This summer, I worked with Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA) – an economic development organization that works to build a stable, equitable economy for all residents in the Adirondack North Country region. ANCA works to achieve this goal with four teams: small businesses, clean energy, food systems, and equity and belonging. My work this summer has been with ANCA’s small business team, which exists to keep small businesses open and thriving, because they are an integral part of our rural economy. You can learn more about .
During my first week at ANCA, I learned about the problems that small businesses face in the Adirondack North Country. One of the biggest challenges here is also a national problem, known as the “silver tsunami.” This is where there are more baby boomers leaving the workplace than there are young people stepping into those roles. On a local level, this problem manifests itself as not having a big enough population of ready, aspiring entrepreneurs to take over small businesses when their owners retire. ANCA has found that there are over 10,000 small businesses owned by people wanting to retire soon, but who have no succession plan.
ANCA has partnered with other local economic development organizations and chambers of commerce to create the Center for Businesses in Transition (CBIT) in order to match retiring business owners with aspiring entrepreneurs who can take over. However, even with CBIT’s work, there are still too many retiring business owners who cannot find someone to buy their business. I sat on a CBIT quickfire call during my first weeks with ANCA in order to learn more about why this problem still exists. Liaisons from CBIT shared that the aspiring entrepreneurs that they work with often get overwhelmed with the buying process and fall through the cracks. They attributed this problem to the fact that many of these aspiring entrepreneurs do not have traditional backgrounds in business and might not understand the nuances of owning a business in a rural area. My work this summer was focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs get caught up to speed so that they can continue working with CBIT and be matched with retiring business owners. Hopefully these initiatives will help more businesses in the Adirondack North Country stay open through ownership transitions.
My project this summer was to create educational materials — namely a comprehensive, user-friendly workbook, for the general aspiring entrepreneur — which start far before the outlined buying process. This workbook seeks to be a less-stressful onboard to the world of business ownership, and is a material that individuals can work on alone before they begin meeting with a CBIT liaison. My goals for the workbook were that it was educational, hands-on, visually appealing, and succinct. Most of my summer was spent taking the problems I heard from liaisons and my supervisors at ANCA on the small business team, and creating an educational page or worksheet addressing them. At the end of this process, I compiled these materials together into the workbook. The workbook is broken down into three sections: exploring, preparing, and taking-the-leap. In the first, there is a worksheet that prompts the user to think about the skills they bring to the table, outside of traditional business experience. By the end of the book, we have users preparing a buyers profile that they can actually use while they are talking to potential sellers, as well as helping them to brainstorm questions they will ask during these discussions.
At 51Թ, I major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies and minor in Global Public and Environmental Health. However, I decided to spend my summer with ANCA because I am interested in non-profit, equity focused work. Economic development was not a field I had even heard of before I began my work this summer, but over the past ten weeks I have been able to see how this field intersects with my own goals of making a difference as a professional. One of the best parts of this summer was having a supportive work environment, even beyond my supervisors on the small business team. My supervisors and many others took time out of their schedules to guide me on this workbook and help me get up to speed so quickly on a field I knew nothing about. I remain confident in my desire to work for non-profits, and will certainly keep in mind the economic development field as I begin my job search this coming year.