Fast Break: Economic Engines – Celebrating Small Business Week

Matt Cranney

Welcome to Fast Break. Today we’re shining a spotlight on Small Business Week, a timely reminder of the backbone of our economy. Did you know small businesses make up a whopping 99.9% of all businesses in the US, and employ nearly half of all private sector employees? That’s a powerful force. In fact, according to the Small Business Administration, small businesses created 1.9 million net new jobs in 2022 alone.

As we celebrate these entrepreneurial heroes, we’re thrilled to have someone who is on the front lines supporting the small and growing business community every single. Sadie Howell, CEO of Envision Greater Fond du Lac, joins us today. Sadie, welcome to Fast Break.

00:45 Sadie Howell

Thanks for having me.

00:46 Matt Cranney

For those in our audience who may not be familiar with Envision Greater Fond du Lac, can you tell us a bit about you, about your organization, its mission, particularly as it relates to maybe supporting the small and growing business community?

00:57 Sadie Howell

Well, maybe if you don’t know where Fond du Lac county is,  I can start there. We are, right in the middle of a triangulation of Green Bay, Milwaukee and Madison. So we are at the base of Lake Winnebago, we’re an hour away. Which is great for businesses to, you know, have supply chain and customers.

Envision Greater Fond Du Lac is a combination of a Chamber of Commerce and an economic development organization. We were previously two really long standing organizations, and came together in 2017 to serve the, I like to say we’re a member-based organization that serves everyone as an economic development organization. That serves Fond du Lac County.

Specifically, how we serve small businesses on our Chamber side would be some programming that, you know, I think when people think of a Chamber of Commerce, we still do some of those networking, coffee connections, business after five. And then we started a program called Envision University, where we’ll host these short informational sessions on how to make a reel, Canva 101 or how to maximize your SEO.

And then on our economic development side, we started a couple of years ago called Ignite Rural, and that is a startup support network that helps a startup write a business plan, create a strategic plan, get some financial literacy. So we have a really holistic approach to supporting startups and existing small businesses.

02:43 Matt Cranney

I love how just intensely practical all your programming and your efforts are. You know, when you think about, sometimes with small and growing businesses, it can be easy to think sort of just, you know, high level or big picture. And when it really comes down to what really matters is you know, can our small business entrepreneurs do a Canva, do a reel understand the latest in social marketing, and social media marketing techniques. That’s incredible.

I’m curious if you could share with our listens, tell us a little bit about you and how you know your journey sort of brought you to the role that you’re in in Fond du Lac.

03:20 Sadie Howell

Very interesting. You know I’ve talked to a lot of other Chamber and economic development folks, and none of us, we all kind of fall into this industry. You don’t go to school to be a Chamber of Commerce professional.

I have been with Envision almost, April 20th will be five years here. And I am no stranger to Fond du Lac, though. I did a lot of government, federal government work in particular, and then political campaign work. Which I like to say both of those set me up for excellent success in this world of meeting with businesses, helping businesses. And then also navigating a lot of different personalities, different political pressures that face a small community. It was a great background, and I had really built my network around Fond du Lac County. Very intentionally, actually.

It’s been a wild, wild, very fun ride. And I was just saying before we got on here, how similar are industries kind of are checking in with your business. Checking in with your business, how you doing? What are your pain points? How can we help?

04:38 Matt Cranney

People, they’re not born to think about, you know, working in a chamber. We use that same expression on the insurance industry all the time. I’d be interested to see if it’s changing in your, but for us now, you know a lot of interns going to school for risk management and insurance and so that narrative is changing a little bit.

This episode is going out, Sadie, for small business week and obviously it’s a time to celebrate, you know the incredible contributions of small and growing businesses to our communities. And, we titled this episode around that, calling out why that matters now more than maybe even ever before. Why do you think that’s true? Why do you think it, maybe even more today than ever, they’ve always been important, but why small businesses maybe even more important?

05:19  Sadie Howell

99.9% of businesses in the United States are small businesses. The majority of job creation comes from small business and those you know, those statistics I feel like have been around for a really long time and still ring very true.

And why maybe they matter more than ever is in this incredibly fast-paced global, social, AI, economy, there still is a really important place for small businesses who can offer still a really unique, memorable customer experience. Customer service experience.

There’s, I can’t quote the survey, but it’s something that we say quite often is, word of mouth and referrals are still the number one way that businesses earn new customers and new accounts.

It isn’t TikTok. Nothing against TikTok for you know, whoever is listening to that. But it’s still, you talk to your neighbor and say, hey, who fixes your car? You know well, Bob down at Bob’s engine, OK. I’m gonna go to Bob. We still are human beings at our core who want to make connections and have experiences. And small businesses are able to still deliver that and also be completely innovative and fast pace.

