know, everything you ever had is an idea that somebody launched, planned, made happen, whether it's a business or an amenity or like you have cool street signs that some that came out of somebody's idea, right, that they activated. Like, so entrepreneurial thinking to me is not just about starting businesses. So like, what is that? What it is, is that like, was it just kind of that, that the language around the offers was either too academic? Because as soon as you said you have all of this academia, right away I just thought, oh my gosh, that's like a double-edged sword to me, right? Because it's— there's great resources and so many tools, but there's also a lot of times that, that gap of like academic language and on the ground, boots on the ground, like practicing, right? Like, or practicing.

So language has played— language plays a big, big role in it. So when we go out looking for people to sign up for our program, and the reason I call it our Dream Business Program It's because what we've learned over the years is that there are more people that put themselves in the bucket as a person with a dream for a business with an idea than an entrepreneur or startup looking for a business, right? Or a business owner, right? So there's just a lot more people that don't necessarily wear that label for themselves of a business owner, an entrepreneur, and we can get into the nuances of what those labels even mean. But we go looking for people with ideas for a business.

Mm-hmm.

And there's a lot more people that put themselves in that bucket than we are looking for entrepreneurs with new business ideas.

Right.

And so it's, it's just a really simple shift of, of focus. What we're also learning is around the approachability of the process. We're also learning that the channels through which you deliver that language and that message means a, a lot. And there's, you know, really interesting story that I often tell about a channel that I never would have thought of in my economic development days that I can share with you. But it's not just what we think of traditionally as entrepreneurs that are in that sort of untapped pool of people. There are people that might think of themselves as small businesses that have been running and operating businesses for 5 or 6 years, but what, what they feel like they need isn't what they're not connecting the dots to what's being offered. And they don't feel like maybe they got into this business, but they really didn't know what they were doing. But the cash registers start ringing, so they just kept doing it. But they're going to find themselves in a room with people that know more than they do, and they're going to feel stupid. And like, so it's not just new entrepreneurs that are in that space. There are existing businesses that find themselves often in that space. And anecdotally, we see about a 70-30 split between, you know, first-time entrepreneurs with new ideas that are coming, you know, coming into our, our program. And then the 30% is a bit of a split between people that are doing something as a hobby today, selling to friends and family. Maybe they do a couple of farmers markets or Christmas markets or, um, and they're thinking about making them, making this their full-time gig, as well as well-established existing businesses that are thinking about growing in a, in a new and different direction. The world has changed around them. How they've been making money over the last 5 years isn't gonna be how they're envisioning making money in the next 5 years, but it's a very different path that they're on. So they know how to run a business and they know the technical parts of that. But where they're seeing their business going is uncharted territory for them. So that's sort of the thread that sort of stitches all of these people together when we run them through, you know, through the process. But it's, it's a lot about language. It's often about channels and relationships. It's also about like the approachability of that process. So when you go to sign up for the Mashup Lab Dream Business Program and whatever community we happen to be running it, We ask you 5 questions. You know, 3 of them are what's your name, where do you live, and what's your email address. The other 2 aren't that much more challenging. But, and we, again, we do that by design. We don't ask them all of the things we want to know from them in that moment because we know that friction can cause people to punt out of the system before they hit that submit button. And if we don't get their name and we don't have their email address, we can't start having a conversation with them. We just, we don't know they're out there. If they go to the, we do all the hard work to get them to the webpage, but they don't fill out the form and hit submit, we don't know they exist in our community necessarily.

Right.

So we have optimized that whole process because this is all we do all day long is try to figure out how to answer 2 questions a little bit better for the last 10 years, Rebecca. It's like, how do we get the attention of people that don't pay attention to this stuff? How do we get them off the sidelines and into the game?

Thanks.

And, you know, we ran our first cohort of that program in 2015. We'll run our 110th program here in, uh, 2026. And, um, and again, it was like in, when you're in these kind of economic develop, and you would appreciate this, like, and any of the folks that have done this kind of economic development work in a small town, know how easy it is to get spread a mile wide and only be able to go an inch deep on any of the really important things that you need to work on.

For sure.

And, and the reason I decided to create Mashup Lab outside of that whole infrastructure is because I wanted to go just an inch wide and a mile deep on just this one puzzle. Just, yeah, let me go figure this piece out because I felt like If we can figure out how to answer those two questions a little bit better, how do we get the attention of people that don't pay attention to this stuff? How do we get them off the sidelines and into that game? Like a whole new world opens up to them. And I felt like that's where I could create value, not only for my own community, but for communities across rural North America. And so it started here in Nova Scotia, but it quickly— what we quickly realized, Rebecca, is like The things that were dynamics that were at play here in my own community exist on a lot of other rural places.

Sure.

On both sides of our, of our border. So it's, yeah.

Okay. So I have some like logistical questions. So, so just again, reiterate. So you originally said that the two counties that you served had a population of 50,000. So how big is— right. Is that right?

Yep.

Okay. How, how big is the town that you are currently operating in? Like how big is the town where your coworking space is? Is that still something you you own and run?

I actually just handed the reins of that whole part of our business over to one of, uh, two of my members in, uh, congratulations. Yeah, thanks.

That's cool.

That happened last year, and it was only because, um, that part of our, our business wasn't like— I, I had to weigh the opportunity cost of every hour and every dollar that we spent doing something with that business versus what the impact I could have doing the things that we were doing with, with Mashup Lab in this virtual program. But the biggest town that we have in our region is, is probably the town of Bridgewater. I think that has like 9 or 10,000 people.

Okay.

We have large municipal districts, right? So we have the municipality of the District of Lunenburg, which covers basically an entire county. Then we have 3 towns within that, the town of Mahone Bay, which is about 700 people. The town of Lunenburg is about 2,500 people, and then the town of Bridgewater is about 8,000. Um, yeah, so like they're small places, right?

And those are small, those are small places. Yeah, I think again, I sometimes think it's just important for our listeners too because, you know, now, now like 700 people, that's like so many of the towns in North Dakota, right? Like we, we have about 800,000 people in the whole state of North Dakota, so are in lots of little towns. And, and the thing about it is, like, I just— what I know is that if anybody listening to this is in any of those towns, those towns exist because of the people like them that are, that are actively showing up, trying to make things happen, trying to get ideas off the ground again, whether it's a business or, you know, an amenity. And they're figuring out unique and different ways to make things happen.

Can I tell you the story of Mary? Because I think it touches on two of the things that you—

Please do.

Yep. So we were just running one or two cohorts of this program here in Nova Scotia when I first started. And the province of Nova Scotia at the time, because of the relationships I had from my economic development days, they came to me and said, Andrew, like, we hear what you're doing down there. We don't quite understand what it is, but we hear good things. We've got this fund of money that we have to spend in the next 24 months, and we're wondering if you can take what you're doing and roll that across the entire province of Nova Scotia. And I was like, literally in the meeting, saying, well, yeah, sure. Like, how much, how much of a budget do you have for, for this? And they gave me the number, and they said, well, how much do you think you could do with that? So I gave literally on the back of the napkin and I was like, yeah, I think we could probably put 100 people through our virtual program in that 24 months and maybe we start 20 different businesses and in a few communities across the province. And they were like, so let's get this right. You're going to go find 100 people in rural Nova Scotia in 24 months to put through a 100% virtual program. In a province that had at the time notoriously crappy rural internet. Like, are we understanding you right? Like, we just want to make sure, you know, we got this clear. And I'm like, yes, that's what I'm saying. So they were like, great, we'll get back to you. And so I'm like, this is, this is not going anywhere. Luckily, I had a few people that were in sort of the inner workings of government at the time say like, you know what, we don't— we have no idea if Andrew can pull off half of what he thinks he can pull off. But what we do know is this, if there is somebody in our province that is going to work their tail off to go figure it, figure out how to do it, it's gonna be him. So we gotta spend the money anyways, so we may as well give him, give him a shot. Oh, that's what they did.

