Commercial buildings are sitting empty in Independence and Coffeyville, and I think that's an opportunity, not a eulogy.

In this episode I talk about what actually makes a business work in a small town, the honest pros and cons of building one here, and the wave of retiring owners who are closing profitable businesses instead of selling them to the next generation. Those businesses have customers, cash flow, equipment, and a name people trust, and a lot of them are simply going to lock the doors. That's a loss for the owner, for the buyer who never knew it was available, and for the town.

I also share why I built my businesses here and would never go back to working for someone else, and why you're not limited to a storefront or to the people who can drive to you. I built an online community of 26,000 people from this same small town. You don't need a huge following to make a real living. If the right people hear your message, it doesn't matter how many wrong people never do.

Thinking about buying, selling, or building something here? Message me the word BUILD and I'll reach out personally.

Find everything I'm working on at https://jessicarenfrow.com
Homes and commercial listings in Southeast Kansas: https://www.sekhhr.com
Book a call: https://calendly.com/jessicarenfrow
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Jessica Renfrow, Associate Broker, Heritage Homes Team at eXp Realty. Licensed in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Mat Lewczenko signed a personal guarantee on a commercial space he was certain agents wanted. Twenty five hundred dollars a month each, twenty four months, plus overhead. Nobody came. It cost him seventy four thousand dollars and it nearly cost him his marriage.

Then, at the end of November, with his mindset in the dirt, a friend asked him a question that took about four seconds to answer and two years to act on. He made one social post and closed his phone. Ninety minutes later there were eleven messages waiting. Six of them became clients at a thousand dollars a month.

Mat runs Leveraged Agent Coaching out of Lenexa, Kansas. He's four years in with four people, and in this conversation he walks all six layers of what he built, including the parts that failed and what they cost.

In this episode:

· Why nobody used the office everybody said they wanted, and the question he skipped
· One post, eleven messages, six clients, and what happened next
· "You are most ideally suited to help you five years ago," and how it rewrote who he serves
· The scorecard problem: a 97 in business, a 15 in life, and why that still counts as losing
· Enoughness, and why he stopped telling clients to double their goals
· What he changed at home first, and the rule he made about walking through his own front door

Not sure which of the six layers is holding yours up? Take the assessment at jessicarenfrow.com. It's free and it takes about four minutes. Start with what you've got. Then build yourself out of it.