(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Are you an entrepreneur?

Or are you an entrepreneur in a small community?

Do you not know how to get started?

Well, this is a show for you.

Today, we're talking with Marci Goodwin of Peoria.

How you doing, Marci?

- Good, how are you?

Thanks for having me.

- You are the co-founder of SmartStart Business Development.

- Yes.

- And that's here in Peoria?

- Yes.

Based in Peoria.

- Based in Peoria?

- Yes.

- But y'all go- - Yes, we are all throughout Central Illinois, Eastern Iowa, and we are branching out nationwide soon.

- Oh, really?

- Yes.

- You're gonna take over the world.

- We are.

Well, we'll we.

- Dr.

Evil style?

- World domination.

Right.

(laughs) One small town at a time.

- Did you grow up on a farm?

- So we had the, like, typical family farm where my grandparents had the farm and then all the kids had the property around that farm.

And so my uncle and my dad, and my grandfather passed away when I was young, took over the family farm and farmed it, as well as having their outside jobs.

- Gotcha.

15 cousins in a one-mile radius.

- Thereabouts.

I mean, it's a small town.

Everyone's related.

And that's, you know, cousins, second cousins, we all grew up together.

- I could only imagine the sounds of banjos around.

(Marci and Rob laughs) - I mean, yeah.

- That could either be fun or horrible, was it?

Which one?

- It was fun.

- Was it?

- It was great.

Yeah.

- I mean, you always had, like, someone to play with, right?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You just go outside and kind of yell or ride your bike down the street.

Down the road, someone would find you.

- So you were driving the fuel truck as a kid?

- No, my dad did.

- Your dad did.

- I did not drive a fuel truck.

- Would make a better story.

- I know.

Now I'm wishing I wouldn't have said that.

Yes, definitely.

We have fact checkers now.

I can say that.

So my dad drove the FS truck for the southern part of our county.

- So he went around to the farms and filling up the tanks and that.

Yeah.

You played sports in high school.

What'd you play?

- It was a small town, so you could play all you wanted.

So I played softball, basketball, and volleyball.

- [Rob] What town?

Where'd you grow up?

- Bunker Hill, Illinois.

- Bunker Hill.

Okay.

Where is that for people in Peoria?

- So it's in Macoupin County.

So it is down toward the Alton area.

- [Rob] It's not Bishop Hill.

- No.

No, Bunker Hill.

- Bunker Hill.

Bunker Hill.

- Down towards St. Louis area.

- 15 cousins within a mile.

(Marci laughs) - Pretty rural, pretty- - You know how redneck that sounds?

- Do you know how redneck it was?

(Marci and Rob laugh) - So you played softball.

- That was my main sport.

That's what I excelled at.

- In what position?

- As a pitcher.

- Oh, so, like, the fast or the slow?

- Fast pitch.

- So where you, I don't know, where you wind up.

- The windmill.

- Okay.

I remember seeing, like, every year during the Olympics, they have the gal pitcher, and she pitches to the major leaguers- - Oh yeah.

- and they can't hit it.

Right?

Explain it to me.

'Cause the ball's actually, it's going up instead of down, or what's the deal?

- And we used to do this with our baseball team too.

We would always play the baseball team the end of the year, and we would strike them out.

They could not hit us.

You're actually coming at them in a shorter distance.

Like, with baseball, it was whatever it was.

And softball's like, gosh, at that time, what is it now?

45 feet?

But it was 40 feet at that point.

- [Rob] Been a while, huh?

- It's been a minute.

But the ball's coming at you relatively even faster.

Because of the shorter distance, it's coming at the batter faster.

And you can make it go up, down, you can curve side to side.

It has so much more rotation on it.

The ball has a bigger surface area, so it can move.

The air.

It's physics.

It moves more.

- Curve balls.

Okay, so the only thing I played was a slow pitch, right?

- Right.

- And I know that, like, a good pitcher could basically tell you where they're gonna hit.

- Right.

- Were you able to do that with fast pitch, or are you just trying to get a strike?

- Oh, no.

No.

Like, my catcher would set up, a good pitcher would set up, and the catcher would set up, and you'd hit it.

