Main Street America doesn't quite get us

They want to help, but they're not sure how. Will they listen?

Oct 25, 2024

We’re going to begin today’s post inside a quiet, light-filled yoga studio on a brisk fall day in Walla Walla, Washington. It’s a place my mind keeps wandering back to as I navigate some tender weeks of dead ends and futile rage. Not because I had a healing experience there, although I’m sure many do. Quite the opposite! What happened in that studio was a tangible reminder of how far so many of us storefront business owners have to go to be heard, understood, or helped by the people who—we thought?—were supposed to be championing us.

I was in Walla Walla for the Places Conference, a statewide gathering for Main Street organizations, focused on preservation, placemaking, and networking, sponsored by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation. I can’t write to you as if I’m an expert on Main Street organizations (I only learned they existed this year), but you can, and should, read about them. I got a free ticket to the conference thanks to a grant from Tacoma’s neighborhood business district association organization, which offered to send board members from any of the business districts in Tacoma. I recently joined the board of my neighborhood business district association (and we’ll talk about that, I’m sure), so my hand shot up when I heard about the opportunity. I didn’t just want a free trip and hotel stay, I earnestly wanted to go talk people’s ears off about placemaking and city planning and find out if anyone who actually does this stuff for a living has insight on what makes a town a town, who’s doing things right, what works, etc. I wanted to know, maybe deep down, if anyone knew how to help us out.

Part of the conference involved walking tours of local businesses, which I took part in, and which was why I found myself in that yoga studio in the middle of downtown Walla Walla with 40 other people wearing badges and carrying tote bags. The co-owners of the studio were two women who gave a brief intro to their business followed by a Q&A.

During their intro, the described how, right after the pandemic, they were getting the studio ready on their hands and knees, painting, fixing windows, and sanding the floors. The Main Street organization folks seemed really impressed by this, but I’ve been on this trip lately that goes something like,

“… but do you own the building?”

So it sounded to me as they were providing free labor for a commercial property owner who probably didn’t offer them much in the way of a tenant improvement budget.

Good for you for fixing up the place, but you did it for free? And you don’t own these four walls? I mean, if you’re a storefront business owner, you’d catch that too, right?

Especially because they called their business, “a labor of love.” And when the well-meaning Places audience, most of them Main Street board members, executive directors, associates and volunteers, asked them how they financed their startup and their response was, “ourselves, through our own labor,” I thought for sure anyone in the room would have read between the lines. Because we’re in a room full of people whose job it is, in part, to support small businesses in historic downtowns, right?

Wrong! No one seemed to catch what was actually said by “labor of love,” and “hands and knees,” and “our own labor.” Or maybe they just didn’t care. So I raised my hand and asked the question. I’m going to type it pretty much verbatim how I asked it, so you understand I’m not exaggerating in hindsight.

Me:

I heard you say, “labor of love,” and I commend you for the beautiful job you’ve done in this space getting it up and running. I can see from people’s reactions that they love being here. Amazing. But, as a small business owner myself, when I hear “labor of love,” it sounds like a red flag. So I have to ask—and excuse me if this is too personal—are you, as the business owners, paying yourselves? And if so, are you paying yourselves what could be considered a living wage here in your community? I also heard that you had plans to expand to a second studio to meet demand, and my final question there is: are you expanding because it’s something you want to do, or are you expanding because it’s something you feel you have to do, to scale, in order to make enough money from this endeavor that you can support yourselves doing this?

(Yes, somehow that entire question came out of my mouth in front of all these people and I did not have cue cards, and I thought in that moment that maybe I could run for office if I wanted to.)

The studio owners were silent for a moment until one blurted out:

“The latter.”

She went on to say that yes, while they were paying themselves something now, it certainly wasn’t enough, and that some days it was hard to teach clients who occupied higher earning brackets and who complained about class prices increasing. It was a tiny vent, maybe later regrettable, but I just stood there nodding vigorously and wiping away what was probably just a tear because it was windy outside. When the other studio owner—who by the way, was pregnant—interjected to say that really at the end of the day though it still was a labor of love, at least 5 people chimed in to say, “But you should be getting paid!”

Oh but wait for it. The very next question came from tall gentleman in the back who was probably on a Main Street board somewhere in Washington and wanted to know:

“Do you have the opportunity to mentor other studio owners?”

Wait, what?

He was asking because he heard the yoga community was so collaborative and hopefully these women have had the opportunity to impart some of their hard-won knowledge about running a studio, for free, to potential area competitors because Kumbaya, et al.

When these women said no, they didn’t have the time to mentor, but they wished peace and prosperity to all who should enter into their competitive local sphere (a sentiment that garnered some heartfelt sighs), the gentleman went on to offer some totally unsolicited business advice. His idea was: why don’t they run their studio more like a salon? Instead of paying the teachers, have them “rent” class space, like stylists rent chairs.

The “the latter” business owner, god bless her, said in response, “That’s not our business model, but I’m sure it would work for some.”

(Write that down and use it, friends. It’ll come in handy.)

I didn’t make many friends at the conference. People kind of shy-smiled at me after sessions and tours because I kept asking pesky questions to get to the heart of how small storefront businesses were really doing.

