02: What Nobody Tells You About Starting a Small Town Business

There's a version of entrepreneurship that the internet likes to romanticize. Fast growth, big audiences, viral visibility, but small town business operates on a completely different set of rules. And honestly, that's what made this conversation so interesting. Welcome to Small Town Stories, the podcast exploring the business behind Main Streets and the people shaping small towns across Canada, the U.

S., and beyond. I'm Jan Dishro, top-rank podcast host, marketer, and small town local. And every Thursday, we're diving into honest conversations about entrepreneurship, creativity, marketing, reinvention, and what it really takes to build something meaningful in a small town today.

From local storefronts to growing brands, community builders to nationally recognized names, this is where modern business meets small town life. Let's get into it. Well, hello, and welcome back to Small Town Stories. I'm your host, Jan Ditchfield.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the particular kind of optimism required to open a business in a small town. The kind where you look at a historic building that probably hasn't had any fluffle flooring since 1947 and think, yes, this feels financially responsible. Because when most people picture entrepreneurship, I think they still picture strategy and marketing and scaling and all the glossy online business words that we've collectively decided to romanticize on the internet.

But small town business feels different, more personal somehow. The customers are your neighbors, your reputation becomes part of your marketing plan, whether you intended it to or not. And success has a lot less to do with going viral and a lot more to do with whether people trust you enough to keep coming back. Which is probably why I found my conversation with Yves Grandmaitre so interesting.

Because Eve has spent decades building businesses and mentoring entrepreneurs and helping to shape economic development in communities like Merrickville. And the more we talked, the more I realized there's an entire side of entrepreneurship people rarely talk about until they actually try opening a business in a small town themselves. The part that no business plan really leaves room for. The realities of community integration, reputation, visibility, trust, the delicate balance between bringing something new into a town while still understanding the place you're stepping into.

And honestly, by the end of this conversation, I couldn't help but wonder if the businesses that last the longest in small towns are usually the ones that understand they're not just building a company, they're becoming part of the story of the town itself. So let's get into it. Thank you for inviting me. I've been really looking forward to this conversation.

And uh, we got uh some time together before we were actually sitting down to do this interview just to talk about what we wanted to cover. And today we are really going to be focusing a lot on the conversation of how building businesses in small communities and small towns differs than it does in uh maybe the cities. And um, I think just to kind of start the conversation off, I feel like there's this assumption that business advice is universal and that it applies no matter what you do or where you go and what works in online or in the cities will also be immediately translate to a small community.

And the more I've been paying attention, and of course, the more I've been living again in a small community, I've been seeing that the dynamics are quite different. So I thought we would kind of start here with this conversation. And I wanted to ask you when you think about small communities like Merrickville or other communities like ours, what do you think that people misunderstand the most when they're trying to build a business in a small community? Well, when it comes to business, generally speaking, the basics are very similar as to a large community, but the scope and the scale is much different.

So obviously much smaller. The impact of a business on a small community is much faster. So one has to be able to react to changes, react to competition, react to uh the local clientele much faster than in a large community. That I think is a very important aspect of business in a small community, regardless of where it is.

Because things, particularly a tourism community such as what we have here, because things can change on a dime. You could have a really bad season because of weather or other reasons, and that has a huge impact. So the ability to pivot and to change direction or to adapt, very, very important. Do you think that you know I know as well that we had some conversations, I think, about people coming into small communities and thinking like it's gonna just be an easy lift, right?

We have a lot of there's a lot of rosy glasses that when you think about living in small communities. And um and so when people come in and they're a little bit surprised at how different it is, right? To change. Do you think some of that misunderstanding is about the difference between small and large communities is why we see some businesses struggle when they first come into a small community to open their doors up?

I think the rose-colored glasses is a good way of looking at it. Certainly, um, experiences here. We see a lot of people that have may have retired from a larger corporate position, um, and they're still of an age that the entrepreneurship bug still has, is still within them, and it's something that they want to explore. And then it's the approach, well, let's move to a small community, let's open up a retail shop, it'll be fun.

