Starting a Local Business Can Be As Easy as Setting Up a Chair

*A chair set up in a multicultural center in Chisholm, MN, for residents wanting access to natural hairstyling services. (Source: Seraphia Gravelle (Aguallo).)*

When Seraphia Gravelle (Aguallo) of Chisholm, Minnesota, had to drive her son to a town over an hour and a half away just to find a salon that could work with his natural hair, she knew there had to be a better solution. Not only was the trip costing her in time and gas money, but it also meant she was spending money in a different town that could have gone toward a local business in her own community. However, starting up a local business is not always easy, as would-be entrepreneurs are often held back by prohibitive expenses and regulations before they’ve even gotten their idea off the ground.

“There's so many barriers to entrepreneurs,” said Gravelle, who serves as co-executive director of Voices for Ethnic and Multicultural Awareness (VEMA). Instead of waiting to go through the expensive process of establishing the ideal downtown business, she and other VEMA members decided to take the smallest next steps and do what was immediately possible: they set up a hairstyling chair in a multicultural center that they already had access to.

After setting up the hairstyling chair, locals in Chisholm are realizing that development investments don’t have to be overly expensive. They don’t have to be huge, months-long projects in order to create lasting value in a community.

Before the chair was set up, Gravelle recounted trying to make the most of her trips to the neighboring town while her son was having his hair re-twisted: “So, while [my son] is sitting in a chair for three hours getting his hair done, what am I doing? Most likely, I'm getting some shopping done while I'm there because we want to make good use of our time. So I'm spending money in another town. And so there's all this money that has the potential to be coming into the town that we live in, but it’s going somewhere else. And it's not an insignificant amount of money.”

The simple action of setting up a dedicated space for traditional hairstyling has redirected cash flow that once left Chisholm back into the community. Plus, it’s given local businesses the opportunity to find new customers, growing wealth for both business owners and the city.

Not only has the chair set Chisholm up for better financial opportunities, it has impacted individuals on a personal level by providing a needed service for people who couldn’t drive over an hour to a non-local business.

“The transformation that happens with, say, a 30-something-year-old woman who has grown up [in Chisholm], who's never had the opportunity here to have a traditional hairstyle, and they come in, and they experience it and they walk away completely empowered with the sense of pride in who they are,” said Gravelle.

With so many positive outcomes stemming from something as simple as setting up a chair in a community center Gravelle asks, “Why wouldn't we want this?”

Chisholm residents are not the only people to have made simple changes that have made a big difference in their city. When Medicine Hat, Alberta, considered a proposal that would have the city sinking over half a million dollars into new public restrooms, they decided to instead bring more awareness to and improve restrooms they already had by putting up simple laminated paper signs and hiring a nighttime security guard.

When Muskegon, Michigan, wanted to encourage more entrepreneurial activity in their downtown, they decided to invest in inexpensive, small-scale business spaces. This removed one of the barriers their local entrepreneurs faced: large, expensive storefronts as the only option for new businesses. These little buildings have helped small businesses grow into more permanent places, giving them long-term opportunities at lower upfront costs. What was a small step for Muskegon became an increasingly valuable change in the community.

“Also, it's something that creates generational wealth,” said Gravelle on the importance of accessible entrepreneurship. “And that's very important. That's important for anybody.”

Recommended reading: “Rules for the Uncomfortable.”

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Seairra Jones

Seairra Jones serves as the Staff Writer/Story Producer for Strong Towns. In the past, she's worked as a freelance journalist and videographer for a number of different organizations. She currently resides between small-town Illinois and the rural Midwest with her husband, where they help manage a family homestead. When Seairra isn’t focusing on how to make our towns stronger, you can find her outside working on the farm, writing fictional tales in a coffee shop, or reading in a hammock.