Well, let's just like shout out to a funder that thinks like that.

Yeah. And the relationships that you build over, yeah, it's incredible. 15 years, right? Of that, that trust of like, You know, let's see what he can do. So we didn't end up putting 100 people through that program in 24 months. We ended up putting over 200 people through that process that went on to start 100 businesses in 60 communities across every corner of our province in those, those 2 years. One of the cohorts that we were running— this gets to the story of Mary. So we were rolling this, this out across the province and in a 72-hour window, we get 12 applications from Meat Cove in Cape Breton. So I don't know if many of your listeners will know where Meat Cove is.

I certainly don't.

So Meat Cove is at the very northern tip of Cape Breton Island. It's like the most northerly point of our province. Like, good luck getting a cell signal up there, no less high-speed internet. And in 72— like, there's like 100 people that live in Meat Cove, and in 72 hours we get like 12 applications from this little town. I'm like, 10% of the population just signed up for our program.

Yeah. Like, what's going on?

What is going on? Like, so I literally called every single one of them. And, um, so I pick up the phone, I call the first person and say, hey, I got your application, but like, I gotta ask, how did you hear about this? And they're like, oh, Mary told me about it. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. Call the next person, got your application. How did you hear about it? Oh, Mary sent me an email. I'm like, okay, that's coincidence, maybe. Third person, got your application, how did you hear about it? Oh, I got it in Mary's email, right? I'm like, okay, who is Mary and what is this email that everybody keeps talking about? So come to find out, Mary at the time was a 76-year-old lady, volunteers with her local church auxiliary, spends most of her days going around to all of the bulletin boards in town, at the grocery store and at the pharmacy and all that stuff and stuff, a bunch of groups on Facebook. And every couple of weeks she compiles what's going on in town into this email that she sends out to the 5,000-person email list that she's accumulated over the last decade. So everybody knows what's going on in town. And it just so happened one of the local partners in that community had our poster up on the bulletin board at the grocery store.. And Mary saw it and included it in her email. And 72 hours later, we get 12 applications from a community of 100 and 150 people, maybe. Right?

Okay. So, so I just, there's one thing I have to just say, like, I love, I love this so much because, um, you like, we are fortunate in my town. So I live in a town of about 1,800 people. Um, and so we have a Chamber of Commerce. A lot of communities that listen, for what the listeners, you know, that listen to our show do not live in a community with the Chamber of Commerce. Mary is the Chamber of Commerce in that little town. I mean, she's behaving as one. And I also just love like the super analog way that she handles that, right? Like she's got a system, she goes around. I mean, that's, I just think that's such a great story that illustrates the power of rural in a different way too, right? Like you don't have to have have all the fancy things. You don't have to have, you know, like Constant Contact or ActiveCampaign or like whatever you might need for like an email provider.

You don't need to have all of the fancy things. You need to have two really important things, and they're this: Mary didn't hold a title in the ecosystem. She wasn't coming to the quarterly partners meetings. What she had was something more important for us. She held the trust and attention of the people we were trying to help.

Right.

And I could sit in front of my whiteboard in my economic development days for hours and hours. And Mary wouldn't— I would never think to reach out to the local church auxiliary and say, hey, do you all have a 5,000-person email list that we might be able to promote our entrepreneurship program through? Like, she would just never have come up on my radar.

Right.

Or all of the partners around the table. What we're learning is that Mary, or a version of Mary, exists in every single town, right? So in Manitoba, it was Peter, the custodian at the local high school, that took some of the rougher kids in school and brought them into the workshop, helped them fix things around, and then helped them start businesses when they graduated high school., you know, fixing HVAC systems and being auto mechanics and all those kinds of things. He had them all on, on as friends on Facebook, right? So we, we found, we told, told that story to the local partner. They're like, that's Peter. So I'm like, great. Can you introduce us to Peter? And we, we reached out to Peter from, with a warm introduction and say, hey Peter, we're trying to do this good thing for the community. We know, you know, some guys that are probably, you know, trying to, to get new business ideas off the ground. Do you mind sharing it with a handful of them? And we get 17 applications from Peter.

From Peter, right.

In Eastern Ontario, it was, it was a local hairdresser that had women sitting in her chair all day long talking about their dreams and aspirations for, for life. And there we were like, hey, we're trying to do this good thing. We know some of the people that were sitting in your chair have ideas for businesses in our community. Can you send this out to a few of them? And she sends it out to her whole email list. We get a bunch of applications, right? So it's like those people that don't necessarily exist in the ecosystem, but they have that trust and that attention that we so dearly need if we're going to find that untapped talent. Yeah, those are the channels through which those people are really going to be encouraged to take action. And I haven't gone through the whole the whole list, but the number of— because we track, we ask people, where did you hear about it? The number of people that say friend or family, and they actually—

yeah, from an actual person.

Actual person is off the charts, right?

Okay, so this is reminding me too, like, I, I literally just, um, I, I share a lot, uh, I just had a keynote message. I was in Michigan, um, not even a month ago, and we talked about the fact that it's about personal invitation, right? And that people listen to and, and respond more quickly and openly to personal invitations. And so I think for every economic development person or community developer, anybody doing anything that you're trying to get people to show up, which, like, you're reminding me of some things because it's just hard. We have a very cool art reception tonight here, and I just think, like, I'm literally like, who's my Mary? Like, who would that be? You know what I mean? So I think that's so— it's so helpful to remind people because, again, You also have this really cool experience, um, that I relate to so much in the sense that it's like you, you remember being in the office, having those roundtable conversations where you, and again, there's air quotes for our listeners around this word, like you bring in your stakeholders.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And it's like all, all the people with all the titles that hold all the elected important jobs and roles and, and, while those meetings are happening, life is still happening in your town. And there's people like Mary, there's people like Peter, and there's people like hairdressers having active, meaningful, rich conversations with people.

And, and we very rarely get after the meeting, right?

They're never invited to the meeting. Or, or, I mean, and the other fact is, like, who wants to go to those meetings if you don't have to, right? Like, they're not— they're— we're not— we're not— we're just We're kind of missing kind of that, that human part of it, the human connection, right?

They have a role to, to play. They don't necessarily need to be in a boardroom to play it.

Right. 100%.

The thing that I think I appreciate is I've also sat in the role of economic developer trying to figure out how to do this, and I know how difficult it would be.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. For me to actually do all the heavy lifting that me and my team do.

Yes.

Um, when we go, go do this, like, It's not necessarily rocket science, but it's a hell of a lot of work. And so we've just built that part of the heavy lifting, Rebecca, right into the recipe of our budget, right? So, because I know most of the people that are the communities that are going to end up bringing us in to, you know, run our program in, in their community have 15 other projects that they're trying to move forward and they're just not going to have the capacity or the specialized expertise to go do what, do what we do. So we just include that as a part of the budget because we know, like, 65% of our budget covers all of the work me and my team do in the 8 to 10 weeks before the program even starts. Yeah, because, you know, you got to send— you got to reach out to Mary 3 times before she sends out the email. You got to follow, follow up. Like, there may be a phone call that's involved to say, hey, I don't see that posted on your Facebook page yet. Can you, you know, send that? And like, they're just busy people and it's not for lack of interest or wanting to help, but there's just a required, you know, a requirement there, right?

