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Main Street Reimagined Podcast
This is a podcast for dreamers, creators, developers, and entrepreneurs to learn, share, and be inspired to change your community through small business.
Main Street Reimagined Podcast
Episode 52: Dreamers Who Do: Lessons from Season 2 of Main Street Reimagined
What truly transforms a struggling downtown into a vibrant community centerpiece? After two seasons and 52 episodes of the Main Street Reimagined podcast, a clear pattern has emerged—a recipe for revitalization success that's working across communities of all sizes.
In this season finale, host Luke Henry distills the wisdom from dozens of conversations with developers, entrepreneurs, civic leaders, and economic development professionals into three essential ingredients for community transformation. The journey takes listeners through stories of patron developers who took the first risky step in neglected buildings, courageous entrepreneurs who brought unique businesses to life, and public partners who created the infrastructure and support systems needed for sustainable growth.
These aren't theoretical concepts but proven strategies implemented by real people in places like Marion, Sandusky, Sidney, Delaware, London, Plain City, McConnellsville, and other Ohio communities experiencing renaissance. Their stories reveal that successful revitalization isn't about massive budgets or corporate takeovers—it's about passionate locals working at what Luke calls "the intersection of for-profit and for-purpose."
Beyond the practical aspects of development, the episode explores the human side of community building. Conversations about self-leadership, team building, and maintaining personal well-being provide a holistic view of what it takes to sustain the energy needed for long-term community transformation. The episode highlights how vibrant downtowns ultimately become economic development engines, attracting both tourists and industrial investment by creating the quality of life that talents and companies seek.
Whether you're a building owner contemplating your first renovation, an entrepreneur with a vision, a public official seeking strategies, or simply someone who cares about your hometown's future, this episode offers a roadmap tested and proven by those who've successfully walked the path. Connect with the show at info@MainStreetReimagined.com to share your questions or suggestions for future interviews.
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This is the Main Street Reimagined podcast, a show for people ready to turn visions into realities and ideas into businesses, to launch a business, renovate a building or start a movement, their ideas, their mindsets and their inspirations, as well as some of the highs and lows along the way. This is a place for dreamers, creators, developers and entrepreneurs to learn, share and be inspired to change your community through small business. Enjoy the show. Hey friends, luke Henry here, this is the Main Street Reimagined Podcast and I am so grateful that you are here. This is episode 52 and this is the season 2 finale, and so this is going to be a solo episode. This is going to be a solo episode. I have some great insights to share, basically a summary of all that we have learned together over the last 26 episodes of season two, and it's really exciting to have been able to lead these conversations. It's been so fulfilling. I'm so grateful to all of you, the listeners and also all the guests that have been on this season. It's just truly been an awesome season. I've learned so much. I've been able to help people, tell some incredible stories, we've unpacked lessons together and it's been really fulfilling. I've heard from a number of you who have resonated with a lot of these lessons. I'm going to recap a lot of them here, but we've covered a lot of ground, from some solo episodes with me to a ton of great interviews from people both here locally in Marion and then all over the state of Ohio that we've done episodes out on location. We've had folks that have come here for tours and then interviews, and it's just been a really, really great season. So I'm sad to see it come to a close but also really grateful for these experiences. I am looking ahead. We are going to have a little bit of a reprieve here, not exactly sure how long before we kick off again, but I want to recap this, all the lessons learned this season.
Speaker 1:And then, if you're listening to this and you've listened to a smattering of episodes this season but haven't really caught them all or maybe you started listening here recently and haven't listened to season one I think you're really going to enjoy going back through and listening to some of those. Maybe you go all the way back to number one and just work your way up. Maybe you take from this recap and the discussion that I'm sharing here and you cherry pick a few that are most interesting to you and then kind of go from there. That's welcome as well. That's the beauty of podcasts, and so you know, I encourage you to be listening on your favorite podcast player, or we are sharing all of these podcasts on YouTube as well if you want to watch. Especially, it's been fun to be out on location, so folks have been able to see some of the places as well by watching on YouTube what I've been able to see in some of these different locations as we've interviewed guests. So again, thank you so much to all of you.