Then you find out that can be fun, but there are portions off of it that are not so much fun, and it's a hard lesson to learn for some people. What do you think is happening beneath the surface of that that people just don't see? Like, why is it that it's it is a hard lesson sometimes? Well, I call it the iceberg effect.

Whereas as with an iceberg, you see the top, but you don't see how big the rest of it is underwater. And when you're starting a small business, it's an iceberg. And people see the storefront, they see the items, they see a cash register, and then go, yeah, we could do this. It's pretty straightforward.

But then finding staff, hiring staff, training staff, the hours, the documentation, administration, and all that, that's the rest of the iceberg. And that often presents a big challenge. I want to come back to staffing in a bit because I think that is a conversation that we should go a little bit deeper on. But one of the questions that popped to mind when you were just talking as well is thinking about um what it's like to step into something that are already exists.

Because I think sometimes people think they're starting from scratch when they sit come into a small community, but a lot of the time, again, they're stepping into something that's already here, right? There's an established pattern, established history, there's established ways of doing business. It's yeah, it's an that's a very interesting comment because the the establishment, if you wish, that we could call um has multiple layers, right? So it's often the existing shop owners have uh connections established with other shop owners.

They may go for a beer or drink after hours, and then you know, they discuss how the weekend went, how the clientele was, and all the rest of it, the challenges that they have. And it's a um, it's a it's a community within a community, if you wish. So breaking into that community sometimes there's a big wall there because they see an outsider as somebody who competes for the same piece of the pie and competes for the same tourist dollars or the same business, and they are very loathed.

So one has to look at that as to, well, what can I bring to the table that would benefit them as well as benefit my own business? So that is certainly one aspect to that, that those layers that exist. And then it's um, you know, too often I find people, new entrepreneurs, try to look at the easy route in to create a business. So they look at some of the other products that are selling and they go, well, if they manage to sell this, I should be selling the same product to a large extent, which is the wrong way to approach it.

It might be the easy way from an inventory and a sourcing perspective, but then you're just competing with your neighbor two doors down, and that will quickly raise additional walls and it can make conducting business very difficult. We talked about that as well when we were prepping for this interview, but and I think that was one of the things that you said that really stuck with me was understanding that how you carve out your own lane within a small community and how you have to approach entrepreneurship very differently with that lens.

Um, not all small communities are tourist-based, like many of them is very different. We Merrickville is very much a tourism um hub. It always has been that way. But when you see people coming in as starting to directly compete, whether intentional or not, I don't always think it is an intentional decision that's made.

Why do you think that happens? Like, why do you think people choose that route instead of being like, I'm going to look for a niche or a lane that has not been touched within the community yet? So my opinion is there are two types of entrepreneurs. There are ones that are looking for the adventure, and there are the ones looking for um a simple experience, if you wish.

The ones looking for adventure and the the entrepreneurs that have experience and depth are going to do the homework, have the scars to show from past experiences. Uh, you know, the there's a common saying, your most successful business is your most recent one, because there's a lot of failures that happen with entrepreneurs, but persistence with an entrepreneur, a true entrepreneur is part of our makeup. So uh so they will do the homework, they will do their research, they will find out what might work, might not work.

They may go to other small towns and say, hmm, I like this product mix. That's not available where I'm planning on opening up a shop. And so they do that versus the ones that are kind of looking for the the um the quick satisfaction, if you wish, or a quick lived experience. It's not a career for them.

It's well, let's see if this will be fun. And so they're the ones looking for the quick road in. Those are the ones that often end up with having not a good experience because of that. They don't understand that there is some homework to do.

