Naughton, who works for the Northeast Kingdom Learning Service, grappled with that and more alongside regional business leaders during a meetup and panel discussion at Burke Mountain Hotel that night.
Speakers pinpointed unreliable access to both broadband internet and transportation as reasons why businesses in the Kingdom struggle to grow.
The event was hosted by the Vermont Innovation Commons, in partnership with the Northeast Kingdom Collaborative, Do North Coworking in Lyndon, and Spark, a coworking project in Greensboro.
“I think that there are some means that are hard for some people to come by in this region, and there’s a lot of creativity and innovation locked up in the minds of people who can’t get to the rest of the world,” said Heidi Krantz, an advisor with the Vermont Small Business Development Center and one of the meeting’s three panelists.
Krantz described past moments when she worked with small-business owners who were forced to handle logistical planning while driving merchandise for delivery themselves.
“That’s not a sustainable model for a business,” she said.
Entrepreneurs in the Kingdom are passionate, but some lack the tools needed to direct that passion productively, Krantz said.
“That leads to some of the challenges, which is helping people to develop the skills to really assess and manage their business,” she said, highlighting financial literacy in particular.
Boosting entrepreneurship education among young people could help solve that, she said.
She also encouraged entrepreneurs to reach out for help. “Especially in the Northeast Kingdom, we’re all pretty independent,” she said. “But on the other hand, when people need help, they’ll be there to help you, so take advantage of that. People want you to succeed here.”
Panelist Jay Shafer, president of the weather technology company Northview Weather in Barton, agreed. He said fledgling business owners in the Kingdom need more mentorship.
In Shafer’s view, entrepreneurs here have to ask, “Who are the people who are one or two steps ahead of me?”
The conclusion seemed clear: At the heart of all these challenges is a need for better connections and networking in the Kingdom’s business community. Audience members discussed creating a searchable, easy-to-use database for people in the Kingdom to find the resources they need when addressing business concerns.
Panelist Aaron Krone, a business grants project manager with the Northern Community Investment Corporation, said he had found a well-maintained list of regional organizations (and their acronyms) when he came to the group. That’s something he wants to share more broadly, he said.
About 20 minutes after Naughton asked whether there’s hope in the Northeast Kingdom, someone had an answer.
“The hope’s in this room. The hope is in like-minded people like us,” Kingdom Fiber owner Michael Birnbaum said. “But we’re not the majority.”
He continued, “The great majority of people in the Northeast Kingdom are lacking hope, in my opinion. I may be wrong — I hope I’m wrong. So how do we engender that hope?”
His answer, in part: “Seeding communities with enthusiastic people.”