So yeah, you're, you're touching on another thing that I, that I came— I bumped up against, like, in my role as economic developer, this kind of skepticism or, um, doubt about outside parties coming into our ecosystem. Um, and, and you're, you're touching on the reason why I think it's so important because, yeah, I mean, yes, you don't just bring in unfounded complete, you know, like you don't have a relationship with them to, to hand over something as critical as your, you know, entrepreneurial ecosystem building. Like you don't just hand it over to anybody. But you're touching on it. I think it, like, we get this idea that, well, we have the talent here. It's, it's like, of course, of course, this isn't about a lack of talent for the most part. It is truly, it's a lack of capacity, whether it's time, whether it's energy, whether it's, you know, literally just days in the week. How many emails can a person send? How many— again, if you talk about economic development people, and like you said, they're, they're an inch deep and I swear to God, it's like 10 miles wide, right? It's just like you have to— and you're constantly switching roles too, like the hats. You're just constantly flipping a different hat on. That's why it's so hard for them to go And that's where partnership with somebody like you and your team, it does make a lot of sense. I, I actually would love to get into that a little bit. Like, can you kind of walk me and our listeners through, um, what the Mashup Lab experience is, how it works? And then I don't know how, how much you wanna get into pricing, but of course I'm interested in that. Yeah. And I just don't know how transparent that is, or, you know, you do what you want with that. I, it's just, it's a question that anybody listening to this is gonna wanna know.

So yeah, absolutely. And the only reason it's not on our website is because I really love people having the context around what is included in the price, you know, before just giving the price. But like, we never, Rebecca, run our program in a community without somebody in that place having said, hey, I heard what Andrew has to say. I see the things that he's working on. This is all him and his team have done for the last 10 years. It's just so like you talk about the capacity building. I wouldn't be able to execute on the— even if I had the talent and I had the strategy and the playbook, it would just be unreasonable for me to think I would have the capacity to execute on all of the stuff because I have— I've spent 10 years building just this one engine to go do this one job. Right. And in those economic development roles, you just don't have the luxury of doing that. You're delivering programs on behalf of your state or the federal government. Totally. You have really important projects around housing and, you know, food, you know, deserts and like all of those things that have a show up in a real— childcare, right?

Show up in a real way.

Workforce. Like the mandate of those organizations dictate that they have to wear a lot of different hats. And I don't necessarily think it should be different than that. But we can take this one part off their plate and go do that really, really well if they've given us the privilege of their trust to go do it. Right. So I think that's just a really important thing to recognize. And because as economic developers, you can really start to beat yourself up that you can't get to all of these things. And I've been there. And it's not about that. It's really like the, the nature and the nuance of the job just requires you to do a lot of different things. And you just— yeah, it wouldn't be reasonable for us to expect you to be able to do that. So the way that looks is it's usually a municipality or a town, sometimes a Chamber of Commerce, sometimes a state or provincial government, depending on on the situation. We've had a local, you know, somebody that owns a bunch of hardware stores, just a local entrepreneur write the check to run the program because he didn't want to wait for it to go through all of the government processes to do it. He's like, here, just go make this happen. That's rare, but that does happen. But somebody in that place says, hey, we think what Mashup Lab does and specializes in can be helpful to us here. Then we usually spend 8 to 10 weeks before the scheduled start date of the program doing, engaging all those regular and usual suspects, all the people that do have the titles and positions of people that can help. Like we wanna leverage all of that. But then we also ask like, who are some of these other people? And we give a, we tell the Mary story, we tell a few other stories and like, how does that show up? Who are these kinds of people in your town? Who knows them and can make an introduction? Because they're not going to answer andrew@mashuplab.ca in their inbox just showing up randomly, but they'll, they'll recognize Rebecca's name, for example. So we need that warm introduction. But once you've done that, then we do all the heavy lifting to send them everything they need to share it, send them the templated email. We do all the co-branded marketing material. We do all of the follow-up, make sure they have everything that they need, all of that kind of stuff, answer the back and forth, you know, 17 questions that they often have because, you know, sometimes they get asked to share a lot of stuff that, you know, isn't necessarily purposeful or helpful to the people that they— right? So they should ask a lot of questions, but we field all, all of those. Um, then we run the 6 weeks of the program. And as a part of that, we offer up unlimited one-on-one coaching for all of our participants, not just for the 6 weeks, but to at least a year after the program ends. Because the other thing we're learning is that things don't come together nicely and neatly in just a 6-week program.

6, 6 weeks.

Yeah. Sometimes like it takes 6 months for the timing to be, be right. Or sometimes a year, like in You know, I was in Oklahoma in November and on my way to the airport, I was on the phone with an entrepreneur that went through our program 4 years ago, right? So we don't lose their name, we don't lose their number, they don't lose ours. You know, she's dealing with a whole other set of challenges now because our business is growing, right? So we just bake all of that into the budget and all of the aftercare stuff, all of the data collection and You know, we collect probably over 100 different data points and questions over the course of, you know, the application, the 6 weeks of the program. We do a 6-month, 12-month, and 18-month follow-up just to, again, try to track, you know, the trajectory of people along that, along that path. And we include that all in one flat fee for the, for the community.

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 701-203-3337 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. And it's a flat fee for a community, and is it based on up to a certain number of participants?

Not, not technically. Like, we've done it with as few as 5 people with great results. We've done it with as many as 25 people with great results. Our sweet spot is that 15 to 20 person co—

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's just good facilita— that's like a good size group for facilitation.

And there's some design into that. Like, when, when the group gets too, too big, it's really easy for people to hide in the dark corners of the Zoom screen. It's hard for the facilitator to say, like, who's had their camera off, you know, too long, or who hasn't put anything in the chat. So just, there's an engagement piece there where that's really important. Um, because there's kind of two things. Like, if I were to send you, Rebecca, the outline of our program, is the, the actual curriculum and things that we cover is probably going to look like a dozen other things that may be available in North Dakota or any other place. Um, but the curriculum is not necessarily what makes it unique. There's, there's three things that really make it unique.

Number one, go ahead, kind of entrepreneurs we bring to the party. Yep. This is, this is where I think it's so important for people to hear and, and myself to really, because like, I, I I have said it, I've said it, I'll say it now. Like, people, it is not because there's not enough resources out there. Like, that's not the reason why people aren't starting businesses. Like, because we have an SBDC, you know, the function of the SBA. Um, they— these groups do great things. It's about— at least I think— okay, so I don't want to tell you what I think it is. I want you to talk about your differentiators, and then I'll, I'll probably echo my— those sentiments because I'm sure I'll agree. Um, but first of all, as you said, the type. So it didn't mean interrupt your train of thought, but I just— that's— this is, this is where it because again, like, there's so much out there for them. And even— I don't know if you happen to listen to the episode with the Smart Start gals.

I totally did.

Yeah, like, we talked a lot about that, right? It's like, there's, there's a lot of stuff out there, and you still have to figure out how the heck to navigate it.

So, um, there's a navigation challenge. Yeah, there's also a relevancy challenge. I totally agree. I don't unders— quite understand. I, I get the concept There's like a right size.

It's a right sizing challenge.

I'm not quite sure how it's relevant to me just yet.

Right.

So that's a big part of what we end up again baking into the recipe is like of all of the things that you could be signing up, these are the 3 that are probably most relevant to you at this stage. So we get really, really intentional.

So back to your, your 3 things, because I didn't mean to take you off course, but the first is the type of person, the type of individual.

The kind of entrepreneur.

Yeah. Which is very cool.

That aligns the community to the person. So, well, again, well over 85% 85% of those folks aren't taking advantage of the things that are available to them there, there today. We bring up that whole other group of entrepreneurs to that party and amplify all of those awesome things that already exist and get more people using them and taking advantage of them. The second thing is, just as an example, on one— in one cohort, I had a 17-year-old high school student working on an online arts magazine to highlight up-and-coming talent in her community of friends. On the same call as a 57-year-old woman that just retired from a corporate career, moved back to a small town, hired 12 local sewers to upcycle used clothing into new products. Cool. On the same call as a 76-year-old opera singer that wanted to reinvent how he was getting opera gigs because he was having mobility issues and couldn't do all the travel that's required to go and audition for opera around the world, um, on the same call showing Andrew that 7 o'clock on a Thursday night.

That is like, it's just so freaking cool. It's so freaking cool. And I think too, like, I don't— I'm not gonna say— I don't want to say that I think like I, I delight in that. I delight in that variety. I, I truly, I just think like that's also real community. All of our communities actually look like that. Now, we maybe don't know that because people are like fostering their quirky, weird, or like kind of out of the mainstream.

