A business bootcamp arrives in Cookeville Tuesday to help small businesses find success and grow.
Nationally recognized Business Expert Jon Schallert will lead the two-day session. Schallert said small businesses in rural communities face challenges such as lower populations and lower wages. They also struggle to attract customers outside the community. Schallert said he teaches small businesses how to adapt.
“After people have gone through my class, they see increases in revenue, and they see increases in tax rates that go up,” Schallert said. “And so I think the easiest way for a community to become more prosperous is to teach these skills to independent business owners in those communities.”
Schallert said 50 business owners from across the region will learn his 14-step process that has helped small businesses succeed since 2002.
Schallert said the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development wanted him to come to the different regions across the state and help small businesses.
Schallert said he developed this process after interviewing over 10,000 successful small business owners over the course of his 27-year career.
“I would go to places that were often had high unemployment, often were rural, often were small towns, I’d meet business owners that were doing over millions of dollars in places where they shouldn’t be doing millions of dollars in sales, and they basically, these owners, after I interviewed over a thousand business owners in successive years, time and time again, the ones who were most successful just shared their secrets with me.”
Schallert said most rural communities look to attract a big industry to boost the local economy. Schallert said successful small businesses are an alternative way to boost the local economy.
“The more prosperity in an independent business, the more that money stays at home in that county or that small town, the better for the quality of life in that community, as tax revenue is generated,” Schallert said. “So it’s a bottom-up type of reinvention.”
Schallert said this is the first time he will be taking his bootcamp outside the state of Colorado.
The business bootcamp will run from 8am-5pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, and from 8am-12pm on Thursday.