Joan Sheridan, Lake Orion resident and owner of Heritage Spinning and Weaving in downtown Lake Orion, was recently featured as a model of best business marketing practices at Main Street America’s Main Street Now 2021 conference.

The virtual conference, which was held April 12-14 for thousands of viewers from around the world, including small business owners, community leaders and other professionals in the field, focused on recovering and resilience, equity and inclusion, and small business and entrepreneurship.

Sheridan was a part of “The Post-Covid Comeback: The New Requirements to Build a Destination Downtown” presentation by Destination Business expert Jon Schallert.

“My goal was to highlight the most innovative business owners from North America who have experienced the pandemic and successfully emerged from it. I wanted to show owners how best to position themselves so they can succeed in the new normal of 2021 where every business can thrive,” Schallert said. “Heritage is already ahead of the game with what they’ve done this last year under extremely difficult conditions.”

“We knew as soon as the pandemic hit that we had to change our practices and reach out to a larger audience. By upgrading our webstore and adding video creating capabilities, we are creating content for our virtual and in-person classes, which has helped immensely.” Sheridan said. “It’s great that our business was featured in this worldwide conference because other business owners can benefit from what we learned and it’s rewarding to know that my experience might help a fellow business owner who is struggling right now.”

Sheridan was among the 12 business owners that Schallert featured who had learned his 14-step Destination Business Strategy at his Destination BootCamp course. Schallert’s process was learned after interviewing over 10,000 independent business owners over the course of three decades.

“We were the last Destination BootCamp class before the pandemic – the timing could not have been better,” Sheridan said. “That tool made a huge difference to keep me successful during the difficult past year and I appreciate that our DDA selected me to attend the course.”

“Many things about running a small business have been profoundly changed by COVID-19, but for independent businesses, being the first choice with a consumer remains the same,” Schallert said. “My goal is to make sure owners in every community have the best tools possible to flourish in 2021 as we come out of this pandemic.”

— M.K.