We just get together, right?

Right.

People get together at 7 o'clock on a Thursday, Thursday night. Their paths may never, may never cross.

Yep.

Only that we went and found them and brought them together.

I— oh, that's so exciting.

So, so the— but here becomes the challenge, and again, a, a piece of our, our secret sauce is how we make that process relevant to all of them, all of them, as well as like the stay-at-home mom that wants to make an extra 5 grand to pay for some extra groceries, to go on a nice vacation, all the way up to a mobile video game company that sold to the largest mobile video game company in the world for $350 million US 2 Christmases ago and everything in between. So how we make the process relevant to people on both ends of that spectrum is a bit of an art and a science. And so that's another piece that kind of makes what we do a little bit unique. And again, when you— this is all you do all day long for 10 years, you get— you figure these things out and you get—

Well, you get smarter, right? Like every single day you're still learning new things. And also, I mean, and that's what I think. I just— I want to just stop for a second and just say, like, congratulations on, on kind of moving, moving into something that is quite clearly your passion. And quite clearly you have a skill set and like an aptitude for what you're doing, which is very, very cool. And I think to have kind of come out of the traditional role of economic development and just like forged your own path in a way that still like impacts your community, I feel like we're kindred spirits in that way. That's like what I'm trying to do. And holy crap, there's so much I have not figured out. There is so much that I— and there's so many things, and I only figure out what works and doesn't work by trying, like by trying and, and kind of failing. But I don't even consider it failing. But some days it feels like failing, doesn't it? Like you're just like, oh my word, it's so exhausting.

I've been at this for 10 years now, Rebecca, and I'm dealing with a situation right now in, in Alberta where I have cohort running in two separate communities. They're less than an hour apart. Our traditional approach, the things that we normally do that get, gets those results working like magic in one going community, we've got 19 applications already. In the neighboring community, we do all the exact same, same things, we're stuck at 3 applications. So, it's like, just because you've, I've worked in 700 communities doesn't mean we've got this all figured out. We're still learning about, okay, well, what's, different in that community.

Yeah. What's going on, right?

Yeah. Like, yeah, like, let's not get stagnant and stale. Like, I've challenged my team. Like, this is— it's frustrating. It's also a beautiful opportunity. Like, we got to go deep into our toolkit to go figure out how to do right by that community. We're just not going to let it sit at 3 applications. Yeah, let's go figure out what's going on there. Where's the— there's the disconnect. Because what we learn in that community, we're going to find and run into another situation.

Absolutely.

In some other province, in some other state. Yeah. We gotta have a really robust toolkit and strategies for when these kinds of thing— things happen. So that's what we're doing now. There's— we have a whole other set of things that we're deploying. So despite the fact that we've built a really well-oiled machine to, to do all this stuff, every once in a while you gotta pull out of that and say, okay, what can we learn from the things that are challenging us right now? And how can we update the playbook so that when we go to the next 700 communities, we've got more things that could be relevant? Because we may know the 20 strategies that work. We don't know the 3 that are going to work really, really well in your community.

Right.

That's where I need that local context, that local person to say, okay, here are the things that we've done in all of these other places that have worked really well. Tell me the 2 or 3 that you think are going to work best here. Let's start. Right. Yeah, that's a part of our sort of kickoff process is like I tell a few stories and I get people giving me some guidance and direction about their community because I can't learn that sitting here in rural Nova Scotia. I don't know what, what that's like.

I may have, right, right.

But I don't, I don't know what it's going to be like in a small town in North, North Dakota. And just even if we've done work in small towns in North Dakota, I don't know.

Exactly. No two towns are exactly the And that's the mistake, I think. And that's also why I think it's so fun that you're, you're actually focusing on rural places, because I think even our, our federal government, even sometimes our state government— and our, our state is rural, Andrew. Like, you know, Fargo, North Dakota is the biggest city in our state, and it's— I mean, just the, the Fargo itself is like 150,000 people, you know. Now obviously there's, there's West Fargo and there's Moorhead, Minnesota, right? Like, they're all right connected, but we're not talking about a lot of people. And so I think there's still though this, this blanket idea that if you've seen one small town, you've seen them all. And that's not the truth. That's just not the truth.

Figure out— yeah, right. I've been in those roles where I've had a provincial mandate. Like, I—

yes, it's—

yes, I think what has really put me in a good position to do what I do today was that context and that experience I had in my economic development days.

Right.

Like, I'm still the same guy that values the same things, that's passionate about the same, same stuff. I've just figured out a different way to go solve the puzzle I was struggling with. And, but I have that context of like, I understand what makes what I do today difficult to do at a state level, difficult to do if you are executive director of a chamber of commerce or part-time economic—

Yeah, right.

Or yeah, volunteer city manager. Like, I understand what makes what I do difficult, right? So I know I gotta, I gotta figure out a different way to go help that community because I can't just hand my playbook over and say, okay, here you go, you go do all this stuff and we'll be waiting over here for the 20 entrepreneurs you go find, right? To, to work with them. Like that's, that formula is just isn't gonna work. But I wouldn't necessarily have that context without having spent 15 years in that chair. In those chairs.

And you also, you also have an empathy for the role, which I think is, is so important because again, like, I almost just sounded flippant, like they get it wrong all the time and then end it there. I understand why they get it wrong. And it's still like on the ground, you're like, oh, that's just not quite right. Right. So, but the empathy, the empathy that you can carry for the people in those positions also in, in endears you to them in a way that's important, right? Because it's relationship building. This— your entire thing does not work without, without a local person. And you— that— you don't find that local person without being warm, being connective, and being relatable and being empathetic, right? Like, you know what they're in, you know what they feel like, you know what they experience. It takes that.

And it's interesting.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And because people, you talk about, you know, bringing other resources from outside of the state or outside of the community or outside of the country to this place. And I'll share a real quick story about a small community I was working with in Wisconsin. And we ran our first cohort there, it went really well. We were going to be running a next cohort. And I'm like, I got to go see this place. So I hopped on a plane and through flights getting canceled, I end up literally zigzagging across the continent to find myself in Minnesota to rent a car to then drive to this in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and was there and got a really great sense of the community, met some of the entrepreneurs we were working with, met with the local partners. And at the dinner that I was sort of hosting with some of those partners, they were like, like, Andrew, why are you here? And why do you care so much about the Northwoods of Wisconsin? Like, you're sitting in Nova Scotia, like, why? Like, why do you care? I'm like, it's not about the place for me. It's about this idea that so much of our entrepreneurial and innovative talent is often overlooked and underestimated. And I care just as much about activating that talent in your town as I do in my own. And they're like, Andrew, like, we can't often get people to come up here from Green Bay and you just taken 3 planes.

Yeah, yeah.

3,000 miles to get, to get here. It's like, but yeah, it was important for me to be here. We're going to be doing work in this community. I like, we can do all of this over Zoom, but I, there's just a different context and perspective that you get from being in that place.. And the, the biggest compliment I got from one of the participants in, in that community, cuz that was the, that was the first one that we did outside of Canada.

Really? How long, can I ask how long ago was that?

That was 2021.

Okay.

So we, we were running it.

Again, like good for you cuz that's not an easy thing to do either. You know, just like making—

Thank goodness for LinkedIn and thank goodness Yeah, Tony Van Doren in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, that met this random guy on LinkedIn through a connection and like, hmm, I think what Andrew's been working on up there in, you know, Nova Scotia can be helpful here and went to bat with her local partners to say, hey, I think what he's doing can be helpful here. And we've ended up running, I think, 6 cohorts in that part of the state.

That's so cool.

