Delta County Area Chamber of Commerce

Minding our own business for November 20, 2004

Linda Hirvonen, Delta County Economic Development Alliance

Entrepreneurship

Minding Our Own Business for November 20th

Local people starting businesses within their community. It’s the essence of what makes our country great, and it’s essential to the UP economy. Several years ago, the Upper Peninsula Economic Development Alliance (UP.EDA) conducted an informal survey of member communities and asked what businesses each valued most, and what their origins were. Overwhelmingly, it was the spirit of entrepreneurship and the desire to live in the UP.

The UP.EDA is a coalition of economic developers, private industry, and educational communities working together to promote the UP as a place to do business. Growing UP businesses by educating our communities and assisting our potential and existing businesses is a concept we call Economic Gardening.

Several regional initiatives of the UP.EDA’s Economic Gardening program are new and include: Entrepreneurship Expos, a UP college presidents group, and volunteer mentoring programs.

Last week we held the first of three Entrepreneurship Expos, designed to help graduating college students and the community make the decision about staying in the UP to start their own business. Held at NMU on November 10th, this first one featured a marketplace for people to meet those who can provide assistance like the UP.EDA, Michigan Works, Northern Initiatives, the Smart Zone, and so fort as well as a series of 45 minute workshops. There were several local partners in this effort. LSSU and MTU, with assistance from other groups in their areas, will each host one for their students and communities in December. Expos will be slightly different as each takes into account the needs, resources, and partnerships of that community.

In addition to materials that can be picked up at the booths, the UP.EDA also created a DVD geared toward Gen X and Gen Y promoting the UP as a place to live, work and play as well as an entrepreneurship resource directory with hotlinks. This will get into the hands of each “20 something” person attending these events. We are working on getting one in the hands of each senior and graduate student graduating from a UP college. This is a complement to the rotating series of 3 hour “Reality Check” workshops provided to community members throughout the UP.

Related to this quest to keep younger folks here and to promote entrepreneurship is the UP.EDA’s convening of the college presidents in the UP in a series of higher ed-economic development roundtables. This project will be spearheaded by Michael Allkins of Bay College and Dennis West of Northern Initiatives and president of UP.EDA.

The thought is that colleges already play a expanding role in economic development. Look at just a few examples: M-TEC’s ability to provide customized employer-based training that is independent of the credit/semester system. The Smart Zone at MTU that provides an incubator system for production of marketable items that have come out of the university’s research programs and other high-tech start-ups. They, like M-TEC, consider the UP as their market and will reach out to help those across our region. Finlandia University also has an on-campus incubator and full-time employee to help students and the community launch their own businesses. If the presidents, many of whom are new, get together there are many other ways that we can create and promote stronger entrepreneurship and retention systems that span the UP.

Starting a business is only the first step in so many ways, and there are a couple programs the UP.EDA is implementing regionally to help businesses stay and grow.

One is the creation and coordination of a regional mentorship program. Delta County and the Soo have had long-standing SBA SCORER chapters, but when the Soo, as host chapter, no longer had the interest to continue, both chapters were suspended. Delta County alone cannot meet the numbers that the SBA requires to be a free-standing chapter. SCORER is a valuable resource that we used to place retired business managers and owners as mentors to expanding or struggling businesses. Mentoring could benefit each county’s ability to grow, so the UP.EDA is working with the SBA to create a UP-wide chapter. Our goal is to have at least two mentor volunteers in each community by the end of 2005, and then work toward having at least one in each of several key content areas (finance, manufacturing, retail, human resources, marketing etc) within an hour of each business in the UP!

The other is a retention device we have been using for several years now. Several of our counties were not making retention calls on existing businesses, and a couple still don’t. But calling on businesses and talking to the owner/manager tells us a tremendous amount about industry trends; their company’s risks factors, projected needs, and potentials; our community; and the direction the economy is taking. Getting good data about the UP has often been difficult, as we as a whole do not have the population to create our own Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in order for us to have detailed economic data.

By banding together and in conjunction with the Michigan Works agencies (spearheaded and still led by the Central UP’s Job Force Board), the UP.EDA purchased and uses a system we call “UP Business Barometer.” Using this online tool, each of us now asks the same questions to our businesses. We can now quantify trends, gaps, issues, needs and opportunities on a community basis and the UP.EDA can do the same kind of research for regions as well as UP-wide. This information will not only let us keep and grow the businesses we have, but will also let us see opportunities for attraction and have data to back up our approaches to them.

Program to keep our young people, attract and retain business, create entrepreneurs, and provide community assistance in creating conditions favorable to growth are just part of what we buy for our $1,000 a year investment in the UP.EDA, a group I am proud to say I helped start. Working together for the betterment of all….it’s just one more example of what makes the UP a great place to live, work, play and grow. No wonder we love it here!

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