Like, we would actually put the styrofoam cups in the chain link fence, and the coach would put numbers on it, and we'd have to hit them order.

- Like, from how far away?

Your regular distance?

- Yeah.

- You just put it where you want it, and that's how you... Yeah.

- Okay.

So you played for what college?

- Played for Millikin University in Decatur.

- Okay.

And you were a pitcher there.

And then when did you start running the pitching clinics?

- Oh gosh.

So in high school and college, looking back, it was my first business venture.

We had to drive, like, an hour into St. Louis to find a pitching coach at that time.

This was, you know, back in the, you know, Middle Ages, basically.

- '70s.

- No, '70s, but it was the late '80s.

So we would drive like an hour into St. Louis to get a good pitching coach.

And then softball was growing.

We were noticing more and more people were calling me and coming to me.

Hey, can you teach me how to pitch?

And so my summer coaches were like, "Hey, let's just start running pitching clinics."

So we would run pitching clinics all through the summer.

And that's pretty much how I worked my way through college.

- Really?

You were making enough doing that.

- So four hours a week I worked as a pitching coach, 'cause we would have 20, 30 girls come each session.

And we would, you know, work through those throughout the morning.

So I would work about four or five hours a week, and I would make as much as my friends were full-time at the restaurant or on the farm or wherever.

So I would just kind of hang out in my pool and wait for everybody to go off work.

- Sounds like a rough life.

- It was.

- What happens when, you know, you had a gal show up that had as much talent as this bell?

Did you just say, "No, it's not for you," or did you just continue to coach them and charge them?

- No, you meet them with where they are.

Then you just know, you know, what level that they can go to.

So you can always work with something.

I mean, some people.

I was not the greatest athlete.

I was, like, not very coordinated.

I know you'll find that hard to believe, but.

- [Rob] But you knew how to coach.

- Yeah.

I had a really good coach that taught me how to coach.

Very basic.

You get down to the basics.

- [Rob] What was your coach's name?

- It was Becky Duffin.

(bell dings) And so she was- - You gotta give a shout-outs when you can, right?

- Well, yeah.

- Okay.

- Right.

So she was actually on the US women's team at the time.

- Oh, really?

- And she was very, give you the basics.

And that's how I've always gone through everything.

Break everything down to the basics.

And you can teach someone anything as long as you get to the basics.

- Then you worked in ag research.

What were you doing there?

- So I was a biology major.

And so I found out that I really liked research.

Started out in medical research, but then moved, in St. Louis, moved back to Central Illinois and worked at what's now Primient.

Or it was a A.E.

Staley at the time, and then they got bought by Tate & Lyle.

- I don't know any of them.

- And so it's a competitor of ADM. - Oh, okay.

Gotcha.

- So we did R&D corn processing and ingredient R&D, and that was fun.

And then- - It was?

- It was great.

It was so much fun.

Every day there was a new problem to solve.

And then I worked at University of Illinois ag engineering and did kind of the same thing there.

Worked on corn process research.

And that was a lot of fun working on all the grad students projects.

- So I guess when you had kids, started homeschooling, is that when you, well, that's when you started your other business.

- Right.

We had moved away from, to Peoria, so it was was too far for me to drive to the U of I.

So we knew when we were gonna have kids, we actually started a construction business here in town.

A home construction business.

And that allowed me to stay home, have kids, kind of help with that business.

And then, eventually, we started, when they got older, we started homeschooling.

- It's so dumb.

Homeschooling.

- That's how I met you guys.

Through homeschooling.

- Is that what it was?

- Well, homeschooling or softball.

One or the other.

- Actually, I think it was softball, but it was, like, for the Christian center- - Was it?

- so it was, like, all homeschooled kids.

- It was.

It was.

So yeah, it was like a homeschool league.

- Okay.

I'm gonna say it's maybe not mainstream now, but it's not unusual to- - Oh my gosh, it's so much more mainstream now than it was.

- But back when y'all were doing it, when Emily and you were doing it, y'all were weirdos.

- Right.

Right.

And people were looking at us like we were, that we were really weird.

And they were like, yeah.

But now it's much more mainstream, - Well, tell me about The Homeschool Scientist.