It is cool. But yeah, but But the biggest compliment I got from that first cohort was from a guy named Lucas. He was the local phys ed teacher. He goes to Alaska to fish it during the summer and then has an arrangement with a processor, I think in Seattle, to bring wild-caught salmon to Wisconsin. So Wisconsin in the middle of America, not easy to get fresh wild-caught salmon. So that's his whole business. And he's like, Andrew, when I first signed up for this thing and I heard you were from Nova Scotia, I'm like, what the heck is this guy in a whole other country sitting in a whole other place gonna know about entrepreneurship and business in rural Wisconsin? He said, by the end of the program, I felt like you were just down the street.

Yeah, that's incredible. That's an incredible compliment. Yeah, it's so, this is so cool. And of course, like you and I are gonna have a long talk after we stop recording, my brain is on fire thinking about ways, of course, to get you to North Dakota. Um, but I also, I just, you too are, you're living, you are actually walking your talk. I don't know what your curriculum looks like and I don't have to. The fact that you're talking to entrepreneurs and you're behaving like one is, I mean, again, and you're not even behaving like when you are one. I mean, you're this 10 years into a business might sound like a mature business stage, but it's— you're— I'm— you still sound to me, or talking to me, like a startup, like a startup mindset, right? Because there's, there's constantly new things that— this idea that like you mature in your business and all of a sudden everything's just like coasting. If you're coasting, you're stagnating. I think you're probably missing opportunities. And we, in our very rural places, like, you're also highlighting just the possibility, the opportunity. Rural internet's really important. I mean, it's an— it's a key part of it, right? But like we can sell, like the fact that even right now, you know, I'm sitting in this podcast studio, tiny little huddle room in our coworking space in a town of 1,800 people in North Dakota. And it will be heard by people all over the country. That's the opportunity that exists for every single one of the people that has an idea that you're gonna help them bring to fruition. Right. It's just, it's really cool. I can't believe it's taken us this long to actually make this happen. So shame on me. Shame on me. Because like, I just, I'm so glad that we're—

You've been heads down doing things in your community. I've been heads down doing things on the things I'm passionate about. And I think you're absolutely right. I think there's a bunch of opportunity in this space. Number one, what we're learning 10 years into it is we still, well over 80% of the folks that we end up applying for our program in 2026, will have never signed up for a business or entrepreneurship program before. So there's a massive pool of untapped talent sitting on the sidelines in these rural places in every province and state that we've ever done it. Secondly is, and we talk about micro businesses, and I love what Marcy and Katie are doing and their focus in on micro business. What we also get the privilege of being on the front lines of seeing evolving business models. So we've, we've now seen multiple entrepreneurs, solo entrepreneurs build $700,000 businesses with zero employees from a spare, spare bedroom.

Mm-hmm.

Another one is gonna hire their first full-time employee remote and, and get that to $1.3 million this year. Like the business models that are available to entrepreneurs today to grow very profitable, very scalable business if they choose to do so. And it, and it is a choice. Yeah, some people don't want that, right?

100%. And that's okay.

That's okay. And oftentimes there's a pat on the head and say, oh, you, you have your cute little business. I don't see it that, that way.

I don't either.

Yeah, it's like, that is actually really, really important for us to have dozens of businesses that make $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 in their spare time, right? That help sponsor local teams, that help pay for, in our case, hockey gear. You probably have hockey gear, you know, hockey jerseys.

I don't in our little town. Definitely have hockey in North Dakota, but not in our little town.

Yeah. But like, that's really important because what we're seeing is the ripple effect of those things that they have, especially in a rural place. Because what's, what's really, really cool is what we're starting to see now, Rebecca, is we've been at this for 10 years. I'm starting to see the 9-year-old that was sitting on his mom's lap 10 years ago, watching her go through an entrepreneurship program on a Thursday night, go to the local farmer's market, come home with $1,000 in her pocket, right? Right now is starting to— is signing up for my program to take his business through on— that's probably going to employ 5 or 6 people in their community this year. What impact did we have on that 9-year-old?

Right. Right.

And like way back then, like in his worldview of what was possible from his town of 1,700 people.

Right. So the other, the other big thing, and you're touching on it, but I want to go straight to the heart of it because it's why I started my nonprofit. Okay. Is that I think that what we're talking about is fulfillment and, and a, and a sense of contentedness in a career that wouldn't exist without what you're doing, whether they're doing it as a side hustle to something like they have a full-time job and they are doing, they're pursuing this thing as a side hustle. And again, this idea of like you get to make your business idea whatever you wanna make it as big or as small, right? Yeah. But we're, what there's there's such— there's an enormous ripple effect. Um, and I mean, the generational thing is absolutely a part of it. Like, I think about tonight, at least two of my children will be actively involved in this thing happening here, right? I love, I love that because they also then just are kind of— they're raised with this mentality of like, well, all sorts of weird stuff is possible, right? Which is of course what we want to do. But I think it's also truly people that feel a level of fulfillment, contentment with their work, they move through the world differently. They walk out onto our main streets with a different sense of not only purpose, but just kind of happiness that I think, why would we not want that to be on the faces of more of the people in our communities? And it doesn't have to come through businesses, but for those people that have that like passion, drive, interest, artist, you know, desire to do something. Gosh, like, what are we actually unlocking in them? You know, I just, it's so important. That's what culture is, right? That's what communities feel like.

And other people feel when they show up to town and think, oh, this is a place where being an entrepreneur and being creative and being innovative is welcomed. And I can find my tribe and my people here. And like, I don't feel like the weirdo in town. Like, I have so many stories about the ripple effects that we're seeing, and I'm actually in really, really early conversations with the university around, like, how to actually start to quantify some of this now that we have 10 years' worth of data to dig into. But I, like, I will talk— people will say, well, tell me your biggest success story. I'm like, success based on what criteria?

Right.

So I'll talk about the $350 million exit of the business that went, went through parts of our program. I'll also talk about the stay-at-home mom that started a business, was doing really well, ran into some health issues, decided to shut the business down, took all of the things that she learned and gained through that process, not just the technical skills, But the confidence, right? The ability of like, you know, resilience, all of the things that we bake into the recipe of this are just as important as teaching people how to do marketing and understand their financials. And has gone on to do so many good not-for-profit things, community gardens, run, you know, run food programs at the local high school. She ended up running for council in a town of of 1,500 people, all old white guys sitting around the table. And here she is, you know, 30-something, you know, you're, you're a woman around that table, and she's probably going to give the mayor a run for his money in the next election. Like, that—

those are such big deals.

It is such a big deal, right?

No, it's not cute.

No, it's like the people that get it— Rebecca, get it. I've also been in rooms where I also, I felt like kind of sitting at the kiddies' table at Thanksgiving. People are like, oh, that's really— those are really interesting anecdotes, but it's not real economic development. It's not real business. I'm like, that is so short-sighted to not realize the ripple effect that that can have in a town. What that person's neighbor sees now as possible for them and themselves, what that person's— like her sister, her aunt, her cousin. Like the ripple effect that that story and that experience has in the, in these small places is actually just as important as the number of jobs that get created.

Yeah.

Like the number of jobs that get created is important. That's an important number. Just as important is how have we boosted people's confidence in their ability to go do something audacious. Yeah.

You were 100% speaking my language. Like that's 100%. Met one of my deep, deep, deep core beliefs. My, my background prior to growing small towns was in organizational development, right? So I've always had this like fascination with the human element in everything because that's, I mean, again, it's, we're human, so we're emotional. We're emotional creatures, right? So like, I, I just think like, help me understand the downside of giving somebody an opportunity to express themselves more fully, find more purpose in their work, create something. You know, like, help me understand the downside. So a fun thing, um, this— it was not last summer but the summer before— we, we hosted a big development day with a bunch of nonprofit leaders. There were like 50 people in the room. We did this quick activity asking them to write down— so we had kind of like a U in the center, and then we had all these little like concentric circles around it that had buckets of, of places where they might be showing up in their community, right? So like school activities, you know, boards that you serve on, right? Just like all this stuff. And we said, just take 5 minutes and jot down as many of those things that you're involved in as you can think of, right?