I entered the conference eager to figure out if anyone was solving these big, systemic problems, and I was surprised to find out most were not even aware of them.

I was surprised because if anyone should be examining how storefront businesses are doing, it should be Main Street organizations. They survey business owners frequently and supporting small businesses is one of their organizational tripod legs. They also seemed to be really eager to learn more about how to support small businesses.

But I found it strange that for a roomful of people all saying, in some form, “I came here to learn how we could better support our small businesses,” not a single Main Street small business owner was invited to speak during a session. Sure, you had business owners there—architects, lawyers… people who own their own firms—but I didn’t meet a single storefront proprietor during my 2 days there. In a session titled “Meaningful Connections: Building Resilience in Your Smallest Businesses,” only 3 storefront business owners, including myself, were in attendance. (I think the other two were also part of local Main Street organizations.)

In fact this session ended in kind of a workshop wherein the Main Streeters threw out suggestions for helping their small businesses combat seasonality, something I thought was especially weird given that more than half the organizations there were from resort towns. Don’t they know that seasonality isn’t something you can creatively combat? You just work with it, work around it. That’s what the business owners do! I imagine they’re not trying to work harder in the off season. They don’t need ideas for how to turn ice cream cones into hot chocolate local couple date night stuff.

But therein was the problem with the conference, from my perspective. No one asked small business owners what we need help with. Or rather, they did, but with a closed set of questions that focused, as they so typically do, on whether or not we need marketing and website help. It’s like Clippy the Paperclip popping in to ask if you need help with social media while you’re trying to find a spare piece of plywood to board up a window that’s been smashed in for the fourth time this year. Grab a mop, Clippy, and help me clean up this blood of unknown origin!

I need to be really clear about this. I don’t think the SBA, or Main Street, or our Chambers of Commerce really understand what our needs are because they keep writing the surveys they ask us to take… themselves. Take a look at this report on the most recent Main Street small business survey results, which states in response to a report that confidence has diminished among small business owners that (emphasis mine):

We suspect that the diminished confidence values may come from uncertainty due to a variety of factors: the election, high interest rates, and continuing inflation impacting some segments of the economy. But there is also indication in the data that small businesses are facing real slowdowns. In the last two surveys, we asked whether small business owners generated profit, broke even, or operated at a loss over the previous 12 months. In the Spring 2024 survey, 42 percent of respondents had generated a profit and 21 percent operated at a loss. In comparison, in Fall 2023, 51 percent had generated a profit and 15 percent had operated at a loss. This is a trend we will continue to monitor in future surveys.

So you suspect, but did not survey, or ask, why confidence has dipped? I can tell you that when you ask me why my confidence has dipped recently as a business owner, my answer is not “the economy, stupid.” It’s SALES. More than a fifth of your business owners surveyed are operating at a loss, and those are the business owners who bothered to fill out an online survey, so my guess is the actual business owners operating at a loss in your community is higher than 21 percent.

This is a crisis! And you didn’t even ask if, while operating at a loss, the business owners are paying themselves.

I’m not making this up that Main Street organizations don’t know that much about small businesses and what their needs are. A 2021 survey conducted in partnership between the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation and the Washington State Microenterprise Association found that, when asked, 83 percent of Main Street employee survey respondents say they either know “some,” “very little,” or “none” about the strengths, challenges, and needs of microenterprises (businesses defined as having fewer than 5 employees, needing less than $30k in startup funds, and having limited access to capital).

When asked to further guess what they thought might be the strengths of microenterprises or their unique challenges, Main Streeters overwhelmingly guessed that marketing, web presence, and social media presented the biggest challenge. (Hi, Clippy!)

It wasn’t apparent whether anyone had surveyed the microenterprises themselves to ask what their challenges were before presenting a list of challenges for the Main Streeters to guess from. The word “safety” did not appear in this report, nor did “crime,” for example, but it was suggested multiple times that Main Street approach helping microenterprises with a trauma-informed lens.

What Main Street organizations think micro enterprise business’ strengths and challenges are, as found in this 2021 survey.

I read this report at dinner (alone, of course) during the conference because I had to dig deeper on what the barriers must be for Main Street organizations to actually… get to know us.

While I was in the sessions and in small talk during walking tours I noticed they seemed particularly obsessed with a couple of issues that they thought small business owners were particularly grouchy about.

Events. Why don’t small business owners like and appreciate the events that Main Street organizations produce to try and help them out? They’re always so grouchy about the parking, street closures, and people who come in and look but don’t buy. Why don’t they recognize that while maybe people aren’t shopping today, they might come back and buy something in a few weeks! These events are free marketing, duh.
Open hours. Why are small businesses limiting their hours so much? Why don’t they stay open later? They complain that downtown feels “dead,” but then they close at 5pm. Some days they aren’t even open! Why?
Doing more to attract locals during the off-season. Why didn’t businesses in vacation towns do more to attract locals during the off-season? The locals deserve to enjoy these businesses year-round, not just when they have to fight with the tourists! After all, they’re locals! Be open for them! Why aren’t you?

I implore you, if you own a small business and are bothered at all by these questions and feel like “ooh, ooh, ooh, let me tell you the answer,” that you please write your response in the comments.

Storefront Revolt

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