Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

On Friday, Aug. 28, Upper Cumberland’s small businesses and founders took over Leslie Town Centre in Cookeville for the second annual Small Business & Entrepreneurial (SBE) Conference hosted by The Biz Foundry. The day was full of meaningful speakers and breakout sessions. Here’s a roundup of a few highlights.

Opening remarks

Jeff Brown, CEO and president of The Biz Foundry, welcomed the crowd and spoke to the importance of promoting entrepreneurship as a key driver of economic development. He explained that this belief is why The Biz Foundry, and conferences like this one, exist.

“We work with hundreds of entrepreneurs a year. We love our growing, existing companies, but regions with successful, new entrepreneuers truly allow a community to thrive. This conference is in a beautiful town center building with walkable breakout sessions at places like 37 Cedar, Red Silo Brewing, and others all along the main street. New life has been brought to our West Side. Take those entrepreneurs out of our community, and we wouldn’t have any of this. Our theme for today is to give you something to really walk away with and act on, so we can all keep this up,” he said.

Keynote: Liz Bohannon

Forbes Top 20 public speaker and author of Beginner’s Pluck, Liz Bohannon built a globally recognized fair-trade brand from scratch and became a top 1% VC-backed female entrepreneur.

Bohannon shared her own story, including how her entrepreneurial journey left her “lonely at the top.” She pointed to research showing that our society is in a “connection recession” — and that being an entrepreneur only makes relationship-building harder.

Building on the day’s theme of actionable takeaways, Bohannon offered four ways entrepreneurs can get relationally “RICH”:

• R – Rhythms and routines. Actually calendar that meeting or activity — commit to one new rhythm or routine when you go home.
• I – Initiative. It starts with “I,” and in this case, “you.” Building your social health means recognizing that you hold the power to create these relationships and must get the ball rolling.
• C – Communication. Real communication, in real life. Keep a deck of conversation cards handy to move past small talk and into real connection.
• H – Help. Having lived and traveled all over the world, Bohannon said American culture is less inclined to ask for or offer help than others, though she she did give a nod to Southern hospitality. Elsewhere, multi-family living and communal support are the norm. She’s built that same kind of community with her own family compound back home, and calls it one of the best decisions she’s made. Help others, and be willing to accept help in return.

The number one thing every business has to have: Customers

The first breakout session of the day covered customer discovery. The number one reason businesses fail isn’t money. It’s not having enough customers.

Entrepreneurs naturally want to build first and get product-obsessed. But long-term success starts with customer discovery.

Entrepreneurs need to ask:

• Is this really a problem?
• Will my solution actually solve it?
• Will people pay for it?

From there, the session moved into customer slicing and narrowing down exactly who that target market is. Get down into the nitty gritty of all demographics, buying tendencies, geography, and more. This session set up a perfect segue into the customer discovery NSF I-Corps program for founders who aren’t familiar.

Invest TN

Wisty Pender, programs and operations administrator at TNECD, and Lamont Price, innovation director at TNECD, took the stage next. They walked through the state resources available to help small businesses start and grow. Programs like TNSmartStart and Fund Tennessee offer support at different stages of that journey, and representatives from Pathway Lending and LaunchTN were also in the crowd.

LaunchTN’s Chief Investment Officer Eller Kelliher said that the LendTN program has been a great fit for area businesses. She also pointed to the Tri-Star Angels program, a statewide initiative that trains aspiring and current investors on how to fund early-stage startups.

Before this session closed, Price added that alongside the high-growth ventures and tech startups he works with as innovation director, there’s a real opportunity in the Upper Cumberland area for entrepreneurship through acquisition — buying into businesses whose owners are aging out, or exploring employee ownership. It’s a form of innovation that doesn’t always get the spotlight, but matters just as much.

Is your business bankable?

Continuing the capital conversation, the last breakout session we attended featured Kelly Sullivan, director of the Cookeville Tennessee Small Business Development Center. She guided attendees through how to prep for the bank.

What banks look for: 

• Character – your credit history and reliability
• Capacity – your ability to repay the loan
• Capital – your own investment in the business
• Collateral – assets that secure the loan
• Conditions – the loan’s purpose and current market conditions

She expressed that nothing loses a banker’s trust faster than not knowing your numbers. One must be able to speak to the essentials: current monthly sales, your break-even point, a plan for if sales drop, your top three expenses, and how you pay yourself. Lenders also want to see that you have skin in the game, so be ready to explain any red flags upfront rather than let them surface on their own. Here’s a breakdown of what to bring:

For existing businesses:

• Three years of business tax returns
• Year-to-date profit and loss statement and balance sheet
• Three to six months of bank statements
• Personal tax returns
• Personal financial statement

For startups:

• A business plan (that’s not AI-generated)
• Startup cost breakdown
• 12-36 month projections
• Resume or industry experience
• Personal credit history

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