How many pieces of paper did they ask you for?

Well, we had— we just— there's one place that they jotted it down real fast, but we did a quick report out. And in that 5 minutes, we, we discovered that on average, in that room of people— and they were all in rural places, all in small communities— 11, 11 was the average number of things that they were involved in, places that they were showing up in their community. So that's the other ripple effect. Your work matters. Like, so if, if I gain confidence or I learn how to, how to handle difficulty or like conflict resolution, pick a thing, pick a thing, anything that they'd learn kind of anecdotally, or we wanna call it like a soft skill, which I also struggle with that. I'm like, there is nothing soft about what we're talking about here.

Right.

Right? You help them develop that skill, they take that forward to 11 places in your community. Then how many other people are impacted? How many other budgets are impacted by, like, again, just any skill getting better? They take it with them. That's why it matters, right?

Like, totally.

I just— it's, it's such a big deal.

In our entrepreneurship program, we, we call it a business model. In a community group, it's a funding model or a sustainability model. It's the same thing. We have to figure out how to fund the, the good thing we want to go do in, in the community. So you have that context. And like, one thing I, I never would've connected the dot dots on, on this until we, we saw it starting to, to show up. So in a, in a community that will remain nameless because because the folks that were involved in this particular project didn't want it to go up. But there was a large manufacturer in that town. And what they began to notice was that the people that were going through our program that didn't end up starting businesses were amazing employees at their— because they wanted all of of the things that inspired them to go look at, you know, a business opportunity to be ingrained in their culture.

Right, right.

So, so they ended up funding an entire cohort, and they said, we don't want our logo on it, we don't want anything, because we don't want to be in economic development. But we see the connection between you're going to go find people in our community that bring that entrepreneurial thinking to your point, right, right, into the pro— and some of them are going to go start businesses in our community, great. All the ones that don't, we want to say, hey, we've got jobs for you here and we want your skills. So like, we put those two things of workforce development and entrepreneurial development or business development in two, two different silos, and they're humans.

They're all humans, humans that have have things.

And like, to your point, if we can in 6 weeks boost somebody's confidence, how does that show up in their workplace, right? Right. The, the full-time job that they got when they're thinking about, you know, doing a side hustle, and they go through this process and now they've got some skills and understanding of how business works and like how their, their company is really trying to make money and grow. And like, those are all really valuable things for a workforce to have at their disposal.

Yeah. And like, that's a full stop kind of thing to me. There's like, there shouldn't be an argument about that. I, I don't know that there actually is. I think it's more just a lack of— a lot of times people aren't connecting those dots, right? It's— I don't, I don't think anybody would actually disagree with it. I don't know, probably somebody might, but I, I don't feel like that's what I hear. It's more just like we wouldn't have ever thought of it that way. And like you said too, some of it comes down to where the money to address these challenges comes from, right? And a lot of times it's— if it's like government funded, it's like really narrow. And so we just all have to get better maybe. And I'm this— I'm including myself in this— and just navigating the language side of it to make sure that we're, we're articulating that they are the same, that the benefits land, right? Whether it's workforce development or business development or business attraction. But it's, it's super interesting. I just— it's humans. It's like, how are we investing in the humans in our communities? That's, that's what I, that's what I care about. That's what this show is about. That's why we do what we do.

Where the funding comes from, we can get creative with.

Yeah, right.

I totally, I totally appreciate the constraints that some of those Like they want to make it happen and just like they can't make a square peg fit in a round hole. I totally get it. And that's where I think we're starting to see towns and municipalities kind of emerge as a really interesting customer segment for, for us, because the people that are at that sort of town and municipal level totally appreciate this rising tide lifts all ships. Yeah, kind of benefit that, that you get. Yeah, they totally appreciate more money circulating in their, in their town, and it doesn't matter if it's $5,000 from this family or $500,000 from that family. Like, the reason to have more people doing entrepreneurial things, bringing money into their community, just a lot of alignment there. Uh, and they also have a lot of creativity around and control over funding and how money gets spent. And like, if it makes sense for the community, they can usually figure out a way to make it work. And I think there's just a lot of, you know, opportunity in that, uh, in that space of not just— because sometimes we're dealing with towns that their entire budget is less than $18,000 for the year, right? Team up with some of their neighbors, right? And we can, you know, pull some people from your community and some people from your neighbor's community, and maybe there's 2 or 3 of that can get together and all of a sudden you make something happen for the whole place.

Right.

We've done lots, lots of those sorts of things as well to get creative.

But so that's the first step. You just said a number. That was the first time you'd said a number.

Oh, sorry. I didn't say that earlier.

You didn't say that earlier. So is that, is that the, is that the number?

Yeah, that is the number. So it's so all of the stuff that we do in the 8 to 10 weeks before the program starts The 6 weeks of the delivery of the program with one of our trained Mashup Lab facilitators, um, that does all of the things we do with that group, as well as the unlimited coaching and all the support that we give folks for at least a year after the program ends, is $18,000.

Okay.

Plus any local taxes that might be due.

Up to 25 people?

We, we usually cap it at, um, at 20, 20 people.

20. Okay.

Okay, because again, you know, we're not going to leave 5 people on the, on the sidelines if we can help, help them out. But once we get to that 20 to 30 people that are applying, we really look to divide the group up in the 2 cohorts and see if we can find funding to, to add a second cohort. And there's some cost savings in that also, Rebecca. Like, we've done that as well, where a community has put funding in place to run 1 cohort. Like, this happened in Morinvale in Alberta. Um, we ended up ended up getting, I think, 42 applications to fill those 15 spots. They went back to their council and say, hey, like, we can— it's not another $18,000, it's something less than that. Can we find that money somewhere to run a second cohort? Because let's strike while the iron's hot. And that's what we were able to do. We bolted a second cohort on and we ran those cohorts simultaneously on two different nights. And we ended up, I think, with 30-some new businesses in that, that community at the end of the program.

Yeah, that's so cool. So, okay, one quick question. Do you ever— is part of your model, is it completely flexible on the part of your partner, whoever's funding it? Do any of your partners ever actually charge something to the participants, or is it pretty much always just an expectation that they would participate for free?

It has happened. I discourage it.

Okay.

For this reason. And because what we really built this whole model around, Rebecca, is optimizing for activating as much untapped talent in your community as possible. The more people we get a name and an email from that say, hey, I have an idea for something, the better, right? Yeah. So what we, what we've learned, because because the question always comes up, well, the entrepreneurs don't have skin in the game. My pushback on that is there's lots of different forms of currency. Greenback dollars is just one version of currency that people pay. Yeah, people pay with their time. If you're a stay-at-home mom, you got to go hire a babysitter on Thursday night, you've got skin in the game. If you're somebody that doesn't believe that your idea is really good and you're going to get on a call with 15 other people and say, hey, I have a dream for something I've been trying to build for the last 5 years. That takes a ton of courage. You got skin in the game, right?

Yeah. See, oh, we were absolutely meant to be friends. We're friends now. I don't know if you knew that, but like I've said that so many times. I think too, it's like, it's a mistake to assume that their only investment into the process is, is money. Because like you said, it is, it's their time. If they actually end up starting a business, that there is so much that they are potentially risking, right?