You know, I can’t imagine how fast you can turn a ship like Amazon, Google, Apple. But I can certainly tell you from firsthand how fast a five-person operation, and we saw this during COVID of you know, a restaurant who was used to in-person seating completely flipped their business model to take-out and delivery and online ordering.

So I hope that answers I could go on and on.

07:22 Matt Cranney

Just jotting down some notes, Sadie, because I sort of want to call back a couple of things that you said here. Word of mouth and referrals are still the number one in the world where if you pay attention to sort of the hype and the noise, it’s kind of like, hey, it is TikTok or it is Instagram or it is Facebook.

I love that reminder that delivering, and this is something else you said, delivering that unique and memorable customer experience, is still providing a differentiation today, not only in making your customer happy that you’re talking to and delivering that to, but also and then potentially who that person is going to go talk to.

08:00 Sadie Howell

I don’t remember when Amazon started to add reviews. I know they didn’t always have them, but you know, we were just talking about word-of-mouth referral. Even on this global scale, you buy something off of Amazon. And you’re looking for some product. I bet you are going to those reviews, reading the best, reading the worst and still making decisions based on. That is still a word-of-mouth referral. They just might be in a different state. You’re watching a TikTok. You click on the comments. What are people saying.

08:35 Matt Cranney

Yeah that thread runs through all of the marketing efforts. And again, all it is then is just talking about the format and the delivery mechanism for us.

I also want to call out too, Sadie, the idea of being nimble and flexible. If I’m a small business owner in, you know, insert any industry here, the ability for that owner to think about, sometimes it might feel overwhelming in terms of, like, well, how do I compete with Amazon and how do I compete with some of the big operations?

And again, it’s really playing to your strengths, right and not trying to maybe replicate the same experience, but figuring out what you can uniquely do to meet that customer where they are and continue to check in on a regular basis, to say is what we’re doing working? Do we need to change and pivot and grow and evolve? Because to your point, that’s much easier at 5, than it is at 500 or 5000 or whatever employee count it is.

Let’s keep moving. One of the things that we talk a lot here about here at M3 Elevate is the importance of small businesses playing both offense and defense. We kind of talked a little bit about that even in that last answer about being nimble and flexible. But obviously we want to power growth, while protecting what they’ve built and worked really, really hard to build.

And I’m hoping maybe you can share a story of a small business you’ve engaged with that got this right and maybe how they did that in terms of thinking about growth but also making sure they protected what is really important.

10:00 Sadie Howell

Small businesses have the ability to pivot and innovate and change. And some choose to and some choose to not.

And you know, again, I hate always referring to COVID, but COVID was quite the shakeup of if you continued to operate the same way you operated for the last 50 years as a family owned business, you might not have survived, or you might have come out looking really different than you expected to because you didn’t change. You held so closely to that, this is how we’ve always done it and this is what we’ve always done.

That’s kind of just a broad statement, but I’ve had the opportunity to interact with the company called Shea Electric, and it’s owned by a gentleman named Dan Shea. And at his core and at that business’s core, he is an electrical contractor focused on commercial. He’s incredibly protective of that core, of being the best in class, the best quality, the most respected electricians in the state of Wisconsin and around.

And he is constantly playing offensive. He attends national conventions. He serves on the board of the National Electrical Contractors Association, and he studies trends, he listens. And he doesn’t plan for the 2 – 5 years. He plans for 15 –  20.

And one example is, I think if you listen to some economists, they’re saying the year 2030 is kind of this big shake up awakening. And Dan has been talking about 2030 for many, many years too of what does that mean to my industry? Can I survive? How can I make sure that we’re protected.

And I haven’t met a lot of people like Dan. And when you spend time with him, it is totally exhausting, but also exhilarating because it is holding that the core of his business is and being really, really good at it, not losing sight of that, that even no matter what industry or what trends he’s watching, he’s holding on that I am still the best electrical contractor in Wisconsin.

12:30 Matt Cranney

I think it one it’s a really powerful story. You know what you’re describing, Sadie, is, how can you be sort of very open handed and flexible on how we do things, but maybe not the why we do things.

So when you think about, you know that example that you shared, hey, if there’s different services that we need to think about, we can do that. There are, you know, different hiring methods that that we need to think about, we can do that. If there’s different training we can do that. But we’re never changing our why.

And I think that’s such, you know that that analogy. Across so many different things, regardless of your industry, regardless of your even your size as a small business. Those things are really, really important to do to identify and what you’re calling us maybe as a first step is what is your why?

Take some time as a business to think about why do you exist and what are those things that you don’t want change and you do want to hold tight. Because once you define those, it also becomes a little bit easier to understand well if these are the things that I’m going to be really tight around and controlling on and the rest I can be open handed with.

