That’s a great idea! I bet you can do it. That’s brilliant! You are amazing! Let’s put that into action!
These are just some of the words of encouragement that you would hear if you took your market of ideas and moved on them. Encouragement plays an enormous part in doing business; not a singular encouraging word but the collective and aggregate encouragement is what inspire people to get to work.
Encouragement is a constant in the economic development world. There are many dedicated professional economic development practitioners in the region who offer encouragement in unique and complimentary ways, which is an enormous blessing to the entire community Just as the medical field includes doctors in various and similar disciplines, the economic development arena includes a similar offering of practitioners. The practitioners provide a complementary offering of support and encouragement to the community of dreamers and risk takers.
To attempt to list every economic development partner in our region and their services would certainly be a challenge and possibly erroneously omit some organization; however, providing some listing will illustrate the idea that you can’t have too much support or too many friends to encourage you and troubleshoot and support your endeavors. With that stated, here is a short list of agencies in the region that think you are doing great work, that your idea is worth exploring, and that you can do great things.
The Northern Arizona Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (NACET) partners with individual entrepreneurs and start-up businesses to guide and encourage them through their growth opportunities. NACET is also now taking their experienced support and perspective to grow graduates of NACET to their next levels of production and innovation. http://www.nacet.org/
The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) is now co-located at NACET. The SBDC works with businesses of all sizes and configurations to provide counsel on topics from business plan development for starting new businesses to business plan updates for long standing businesses. The SBDC is also a direct connection to Small Business Administration (SBA) Loan process. http://www.coconinosbdc.com/
The Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce provides a suite of services to its members and the community at large. The Chamber has been growing its team and its offerings in the community; its list of events goes on and on, which is a good thing. http://www.flagstaffchamber.com/
The Sustainable Economic Development Initiative (SEDI) provides a suite of services to the region including a micro-loan program.http://www.sedinaz.org/
The Economic Collaborative of Northern Arizona (ECoNA) is an organization that brings regional partners together for the benefit of the entire region. ECoNA has numerous sub-groups that work to meet specialized aspects of the business community such as Redevelopment, Business Retention and Expansion, and Business Attraction among other things. ECoNA has also partnered with NACET to provide a revolving loan fund as well. http://econa-az.com/
Goodwill of Northern Arizona has partnered with the Coconino County Career Center to develop their Comprehensive One-Stop which includes a Business Services Team. The goal of this partnership is to connect people who are looking for work with businesses that are looking for employees. http://goodwillna.org/
The City of Flagstaff has an economic development group that includes a Business Retention and Expansion and Business Attraction offices. Between the two offices, they often connect the businesses to various resources including the partners listed above and others around the state. http://www.chooseflagstaff.com/
All of this means that there is a network of professionals that work to connect you and your business to the best resources for your unique needs. Fortunately for the business community, you have options of dedicated individuals and organizations that believe in you.
Encouragement may be credited with making Flagstaff:
- America’s First STEM Community and the First International Dark Skies Community;
- Home to W. L.Gore & Associates, Prent Thermoforming, Nestle-Purina Pet Care, Joy Cone Company, T-Gen North, Machine Solutions, Electric Torque Machines, eight separate craft brewers, a group of world class medical facilities, among others.
- Home to over 700 patents and one of the only astronomical incubators in the world.
- And, the list goes on.
Encouragement can inspire a community and put new ideas into action … this is shown every day in our fine city with the businesses listed above and more. FBN
John Saltonstall is the City of Flagstaff business retention and expansion manager.