And also, what Yes. Like, and, and we've done it lots of different ways. We've had the entrepreneurs pay the full shot. We've had entrepreneurs pay half of it, and if they get through the program, they get, they get their half back. We've put all kinds of different amounts on, and what we're learning is that it doesn't matter if it's $20, $200, or $2,000. There's a friction point when, as soon as you do that, as soon as that entrepreneur goes to that page and starts filling out that form, and realizes this is going to be $20. Do I take that $20 and take my partner out for a nice dinner somewhere and like it goes towards that? Or do I pay that $20 for my kid's drama class that he's gonna, gonna take? Like there's a friction point there and we see the number of people, the number of applications shrink exponentially. And again, it's not necessarily the amount of money, is that decision that the person now has to make about before they hit that apply button. And we want to reduce that friction as much as possible because our belief is that the more people we get into that process, number one, we can then— it helps us identify the 15 to 20 people that are going to get the most out of the process. But it also helps us to wrap our arms around all of the people that apply and help them in lots of different ways, even if we can't offer offer them a spot in the, in the program. So we do, we do a whole thing for people that say, hey, the spots are filled, but we, we still want to help you. Here's some things that you can do, sort of like a do-it-yourself kind of a, kind of a model while we're waiting for the next cohort to, to open up. So we don't leave people kind of out in the cold if they've had the courage to put their name forward. We want to do something to, you know, to help them. And we've, we've hoped— we've booked one-on-one meetings with people that applied for the program, didn't get in, but they're like, I just, I just need to talk to somebody. Great. Here's the link, book a call. We'll do our best to help you out and get you connected with some folks in your community that can, that can probably, uh, help you. And you can sit across the table and have a coffee or a beer and chat with them about your, you know, idea.

Right. How many, how many team members do you have?

So we, we've got a total of, uh, 6 people now that that make that engine, uh, that run cohorts and do all the things. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. That's, that's incredible. I, uh, this has just been such a fun conversation. I think too, like, uh, so it's funny you said people ask like, what's your best success story? I have a different question. I have, I definitely have something that I wanna know. What's the most unique business that you've seen kick off?

Oh my God.

Like actually, actually start, right? Like, yep. And maybe, and maybe are like turning a profit just because again, like I don't wanna, I don't wanna minimize the value of learning these things cuz it doesn't have to result in a business. I truly fully believe that. But I think, I think what people also kind of miss maybe is just how much more amenitized and cool your community can become if you activate this kind of untapped talent. I know that it exists here. Um, I actually think a lot of it's coming to the forefront. I, there's something in the water in our community right now. It's great. Like it's really, really fun. Um, but can you— is there, is there one that comes to mind? I mean, the people you talked about that were these 3 people on the call, like the opera singer, like that is so cool. But I don't know if that turned into like an official, like an actual business.

What he, he ended up doing was, um, supplementing kind of his retirement income by going to, uh, seniors' homes and getting seniors' homes to hire him to come in and sing opera to their— the seniors that were in, in their community. Like, beautiful, right?

That's so beautiful. Yeah, right. Yeah.

So, so one of the other things to know about Nova Scotia is we have one of the fastest aging populations in, in the country as well. So we have lots of people that are sitting in our seniors' homes that would really appreciate, you know, music and what that does for cognitive—

oh my goodness.

Yeah, like there's just a lot of benefits. And he figured out how to repurpose purpose, his talent to go serve a different community. So I think less about specific businesses and more about business models.

So, okay. Yeah, yeah.

You know, people that come to us with like this sort of off-grid ecotourism business, but in the process of building the, you know, bunkies that are powered by the river that runs through the community or through the property, They've realized all the off-the-shelf, like, hydroelectric things that would normally power the bunkies don't work. So they invented a whole new thing to get more power out of the, you know, because of their local site conditions. And now all of a sudden we have a quote-unquote green tech company that showed up as an ecotourism bunkie business. But you would never necessarily put those things together. We see— we're starting to see more in the US than here in Canada because we just have some logistical financial challenges. But this whole notion of live social shopping, that's been huge in China for like the last decade. I know Gary Vee, uh, talks a lot about it. I don't necessarily prescribe to everything Gary Vee says, but I think he's right with this one, where on a Tuesday afternoon in a sleepy downtown, uh, storefront, people are turning on live social shopping, selling products, and making $900 in an hour. Um, we're starting to see businesses build entire business models around that, the fact that that now exists. Um, so yeah, like those kinds of things. Um, but there's been just so many, Rebecca, and I think this is a really important thing for our economic developers that are listening to, to just realize, like, because I held this bias, right? There were so many businesses that have come through my process where I've said, you know what, that is an absolute winner, that this, this entrepreneur is going to knock that business out of the park, and it goes absolutely nowhere, right? And the flip side, I've also said, you know, that's a really nice— uh, there's no way you're going to make any money doing that, and they absolutely crush it because they understand their customer, they understand who they're selling to, they understand the things that create value for them that I would never know because I'm not in community. I'm not in that space.

Yeah, right.

So, so we've kind of distilled the process down to like, we really don't care what sausage you want to put through the machine. Let's just build a really awesome machine. You understand the ingredients, you understand the market.

Yeah. Oh, I love that analogy. That's such a great analogy. Yeah.

So let's not judge the business as when it, when it comes in, because And again, I was guilty of this in my economic development roles. You see lots of people come through, through your door and, you know, the quote unquote tire kickers, people that have lots of ideas, just don't do anything. And you get jaded a little bit with some of these. Yeah. You know, you've issued a bunch of loans to local landscaping companies and they didn't, you know, they didn't pay back the loan. Well, it may have absolutely nothing to do with landscaping opportunities in your community, it may have something to do with the entrepreneur behind it. They went through a divorce, their, you know, the business partnership went south. All of a sudden they had a key piece of equipment that broke and they didn't, you know, structure their balance sheet correctly. Like there could be literally hundreds of variables that determine whether or not something can be successful in a place. So we just like welcome all of those things. But then we get those entrepreneurs to really focus in on like, okay, who are you going to really create value for with this business? Who's going to be super excited that your new thing exists in the world? And how do you go about getting the trust and attention of those people? And you're not trying to find 1,000 customers, you're trying to find your first 10, right? From those first 10.

The other thing I really hear in the way that you approach this, which all of that is so true, it It is so— we are not historically that good at picking winners and losers because we have no idea. Like you— yeah, like you said, there's— all it takes is one variable. Like, a person can develop one skill, hone it to the point that it completely changes the trajectory of their business. That's— and that's what I think is so fun because humans are so cool. Um, but I think the other thing that I really hear in the way that you're talking is that you don't approach this from the perspective that the only way to create a sustainable business is to solve an existing problem, because business isn't just about problem solving. We say that it is, but I think we live in a time now where it could be like fostering a really unique, like, niche creative outlet.

Like, it's fulfilling a desire.

Yes, it's crazy. And that's not— that's again, maybe— so then maybe the argument would be like, the problem is that you have this desire and there's nowhere for it to be fulfilled. Sure. But I guess my point is, there we go, right? That's what we do. And I just have to share this because I'm thinking about in the last even 6 months, some of the conversations we've had locally. There was this group of— that was 2 guys that came that reached out to me. I knew of the guy before a little bit, but not well. And he's like, we want to start a model train club. Okay, so it's a club. It's not— they're not like doing it to make money, but it is. And then they came and they had that. So it was so fun. I can't wait to like eventually share more broadly when they kind of get their stuff rolling. Um, but that is absolutely going to drive tourists to this community because that's a really niche hobby. It's like a niche desire. And they geeked out about it so hard in front of me, and I— it was just like pure delight to me. I thought— and this and this thing that they're doing, whether they ever make it about making money, right? It's the fact that they will now love this community more because that outlet is being met. That's what I feel like it sounds like you're welcoming into this process, which is— that is not— it is missing. It is missing from kind of the more formal processes. It is.

We not only welcome it into the— there's a really good reason why we we welcome that into the process, Rebecca, is because as soon as you said that we want to start a mobile or a model train club— yeah, I've— I can think of 4 other entrepreneurs that have started really, really niche clubs and different business models that they've built around those ideas that generate a hell of a lot of money. Yeah, that if we get the privilege of being exposed to the creativity of entrepreneurship in 2 countries.

Yeah, that is so cool. I, I bet you just— oh, and you meet— there's nobody you meet that's not just cool because everybody— like, I guess I kind of see it like there's something to learn from every single person we meet, right?

