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Networking Widens Entrepreneurs’ Horizons
By
Carol L. Spence
 LEXINGTON, Ky., (Oct. 31, 2007) – Along the ridges and rivers of
eastern Kentucky, winding scenic byways thread their way past
farms that beckon visitors into their gift shops or onto their
hayrides, inns that offer lodging to the nature lover and
artists who create from the wellspring of their mountain
heritage. Pooling this natural wealth during a fall workshop at
the Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center were coaches from the
Kentucky Entrepreneurial Coaches Institute.
A leadership program, KECI was established in 2004 by the
University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service and funded
by the Kentucky Agricultural Development Board. The institute
concentrated in its first three years on developing
entrepreneurial coaches in 19 tobacco-dependent counties in
northeastern Kentucky. In 2008, it will expand its reach into 22
counties in the south central region of the state.
KECI’s objective is to promote diversification of the economies
in these counties by developing coaching skills among community
leaders wishing to encourage the development of local
entrepreneurs. These trained volunteers strive to build a strong
entrepreneurial culture and infrastructure that will stimulate
new business startups and small business expansion, especially
among the region’s tobacco farmers.
Ron Hustedde, professor of community and leadership development
in the UK College of Agriculture, is the director of KECI. He
contends that believing in a region’s people will bring out
their very best, for themselves and for their region.
“We can create new wealth in the region -- new hope. I believe
the institute’s graduates are honoring people’s dreams for
starting new business. They are successful because they focus on
local assets rather than on problems.”
The recent workshop featured entrepreneurs representing a
variety of enterprises from surrounding counties. Gwenda Adkins,
family and consumer sciences extension agent in Elliott County,
was one of the planners of the roundtable event. She explained
that the gathering was
a way for people who wanted to start or expand a business or had
a product they wanted to market to talk to people who had been
through the process.
“Sometimes people just have that one question, ‘How do I get
started? What do I do?’ To come in and be able to talk to
someone who did that will give them that little bit of knowledge
or maybe that little bit of encouragement they need to go
forward,” she said.
Fellow KECI graduate Kay Boggs was not only on the planning
committee, but she also participated as an entrepreneur, lending
her encouragement and expertise to those who dropped by her
table. She and her husband Lafe own the Laurel Gorge Inn, the
only overnight accommodations in Elliott County. They also raise
white-tailed deer and Nigerian dwarf goats, alternative
livestock that are particularly suited to small steep-sided
tracts of land. She praises the network that KECI and its
coaches helped to establish in areas that might be perceived as
remote.
“The networking is wonderful. There’s somebody who knows
something about everything. And this meeting is a good
opportunity (for people to ask questions). Because if someone
comes and asks me something, if I don’t know, there’s someone in
our group that does know,” she said. “What it takes is for
everybody to work together, because you can’t do it all by
yourself.”
Kim and Jason Smith benefited from the Boggs’ experience. They
moved to Kentucky from Ohio to start their own alternative
livestock business. The couple depends on the Boggs’ knowledge
to help them over the rough patches inherent in a new endeavor.
“Lafe and Kay both have been a great help and a tremendous
resource for us,” Kim said. “Starting any new business, you
don’t know where to start. And once you get started, you don’t
know where to go from there. They’ve been there for us
throughout the whole thing, in order to help us be successful.”
That success is crucial to the growth of a region suffering from
the loss of tobacco income and the lack of industry.
“The bulk of new jobs and wealth in the state will be created
through small business,” Hustedde said. “We can no longer rely
exclusively on traditional industrial recruitment as our sole
economic development strategy.”
Workshop planners included people from a wide variety of
endeavors. The gathering comprised a farmer who sells his beef
through direct marketing methods, agribusiness owners, a
proprietor of a bed-and-breakfast, an artist who creates
jewelry, owners of a home décor business and a wood carver,
among others.
Adkins said that not only did entrepreneurial novices gain
something from the event, but so did the established business
owners. She pointed out that the owner of the Gambill Mansion, a
bed-and-breakfast in Blaine, met the owners of Alley Farms, an
agritourism business in the same county.
“They are about three miles apart, give or take, so they can now
market each other,” she said. “Alley Farms also met two
entrepreneurs of the tobacco buyout so they now have more
products to sell. An artist from Elliott County came to talk
with the jeweler about marketing and found two outlets for her
works of art. A young man who wants to get into biofuels talked
at length to Harvey Mitchell, from the Center for Rural
Development and the Small Business Development Center, as well
as a KECI coach.
“In eastern Kentucky I don’t think that we have realized all the
niches that we have,” Adkins said. “And sometimes it takes
making people realize that they have a niche – that they can do
something special, that they can take this idea and go forward
with it and turn it into a profit making venture. Hopefully,
today people will see that’s a possibility.”
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Contact: Gwenda Adkins, 606-738-6400
Ron Hustedde, 859-257-3186
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The UK College of Agriculture,
through its land-grant mission, reaches across the commonwealth
with teaching, research and extension
to enhance the lives of
Kentuckians. |
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