Speaker 1:If you find this episode helpful, if you found past episodes helpful, I would ask and it would be a personal favor to me for you to share with someone else who may be educated or inspired by what we're doing here and the different lessons that we've had. Of course receive no money for doing this. It's just really a labor of love and a way of helping others, paying forward through some of the lessons I've learned personally through business, through downtown development projects, as well as those that have come on also have not been compensated for their time, but they have shared because they also want to help others that are coming behind in order to learn from their lessons and their experiences so that they could be better, and that we're all working towards making our communities and our world a better place, and so I hope that you'll share some with somebody who would find this helpful. So I'm going to start off with one of my favorite quotes, and that is that the world needs dreamers and the world needs doers, but most of all, the world needs dreamers who do, and so I believe that that encapsulates a lot of what we're doing, the vision that I'm working towards here in our community and the vision that a lot of others are working, both here locally in Marion Ohio, where we are, but also in the other communities where we've interviewed and talked and had conversations, and many of you also who are listening. You're dreamers who are doing, or maybe you're a dreamer and you're getting the education or the inspiration in order to go out and do something with it, but I want to encourage you to absolutely do that. But we've talked to a lot of great dreamers and doers creators, entrepreneurs, developers over this last season, and we've talked a lot about the recipe for success, and I've actually used those words in some recent episodes and had folks give their feedback.
Speaker 1:But really, as I listened back through this season, went back through my notes from those episodes, I saw some common themes and threads throughout the various communities where I visited, where we had interviews, and they're having success. Some of them in different areas, some of them in a lot of areas, some are just getting started, some are a little more mature and farther along in the journey, but there's definitely some common themes and I wanted to identify what I noticed. Those ingredients seem to be those of you that are, I think, listening most regularly to this podcast are those that, especially, are making impact in your community. You maybe have a downtown focus, like we do, and trying to create vibrancy there, trying to be a part of that progress that's gonna move your community forward. So I identified three ingredients and this is gonna take us through most of the episodes, kind of in a reflection, and then we'll kind of take a couple of sidecar excursions to talk through a few of the things that we learned this season outside of these ingredients as well. So with that let's get going.
Speaker 1:So ingredient number one that we identified is that there are developers, especially what I would call patron developers, that are working in these communities that are really, really making a difference and, based on the conversations that I've had, both on air and then off air, with a lot of different communities that I visited, it's the people who go first or went big. They took it to the next level. Time and time again we see that it starts with the building owners and their willingness to invest. So when I say developers, it might be somebody that's developing one building that they bought, maybe they've owned it for a while, they're going to reinvest in it, maybe it's someone who's going and they're doing a few different projects in a community, but that is really what seems to catalyze the big changes. But that is really what seems to catalyze the big changes. And in fact, on the recent episode, sean Hughes talked about the success of the revitalization during his time in downtown Delaware, ohio, and how his first action when he got into that development role economic development role was to meet with the building owners, get them on board to make investments, to be able to attract better businesses and then make the district more attractive overall.
Speaker 1:And as I look back, through this season, I had a lot of really great conversations with those developers, some of them patron developers, people that went first in their community. There was a dying downtown. Maybe they saw a spark, maybe there was some outside influence that made them believe that this was going to be possible. Maybe they were just doggedly persistent, maybe they were dreamers that just had a vision for their community. And those were some incredible conversations to hear how they went in and started, you know, buying one building, then another, then another, and made a real impact as that snowball has been moving over a period of years. So I had a great conversation with Seth Middleton, who's doing work over in Sydney, ohio, great patron developer over there. Andy Warnock in working in Old Hilliard, london, ohio, and Plain City Again, just a passionate guy doing some fantastic work, really doing things with excellence, getting momentum in these communities, getting community buy-in and really making sure that everyone has a voice in the process and he's listening and really looking for the needs that can be met in the community, in the community.