So what ends up happening is like, okay, somebody brings that in, and because our facilitators have gotten exposed to a lot of these, these things— like, this lady that she was like looking to start a, you know, you know, some sort of wool club, right, to make knitting wool and, but then figured out how to build this whole festival around it. And that's what then, and then this one over, over here, there's this whole other subscription model thing that they, they did. So maybe, so you play around with enough of the, these ideas, you start to layer into their, the entrepreneur's mindset other ways that they could build really sustainable businesses or business models behind these things, whether it's a for-profit business model social enterprise business model, a not-for-profit, like it doesn't matter the corporate structure, right? The organizational structure still needs to figure out a way to sustain itself, right? So they can pick and choose. It was like, oh, like that wouldn't work for me, but like, I really like that idea. And like, let's give that a try. And then what I love about, say, what Becky and Deb are doing, or like the way they approach things, with SaveYour.Town, uh, is like, well, what's the first, like, idea-friendly way to go test and experiment?

What's the thing we can test? Yeah, simplest, simplest, smallest, easiest.

Something super unique about that kind of niche market that, you know, doesn't make that business model work. But like, how can we, you know, take a very small first step of testing and experimenting with it? And sometimes it's just a matter of like opening up the minds and eyes of the entrepreneurs behind like different ways that they could potentially to make money. And now they're making a choice. Now they, now they get to make the choice of like, do I want this to be a fun hobby thing that me and my buddies do on a, on a Friday night and we just love it for that? Or if I can figure out a way to replace my full-time job income just doing this, like, what could that look like, right? Because it's possible. There's a way to do it. It's a lot of work, and it may be something You may have to make some choices and some sacrifices in order to do that.

Mm-hmm.

But there's a possibility there, right? So now you're an entrepreneur making a choice about what you want your life to look like. And I think that's really the, the benefit and the privilege of that. We end up putting people— like, one of the outcomes of the 6 weeks is not just the number of businesses started and the amount of sales that get made and the amount of financing that gets raised and number of employees that get hired and all this. Those are all things we measure, and that— those are important things. But it's, but it's also about, can we put somebody in a position to make an informed decision about what they want to do in the next 90 days with their life and how does fit into that, right? Right. And now we've opened up their eyes to something that was possible that really wasn't necessarily possible in their own mind 6 weeks ago.

Like, yeah, it's a huge deal. It's like latent possibility, right? It's there, but it's just sitting in a— it's, it's— so the talent, I think, is untapped, and then you're matching that with like possibility that they maybe didn't even know existed. And, and that's not anybody's fault, right? It's like literally just, you only know what you've been exposed to. You only know— any single one of us, we, we're limited by what we know, by what we've seen, by what we've experienced.

And so putting people And you touched on this at the, at the end of your podcast with, with her, Marcy, and, and Leanne, you know, Smart Start. It's like sometimes when we talk about these things, it can almost be like we're in, it's an indictment of, of the system. And I don't see it that, that way, way at all. And the, the big, like the best question that I've asked myself over the years is like, what are we optimizing for. So in my economic development days, I was just optimizing for something different. I was optimizing for a different outcome. And as a result of that, I attracted and I was useful and valuable to a certain kind of entrepreneur. With Mattel, I'm optimizing for something completely different, right? As a result, a whole different kind of entrepreneur is showing up. I'm the— still the same guy with the same values, believing the same things I believe, but now there's in 15 years in economic development. I'm just optimizing for something different. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a really, that's a really great frame. Yeah. That's a really great frame.

I have the privilege of being able to, to, to make that choice because I've pulled Mashup Lab out of that whole infrastructure and system. I can, I can do that. I can, as the entrepreneur behind this business, I can make the choice to optimize for the things I want to optimize for. And as a result, help. There's some things that we don't do really, really great, right? We don't necessarily— aren't positioned well to help that scalable startup company go get venture capital funds. Like, we're just not— that's just not the engine we've, we've built. There's lots of other partners that can help somebody when they get to that stage, if that's what they want to do.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Andrew, it's been wonderful chatting with you. I, I really— I love— and thank you so much for just sharing so much about the arc, your own arc, right? Kind of your own story arc because there's— that's just it. You're constantly evolving, constantly growing, constantly kind of transforming, right? It's, it's a process of constantly, you know, shifting and changing and growing and learning.

And it's just a matter of focus, right? Like, I— there was a really important, um, sort of juncture of Mashup Lab where I could have kept it just a really small thing and just went and did this work in my own province or in my own community and ran 2 or 3 cohorts a year. I made a conscious choice to try to figure out how I roll this out across rural communities into 2 countries, right? And it took a level of— there's all kinds of sacrifices that came along with that, trade-offs, right, that came along with that, that choice. But it really allowed me to focus in on the thing that I felt like I could be really, really good at. And I just couldn't live with myself, Rebecca, if I made the choice to keep it small and then 10 years from now say, "What if I was able to help a community in North Dakota? What if I was able to help that entrepreneur that's been overlooked in rural Alberta or rural Ontario or rural Wisconsin or rural Texas or rural anywhere else?" How would I feel about that? If I had something over here that could help them and I just chose not to, Like, I don't know, I just, I couldn't live with myself.

Right.

At least if I go try and for whatever reason it doesn't work out, it doesn't translate, there's no business model behind it, great. I'm good. I can go figure out a different way to do it. But I just felt like there was an opportunity to take the things that we were learning and apply them to lots of different places to really help those people that are often overlooked and underestimated.

Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic. So for, um, for the economic slash community or slash government agencies that are listening to this, that wanna bring you to your town, we will have the show notes filled with the links of where to go. If anybody listening to this is an entrepreneur, is this person that has a dream, we'll also make sure we call that out. So that's, we'll have those two things kind of identified as far as what's your next step if you're listening to this. Um, because I'm, I'm guessing you're gonna get, hopefully there are some people that reach out to you after listening to this, because again, I, I, I can't believe what took us this long because it's just ridiculous how much I agree with everything that you're saying. Um, so thank you for doing that work, and thank you for choosing to do it in rural places. Um, because that's— there's so many different reasons why people end up or, or choose to go to us. I say end up because like that was kind of my thing. I came back. I'm a boomerang. Um, I didn't expect to legacy family business. We farm and our land is here, Andrew. So that's where we're at. And in choosing not to say, like, well, I settled for it or I'm stuck with it, it has required a lot of navigation because I also just don't fit into the traditional mold of what existed here. So this is like that. Your whole story, everything that you're offering is what I needed, right? It's what I still need. I still need that kind of support. So I know that I'm not alone in that. Um, I know that I'm not because the kinds of conversations that we host on this show are resonating with people, right? All over the country, all over the world. So, um, there's a lot of people that need Mashup Lab and your team. And so I'm very excited to be part of shepherding this story forward. Thanks. Thanks so much for your time and, and truly thank you for what you're doing. In our rural communities. We need you.

My absolute pleasure, Rebecca. And like, thank you for giving and creating a platform to have these kinds of conversations because they don't often, often exist. And I know you're working really hard in your little corner of North Dakota, masterminds and things that you're trying to do with your, you know, coworking spaces and your building. And we need all of that in, in the mix, right? And as much as we've gotten good at some, some things, I also need people in those, those communities to trust us to come in and bring that authentic help to people in their community and know that we actually really care about how many of those people we're able to bring off the sidelines in their little town. And so I need those people just as much as they need me. And folks like you that give us a platform to come talk about it, I just can't thank you enough. I really appreciate everything you're doing.

Well, can't wait to have you back. You will come back.

I will absolutely come back. You name the date and time and I'm there. There.

Sounds good. Thanks so much, Andrew.

Alrighty, we'll talk to you again.

We hope you loved this episode of the Growing Small Towns show. We encourage you to leave us messages at 701-203-3337 and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at growingsmalltowns.org. In the meantime, keep doing what you can with what you have, right where you are. Your community needs you.

Because we are growing small towns. We are growing small towns. We're right here living our of best lives, as crazy as it sounds. But we are growing small towns, growing small towns. We are growing small towns. We are growing small towns.