2025 Entrepreneurship Outlook: April True

What are some of the biggest challenges facing those wanting to start small businesses right now?
The hardest thing is finding employees, dependable employees that show up on time or show up at all. We are active in our community of Lebanon, so we know different business owners, and that’s a big struggle for the restaurants and the various businesses. I think things have changed from generation to generation – I don’t quite understand it. In the construction part of our business, we have employees retiring out, and what we are offering for an employee coming on is pretty decent, but we can’t find people to fill those jobs. I think a lot of employers are scratching their heads and don’t quite understand that.

Regarding consumer climate, funding and ownership costs, is now a good time to start a new business?
I remember when my husband and I were young and we had an elder tell us, “If you wait to start your family until you have money, you will never start your family.” There’s always going to be something. I kind of liken that to starting your business. When you start that business and you’re that entrepreneur, it kind of becomes your baby. If you wait for everything to align just right, a lot of times that isn’t going to work out because there are always issues with the economy or costs in general. I think if it’s something you got and you can put numbers to it, and you think you can make it work, you just need to dive in and go for it.

How did The 229 Project entrepreneurial competition in Lebanon help small-business owners propel themselves into the industry?
What we love about that project was the mentorship group. I think that will propel a new business owner so high because they have got all those resources. There are 12 people there that have experience in digital marketing. We have an accountant, banking professionals, other business owners and the leader of our chamber of commerce. They all have their specialties and all play a part in our downtown community. They are reaching out and helping that businessperson and guide them and lead them. Everyone is so invested in making the winner of that project successful. That is priceless.

What kinds of individual skillsets or ideas were you looking for in potential businesses competing in The 229 Project?
We really left it open. We thought we may only get five applicants, and 10 would be phenomenal. We ended up with 67. We were shocked, and almost all of them were right from Lebanon or in Laclede County.
We had criteria for it: we wanted a food establishment, or we wanted an entertainment venue, or it had to be a retail space. One of our biggest goals for our downtown area is to increase the foot traffic here.

How do you hope to foster this excitement and creativity in the community in the future? Do you plan on doing The 229 Project again?
We had that question a lot of, “Are you going to keep doing this?” and we’d love to. We would do some things differently – we learned a lot because we just started this and it grew so fast. We want to do this again. We love how it turned out.