The event drew a crowd of business owners, city officials, and business aid groups for a town hall on entrepreneurship. The series was started by the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation (SMIF) looking to shine a light on the issues affecting rural Minnesotans. SMIF CEO Tim Penny started the event by discussing his organization’s role in aiding prospective entrepreneurs.

“We invest in small town programs and grants,” he said. “We invest in entrepreneurship, which includes some business training and mentoring programs. We’re another resource that can help [southern Minnesota] grow. Our motto with the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation is ‘collaborating for regional vitality’. We’re simply trying to supplement and complement with others in our region to advance early childhood needs and entrepreneurship opportunities.”

Miller then took over and led the discussion. Her focus was on stories from and solutions for local small business owners. She talked to several local entrepreneurs who have either started a business or are looking to about their experiences.

An important theme was mentorship and having help from like-minded people. City Planner and co-owner of Tallgrass Cider John Knisley described how important his relationship with Black Frost Distillery co-owner Jace Marti has been in his entrepreneurial success.

Attendees look on as City Planner and Tallgrass Cider co-owner John Knisley talks about being an entrepreneur in New Ulm. Knisley said that without like-minded individuals like Black Frost Distillery co-owner Jace Marti, his business would not be where it is today.

“There was a lot of 11:30 at night text messages back and forth after the kids went to bed,” Knisley said. “Without Jace’s help and his feedback it would have been really scary to make a jump. Jace told me flat out ‘this doesn’t seem good’ or ‘this is great, you should go with this’. Without feedback from someone who’s been in the business and has expertise, it would have been scary to branch out.”

Tom Mayberry, owner of Mayberry Realty in St. James, started a debate when commenting on the current crop of young entrepreneurs. He suggested the demands of starting your own company is too much for many of the new generation.

“If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s not a 40 hour a week job,” Mayberry said. “You work from sunup to sundown if you can’t get it done on time. You work seven days a week if you want to be successful. It’s hard to find entrepreneurs. They get to college and they want to work from seven o’clock to five o’clock and then not worry about it.”

A dissenting opinion came from Brenda Flannery, Professor of Management and former Dean of Business at Minnesota State University Mankato. She believes it is not a black and white issue of young people wanting or not wanting to become entrepreneurs.

“We come in contact with a lot of a lot of young people,” Flannery said. “We find [there is] a whole continuum. One of the things about rural communities is either you’re raising hard working young people, or you’re attracting individuals who want to work hard. We’ve had a lot of entrepreneurs that pursued it while they were students. Many of them work 60 to 80 hours a week. I wouldn’t count out young people. You might not have run across all of them but I have.”

Mayberry said he believed there were a lot of good young entrepreneurs. But with a college education, they can work for someone else and make more money for less work than with their own business. He said young people need to have the entrepreneurial spirit and choose hard work and ownership over more money.

Penny capped the town hall with optimism and hope. From what he heard from the local business owners and partners, he believes southern Minnesota has tremendous potential.

“Lots of interesting new businesses are sprouting and growing here,” Penny said. “I’m convinced the more people visit here, the more they want to live here. And that gets to in-home businesses in your community. We also have a strong manufacturing base and a strong cultural base that’s going to continue in the future. Thank you for being a part of this. Thank you for giving a voice to rural Minnesota about an issue important to our future.”

The town hall was recorded, and segments from the discussion will be aired on MPR later in the fall. For more information, go to ruralvoice.org.