It comes back to the iceberg, right? That the rest of that iceberg is putting together the tools in place and doing the planning for it. I think that's a very interesting point because when you're talking about the iceberg and I'm starting to layer all the different parts that are underneath the water to it. And I'm wondering, again, with that second type of entrepreneur, maybe that's coming in and saying, like, this might be was fun, let's just try it and see what happens.

When it comes to, I'm going to say in not intentionally end up designing a business that competes, do you think that some of that um comes down to understanding the local landscape or not understanding it perhaps, not understanding suppliers and relationships with suppliers and how that's done or demand or community need, that there is there a way that we can kind of avoid that when we're starting a business by spending more time on the business planning? Yes, definitely. And I think the to me, if you're if a person is planning on establishing a business in a small community, there's a couple of aspects to that.

For one thing, demographics. One of the things that I've noted in many small communities, the business people tend to be of an older generation. Many of them tend to be there for many, many years. So they are well set in their ways.

So they do see somebody else opening up a business as a little bit of an outsider. They're we're starting to see a shift in that uh with younger entrepreneurs, but certainly um the older business people that have been there for many years, particularly in small towns, they tend to have to be more cautious about new arrivals. So that does play a role. And then the um um spending time to visit a possible location that you want to open a business, spend time in the coffee shop, chat with the locals, and you know who they are because they're gonna be there every day at the coffee shop.

They're gonna be there first thing in the morning before the stores open. And to get a feel for the conversation and to get a feel for the the uh the mechanics, if you wish, within that community, I think is a very good step to understanding as to what could or could not work in the place. I actually found that to be really interesting because I know even myself, you know, moving forward with opening up my uh, you know, a small community business, and so much of the planning has been conversations.

And in the online space where I have built my career now at this point, um, we have a guest joining us. Hamish is coming in to say hello. Uh so for those of you who can't see this, which you can't, it's uh my orange tabby. So he's just coming down to say hi if you hear him in the background.

Um, but one of the things, um, again, going back is that the conversations with people and how it's a much slower role. Whereas when you start an online business, like we all have competition, but really honestly, nobody really cares, right? You just start and you go and you figure it out and you learn how to stand out. And here it's not about that.

It's not about just start and go and figure out how to survive and stand out. There is more about the relationship building that belongs, right? And that that's part of what differentiates your success is how you build relationships within the community, yes, even before you open the doors to the business. Absolutely.

As with uh my experiences, in particular in any small community, um, there's always in the within the business community, there's going to be two or three individuals that are kind of the go-to's. Uh the other business people will go to for what's happening in town, what's happening in the village. They will um use them as examples of successful business people, um, achieving success, certainly within their area. And um, so the identifying those and having an opportunity to have a conversation with them, to learn from them, but also to establish that connection.

And then you quickly find out which toes not to step on. And that is a very important thing to identify early on. And sometimes it being able to do that, you may find that the community that one has originally targeted may not be the right community for you to establish a business in. I think that let's just stay on this for a second because I think that this is something that's important to talk about as well.

And we were chatting before about the idea of becoming involved in the community through things like sponsorships or um joining, volunteering, getting involved with that, and how it's actually part of your business strategy when you are doing something local. That the more involved you are in the community and the more that you show your care and your commitment, it it is almost like you're buying goodwill to, so to speak. Yes, agreed. You have a very strong um lens on this as well about how it should be done because you were versus us just being like just blanketed everywhere, and you don't think blanketing your support across the board is necessarily a good idea.

No, no, no, because I think you have to be very strategic as to how you look at things and now you're approaching. And I'll give you a very good example. If you're starting a new business, more often than not, you're going to be looking for staff, small community, limited available staff, particularly if it's a tourism location, if there's not a lot of young people, the stores, the restaurants, they're always looking at the same people to hire. If one were to steal, if you wish, a staff member from a well-established business, um, that could spell the death knell in regards to your relationship with the others.

So one has to be very careful with that. And sometimes finding staff, you will be able to achieve that through establishing rapports just outside the community. And again, it comes back to the easy pickings versus doing a little bit of homework. So to establish connections with community groups within, but a little bit without, particularly with newly arrived residents.

