In the first conversations of the Know, Better, Do Better series, Della has a deep talk with Nahamani Yisrael about Black entrepreneurship and business management, and the challenges and opportunities these founders face. And they laugh a lot, too.

Local nonprofits often feel like they are at the mercy of elected officials and city staff, and they often feel that their nonprofit status and their minimal staff prevents them from being able to do much of anything - other than respond in a crisis.

None of that needs to happen.

In this interview, I talk with Theodora Skeadas, Executive Director of Cambridge Local First in Cambridge, Mass. about how her organization is advising and collaborating with elected officials and city staff. And they are doing that despite the fact that they have no full time staff!

How can we best help the next generation of entrepreneurs? Perhaps not the way you think. Kemo drops truth and shares some of the insights that formed Trep House. You won't think about capital the same way again!

We all have a lot to learn and to do right when it comes to how the environments we build impact the people who live there. Join Della and Kristen to talk about the unintended (and sometimes intended) ways that city design and city policy impact people who do not fall within the majority’s narrow bands. Having worked and written on these issues for more than 10 years, Kristen’s voice shows many of us what we have not seen, but must understand and act upon.

We often want to think that creating the kind of community where people can do great things requires fancy buildings, and cool cafes, and street art and the like. But Wisconsin’s Nick O’Brien has been building exactly those kinds of communities in places that don’t have these — and getting impressive results. Join us while we explore community-building in a whole new way, leveraging the power of people in collaboration to get transformation going

What can a small business owner do now, when their markets and channels and all their old assumptions have been thrown into chaos?mugshot

Answer? They can play their way to a new strategy, a new tribe and a renewed sense of purpose. Join Della and Jaime Izurieta of Storefront Mastery as we explore a new strategy for evaluating and planning for the future of any small business, building from the factors that made someone work and fight for that business in the first place. And we’ll hear the story of the businesses that started the Hopscotch — a struggling bookstore in a desperately struggling country that found renewed purpose and new opportunities.

Being an entrepreneur or business owner is hard, and being a Black entrepreneur or business owner can be even harder. And if you come from a background with little income or family wealth, even seemingly small challenges can derail you. We will explore the outsized importance of coaching and training, what microlending requires and why that’s so neccessary and so hard for conventional banks to do, and more. You don’t want to miss this conversation with one of the few organizations in the US that provides business training and coaching and microfinance lending for low-income entrepreneurs and small business owners.

It’s no secret that the world facing independent businesses was changing fast before we ever heard of a COVID — and the pandemic has accelerated those changes. But there’s more to thriving in the coming era than setting up an Instagram page. As one of the leaders of the entrepreneurship ecosystem groundswell nationwide, Enoch has a deep and wide perspective on how the fundamentals of business, and business in community, is changing. You will not want to miss this insightful and encouraging conversation.

Community nonprofits often struggle to develop the kinds of collaborative relationships with local governments that lead officials to trust you in times of crisis. But that’s exactly what Dane Buy Local did — and it has resulted in over $10 million that they are distributing to businesses that need it on behalf of Dane County, Wisconsin. We will talk with Colin Murray, Executive Director of Dane Buy Local, about how that relationships developed, what that required of the nonprofit and how that is impacting the community and Dane Buy Local today.

People who run economic development and local business organizations know that they have to get good, useful, reliable information out to their community — and do it NOW. But too many of the resource guides and directories coming out since the pandemic consist of small-text laundry lists that give the overwhelmed user a headache before they get to anything they can use. Which isn’t surprising, since “User Interface Expert” and “Tech Genius” isn’t on most of our resumes.

But Cambridge Local First didn’t let that stop them.

You won’t want to miss this deep dive into the technologies, tools, design strategies and more that Cambridge Local First and its partners have been using to make it easy for businesses and residents to find the foods, services, and resources that they want. Join us as we explore the tech that’s not only possible, but being used right now!