Small Town Startup

Behind so much of what makes a downtown feel vibrant, are the people who decided to personally risk something to build it.

Opening a small business is exciting, but it’s also scary as hell. It’s signing the lease before you know if people will show up and putting your savings into an idea. It’s making payroll when you’re worried about your own. It’s lying awake thinking about sales, rent, employees, inventory and whether you made the right call. It’s having a terrible Tuesday and still unlocking the door Wednesday morning because we all have this undying hope it’ll get better.

So if you’re one of the people doing it, I want you to know you’ve found your community here.

We’re going to keep talk long about the hard parts and what our towns can do better. We’re going to talk about what businesses can do better, too. And we’re going to keep reminding people that the downtowns they love don’t just happen. We helped make them happen.

Thank you for filling the storefront, turning on the lights, employing people, giving your community something special and often much more of yourself than you ever intended, creating places for us to gather and giving your community another reason to feel like home.

I’m really freaking glad you’re here. ❤️🚀

A few years ago, a local restaurant owned by a friend announced it was closing, and I made the mistake of peeking at the comments.

I couldn’t get over how many people were saying, “I’ve been meaning to stop by!”

The restaurant had been open for more than a year.

What struck me was how casually people said it, almost as if they were disappointed the restaurant couldn’t have held on a little longer so they could finally get around to visiting.

I get most people meant well, but imagine spending more than a year paying rent, buying inventory, making payroll and hoping enough people would walk through the door, only to announce you can’t afford to stay open and hear how many people had been planning to come…but didn’t.

Now to be fair, nobody owes a business their money. People have budgets and preferences, and small businesses still have to give people a reason to come back. But if we genuinely want thriving downtowns, we have to do more than admire the idea of small businesses downtown. Just like family and friendships, we have to be there even when it’s a bit inconvenient.

Try the new restaurant while it’s still new and go back if you like it. Make plans to meet a friend at a local business instead of defaulting to the same places and be an advocate for the places you love before they announce they’re closing.

And our downtown organizations can help by creating reasons to visit on an ordinary Tuesday, not just during a big event. Give people a reason to come, stay a while and discover another business.

At the end of the day, I don’t want a small business owner’s last few weeks to be their busiest because everyone suddenly realized they were running out of time.

So here’s my homework for you this week: If you’ve been meaning to stop by a small business, do so by Friday. 📝 Let’s start a small movement in our small towns.

SEPTEMBER BOOST ANNOUNCEMENT!

There is something pretty special about being a small business in a small town. You get to know the people behind the businesses. You see the kids on the sidelines and you hear about the cultural experiences people work so hard to preserve. You watch young people start figuring out what they want to do with their lives (and get really excited when they choose business).

And then, every once in a while, you get the chance to help.

In September, we were able to throw a few boosts into the community. Here’s how we did it:

Gave $200 plus special items to a local Mom's Night Out Event by Common Thread - Robertson County! 💖

Knocked out a good portion of the Robertson County Sports Alliance Amazon Wishlist (And there are still items left if you want to help!) 🏈

Added a $50 gift card to the prize basket supporting the The Bell Witch Fall Festival. 👻

And donated $500 to Springfield High School FBLA because we are pretty excited about the next generation of business owners, leaders and entrepreneurs coming out of our community. 😍

The dollar amount is not really the point, it’s more about getting to be part of a community where people keep showing up for each other because that is why we love small towns. And we get to do that because the small businesses who put trust in us to connect them with their communities. So really, all the thanks goes to our clients on this one.

Now, let’s see what we can do in October! Any suggestions?

We’re BACK, baby!

For now, Small Town Startup has a new little home for our team inside Willow Oak Center for Arts and Learning while we think intentionally about what the future of our physical space could look like.

And somehow, while we were figuring that out…everything exploded.

In just three weeks, our content has reached more than 1 million organic views on Instagram. Nearly 7,000 new people have joined us on that platform in the last 20 days, and we’ve received countless messages, calls and emails from people asking how we can help their small towns through our workshops, consulting, policy messaging and more.

Small Town Startup is still committed to being one of the best marketing agencies built specifically for small-town businesses. But we’re also paying close attention to what our neighbors, both here and across the country, are telling us they need.

We are incredibly grateful for this moment. 40 days ago, we were packing the last boxes out of Small Town Startup with absolutely no idea what was waiting for us on the other side for anything other than marketing.

God truly works in mysterious ways, and apparently letting go of the coworking space was the plan all along. It was the beginning of something much bigger. ♥️

WE got this! 🚀

We underestimate how different it is to build a business from absolutely nothing.

When you’re the one who started with the idea, the empty bank account, the first customer, the first mistake, the first hire and the first “oh crap, I guess I have to figure this out myself...” moment, that business becomes INCREDIBLY personal.