Speaker 1:Ryan and Chad Whaley in Sandusky. We had a really fun and awesome conversation with those guys and they came into Sandusky very early on in the process and were able to make an impact with a project then another, then another, and those are, you know, were really exciting to talk about. And then, going back Lois Fisher and her early work here in Marion. That was a really fun conversation. She started here many years ago and, you know, started very slowly and just with one project at a time and you know some of those really took a lot of effort to get going but that snowball just started moving just ever so slowly and then others like us were able to come along and really accelerate the progress and we become great friends in the process. So what I've seen that's been really exciting is not only the work that each of these folks are doing in their community but the willingness they have to talk with others, as we did on these podcast episodes, about the lessons learned and just the camaraderie that we have where we are working.
Speaker 1:I often say that we're working at the intersection of for-profit and for-purpose. Look in real estate investing. There are way easier ways to make a dollar. There are way easier ways to invest in real estate. But when you really care about your community and you can bring purposeful development or revitalization in your downtown and also do well in the process, hopefully over time it does have to be patient capital, but over time you can do well and do good at the same time and that's what these folks are doing and it's just so evident through all these interviews. I'd encourage you to go back and listen to them. Just salt of the earth, people doing things for the right reasons. They really love their community and they want to see it move forward.
Speaker 1:And then, lastly I guess I didn't mention also Jared Jablanka interviewed him several episodes here ago who's doing work in Delaware Not the first there, but he was building on what others were doing, did a pretty big project there that further catalyzed some really great opportunities in their community there. So that's ingredient number one is those developers who are willing to go first. And again, these, you know we use the word developer and I think sometimes what comes to mind is some you know mega funded, you know big outfit that has, you know, tons of employees and they're coming in and doing these projects and they're, you know, sucking money out of the community or whatever. And that is not the type of developers that we've talked with and that we see really making big impacts. It's often a person, maybe a couple, maybe a few, you know. They get into a partnership or somebody's you know doing it themselves and they start building a team around it a little bit after they do a project or two, and it's just a slow process. Oftentimes it's a person's own capital. They're signing personal guarantees on this work. I mean, it's risky but it's so meaningful to be able to see these types of projects happening in communities.
Speaker 1:And it starts with the buildings. If there's not nice buildings, nice businesses, unique concepts are not going to be attracted to that downtown and oftentimes when that vacuum exists it gets filled with retail chains, suburban sprawl. That's what's going to happen. There are opportunities to be had, and if they're not being had by local folks who are mission focused, local focused, then there's plenty of outside chains and bigger companies, corporations, that are willing to come in and they are going to siphon that money off of the community. But when it can be locally led, locally focused, that's when the magic happens. But it starts with those developers in the buildings.
Speaker 1:So ingredient two that I saw through these interviews was courageous entrepreneurs and small business owners. Courageous entrepreneurs and small business owners, these people who are willing to take a risk to chase their dream and bring something special and unique to their local community. And so, really, season one was filled with these interviews, most of them folks here locally in Marion that have been early in our progress and our process here over the last seven or so years where we've really been investing and going hard and helping new businesses to be stood up, and we interviewed a lot of those folks and had some awesome conversations through season one. Season two was no different. We had a few others from Marion here Sarah Hogan with Hogan's Photography, al Aguirre with Taco Central, sandy Weddington with Blend of Seven Winery, and again that was just this season, season one. We had another 20. Some episodes primarily focused on these small business owners, entrepreneurs, who are making big things happen.
Speaker 1:And then this season we took our show on the road, which is a lot of fun, and a few of them came to us too, but I think it was back in episode 26,. The first of this season I had Brad Winter with Mix 165 Restaurant in Mechanicsburg, andrew Boucher from over in Sydney with Osteria Wine Boutique Super cool place. We did that on location there. Nikki Woodruff with Greenhouse Coffee and again super neat place. We did that on location. I stayed in her Airbnb above it while I was there in Sydney and had a great experience. Megan Gerber was here from Chillicothe. She talked about founding Paper City Coffee and Paper City Mentoring Project and that was a super interesting interview and hearing about her journey in that business.