13:33 Sadie Howell

And you’re totally right of, what is your why and defining that is incredibly important. As a small business we talk about this at Envision as a Chamber and an economic development organization, what is our why? Because we could stray every day into different areas or industries because, you know, you see something shiny or you think, well, we probably could be good at that. But if that isn’t our why, then we should not be doing that or focusing on it.

14:05 Matt Cranney

On Fast Break, we always want to be really practical for people that are listening so that they get some things that they can hopefully take away from your wisdom from this conversation and immediately turn around and think about their businesses differently or things that they’re going to go do.

So, for all the small business owners and entrepreneurs who are listening, how would you coach them? What would be the things that you would tell them that they should be thinking about? And if they’re not, I mean we’ve touched on, you know be future focused. We’ve talked about defining the why. What else would you coach in order for them to be as successful as they can be in this in this new sort of socially driven, hyper connected, but maybe never more a part world that we find ourselves in?

14:48 Sadie Howell

I have four pieces of advice, so #1 is what we just said. Define a clear vision and goals. And then stick to it. It is very easy, every six months to start something new. Refer back to what is that defining vision? Your goals are going to change, but your vision and your why, like you said, should not change.

 And also what are your values as part of your vision and goals? If you can define those and those are really important to you, then there is no better North star on how to make a business decision than running every decision through what is your vision, your goals, and your values? And you’ll always be led right.

15:33 Matt Cranney

I love that Sadie. You go before you go on, I just want to jump in. Because, man you said something super important, the discipline to stay committed to your point as a small business. We’ve talked about it and this is that difference between a problem to solve, and attention to manage.

Just because you have the ability to, you know, pivot and be flexible. Understanding though there are some things that it’s not always a new product. It’s not always a new service. Sometimes it’s going back to, like you said, no, we need to give this more time.

We need to be maybe more committed to this. One of the things that I see sometimes is people confuse, you know, the ability to, you know, stay focused with, no, no, we got to continue to pivot and as a strength, which it is, but any strength presented in its ultimate form can also be a weakness.

So I love the fact that we called out that we can pivot, but also that there’s going to be times where we need to stay completely disciplined. Thanks for letting me jump in and call that out.

16:29 Sadie Howell

You’re exactly right. The gift of change in pivoting as a small business doesn’t mean you always have to.

#2 is know your target market again, the number one thing when we meet with small businesses and let’s just say you know, OK, I’m going to start my own insurance agency. What’s your target market? Well, everyone, because everybody needs insurance. No, that is not an answer.

Financial management, can you read a PNL? And if you can’t, that’s OK, but do you know what your expenses are? And do you know when you’re making a profit? Those are both really important things to track, and then can you interpret what some of that financial data is telling you?

You know, at the end of the day, if you’re super focused on making widgets, you still need to know, are you keeping your costs in line? Are we still making a profit? At what point are you making a profit?

17:26 Matt Cranney

And if you can’t, make sure you build a great team around you, not just from an employee perspective, but just your when you think about your sort of businesses, informal or formal, sort of board of directors. That mentality right in terms of, hey, you know what, I’m not really strong in finance, I’m really strong in running an electrical company. Great. But there’s so many people out there that are experts at the finance piece and they can bring that.

Again, another reason how to engage with the Chamber to make sure you’re putting yourself in places and spaces where those relationships and networks exist. We’ve never been more needing to be connected. And that’s what you know, Envision and a lot of our other incredible chambers around the Midwest do. So thank you for letting me say that. OK, point #4.

18:11 Sadie Howell

Track performance and continuously improve. We use KPIs at Envision. Those are key performance indicators, whatever that means to you and however you track it, and however often you’re checking in, ours is we update them monthly and then quarterly we update them to a board of directors.

And then annually, we’re looking and seeing, OK. We need to adjust. KPI do we need to change it? You know, know where you’ve been and map out where you’d like to go. If it matters, it should be measured.

18:40 Matt Cranney

If it matters, it should be measured.And you know, for everybody listening today, if you don’t have, you know, a list of three to five, you know, really important key performance indicators or whatever, people would call them, you should probably think about that.

Those metrics should ,if you can pick up that piece of paper and say well, Sadie, right now our profitability is this, our margin is this our whatever it is, pick a few things and start small and measure it and watch what it will do over time as you build up those reps and consistency of tracking how your business is performing.

19:19 Sadie Howell

Absolutely, yeah. And even if you if you’re not a small business owner, you know Matt and I we don’t own either of our businesses. It’s still easy to get caught up on the day to day. You need to work on and in. And I get guilty of that working in because it’s easier and more comfortable.

19:38 Matt Cranney

For sure, yeah. And the rewards are quicker. It’s very easy to say. Should always make time to work on the business, not just in the business, but the challenge I think with working in an “on” is, like sometimes it’s super. It’s like, oh, I can jump in and check out this customer at the checkout. It feels really good and there are times to do that, but there’s also times to say, you know what, I also need to potentially go in the back or I need to meet with a mentor, or I need to go to this Chamber event so that I can connect with people and think about 20-30.

