Talk with the Team: Tiffany Henry

Rural Entrepreneurship

“So, you’re like a train conductor? You work with trains?” This was one of the more frequent questions I heard from people when I first started visiting neighboring communities through the Conductor’s Rural Outreach initiative. Their inquiries weren’t entirely off base. Our organization's name, “Conductor,” actually did originate as a throwback to Conway’s rich history as a railway hub. However, it also refers to our role as the conduit for innovation in Central Arkansas. At the Conductor, we aim to empower entrepreneurs, innovators, and makers in everything we do.

We help people start businesses and communities sustain them by disseminating the Conductor’s Four Pillars of entrepreneurial ecosystem development: Engagement, Talent, Capital, and Culture. Our multifaceted approach to supporting startups and small businesses allows us to customize our assistance to each entrepreneur, as well as to each unique community in our 11-county service area. This specialized assistance of meeting the entrepreneur wherever they are located has contributed to the Conductor’s ability to build trust and form relationships across the Central Arkansas region and beyond.

Building trust is often an overlooked component of ecosystem building, but particularly in rural areas, it is one of the most important first steps. Community and economic development activities hold the key to people’s livelihoods, as the success of future generations is determined by the opportunities provided to them today. The Conductor is dedicated to eliminating obstacles for entrepreneurs in these rural areas and providing appropriate resources to help small businesses thrive.

Over the last six months, the Conductor has had the opportunity to build trust with underserved entrepreneurs in Central Arkansas by utilizing our Four Pillar Approach to ecosystem building which includes: 

Engagement:

Vibrant ecosystem building requires collaboration and engagement with entrepreneurs and communities on many levels. In Searcy, we have engaged with faculty at a local university, hosted workshops at a local small business, and provided startup insight at local community meetings. We have engaged in one-on-one coaching sessions in partnership with the Searcy Chamber through our Office Hours program, which has also been rolled out to other Chambers, including Clarksville, Cabot, Heber Springs, and Morrilton, to name a few. We have hosted events on the campuses of ASU Beebe, Arkansas Tech University, the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton, in addition to our frequent programming at the University of Central Arkansas. We aim to provide programming and assistance that cultivates collaboration and cross-sector involvement to encourage entrepreneurial engagement at every level. 

Talent:

There is no limit on who can and should become an entrepreneur, and we have been able to assist people of all life stages in considering the possibilities of owning their own business. We have helped college students explore the idea of starting a makerspace, consulted high school students interested in hosting a hackathon, and assisted displaced factory workers in identifying their own potential for a second career in entrepreneurship. We have hosted workshops in our rural service area that teach people how to think like a startup, improve their personal brand, and pitch their business like a pro. We have provided our own talent development programming to help one hone their business skills and partner with trusted leaders and organizations to strengthen their employees’, students’, and constituents’ professional skills.  We support all small business development levels and help nurture the talent required to make the big decision to start a company. 

Capital:

With traditional startups, capital typically comes in the form of finances. We have provided financial capital through multiple pitch competitions in our service area. However, we also work to connect entrepreneurs to other resources found in their communities like social, political, natural, and built capital. We have provided social capital by coordinating networking events with business influences. We have provided political capital by hosting roundtables with government decision-makers. We have inspired innovative uses of built capital by discussing non-traditional lease agreements.  The Conductor Rural Outreach initiative aims to highlight existing elements of capital in our smaller communities to connect entrepreneurs with resources that have potentially been overlooked and eliminate barriers to all forms of capital for people who may otherwise not have access. 

Culture:

Rural and underserved entrepreneurs cannot be successful without a community to support and sustain their business. Growing strong entrepreneurs includes strengthening the local message that small business impacts economic development as much as large industry recruitment. We partner with local organizations and municipalities to foster a culture that embraces innovative problem solving and is not afraid to take risks. We have facilitated capacity building workshops with county and city leaders in Clinton to determine how to involve area high school students in business activities. We have led an ecosystem-building exercise with Russellville entrepreneurs to explore how business owners can more efficiently work together. Ecosystem building is a community sport that depends on an adaptable and open-minded culture that views failure as another opportunity to try again rather than a reason to quit.

The Four Pillars of Conductor Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Building have been critical to the progress made in the rural and underserved areas in Central Arkansas. As we continue to lay the foundation of trust and build relationships in our service area, we look forward to seeing how entrepreneurial endeavors bloom across the region. And although we don’t have any immediate plans to become actual railroad Conductors, we will always work hard at keeping the innovation train moving swiftly across the tracks to the future. 

Empower, Make, Innovate

Conductor