New program to ‘rev’ up Merrill’s small business economy

MERRILL, Wis. (WSAW) – The University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension’s Rural Entrepreneurial Venture Program, or Wisconsin REV, seeks to energize small city economies by educating local leaders on how to support aspiring entrepreneurs. For the first time, it will be used in Merrill.

The three-year program follows a framework that has been applied to other states, most recently Minnesota. UW Extension will provide a community coach to keep local leaders on track with that framework and help them navigate difficulties.

“The framework teaches a group of leaders in the community, so a core leadership team, how to go out and find the entrepreneurs in their community, how to identify which industry sectors they really want to grow and to go out and talk to entrepreneurs that are in those community sectors or perhaps wanting to get into a business in those industrial sectors,” said Lisa Taylor, Wisconsin REV Program Leader. “It teaches them to go out, identify them, find out what they need in order to start a business or to grow an existing business, and then gather those entrepreneurial resources that are being requested so it really helps them to build out that entrepreneurial ecosystem within the community to help those entrepreneurs.”

The early steps of the program include setting goals for the city’s economic growth, setting the steps to accomplish those goals, and reaching out to and working with aspiring or small-scale business owners.

“If somebody’s thinking about starting a business, I want them to think of Merrill,” said Renea Frederick, Entrepreneur and CEO of FreMarq Innovations.

Merrill is one of the first cities to participate in the Wisconsin REV Program. One of the Merrill REV team’s goals is to diversify the economic income of the city’s downtown areas while using the assets the city has to offer.

“The folks here are good and they’re hardworking and they care, so that’s why I see the opportunities and Merrill has such great assets…it’s those things that people don’t realize the assets that are here and what we could do with them,” said Frederick.

Renea Frederick is a long-time Merrill resident, and she wants to help re-energize the entrepreneurial history of the city that dates back to the logging companies that inhabited her business’ building years ago.

“I want Merrill to be here 100 years from now and thriving, Merrill started with entrepreneurs,” said Frederick. “It’s all these different points of view coming together to create something really neat really, and it’s gonna be Merrill, it’s what Merrill, who Merrill is, and what Merrill’s going to be in the future.”

The program has only just begun, but Wisconsin REV’s next cohort of cities is already being put together. To qualify, the city must have a population of under 10,000 people.

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