Here’s an idea to help new businesses

In last week’s column, Darn Good Yarn founder/CEO Nicole Snow spoke about her reasons for moving her Sebec, Maine-based million dollar a year business to Schenectady, N.Y. In part, the move was due to her husband’s business.

But Darn Good Yarn’s exit had also to do with other factors:
An internet system unable to handle her web-based business’s increasing demands. As Nicole was succeeding, she was outgrowing her local internet.
Nicole, on a few levels, was unable to find “the right” people to work with her.
“It comes down to getting [Piscataquis County] people really fired up about entrepreneurship,” she said.

Local brick-and-mortar store owners were “pretty good” toward the new eCommerce. Snow’s friend, Foxcroft Agway owner Pam Pultz, was “in the community a lot longer than I was,” Snow said. “We would brainstorm plenty of times at her kitchen table — a sort of crossbreeding of ideas.

“It’s a little like a mentorship [of] people who’ve been down that road, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a one-for-one fit,” Snow said. “There is a beauty to that cross-pollination because it’s a base of entrepreneurship. It is people being able to creatively think, look at what they have, and then [from that], create creative solutions,” she said.

As for finding workers? “I had a difficult time. Being the business owner growing the business, I wasn’t out in the community [networking]. So my hires came from friends knowing friends. Those weren’t necessarily the best hires. I didn’t know of any centralized place where I could get help.”

What about Maine government’s help programs for small businesses?

Snow remembers government programs mostly targeting “made in Maine” businesses. She “often felt like the odd person out,” ineligible “because I was an importer, essentially, a manufacturer importer.” It was frustrating, she said, seeing Maine government resources go to businesses “that aren’t scalable. I think there’s better use of resources for businesses that have more opportunity to grow.”

“I would have killed to have someone take an interest, [and] on a quarterly basis, come to my little house in Sebec, to offer mentorship,” Snow said, feeling that in Piscataquis County “everything was so connection based.” Not having that network, “really did hurt me.” I think if I had probably three or four more years I could have really moved the dial a little bit in Piscataquis,” she said.

Snow said looking back is “bittersweet. Some of the best foundational components of Darn Good Yarn happened while I sat at my desk in Sebec. I really do miss sitting there occasionally, and coming up with those really good ideas. The awesome part about Piscataquis is that you do get to be by yourself, very close to nature. It puts things in a better perspective,” she said.

“If I could be the Fairy Godmother of Sebec I would have an awesome incubator there [with] other businesses, run by business owners. Not by government agency people who have never run a small business or [who] ran a small business [that failed],” said Snow.

Linking with successful incubators in southern Maine, Snow said a Piscataquis incubator and a T3 or T1 internet connection would have “resources we can pull up virtually, Skyping with southern Maine, and bringing that energy up to Piscataquis.”

With Foxcroft Academy’s “calibre of students,” strong internet access, and central Piscataquis County location, Snow thinks FA could be perfect as a mini-incubator for entrepreneurship — which Nicole would love teaching, saying “I can stretch between two states. Maine is in my heart every single day.”

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.