Post by Charisse Conanan Johnson, CFA

Hot off the press.... My Brookings Metro piece - "Time to level up: How to help America’s small businesses survive and thrive in tumultuous times" - that I co-authored with the dynamic Xavier de Souza Briggs, my partner for getting into good-trouble! I am confident that we now have an opportunity to energize local places in ways that can restart the nation’s sluggish job market and expand the ownership economy, empowering millions of entrepreneurs and making them more resilient to shocks. A few key takeaways: 🌟 Developing an effective small business ecosystem is very different from America’s fragmented approach, wherein time-starved small business owners must navigate a maze of well-intended but disconnected (and sometimes irrelevant) “assistance” programs. 🌟 When it comes to building systems of support, one unsung hero is county government. There’s a “Goldilocks” quality to county government: It’s not too big to navigate and not too small to matter when it comes to pulling disparate public and private capabilities and agendas together across a range of local marketplace players. 🌟 Whether it's the momentum in St. Louis region through a coordinated regional jobs and business growth plan, targeted public private investment in the manufacturing and EV market in Mecklenburg County, or a “coordinated and data-driven approach to supporting small businesses that represent(s) a fundamentally new model” in Cook County as stated by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, intentional leadership matters. 🌟 Building a strong small business ecosystem is foundational to transforming local economies for growth as well as for resilience to shocks. Doing that at scale will require prioritization, collaboration, patience, and innovation, as the examples in the article showcase. Please have a read and see how you can learn how, or contribute, to transforming local economies. Feel free to reach out if I can be helpful. Thanks to my Next Street colleagues Sara Dinges, Maddie Bianchi, Spencer Lau, Andi Crawford and Katie Mendez Beach for their insights and feedback along the way. And, I'm grateful for The Brookings Institution's Joe Parilla for his helpful critiques that helped us level up this piece. #changemakers #leadership #smallbusiness https://lnkd.in/dVfyqKMn