When Renea Frederick helped start FreMarq Innovations in 2015 she says she was fortunate to have support, saying her business partners were like a three-legged stool.
“My husband had the idea, my brother is the hands-on MacGyver, and I took care of what I always call the support stuff, insurance and taxes and all that fun stuff. We worked together,” said Frederick.
She says many entrepreneurs are often solo and are expected to know everything.
“I think that's too much for them to be successful. I think they have great ideas, but then it's all those other things that doesn't help them get off the ground. They sort of get stuck, or they don't start at all, because it's so much to take in,” said Frederick.
It’s why when she attended seminar in Platteville and took a breakout session on the Rural Entrepreneurial Venture Program, Frederick knew she wanted to bring it to Merrill.
It takes a “grow your own” approach to economic development by connecting entrepreneurs with the resources they need to succeed.
She says it’s a different approach to economic development that she believes also preserves community.
“The impact it has on Merrill, you could show it. There's a few more businesses and your tax base hopefully increases. But it also has an impact on nonprofits and on your school system and the kids that are there. The whole growth is sort of raising the ship altogether,” said Frederick.
Wisconsin Launches Rural Entrepreneurial Venture Program
The three-year REV Program is run through the UW Madison Division of Extension.
It’s the first year of the program in Wisconsin. Merrill is one of seven communities selected for the first cohort.
The REV Program pairs coaches with leadership teams in communities like Frederick and her team in Merrill.
The coaches guide them through the REV framework which is based on the successful program out of Minnesota.
“This framework is designed to help them go out and identify and reach out to set up relationships with the entrepreneurs in their communities, and then to also provide them with the resources that those entrepreneurs need,” said Wisconsin REV Program Lead Lisa Taylor.
Taylor says the framework has been used in Nebraska and Kansas as well.
Testimonials from the REV program with the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation show the program can have an impact on small towns and cities.
Spring Valley completed the program in 2021. It said the town of 2,500 was able to open a variety of businesses, saw an increase in loans to local businesses, and it created a website of resources for community members and entrepreneurs.
Designed for rural challenges
Taylor says the REV framework is designed specifically for rural communities which face different economic challenges compared to their urban counterparts.
“Rural communities, for instance, have what we call limited capacity. That's simply because they have just fewer people who are engaged in and responsible for growing their economy,” said Taylor. “This particular framework helps to expand that capacity. It really helps more community members to be involved in it.”
Taylor says it can be especially helpful for communities like those in the Northwoods that are reliant on tourism.
“They may rely on tourism, which is great until you have weather issues. If you rely on winter tourism, and we didn't have very much snow last year, then their economy took a hit,” said Taylor. “This program is designed to help them diversify the number of industry sectors that they rely on, and through the program, we help them to identify the opportunities that they have in front of them, and to focus their efforts on those opportunities for diversification.”
Taylor says starting the REV program can be overwhelming for some leadership groups as it’s a lot of work for a small group of people.
“Once they work through the framework and start talking to the community, talking to other economic development professionals in that community, they start to understand that, ‘Oh, this work can be done outside of our core leadership team, or at least there can be others in the community that collaborate with us so it's not just resting on us,’” said Taylor.
Communities set short-term and long-term goals and then work through the framework to achieve them.
Taylor says communities that are successful will be able to track and see progress towards their goal. They’ll also be able to keep up the framework after the program ends in three years.
“Merrill has a really good core leadership team for this and a very strong one that works together well. I think that they are going to be quite successful in this program,” said Taylor.
Right now, Merrill is in the beginning stages of the REV program.
Frederick’s dream is for Merrill to develop its own entrepreneurs. That includes everything from the smallest businesses that is just one person working on the weekends to people that want to grow a manufacturing business with dozens of employees.
“It's really a change in the way economic development will work in our community. It's a different focus, and so we need to get the community to embrace entrepreneurship, and then we need to go find those entrepreneurs,” said Frederick.
Frederick encourages people who are interested to reach out to her. She can be reached at 715-297-9984 or reneafred@gmail.com.
Taylor says UW Extension will be looking at starting a new cohort of communities next year for the REV Program.
The ideal size is communities with populations between 1,500 and 10,000 residents. You can learn more about the Wisconsin REV program on the UW Extension website.