- So as we started homeschooling, I started realizing that there was a big gap.

Like, people, women, and not just women, there are dads who teach their kids as well, but parents in general- - All two of them.

- all two of them, both of them were both scared.

There was this fear of teaching science in the homeschool community.

And so they would try to farm it out or just, like, do the bare minimum.

And I was shocked 'cause I'm like, "Science is fun."

And people look at me like I was nuts.

- Yeah, 'cause it's not like math, right?

You could do stuff.

But, you know, if you just, like, got the curriculum, right, you just got the books.

- Ah, so boring.

The books are boring.

I think people who have a fear of science, it's because they had teachers that all they did with them was make them memorize a bunch of big words.

It made it really boring and then- - Periodic.

- (laughs) That's not even a big word.

It's not a big word.

- Well, I mean, I didn't know we were comparing here.

- Big word.

- Anyway.

- Oh, you went to Southern.

That is a big word.

I'm sorry.

That's right.

Anyway, the- - Yes?

- Yes?

They would bore them with these big words, and then at some point they would say, "Here, dissect this dead animal."

That is not appealing to people.

So I took it as my job to, like, how can we help people take the fear out of science and put the fun into science?

So I started teaching some classes, homeschool science classes here, which eventually evolved into thehomeschoolscientist.com, where I got to review science curriculum, work with a lot of the curriculum companies in homeschooling, help them develop more fun, more interactive science, get to speak off at convention.

- You took off.

And you were speaking.

- Right.

Yeah, it was great.

- People actually wanted to hear what you had to say about that.

- I know.

They were shocked.

They were shocked that science could be fun.

So it was a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed that.

- Okay.

So all right, tell me about what you're doing now.

Tell me about SmartStart.

- Oh gosh.

So after The Homeschool Scientist, you know, our kids graduated from homeschool.

I was like, "I am not gonna write a homeschool blogging business anymore."

Just the passion for homeschooling was just- - [Rob] Seasons of life.

- Seasons of life had changed.

So I actually sold that business to another homeschool entrepreneur who had a science curriculum.

And so just worked great.

- That's cool.

So it was actually like an asset.

- Oh, yes.

Huge asset.

- Oh, fantastic.

- Yeah.

So thehomeschoolscientist.com is still a great website.

You should go there if you homeschool.

Or if you have kids that just like science, you wanna make it fun.

Still a great resource.

So sold that, right, like the beginning of COVID, which was like, oh.

So I thought, "I'll just start a new business."

Well, that was fun.

So great timing.

But I found out that there were a lot of people that wanted to start businesses, especially during that time.

So I started helping them start their business through social media and content management, but just even, like, the steps of starting a business.

And so that became my business.

- Yeah.

'Cause it's intimidating.

- There's so many steps.

- Hey, I've got this great idea.

Okay, I'll never do it because I don't even know the first right step.

And so that's where you come in.

- Yes.

And even then, I didn't know all the steps.

I kind of knew what I did, and I knew what made my business successful.

So I started plugging into local resources and other entrepreneurs to kind of figure out how to do this better.

Then I met my co-founder for SmartStart, Katie Kelly, who was also, she was a software entrepreneur.

And she went through the same struggles of how do you start this business?

How do you make it grow?

Realized there's so many dots to connect, but how do you connect those dots?

In what order do you connect those dots?

Where do I find what do I need to get to that dot?

So she had created a software platform that walked people through the steps of starting a business and started marketing that to different small communities, counties that were lacking the resources.

- Because they want entrepreneurs.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And we were finding that in communities they want, you have your chambers of commerce, you have your EDCs, you have your municipalities.

Of course they- - What was the second one?

The ABC?

- The EDCs.

- EDCs.

- Economic development councils.

- Okay.

I don't know this stuff.

I grow corn.

- (laughs) Right.

So they're in charge of, they make sure there's economic opportunities within a community by helping the infrastructure to bring in new businesses.

But none of those are really experts in how do you start that business?

They can support a business after it's here, but how do you start?

So we were seeing a gap that need to be filled.

So we actually came together to, even though that software platform was there, there was a missing link.

Just pointing people to a resource isn't the same.

So I came on with Katie, and we started this programming.

