Can Social Entrepreneurship Work in the Rust Belt?
A Mom, a Dream, & a Declining Downtown
by Jennifer Brogee
A case study of entrepreneurship that explores themes of:
women in leadership
gender funding gap
social entrepreneurship
rural entrepreneurship
strategic leadership
entrepreneurial leadership
Includes activities for the classroom, lessons learned, and actual financial statements from the Ohio small business startup.
What she learned in business school barely prepared her for entrepreneurship.
Jennifer Brogee thought that having a well written business plan was the path to success when she launched her coffee shop in 2003. Her goal was to create a living for her family and to help the declining rust belt downtown by believing in its potential and locating her business there. She soon realized how littered with roadblocks that path was. Denied funding, she and her family bootstrapped the business to make it work.
This story shares the roadblocks she faced as a young woman with children, in a business model with tight margins and high overhead. Twenty years later, the coffee shop still stands but the business model – and the mindset of the owners - had to change. Jennifer identifies the lessons learned and explores the types of business models that are better served toward social entrepreneurship.
Published by Lived Places Publishing, April 2024.