So on many of the small uh municipalities, communities, there might be organ, not necessarily the top ones, but there's always an underlying layer. There could be a um call it a local legion or another group that people tend to migrate towards. To me, that's always a good opportunity to meet people that you might be able to do to hire on as staff, which uh would work well and you're not going to impact any relationship that you might have built with uh other businesses in town.

So it's uh yeah, those can be very interesting waters to navigate. The staffing part of it really, I mean, it could it catches my attention because again, it isn't something that I even cross my mind ever to think about, oh, it'd be really hard to find somebody. You just you think, oh, everyone's gonna want to work in their own community when in fact it's not necessarily the truth. Yeah, in a smaller community, there's a lot of retirees, and they often tend to be a little bit picky as to what they want to do and how many hours and all the rest.

And so that does play a role. So, and what you find is often with fewer younger families, fewer teenagers. So the uh, and if there's no public transportation to other larger communities, that again becomes a challenge. So those are the underlying aspects of the what's under the water from that iceberg that one has to keep in mind.

Do you find do you have ideas of ways that people could work around that or or the idea of because even with you, you've always you've said to me, be careful, right? You're gonna end up working more than you want to be working because you won't be able to get the help that you want to get. Exactly, exactly. To me, it goes back to making those connections with new with people that have newly arrived in the community.

If there's new housing being built, it's you know, it's and in our case here, what's very interesting, what I find very interesting are dogs. Dogs, dogs, a lot of dogs in town. You walk a down, it's like walking a baby, right? Yes, everybody stops you.

Oh, what's the name? What type of dog? I know a lot of people, they can't tell me the owner's name, but they can identify the dog on the sidewalk. That's such and such, it's such and such a breed.

It's you know, 12 years old and all the rest of it. Dogs. Yes. Move to a small community if you can.

Get yourself a dog. You're gonna meet everybody within the first two weeks. You'll get to find out who hangs around with who, you get the conversations going, and you're gonna see them regularly because they always walk their dogs at the same time. Yeah.

It's an easy icebreaker, going back to the iceberg, and it's a great way to make those connections. I'm laughing because we have a 126-pound dog and everybody knows her name. But probably people don't know ours. It's the same.

Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about business models. Um, we are I think this is like a very foundational conversation, but at the same time, in communities like ours or other communities that are very tourism driven, there is you have two different ways you can build a business, right, in a small community. You can build a business that's for local facing, or you can build a business that's tourism-facing.

There's pros and cons to both, I'm quite sure. Um, but I know you feel that this is a very important decision that you need to be making from the start because uh you've said before that you know you have to pick a side to the fence type of thing. What are you building? Can you walk me through why you think that decision is so important?

Well, because really, partially from a business perspective, it's a cash flow impact, right? So if you can make a lot of money, if you wish, during tourism season to cover your expenses during the low season, great. Uh now there's the other aspect to that, that if you don't want to be that busy, because you may have a smaller store, you're not necessarily fully tourism oriented, then you have to understand the needs of the community you're living in. Uh, sometimes smaller place means you don't need as much staff.

It's easier. If you're catering to tourism, you need more staff during. So it impacts multiple aspects of running a business. And we do find here, and you'll find in other, many other small municipalities as well, um, if it's a retiree that decided to start up a business, many of them don't want to be around in the wintertime anymore.

They want to have a business that they can pay the bills for 12 months of the year operating during six months. Because the other six months, they want to be in warmer weather, they want to travel, they want to take advantage of that. So that then becomes a personal planning decision. How do you see yourselves moving forward over the next five or 10 years?

And what do you see as to how you want to spend your time? And that should formulate the basis of which the type of business you're looking to establish and the type of monetary needs you have or the business will have, and and how you can roll that out. And these again are all part of the initial planning. And often people don't consider that.