We started workshops and really getting involved in the communities, and now we're seeing that prosper and grow in small communities.

So it's a lot of fun.

- So are you teaching them how to get funding?

You teaching them, like, even the basics of how to rent a space, build a space.

- Right.

Well, the first thing we teach them is customer development.

Do you have, as I say, it's only a great idea if someone will pay for it.

- [Rob] You said that?

- I said that.

I did.

Was that smart?

Was that sound good?

- Yeah.

I wondered if Google would agree with you.

(laughs) - Someone else could have said it in the realm, but that's why I say to my...

When we go into do a workshop or talk to or counsel someone, great.

I am all for you having a great idea.

I'm the biggest cheerleader.

But how do we make sure that there are people who will pay for that?

So we help them through that process first.

Then, okay, do you need to be an LLC or an S corp?

You know, how do you do your taxes?

Do you need a storefront?

Can you do it from home?

Do you need a website?

Do you not need a website?

We walk them through all those steps and provide them, not just walk them ourselves, 'cause we're not, like, the experts.

We know broadly what works, but we can connect them with people.

Like, we're partners with the Small Business Development Centers.

They provide a lot of that business planning assistance.

We partner with local accountants, local lawyers, who also... Not all accountants and not all lawyers want to work with small businesses.

It's just not their niche.

So we go into a community and we find out which ones do, and then we work with them and point people to them as resources.

- Does it matter the size of the town?

- You know what, at first we thought it did.

We thought we kind of had this demographic.

We started in bigger communities.

We started in Muscatine, Iowa.

That's like 25,000 people.

We did Peoria County.

We're getting where the great need is and the most excited entrepreneurs are in the towns.

Like, Delavan, Illinois has 1,700 people.

- Okay.

I'll say maybe what you don't want to say.

So like, Bradford, let's say they contact you.

A town like Muscatine or the bigger towns, they're gonna have a lot of resources.

They're gonna have people on their boards that have experience like that.

Small town like Bradford, probably not.

They just know that they have businesses that want to get started, but the people on their boards are probably doing 10,000 other things.

They don't have time.

- Right, they don't have time.

Right.

So we come in and fill that professional capacity.

And we're finding that a lot of times just going in and showing them the possibility and cheerleading for them and connecting the dots and saying, "Hey, you've got a building open.

Oh my gosh, you wanna start a business?

You want us to teach you how to do that?"

And then other people see that, and then, like, oh, we wanna do that too.

And so we just see this.

A lot of ours is connecting the dots, but cheerleading, doing all those things that the people in the town wanna see done, just don't have time to do.

- So a town like Bradford would hire you.

- Yes.

- And then what?

Do they have like a list of people that have interest in starting ideas?

- Right.

Yeah.

So basically a lot of times within these communities, they might have just a list of contacts.

Small towns, word of mouth.

- [Rob] Yeah, we all know each other's business.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

Everybody knows anybody who's gonna start a business or- - [Rob] Do you get some crazy ideas?

- Oh my gosh, we do, and I love them.

I love everyone.

Like, bring me on the crazy ideas.

Those are the ones- - The Pet Rock Farm, I mean, that's not gonna make any money.

- Hey, you know what?

You'd be amazed what people pay for.

And we are down to, like, hey.

And maybe that's not it.

We go through the customer development process.

But those people that come with the crazy ideas, they come with motivation.

And we do the customer development.

Maybe the pet rock thing doesn't work, but maybe teaching people to paint their pet rocks.

Maybe that's where the niche is.

So we help them find that.

And success breeds success, so we are- - Any illegal activities?

- We do not promote illegal activities.

- The margins are good though.

- I hear they are.

- Does anybody come to you with some questionable ones?

- We have had a few questionable ones.

I will not say what they are, but I'm like, "Is there a market for that?

Go for it."

- Of all the towns you've worked with, which town do you like the least?

- (laughs) You can't say that.

And really there isn't.

- Is it Bradford?

- I'm not working at Bradford yet.

That's your job.

You gotta get me in there.

We're gonna build that Main Street.

- There's not much there.

- Well, we'll fix that.

- We can't even get a dollar store.

- Don't get me started on dollar stores.

- You don't like those.