Speaker 1:Dan and Amy Smith from McConnellsville came to Marion for a visit and they own the Inns at 8th and Main, which are traditional bed and breakfasts, and my wife Lindsay and I had been there and visited with Amy and had a fantastic time in McConnellsville and then and then they came up and we were able to do an interview there really fun here, I mean. And then Ryan and Chad Whaley, who I mentioned, from Sandusky. They talked about their journey of starting Volstead Bar and then Paddle Climb, which then turned into the Paddle Bar, along with some other businesses, a PR agency that they founded together. Just a really cool story. If you didn't catch any of those, I encourage you to look back through the season two lineup and any or all of those that resonate with you. They're all fantastic, really good people and just each shared not only their story but actionable advice from their experience that I think that you'll really enjoy and learn from. But I just love these people. They're so hardworking, they're creative, they're passionate.
Speaker 1:But then after these interviews or amongst these interviews, no-transcript episode with talking about best practices of leading teams. That was episode 38. And then who, not how, was episode 35. And that was just because of my work, you know, working with small businesses that are our tenants, just friends of mine, my own businesses that we're operating. It's hard and it's hard to have teams and it's hard to be a good leader and it's hard to know how to navigate some of these challenging situations how to delegate, what to delegate, when to delegate, how to know if someone's ready. And I was just having a lot of those conversations day to day, week to week, and I thought, man, I think it'd just be helpful to do a podcast about this. And I heard myself repeating some of the same conversations with some of these folks. So I just took some notes and then released those as a couple of podcasts. So I hope that if that sounds like something that you could benefit from and you missed those episodes, go back and check them out. I think that there's a lot of really actionable advice there as well.
Speaker 1:Then I also spent a couple of episodes talking pretty vulnerably about self-care and self-leadership due to my own journey and watching others that I've interviewed, other people that I care about, who've lost their health, they've lost their family and other important aspects of their life because they were going so hard for so long that they lost themselves. In fact, we also spoke about that at length with Megan Gerber in her episode in 47 regarding her journey and now how she's helping other women through coaching based on her own challenges, and just some low times where she talked about losing herself in the business and her work. And so, if you missed those couple of solo episodes that I did on self-leadership and self-care, I probably got the most feedback about those two episodes than I have from any other episodes that I've done, at least as solo episodes, and so I think that they resonate with a lot of people, because I think driven people who are out there trying to get it done, running the gun, and every day it's so easy to kind of let yourself go and when you're not taking care of yourself, you're not able to take care of others, your business, your community in the way that you really want to. And so, again, if that resonates, if you're finding yourself in a place or maybe listen to them and you need to go back and listen maybe implemented one or two of the tactics and strategies that we talked about. Maybe you need to go back and do a little more because things have slipped or you're having challenges in another area. I encourage you to put those on, take a listen and put those things into action. Most importantly, reflecting back, I also had a fantastic conversation about leadership of teams and bettering ourselves through reading with Chad Hoffman. Chad is a really innovative leader. He's the president of Richwood Bank. That was in episode 41. And we just kind of geek out talking about some of our favorite leadership books and some of the lessons from those that have been transformational in his leadership. I shared some about my own leadership and so that was a really fun episode. Again, man, if you missed that, go back and check it out. I think you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1:37. I had a really meaningful discussion with Pastor Steve Estep from Marianaz about the role of faith not only in our communities but in our own lives, and actually today, kind of thinking about that, I put on my restoration shirt here. If you're watching on YouTube, you're like what is this shirt all about? So this is a restoration. So Restoration Week or Weekend is an initiative that Marianaz started many years ago and has come to involve other churches in the Marian community and it's just basically a time for people to mobilize and go out and serve the community in tangible ways. So it's a lot of like yard work and cleanup and cleaning up tires and brush and building wheelchair ramps and rebuilding front porches and steps and just serving people in the community. Doing downtown cleanups, going out and having an intentional night of just going to local businesses and being able to bless them by having more people through their doors. So that's just a cool way and, again, maybe something that you, if you're listening you're from a different community or looking for ways to just engage more people in the mission and the vision of what you're working toward in your community that you might consider something like that as well. But here it's called Restoration Weekend and it just took place recently, and so I wanted to highlight that as well as just another way.
