Getting a new small business off the ground can be challenging, and even more so in some smaller communities. But one local company is working to help people across Peoria and Tazewell Counties navigate the process.

Marci Goodwin is co-founder of SmartStart Business Development, a sort of start-up for start-ups she runs with partners Katie Kelly and Alec Johnston.

“I think of it as those dot-to-dot puzzles we used to when we were kids,” said Goodwin. “Sometimes if you connect the dots in just the right way, you get a great picture. Well, if you get out of order or skip dots, it’s a big mess — and it’s the same thing with entrepreneurship.”

Goodwin said SmartStart assists with engagement, education and support in getting new businesses launched and growing. Typically, she said, they are approached by civic organizations looking for help in running programs to help small business development.

“We get brought into communities by like a local chamber of commerce, by a county, by an EDC (economic development council),” she said. “Each community is different because many times people don’t have the professional capacity in a community. They don’t have a person that is dedicated just for an expertise in starting small businesses. So they bring us in because we have the expertise, but we also have a suite of services and programs.”

SmartStart operates an online dashboard in conjunction with Peoria County that works to connect entrepreneurs with various resources. That dashboard can be accessed at startabusinessgp.org.

“That is where we walk people through the dashboard, we match them with mentors, and at the end of the program — when they’ve walked through the dashboard, finished all their business plans and all the things their checklist — they can be entered for $5,000 grants,” said Goodwin. “So that’s been very successful, and it’s been great to run into these people around town and see businesses starting that walk through the SmartStart dashboard.”

Over the past year, SmartStart also has assisted business growth initiatives in Pekin and Morton, as well as Delavan’s downtown revitalization efforts, and they’re expanding.

“Because of the grant given to us by Tazewell County, now we’re branching through all of Tazewell County. So we’re starting to reach out to all the little communities in the county to give them the support that they need,” said Goodwin.

She says the funding they’ve received from Tazewell County and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity will go toward three monthly small business workshops in Delavan, Morton and Pekin, and to operate a small business help desk.

Goodwin says many times, new business owners work in a vacuum as they get started, but eventually they realize they need some kind of support to be successful and sustainable.

“Let’s say people don’t know they have to have business insurance. We go into a community (and) we actually vet those insurance agents, because not all insurance agents specialize in small business,” she said. “So we go in and we find out who those insurance agents or accountants or lawyers are that work with small businesses so they don’t have to hunt and choose and find the right people for them. It’s already on that dashboard.”

Goodwin said the biggest challenge SmartStart faces is having enough capacity to provide all the assistance they’d like to.

“We have more ideas than we have time to give for these communities, and even though they contract us for the dashboard and the workshops and the connection, we’re always giving them more,” she said. “We’re always getting in their business, because we get so excited about helping these small businesses, because we’re entrepreneurs.

“In our business, we have over 30 years of entrepreneur experience between us all, and we just, we love what we do and we want to help people. So some of it’s the scalability, it’s the time and now to wanting to reach out to new communities. It’s finding a way that, ‘how can we take this to other communities? How can we spread out and still be impactful?’”

Community support aspect is one of the biggest benefits for first-time small business owners, such as those with little point-of-sale experience, she said.

“Sometimes small business owners, they know you live in a little bubble and have blinders on and you don’t look around,” she said. “So we help people look around and say, ‘Oh my gosh. You don’t know how to — you know, this person’s having trouble with their POS system.’

“‘Oh my gosh. You know, Mary down the road. Did you know that she’s the POS queen? She could help you. Let’ss get this together.’ Or, ‘oh my gosh, who has a great accountant that they love?’ So we go in there, not with just resources and we bring educational workshops, but it’s a fair bit of cheerleading.”

Goodwin said SmartStart is committed to offering its services to start-ups for free.

“We never want to charge the entrepreneur, because it’s expensive and crazy enough to start a business,” she said. “So we want that to be a ‘no-cost.’ Our whole premise is to lower the barrier of entry to entrepreneurism; we want to make it make it easy and make it accessible.”