They don't consider that, and we had that during COVID. I I lived a similar experience actually through my son, where he um he had a small business um catering to people that had bought businesses, but these were the types of businesses that ran 12 months of the year. And then they realized we want to take holidays, right? Because they moved out of the big city into small communities, and we want to take holidays.

We can't take holidays because our business requires us. So he developed a business to take their place while they were taking holidays. Oh, that's so he filled in a gap that way. Yeah.

So these are all considerations because working six or seven days a week, 12 months of the year, wears on a person really quick. I think that we also are starting to see a shift in a lot of younger families leaving the city and coming into small communities. And we're seeing it here a bit more. You know, we you look around and you know, there are children.

We have a little person, there's lots of little people around. And many people are coming and starting businesses as well for the first time. And it's, I think again, goes back to that a lot of dynamic changes and also understanding what it means to be an entrepreneur because it is very, very romanticized. I mean, it's I it's my industry in the online space is very romanticized, but it always is like you know, oh, we just get to have this lovely life and be able to talk to people and I work when I want, and and that's not the case.

It's a you are 365 is what you are when you own a business. Yes. Yeah. Do you think um, you know, how are the decisions changing or how could they change when people are thinking about starting something in their community, either moving in for the first time or something that now I want to start something, right?

Because I don't want to travel and I don't want to go into the city, or I want to be able to be a present parent, because that's the reason many women get into entrepreneurship, myself included. But what are some of those things that we need to change in our mindset and in our understanding about business, especially or first-time entrepreneurs to be successful? Oh, geez, that's a that's a question that could have a very long answer. I think the use of the term mindset, I think is a very important one because yes, um, it is romanticized and it is um people will look online at others that have established businesses and it looks like it looks so simple.

And particularly if you have a little person at the house, those little people grow up and they sign up for a variety of sports or other classes, which happens after school, which means transportation, which means if you're living in a small community with no public transportation, now you have to become a taxi driver. And that's not always easily done. And so there's a whole bunch of interactions that occur. And yes, for the early days, it might look simple, but that can quickly snowball into bigger challenge.

It's all manageable, all manageable, and but you have to be ready to pivot, or you have to be ready to accept, or you have to be ready also to look at the opportunity. Because if you have a little person, um, and I did that in my case, is um if you introduce them to the business, and it could be an opportunity for them to learn to develop social skills. And we spoke earlier about um in a small community is being very social and connecting. That can be taught and learned at a very young age.

And that's to me, is the number one skill that any entrepreneur should develop is interpersonal. Um, you can do all the courses you want online, you can develop a great business plan. And I've said this on many an occasion, you can have the best product in the world, but if everybody hates you, you will not sell any. Yeah, you could have an okay product, but if you're very engaging, people will go out of their way to buy your product and or your whatever you're selling.

So I think developing interpersonal and social skills should be number one on the list of anybody who's starting a business, regardless if it's online or in person. Because even in person, you still have to deal with suppliers and you have to deal with other people. So to me, that's the a mark of a successful business is one that has established person-to-person connections and has nurtured those and has developed those. What about doing the same thing, but not necessarily with people who end up becoming um necessarily clients or customers of your store, but people who become advocates or champions of it?

Because we talked about that as well, that it's also a good strategy to be able to find your community within the community and to build those relationships with people who are going to speak highly of you, even if they don't necessarily shop there. Yes, yes. Well, this comes back a little bit to what you mentioned about sponsorships. Yes.

And and what I mentioned about in most communities, there's always three or four leaders in a variety of different areas. I mean, we have a strong agricultural community where we are as well. And there are some strong multi-generational families that are leaders within their group. So establishing connections with them is always important and good.

And the same thing within the business community. Um, you will find small groups. We spoke earlier about the business people that may have been within the community for 25 or 30 years. They have their get-togeth.

