I am speaking this week in Southern California about the pandemic and small business. It appears I will need more than a little luck to avoid having my flight cancelled or have a run-in with an unruly passenger while simultaneously dodging Omicron during my four-hour flight from Florida’s gulf coast. I cannot believe I had the audacity to complain about flying before all this.
1M Cups at the University of Northern Iowa
In the urban center of Riverside County where I am headed, nearly 13,000 businesses have closed and more than 30,000 jobs have been lost during the pandemic. We are seeing even greater proportional impact in rural regions. In Sweetwater County, Wyoming – which only has a population of 42,000 people – more than 425 businesses and 4,100 jobs were lost in 2020 alone. Nearly two years into this pandemic, these disruptions are happening everywhere in the United States. In many regions (especially rural), this is just the beginning. The need for small business support is urgent.
The magnitude of these events requires us to think creatively to save locally-owned businesses while continuing to learn how to foster startup/scaleup activity. A lot of the good work already underway in entrepreneurial ecosystem building around the country can jumpstart our efforts to address the needs of pandemic-affected small businesses. Here are four ways we can borrow from ecosystem building to help our small business community.
1- Launch, grow or incent the creation of a cowork
Coworking has proven successful in providing startup/scaleup entrepreneurs flexible, communal workspace and infrastructure while promoting social and business networking. The rise of pandemic-related remote workers, increasing numbers of sole proprietor (necessity) business owners and small business owners who lack the resources or capital to invest in ongoing office space makes coworking appealing for a wide array of businesses and workers. If you don’t have a coworking space in your community, you need one. If your organization cannot open a coworking space, consider incentivizing an entrepreneur or community builder to do so.
2- Improve access to capital and industry resources
From pitch competitions to TechBrews, BarCamps to Hackathons, Jellys to Ghost Kitchens, the array of novel capital and industry resources developed specifically for startups over the past decade can have equally broad applications for pandemic-affected small businesses. Everyone is familiar with pitch competitions, for example - but what if we redirected a pitch contest to help existing, traditional industries (manufacturing, processing, retail or construction, for example) re-imagine their use of technology and automation to exploit new markets, introduce new products or leapfrog their competition?
3- Rethink, re-envision technical assistance
Nationwide, SBDCs serve over 500,000 business owners each year, and we rely upon them as a key technical assistance provider to small businesses. But who is helping the other 98% of companies who cannot or won’t use these services? In ecosystems across the country, entrepreneurs help each other solve common business problems through programs like 1 Million Cups (1MC), a weekly open meetup between business peers to share and solve business problems in a non-competitive forum. Launched by the Kauffman Foundation as an alternative to competitive pitch events, the motto of 1MC is, ‘what can the community do for you?’
4- Streamline access to resources and services
The average community with a population of 100,000 will have more than 150 resource providers dedicated to supporting small business owners, but connecting with the right resource at the right time is difficult. Many ecosystem builders use software like USSourcelink, to collect and make searchable the resources in a community. Online navigators like USSourcelink, directories and concierge services common to startup communities should have a place in pandemic recovery for all businesses.
To learn more about these resources, plus coming economic trends and pandemic recovery best practices, join me for the online Entrepreneurship Course at OUEDI. Accredited by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC). For more information, check out OUEDI here or reach out to me at Mo@MoCollins.com. Happy New Year!
