March 12, 2024 | Main Spotlight: Main Street America Trainers Provide Training to Over 100,000 Small Businesses, Expanding Efforts in 2024 | By: Liz Shenk, Manager of Marketing & Outreach
The team at the 2023 Main Street Now Conference in Boston. From left to right (back row): Main Street Ottumwa (Iowa) Director Fred Zesiger, Oklahoma Coach Jarrod Foster, Main Street Wytheville (Virginia) Director Todd Wolford, Downtown Lewiston Executive Director Jim Zubler, Main Street Wytheville Administrative and Events Coordinator Charlie Jones, and Downtown LaGrange Executive Director Bill Hunnicutt. From left to right (front row): North Carolina Coach Tierra Norwood, Iowa Coach Lindsey Newland, Pennsylvania Coach Joshua Miller, Project Manager Monica Miller, Michigan Coach Teresa Heger, Oregon Coach Chelsea Brosterhous, Downtown Middletown Executive Director Jeff Payne, and Georgia Coach April Ross.
In 2023, Main Street America (MSA) helped business owners in rural communities gain new skills through implementing a team of ten digital marketing experts to deliver local training. These experts provided free live, hands-on coaching to small business owners in small towns and rural areas across ten states: Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. Coaches worked closely with their local Main Street managers and their state’s Main Street Coordinating Program directors to develop relationships with local business communities.
Over the course of the year, our team of coaches offered regular workshops and one-on-one support to small business owners on topics designed to help their businesses grow and thrive, including connecting with customers, selling online, and improving productivity. In addition to their focused work with small business owners in rural areas, the coaches also provided virtual live and on-demand workshops available to small business owners across the country – all for free.
Since the program’s start, the coaches have impacted tens of thousands of small business owners across the country in both measurable and immeasurable ways.
"Led by local experts, these trainings equipped business owners with the skills needed to thrive in an increasingly competitive and digitally based economy,” said Main Street America Chief Impact Officer Hannah White. “Supporting local entrepreneurs is an essential component of our mission to create more vibrant Main Streets. This initiative has been instrumental in helping us continue to work towards this goal."
Addressing Small Business Owners’ Needs
Owning a small business is rewarding, but also challenging. Small business owners frequently wear many hats: They may spend 12 hours a day running a restaurant, but they also need to be an accountant, a marketer, a customer service representative, and an IT support person. Small business owners also must contend with finding new customers, sustaining operations, and keeping pace with technological advances.
Moreover, most brick & mortar businesses had to pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Main Street America conducted research to see how they could help and found that businesses needed digital tools to survive and thrive. Findings showed that business owners needed free access to technical training and guidance on building more streamlined processes and advanced marketing through digital tools.
“The program grew out of a need for increased, tailored support for small business owners coming out of the pandemic,” Main Street America Chief Program Officer Matt Wagner, Ph.D. “Our coaches help lighten this burden by equipping business owners with the digital skills they need to adapt to shifting economic, societal, and technological trends.”
Expansive Impact Through Tailored Support
Through in-person training, individual coaching, and virtual live and on-demand workshops, the coaches provided small business training to over 115,000 people since the program’s launch in the spring of 2023. The average number of small business owners trained in-person in each state was 872, with some coaches training 1,500 or more over the year. The coaches also held virtual trainings for the national network, with over 370 small business owners joining live, and over 100,000 viewing the workshop recordings on-demand.
Throughout the year, Main Street America provided opportunities for participants to offer feedback about their experiences through optional surveys and testimonial submission forms. Of the participants surveyed, 94 percent of program participants said that the partnership's impact on small business owners has been either somewhat or extremely positive, and 75 percent of the respondents indicated the impact was extremely positive.
A unique benefit of the program was its hyper-local focus, designed so each coach worked closely with a local Main Street program. By working closely with Main Street organizations and hosting in-person trainings and face-to-face meetings with business owners, coaches established strong and effective relationships with the local business community.
"We don't always have the funding to offer business services to the community and some small business owners can't afford classes, but the training sessions enabled our organization to offer a free business service to our local businesses,” said Ellen Martignetti, Main Street Manager of Building a Better Boyertown in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. “It was just another justification for having a Main Street program in place. The sessions were invaluable and well received by attendees. Our coach, Joshua, took his time to answer questions and help people individually, as well as the whole group. He was great to work with and came to Boyertown twice offering different session each time.”
Of the thousands of small business owners trained, many returned for multiple workshop sessions or even scheduled time with their coach for one-on-one sessions.
Dillin Springwater, owner of Springwater Fence in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, attended four workshops and had two individual sessions with his coach, Jarrod Foster.
-L.png "Springwater Fence Co. Tahlequah Oklahoma")
"[In my sessions], I learned how to use these tools to collaborate more effectively with my team, manage my time more efficiently, and improve my communication with customers,” said Springwater. “Overall, I'm very impressed with the training and resources ... I highly recommend attending a workshop if you're looking for ways to improve your business operations and grow your business."
Expanding Support for Main Street Businesses
We’re excited to announce that Main Street America will continue to offer virtual and on-demand small business training in 2024 through an evolved program, the Small Biz Digital Trainers program.
Beginning this spring, a team of four experts will offer quarterly 90-minute webinars, a series of short learning modules, and a weekly office hour for open dialogue and Q&A. Topic areas will include using SMS for marketing, creating video content for social media, choosing the right e-commerce platform, integrating AI into your marketing, and much more.
“Our primary survey research as well as in the field focus groups and interviews clearly demonstrates that the pace of change remains accelerated and small businesses still need to transition and have access to know-how around digital tools,” said Wagner. “As such we are thrilled for MSA to continue offering small business training, but in a slightly different form and one that will allow for national reach at scale.”
These sessions will provide technical assistance and education to Main Street small business owners. However, we also highly encourage our Main Street managers, Coordinators, and economic development leaders to tune in and pass along these valuable resources to their local business base.
“As laid out in Main Street America’s Strategic Plan, the Main Street Movement is rooted in a belief that supporting entrepreneurs, small businesses, and small-scale development builds community wealth and creates meaningful investment in communities,” said Wagner. “Through our four Small Biz Digital Trainers, we are equipping small business owners and Main Street leaders with tailored support to build stronger local economies and healthier commercial districts.”
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