The newly arrival entrepreneurs, sometimes they may feel a little bit lost. Those are good ones to tap into because you're living a similar experience and you can grow together by sharing those experiences. But absolutely finding your village within a village, I think plays a very important aspect. And that goes back to what I was saying earlier: interpersonal skills.

You told me a story once about you how you built a village within a village. And that, and I think this is a really interesting, it's a very different type of business model than you know, what it was. But it was the ice village that you built. And I would love if you would talk a little bit about that because I think it really brings that idea of community and um visibility to life in a very, very tangible way of how people should be thinking about how do you how do you actually exist within a small community where everybody may know your name or your face and people watch.

There's they're right, it matters. Yes, it does. It does. Yeah, I had the the interesting experience of among the several businesses that I either own or been involved in of um running a ice fishing village.

And so, and literally it was a village. It was uh on a nice weekend. We could have anywhere from 500, 800, a thousand people there, similar population to what we have in our own little town here. And so we would put this together on the ice for an eight-week period more or less, sometimes shorter, sometimes a little bit longer, but typically between six and eight weeks.

And it was interesting because we always had some new residents, if you wish. And uh, I mean, and this was this was pretty big. We had street names, we had washrooms, we had ice rinks, we had curling rink, we had food, we had it was quite a uh uh uh not a spectacle, but a challenge to put everything together because it's a narrow window. But the interpersonal relationships were you know it's ice fishing, but really ice fishing is the secondary aspect of this.

It was the social life. So people wanted to be beside certain individuals because they grew up with them or they were with them last year, and then you have new arrivals, you have people that move just like a village. And it was always a little bit of a challenge to put all that together because um over that period of time people change their minds or they have fallouts or whatnot. Then what do you do?

Then now you have to start moving buildings because of that. Well, I don't want to be beside them anymore because their son comes and he's too noisy, or you know, or whatever. And uh, and you have to manage, it's almost being a demer, if you wish. You you have to manage all that aspect off of it.

And then six weeks later, you take it all apart, yeah, and you put it in storage till the next year. And in this case, it was a marina business that we had, and in the summertime you recreate it with boats, and same challenge again, you know. So uh it was fascinating for me, because I've always been a very social person and observant, I try, is to see the the relationships that either are built or fall apart or that change over that period of time and the impact it has on the other individuals within that community and how it layers and how it changes the whole dynamic on a dime.

Yeah, it absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Let's I just love the story. And I think um you showed me the video of it as well, and I want to find a way. We'll put that on social media just to be able to share a bit of that because the view of it was incredible.

It really was. It was like you're looking at a village and now you're thinking about who runs the shops there. I know, I know, I know. Well, and it's one of those, right?

And again, it's uh what was interesting as well is like, you know, people would they'd get together for breakfast, they get together for card games in the evening, they'd, you know, some of their relationships would continue beyond the season, some would not. Some they would only meet during the winter time. And uh, but yeah, it was fascinating to watch. Yeah, it would be.

Let's zoom out for a minute. Um, because I think this is kind of this is a bigger picture conversation that I just want to move to with this. In small towns, I think a lot of business owners don't necessarily set out to be entrepreneurs. We've talked about that as well.

And it's something that you, as you said as well, often starts because a path ends, right? And we're looking at that second stage entrepreneurship. How do you see that shaping the kinds of businesses that we have in communities like ours and like other communities like Merrickville? You know, that's an interesting question because the um, and I've seen this in other communities as well.

In our case here, the majority of our businesses are women-owned uh of every age. And um I it's still um, I still see, if you wish, those circumstances where the husband goes off to work, the wife is at home, the kids are off to school, need to do something, what can I do? There's limited employment opportunities, I'm gonna start a business. So I think the um for a person to to create a business in a small community is to look at those pockets and to explore them.

And young people tend to be um in many instances more innovative as to how they're looking at business. So I think there are those opportunities there. Yeah, absolutely. Um do you think there are things that we're not talking about or that we're not teaching that would really be helping entrepreneurs be more successful in small communities?