It’s so easy to get, you know, and alluring to get pulled back into the in. It’s much harder and the rewards aren’t always as immediate, but they are there.

OK, Sadie, last question for you, if you could give a Ted talk, you know, on the importance of small businesses to a thriving community. What would be the title in what would be a couple of the key takeaways that you’d want your audience to remember?

20:30 Sadie Howell

My title is creating economic engines that empower future generations, a journey of a small business.

20:39 Matt Cranney

I love that. I love that.

20:41 Sadie Howell

And maybe I’ll have to do a TedTalk and a book on this someday.

20:43 Matt Cranney

Yeah, I hey listen, if that’s the takeaway, Sadie I love it. I love it.

What would be a couple of the big takeaways for you that you would want people to walk away with from that presentation?

20:51 Sadie Howell

Yes. I mean a couple of them are in the title that. Small businesses are the economic engine of our communities, and whether that’s a five person, a 5500 person.

The small businesses are the economic engines that create jobs and circulate money in and around our communities. They, you know, we talked about this already, the innovation and the adaptability and then lastly through the title, you know empowering future generations.

Small businesses create generational wealth and they are the future generation leaders that through mentorship and through role models that often you know when you’re younger, you’re looking at somebody you want to aspire to. And if that’s a small business owner and then you go into that business or you’re a child and you see your parents grow up and you think, wow, I really want to continue to do that.

21:53 Matt Cranney

Sadie, thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom. As always, as we sort of turn the corner to head towards home here, we’re going to go through our fastest break set of questions. We’re just looking for one or two thoughts, you know, off the top in rapid fire, and then we’ll move on to the next one, sound okay?

Sadie, what’s your favorite book that you’ve read in the last 12 months?

22:11 Sadie Howell

Nonfiction is Let Them, by Mel Robbins. Fiction is Remarkably Bright Creatures.

22:18 Matt Cranney

I have let them on my nightstand. Now I’m a big Mel Robbins guy.

Complete the sentence for you, leadership is.

22:25 Sadie Howell

Guiding, guarding and influencing.

22:28 Matt Cranney

That the most impactful coaching advice that you’ve ever received, Sadie.

22:32 Sadie Howell

I got this actually it was when I was at Envision and it was a one of my first chair of the board, said you don’t need to respond to anything instantly, whether that be an e-mail, a text, a phone call or an in person on the spot question.

22:48 Matt Cranney

I love it. Your favorite podcast that you would recommend to our audience?

22:51 Sadie Howell

Well, I mean obviously other than this one.

22:53 Matt Cranney

Oh my for sure, yes.

22:56 Sadie Howell

Mel Robbins and another one that I follow is the Econ Dev show. A national Economic Development podcast. To learn more about what we do.

23:05 Matt Cranney

You can’t live without it. App on your phone.

23:09 Sadie Howell

Text message.

23:10 Matt Cranney

Yep, yeah so people are like, you know, super secret, small niche app. So far, people talk about messages, maps. Notes all of those things.

Last thing you did that truly scared you?

23:20 Sadie Howell

It was after, this is a little personal, so I hope that’s OK after a divorce a few years ago, it was opening myself up and finding the absolute love of my life now, husband Ryan, that was just terrifying, but incredibly blessed and happy now.

23:40 Matt Cranney

Oh, thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing that Sadie. I really appreciate it.

Last one, we asked you this question from a business. So this maybe is more of a personal perspective, but if you’re passionate about going business in a different direction, that’s OK too. If you had to give a Ted talk, what would be its title?

23:53 Sadie Howell

I’m sticking with the one because I I just really like it now.

23:56 Matt Cranney

Yeah. Well and basically, at this point you’re basically like one step away from recording it, I think you, should go do that.

Sadie, thank you. Before we close, if we have people in our audience who have listened today, you know, maybe they’re representing other chambers throughout the midwest. Maybe they’re a small business and they would love to connect with Envision and learn more about you and envision what is the best way to get connected?

24:19 Sadie Howell

Easiest way is to go to our website. We put all of our people’s our team members contact information on there. You can actually find an e-mail address and a phone number to get in in touch with us.

24:31 Matt Cranney

Awesome Sadie. Thank you so much for joining us today for sharing your insights on the importance of small businesses and Envision Greater Fond du Lac role in supporting their success. Truly appreciate it and you.

24:41 Sadie Howell

Thank you so much.

This has been Fast Break brought to you by M3 Elevate. I’m Matt Cranney, thank you for joining me. Do you want more tips to grow protect your business? Subscribe now and catch all of our episodes and we’ll see you next time.