- You don't want it.

- Why not?

'Cause you want the mom and pop?

- I want the mom and pop.

That's another show.

- You can't walk through the dollar store anyway 'cause they always have all the boxes in the aisle and that.

- There is.

There is.

There can be so many more better mom-and-pop stores that come from just that one Dollar General.

If you look at the true economics of it, it doesn't really make sense for small towns, but that's another episode.

- It's tough, right?

Because we've seen people put their all into these small town businesses.

They buy the old storefront, they fix it up, and then they're there for a year.

- Right.

- It's gotta be tough for a person like you to try to not only start something up, but leave them with something that is going to be profitable.

- Right.

You know, there's that statistic that, you know, the average business, or 50% of businesses only last five years.

Well, we wanna change that.

Because we believe that if we start up front and give them the tools that they truly need, like, they're really fitting a niche in their community, the community will pay for that.

And you can't just have one business in that community.

What other complementary businesses can we help people provide that will make that not just a asset for that community, but the surrounding communities?

Maybe that's, you know, what can we help them build and become a destination?

Or become, oh gosh, I don't need to go into Peoria anymore 'cause I have everything I need right here.

So it's kind of changing that culture.

- That's the problem.

The small towns, we don't like each other.

Don't get me started on Tiskilwa.

- Right?

Yeah.

I hear that.

- But you actually try to get them to collaborate.

- There is some interesting things that we're working on, as far as there's a few communities that we're working in that they want to become a tourism hub.

And these three communities are working together.

Now, what businesses can we put in each community that would make people go from community to community?

There is some- - Bars.

- I mean, well, that's central.

There's gotta be that in every town.

And there's always bars in every town.

- It's a law.

You gotta have as many bars as you have churches.

- Churches.

Yes, it is.

It's the unwritten rule.

- Finally, somebody gets that joke.

- Right?

Only from small towns do you get that.

- All right, so if I'm sitting on a town board or whatever and I'm watching this, I mean, what do they do?

They just contact you?

- Yeah.

Yeah, just contact us.

We come and we talk to them.

We can even do a small business assessment.

Just see what they have, what small businesses are there, what small businesses, you know, what the infrastructure is, what buildings are there that need to be filled, what the needs are of the community.

We love to come in and do that.

And then we then take that information, and then we can launch SmartStart there.

- Where do they find you?

- Actually, just go to, or email me at info@smartstartcommunity.com.

- Okay.

All right.

I think it's a good thing, 'cause it's so tough.

And I'm not gonna stereotype, right?

Because a lot of times it's the wives that live in the towns, their husbands are working, but they have this great idea.

They want to get a business started, but they've never done anything like it.

I mean, I don't know if you've got like a bread and butter kind of scenario, but is that close?

- It's mostly women who come to our workshops, and we are women owned.

And in fact, we've had people that wanna partner with this, to wanna, like, buy into our business, and I'm like, "No.

No, you're a man."

I find that the women's touch is needed.

- You hear, this guys?

That's offensive.

- Good.

(laughs) - Contact HR if we even have an HR.

- No, no, I find because most of the people who come to our workshops are women.

I mean, there's men, of course, but there's women.

And so I just feel that if there's a man sitting there telling a woman what to do, it's not very- - It is intimidating.

Yeah.

I've gone to meetings with, go walk in there and it's all women, and it's a bit intimidating.

So I get that.

- Yeah.

I just love that we can help somebody see that dream, you know, that they want to fulfill, and they haven't been able to.

And we can help them with that.

- Yeah.

No, I like what you're doing.

Like we said, we've known each other, our families, for a long time.

It's been fun to see you succeed not only at The Homeschool Scientist, but with this too.

And it's not only that, but to me, you've kind of tapped into what you've always had as one of your greatest assets, is that you want to actually help people.

- Right.

Right.

You know, I love doing this.

I would do it for free.

I mean, if I had to.

- You heard it here first.

- I mean, if I was independently wealthy and, you know.

- SmartStart for free.

- Yes, yes.

We really enjoy what we do.

We just love it.

That's what motivates us.

Marci Goodwin, thank you very much for being with us today.

Really, really appreciate it.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(upbeat music)