Uh not teaching. Uh I think, you know, I have 35 years of working with students at university doing their MBAs and uh their bachelor's of commerce and project management. Um it's hard to teach reality. That's how I would define it.

It's hard to teach reality. Um they wide-eyed, you know, full of energy, and reality often comes, it hits hard, it comes hard, and it's a huge challenge for some. Huge challenge because it's unexpected. And because everything that they've read or they've seen has always been around successful business.

It's one thing they don't teach in schools, they don't teach about business failures typically. They teach about successful business. So, well, if they can do it, I can do it too. But for every successful business, there's probably a hundred that have not made it.

And uh, so I think they need to teach a little bit more about failure and how to come back from failure. So um, yeah, so I think it's uh it's a little bit of that. Yeah. I think I appreciate that a lot because we talk in my other business, I talk a lot about that, right?

Is that the things that we learn best are the things that we didn't do right? And it's always an opportunity to just it's everything's fixable, right? But it's being open to how do I fix it instead of being so fixed on the idea that there is only run one right way when in fact there's many right ways to run a business. Well, if you think of when we were young, more often than not, you know, your parent would tell you, don't touch that, it's hot.

How many kids go touch it? Because it's hot, right? And you learn it's hot, you don't touch it. So yeah, I know.

It's I think it's part of human nature to say, I like to poke the bear once in a while. But uh, and we learn that lesson, right? The best way to know not to hit your thumb with a hammer is to do it once. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everyone should start a business and fail, and then you'll be better at it the second time. Exactly, exactly. And this is where an entrepreneur comes back, right?

Because an entrepreneur will persist and will continue and will learn. Yeah, for sure. So let's bring this back to kind of where we want to see things going in the future. And I would really love your opinion on this because if someone's listening right now to this, and whether they're thinking about starting a business in a small town or they already have one and they're trying to figure out how to keep it going and how to how to turn it into something that matters to them, um, what do you think you would really want them to take away from this conversation the most?

Oh, I think the the number one thing to me is I'm gonna call it deface, deface of your business. And um if some people want to start a business, but they're concerned about the the engagement aspect, the social aspect, working at the counter, and that's okay. But you need somebody, particularly if it's retail, you need somebody there that can be consistent and that can be positive and can be engaging. To me, that's the number one to any business.

And that goes back to my earlier comment about you can have an okay product, but if people like you, they will come and get it. And that to me would be the number one um area to identify and to fill, either yourself, spouse, a child, or hire somebody, but that's the number one thing. Putting up shelves, getting inventory in, anybody can do that. But selling and marketing, not everybody can do that.

And that is what's going to determine the rate of success and the height of success of your business. Yeah. Wow. Considering this is a marketing podcast, I love your answer.

It's wonderful. Um, Eve, my last question for you would be this again. If someone is sitting right now and thinking about moving to a small community to start a business or they are in their community, what would you tell them to do? What would you say?

What what what words of inspiration would you give to them? Go for it. But spend a lot of time at the coffee shop. That's right.

That's great advice. Hope you like to drink coffee. Yes. Thank you so much for joining me today.

It's been my pleasure. Thank you. This was a wonderful conversation. I truly enjoyed this.

Wonderful. Thank you. You're welcome. Honestly, I think that might be the part of small town business most people never really talk about.

That eventually it just stops being about what you're selling and it becomes about whether people trust you, whether they feel connected to what you're building, whether your business becomes woven into the rhythm of the community around it. And maybe that's why the businesses people remember the most are usually the ones that understand they're not just opening their doors, they are part of the story of the town itself. Anyway, just something to noodle on until the next time we talk.

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You can follow along on Instagram at the Small Town Stories Podcast and visit us online at the Small Town Stories Podcast.com. All right, I'll see you next Thursday for another conversation about the business behind Main Street.