Speaker 1:Another way, I don't know, that we talked about in our podcast, but that you can see faith-based organizations, nonprofits and just communities kind of all interchanging and engaging for good. So, while a lot of our focus with this podcast is downtown development, revitalization, economic development and small business, the common denominator is people and learning to effectively work with people, which oftentimes leads us back to ourselves and our self-leadership and how we are showing up, how we are living day to day and how we're handling the inevitable stress that comes with doing really noble work. That's hard and is challenging and we run into barriers all the time. And so this little detour that we took from talking about development small business to talk about self-leadership and self-care, and just where some of the conversations went with these individual entrepreneurs and leaders in community, talking about faith and leadership and delegation and all these other pieces of making teams work and making projects work were hopefully helpful, because we have a lot of people that are trying to do all those things and maybe again there's a vision, there's a dream, but to put work clothes on and get out and do it takes learning some of these business and leadership principles that hopefully you found interesting and if you missed any of those episodes, again I encourage you to go back and take a listen because I think that they're going to be really impactful.
Speaker 1:So number three for building a really impactful, vibrant community is the third ingredient willing and passionate partners on the public and call it NGO or nonprofit side. There are certain parts of building a vibrant downtown and community that have to be accomplished by these, you know, public and NGO type partners, infrastructure, partnership for grants and public funding, public spaces, programming, certain events just all of those types of things really need to come from that public sector. Maybe it's changing parking patterns or traffic patterns or adding crosswalks or making sure that curbs are painted or safety equipment is in place and all just I mean, it's not one thing. I often say that there's a thousand little things that come into play when you're trying to build a really great place, and a lot of those need to come from the public side. And so we studied that as well this season and had some really meaningful episodes that talked about how public and private are working together to achieve a common outcome and work towards a common vision. So a few of those were episode 39. We had the service and safety directors from the city of Marion, mike Bodine and Rob Cowell, who discussed how they're pushing projects forward, the strategies they're using and really going all in in trying to find available grant monies, how they're identifying projects, how they're working with the different stakeholders in those projects to get them moved forward, with the mayor of the city of Marion On last season, mayor Collins, talking about some similar type initiatives and things that he's excited about and working towards. So if you missed that one, you can go a little bit farther back and listen to that.
Speaker 1:On episode 33, we had Andrew Boucher. I mentioned him under the small business heading because he and his wife own Osteria Wine Boutique in Sydney, but he also, at least at the time of the recording, was the city manager of Sydney and he speaks through the perspective of that role and just really added a lot of value. He did a fantastic job in Sydney and really worked hard to bring a lot of outside developers in working with local industry. He had a really targeted focus on improving the downtown as a catalyst for building their city and really got a lot of things done. So I really enjoyed that interview with him, super impressed with him and the work that he was doing in the city of Sydney. So that's a great one to listen to.
Speaker 1:And then episode 30 had Alan Wilson and Cheryl Wickersham from Downtown Marion Inc. They're the local Main Street organization here in Marion and they spoke about the role of Main Street organizations and how just a caring group of citizens can come together to help support the building owners, help support the small businesses in the downtown to be more successful through collaboration and communication and events, and so that was a helpful and informative interview as well. So, again, you missed any of these. Go back, learn more about the specific ingredients that are being used. We also had Eric Woopser and Mackenzie Spriggs from Sandusky talking about their work on the public side, both in roles in city government and now as part of the Greater Sandusky talking about their work on the public side, both in roles in city government and now as part of the Greater Sandusky Partnership, and what that organization does and how they're impacting downtown Sandusky. So that was a great one for sure as well. So, really putting all these ingredients together, we have seen and studied a lot of really vibrant and beautiful downtowns and they don't just look great, they feel great. It's a palpable energy. When you walk the streets, when you visit the businesses and when you interact with the people, you can tell that they care, they love their place and it makes a really meaningful difference.
