By: Mark Fritz, Chairperson for ETC!

Welcome to the ETC! page! We’re excited to bring Entrepreneurs THRIVE in Coweta (ETC!) to you through this medium! As one of the Chamber’s key initiatives, we continue our efforts to promote a culture in Coweta County that helps entrepreneurs prosper and grow, we’ll use this website as the main source of communication to our Entrepreneur Friendly Community. These Articles of the Month will be linked to the Chamber’s regular email newsletters. For this first article, I thought I would share all that we have done these past 18 months to create an entrepreneur friendly community in Coweta County, and share with you our next steps and the features and benefits you can access through the Chamber’s website.

How we began.
We began the process for an entrepreneur friendly community in July 2006 by holding two identical kick-off meetings to ask interested volunteers to join our effort. We received a great response that gave us a strong beginning as we developed our Leadership Team and Steering Committee. Over the next several months, we developed a cohesive and productive leadership team who mapped out our plan for the future. We created a recognizable and marketable name along with a direct, easily understood, and memorable Mission. We developed goals to keep us focused on the right things and to lead us through the process to entrepreneur friendliness. All of these items will remain posted on our ETC! page.

Achieving Certification.
One of our primary goals was to gain the State of Georgia’s Entrepreneur Friendly Community Certification which was awarded to us in November 2007. The steps to certification included:

• developing a leadership team;
• generating community awareness and support;
• identifying and enhancing relationships with resource providers (both local and outside the County);
• interviewing a sizeable sampling of entrepreneurs in our community for a needs assessment;
• reviewing our results and strategic plans with the State’s certification team; and,
• (once certified) implementing our strategies; measuring our progress, and working with the State to further enhance our entrepreneurial environment.

This year we remained focused on these steps toward certification, as they will help us lay the groundwork for our next goal, which is to create tangible benefits for entrepreneurs in our community.

Next Steps.
We have identified Champions to lead several task forces that will get us through the certification steps and will begin creating those tangible items that our entrepreneurs will find helpful. The features and benefits on this website represent many of those tangible items. This website will serve as a “start here” place for entrepreneurs who are in our community or plan on coming to our community, and who are interested in getting themselves plugged into the resources available through our Entrepreneurs THRIVE in Coweta network. Valuable information featured will include:

• Two articles each month, one of which will focus on an entrepreneur in our community
• Updated contact information for ETC! leaders and champions
• A Coweta Business Owner’s Guide, which will give helpful information on starting and running a business in Coweta County
• A Preferred Providers list for entrepreneurs that want to know which providers really cater to their special needs
• Featured links to other websites that provide resources to entrepreneurs
• Categorized resources to make is easier for business owners to find what they need quickly.

The features and benefits featured will grow as the needs of our entrepreneurs grow. Additionally, we also developed task forces such as: Minority and Female Owned Business Resources, Incubator Resources, Youth Programs, Entrepreneur Education, ETC! Legal Forum, Business to Business Mentors. This list of task forces will continue to grow to meet the needs of entrepreneurs.

Join the team!
As we grow, we need volunteers to help us create tangible benefits. Many people have let us know they want to help, and we’ll need many more. There are many opportunities to lead and/or make significant contributions that create positive benefits for our community. Helping with these teams offers volunteers a great opportunity for community wide recognition for producing something meaningful and creating a positive impact for our future. Our Champions are just now assembling their teams. There are still task forces in need of Champions. If you’d like to help Entrepreneurs THRIVE in Coweta, contact Mark Fritz at the Bank of Coweta 770-254-7901 and let’s talk!