There was no handbook. There wasn’t an existing reputation to protect or a system to step into. You built the systems and you screwed up along the way, then you learned what worked because you first learned about 88 things that absolutely did not.

It’s years of figuring it out when nobody was coming to figure it out for you.

If you’re in the middle of building yours right now, don’t forget how big that actually is.

I could write a freaking dissertation about this. I’ve watched small businesses get absolutely DRAGGED on local/community Facebook groups over something the owner didn’t even know happened. It could have been a wrong order, weird policy or bad interaction with an employee. Instead of doing the neighborly thing of calling, sending a direct message or asking to speak to someone who could actually fix it, the first stop is an anonymous post (which REALLY sends me) asking 10,000 neighbors what they think about the experience.

Listen, small businesses screw up - sometimes epically. Being locally owned does not make you immune from criticism, and if a business treats you terribly, refuses to make something right or has a pattern people genuinely need to know about, that’s a different conversation altogether.

But if you never gave the owner a chance to fix it, what exactly were you hoping to accomplish by telling the entire town?

I work with small business owners every day, and I can tell you that most of them would MUCH rather get the uncomfortable phone call or message, and would go above and beyond to correct it. They want to know where their business could be stronger. Frankly, many of us are starved for feedback because so much of it happens behind our backs.

Also, in a small town, an anonymous post isn’t harmless. One person tells their version, everyone piles on with the thing that happened to their cousin three years ago at the business, somebody heard the owner is “difficult,” and by dinner a completely fixable customer-service issue has become that business’s reputation for at least 200 people who saw the post but have never interacted personally with the business.

Meanwhile, the owner is usually finding out through a screenshot someone texted them. 🥴

If you expect accountability from a small business, I think it’s fair for the small business to expect a little accountability from you too. Give them the chance to make it right before you give the whole town the chance to make it much, much worse.

I’ve watched this happen for YEARS and I need to vent. Let’s chat about the way generosity from small businesses can quietly turn into a freaking expectation.

Small businesses are some of the most generous people I know. They donate the gift card, sponsor the team, fill the raffle basket, feed the volunteers and throw money at fundraisers, often while running on margins much thinner than anyone asking realizes. Most of them genuinely WANT to do it because they love their communities. I know small business owners who have one good season out of like, six, and the first thing they think of is “who can I help?” and then a donation shows up somewhere with some of the extra they had leftover.

That’s what makes me love this community. However, real talk is that $100 gift card isn’t free. Neither is the basket, sponsorship or food. And when seemingly every organization in town stops by asking for “just a little something,” it adds up really quickly, especially when some of those organizations and people have barely supported the business they’re asking to support them.

Therein lies the contradiction: we expect them to constantly show up for the community while they’re quietly wondering whether the community is going to show up enough for them to make payroll.

I’m not saying stop expecting small businesses to be good community members. By all means, partner with local businesses and invite them to support important causes, but make it a relationship before an ask. Buy the coffee. Book the photographer. Eat at the restaurant. Hire the local company. Recommend them when someone asks.

Small businesses already prove they believe in their communities every single day by risking their own money to do business there. They shouldn’t have to keep proving it by giving more of it away to folks who are just stepping into their business for the first time. 👎

We have a tendency to believe that success should look impressive while we’re building it. The beautiful office on the corner (been there), the big team and the absolutely perfect setup.

But some of the best ideas are built at kitchen tables, in spare bedrooms, tiny offices, coffee shops or even on the plane while you're flying to a business meeting for your W2 job.

You don’t need a bigger room to have a bigger vision. Please don't, actually. Don't strap yourself down with overhead that ends up killing your creativity because you get into a panic every month just trying to make rent.

You don’t need all the resources before you start. And you definitely don’t need your business to LOOK successful before it can become successful. The room is small because the idea is still growing.

Build it anyway.

One of the hardest things about owning a small business is that the internet has completely warped our sense of how quickly things are supposed to work. We see someone announce a business and six months later they’re posting a huge revenue number. Then we get hit with the viral video, the sell-out moment, etc. We usually don’t see the 5-10 years that happened before it.

Real, sustainable business growth can be painfully slow. You can do the right things over and over again and still wonder why it isn’t moving faster. You can have a great product, show up consistently, take care of your customers, improve your marketing and STILL have seasons where it feels like you’re pushing a boulder uphill.

Keep going anyways. Slow doesn't mean it's not working. Good things take time.

The coworking space living on is the COOLEST thing. Did you now we donated the full podcast set-up to Robertson County Recovery Court so they could continue their podcast, Real Recovery Conversations Podcast? So proud to see it go to such a great cause. Love the work these incredible women are doing in our community every single day.