This month’s newsletter is an honoring of both the emerging and established.

Spotlight on Success celebrated local small business earlier this month, many of which are AEDC clients. This year, we looked back at the last 40 years to see how we got here. It wasn't without some setbacks, but to truly forge new paths -- which AEDC aspires to do -- sometimes things don't go as expected. I'm sure many businesses can relate with that experience. It's important to learn from those mistakes, but not retreat from ever trying new things again.

It's that willingness to take risks that allows us to really make a difference in our community. Over the years, AEDC forged the path for co-op housing, food manufacturing incubators, marketing programs for local manufacturers and local funding partnerships for community development projects.
This isn't the time to rest on our laurels. There's so much opportunity to do more.

What are you doing to make sure you’re continuing to grow your business or your organization? Are you satisfied with the employees you're finding? Check out Workforce Weekend. It's innovative, like many of our new programs. We hope it will have a positive impact on businesses in our community by matching businesses with quality employees.

Or, if you're in the stage to starting thinking about your exit plan (which should be the day before you start your business), ask what can you do to make that transition more like a ride into the sunset, and not walking away from a giant explosion. (There's a workshop for that. You can read about it below.)

Whether we're looking to grow, or move on, there are opportunities to learn more. Because sitting on our laurels is never enough.

~Ross