Need help? Give us a call: (615) 380-8450
Work With Lisa
For the last decade, I’ve had one foot in small business and the other in the rooms where decisions about small businesses get made.
I’ve built a business in a small town, worked alongside thousands of small business owners, served five years in local government and spent a lot of time working with chambers, community organizations and the people trying to make their towns better places to do business. That combination has given me a great view of where things tend to break down.
Sometimes the problem is the business. Sometimes it’s the system around the business. And sometimes everyone is working incredibly hard on something that isn’t actually solving the problem (and sometimes its all happening in a silo).
If you’re trying to make a small business, organization or small town work better, I’d love to help you figure out what’s actually going on and what to do next.
Ways We Can Work Together
Zoom Strategy Sessions
Sometimes you don’t need a six-month consulting engagement. You need someone who understands this world to look at the problem with you for an hour.
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We'll do a focused working sessions for small business owners, chamber and economic development leaders, city officials, downtown organizations and others working in small-town communities.
Bring me the messy thing.
Maybe your downtown businesses are struggling and you can’t figure out why. Maybe you’re trying to build a better small-business program. Maybe your chamber needs a reset. Maybe you own a business and feel like you’ve hit a wall. Maybe your Main Street is filled with empty, decaying buildings. Maybe there are twelve different problems tangled together and you need someone from the outside to help you figure out which one actually matters.
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We’ll talk through what’s happening, challenge some assumptions and leave with a much clearer idea of what you should do next.
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Keynotes + Speaking
I speak about small business, small towns and what it actually takes to build communities where entrepreneurs can start, survive and grow.
These aren’t “shop local” speeches.
I talk about the uncomfortable stuff too: why ribbon cuttings aren’t an economic development strategy, what we get wrong about downtown revitalization, why tourism and small-business health aren’t the same thing, how communities accidentally make entrepreneurship harder and why some of the best economic development opportunities may already be sitting in our own towns.
But the goal isn't to walk into a community, piss everybody off and leave.
The goal is to challenge people enough that they start looking at familiar problems differently, and give them something useful to do about it.
Keynotes and talks can be tailored for chambers, economic development organizations, municipal groups, Main Street organizations, conferences, small-business groups, real estate organizations and leadership events.
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Workshops + Community Conversations
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Sometimes the best format isn’t me talking at a room. It’s getting the right people into one.
I can facilitate workshops and conversations with business owners, community leaders, chambers, cities and other stakeholders around questions like:
What is actually making it difficult to start and grow a business here?
What are businesses telling us?
Where are we spending energy that isn’t producing results? What are we already doing well?
What are the few things we could realistically change now, and then later?
These can be virtual or in person and customized around what your community is trying to figure out.
Who I Work With
Most of the people reaching out to me right now fall somewhere in this ecosystem: small business owners and entrepreneurs, chambers and Main Street organizations, economic development organizations, cities and municipalities, downtown and community organizations, real estate and development groups, and people who simply give a damn about making their small town better.
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If you don't fit neatly into one of those buckets but you're working on something that could make small-town business stronger, reach out anyway! I'd love to hear from you.
A Bit About Me
I’m an entrepreneur, executive and small-town economic development advocate who has spent more than 15 years building businesses, teams and communities. I founded Small Town Startup in 2018, where I launched our county’s first entrepreneur center and small-business-focused digital agency, trained more than 2,000 entrepreneurs, operated a 7,000-square-foot business incubator and helped hundreds of businesses start and grow, including more than 20 brick-and-mortar startups that went on to occupy previously vacant storefronts on our square and beyond.
My career has also taken me through executive leadership, venture development, agency growth and business strategy, including work with national brands and organizations across the country.
I also spent five years serving in local government, which gave me the chance to experience small-town growth from a completely different side of the table. I hold an Executive MBA in Strategic Leadership from Quantic School of Business and Technology, a master’s degree in Journalism with a digital concentration from Quinnipiac University and a bachelor’s degree in English, General Literature and Rhetoric from Binghamton University.
Today, I bring all of those experiences together to challenge how we think about small business and economic development, and to help build communities where entrepreneurs have a better chance to start, survive and grow.