Speaker 1:And I spent some time visiting. I spent a lot of time actually visiting different communities and you know I visited the ones where we did the on-site interviews for the podcast, but have visited dozens more around Ohio and beyond and just seen a lot of the same patterns. So you know the last few episodes we've spent a lot of time talking about the economic development, which is just the positive overflow that happens when a community works together and creates a really special downtown. So I wanted to take a minute here and also talk about this economic development piece, because it was something that came up in a couple episodes and then there were a few recently that really focused on it a lot and that kind of all goes towards this willing and passionate partners on the public side as part of this third ingredient.
Speaker 1:So Sean Hughes talked extensively about economic development in episode 50, similar actually to how Jason Duff talked about it way back in episode 10. They both told some real stories of working with site selectors for large industrial projects and how much emphasis they put on what Sean called soft infrastructure, which is the local businesses and the quality of life amenities in a community, most of which are contained in their historic downtown. And then last episode, episode 51, Brandy Gleason spoke about how those same unique places that Sean called soft infrastructure are what form the basis of attracting tourists. And we spent a lot of time talking about tourism as economic development and it's just a huge piece of that for a community. And then again I mentioned Eric Whipser and Mackenzie Spriggs from Greater Sandusky Partnership, but they also spoke a lot about the recipe that they've used in Sandusky to blend all of these ingredients and how they engage public and private partners. They thoughtfully grew the tax base, then they specifically invested in catalytic projects that have created a really significant boon for the downtown and then that's spreading kind of to the entire region.
Speaker 1:So just as I look back, I mean I felt like all the episodes from this past year fell into these different buckets and those really were the ingredients that make up the vibrant communities that we're seeing being built and that have been built and are continuing to see progress and evolve and grow. So again, I want to highlight some of those, especially in light of those few different buckets, because if you missed any of them, if that's a sector where you're working or a sector where you feel like your community needs to put more focus, or you want to share it with people that are working in that area of your community, please I started the episode with saying that as well, that if there's someone who could benefit from these episodes, that is literally why we put all this together and it is the heart behind what we're doing with this Main Street Reimagined podcast to try to take lessons learned by myself and others that I know and have become acquainted with through this work to be able to send it out so that it can be useful to people all around the country and all around the world. Frankly, I know that there's actually quite a few different listeners from other countries. Thank you for listening in, and I hope that these same principles are working in your own communities and you see how they're working. Another thank you for listening, for putting these principles into work, putting them into action in your own communities, and so I just want to encourage you, friends, that you're in business, you're in development, you're in government, you're interested in this type of work, you're interested in making your community better and you see small business and revitalization as a way to do it. You're my people, and I want to make sure that you are resourced as well as possible and that we're sharing the lessons that we're learning in real time here in downtown Marion, ohio, with all of you, so that you can put them into practice as well. So, once again, please share with someone else who could benefit. I would love your rating and review. It certainly helps us reach more people and kind of feeds the algorithm to get this message out into more of the right hands so that we can benefit as many people as possible. So thank you again and I look forward to linking up with you.
Speaker 1:If you want to reach out the contact information here in the outro of the episode, please reach out. I'd love to hear from you. If you have questions, if you have resources, if you have ideas, you know somebody that we need to interview. If you have resources, if you have ideas, you know somebody that we need to interview that is engaged in this type of work. I'd love to hear from you. So thank you again and I will look forward to talking with you soon. Thanks for listening to the Main Street Reimagined Henry Development Group or our work in downtown Marion, ohio. Please visit MainStreetReimaginedcom If you want to connect or if you know someone who we need to interview, shoot us an email at info at MainStreetReimaginedcom. Until next time, keep dreaming and don't be afraid to take the leap.