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Leaving home to grow, coming home to GROW
by Pat Underwood

Janell Anderson Ehrke believes it is good for young people raised in small towns to go out into the world to gain broader experience and education. She believes it can be even better when they bring those things back home and put them to work for their community.

She should know.

Janell is the founder and CEO of GROW Nebraska, the hugely successful and still expanding non-profit market access program for small entrepreneurs across the state. It was inspired by a craft cooperative Janell once read about in North Carolina, but it is a job she had not dreamed of doing, in a place she had not dreamed of living.

Growing away

Janell is originally from Arapahoe. Her father, who did not have a college degree, insisted all his children obtain one, and they did. He wanted his children to have a better chance in life than he had.

Janell left home after high school to attend the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where she majored in psychology and minored in history. She also studied fashion merchandising at the Lincoln School of Commerce.

From there, she thought she would never look back.

"I was drawn to the glamour and pace of the big cities," Janell said. "I and my siblings always knew our home was a safe zone and our home town a good place to be, but I never imagined I would come back to live there."

She went on to lead what many would indeed consider a glamorous life for awhile, including a job with a big securities firm in Kansas City.

"One thing I began to notice, though, is that I wasn't enjoying the glamour very much because I was too busy working," she said. She also began to notice, on her infrequent trips back home, that she did not know her nieces and nephews very well.

"They thought I was just some lady who came from Kansas City to visit once in awhile."

When her brother began expanding the family business in Nebraska, and asked if she would be interested in coming back to help, she took the unexpected homeward leap, then compounded it by marrying the man who had been her first boyfriend at age 16.

"I sure wasn't expecting that, either," she said, smiling in a way that says this is another of the good surprises about her new-found rural lifestyle. She and husband Leon Ehrke have two children, Haley and Parker. They now live near Orleans, just down the road from where she grew up.

Growing in place

After working for awhile in the family business, Janell accepted a position as Executive Director of the once-foundering Central Plains Foundation, which evolved into the business incubator that eventually became GROW Nebraska.

At its startup in 1998, GROW Nebraska represented only a handful of crafters. Today the program represents some 300 members, including fine artists, crafters, graphic designers, gourmet food and beverage producers, furniture makers, jewelry and fashion designers, galleries and retail shops, and small producers of candles, soaps, lotions and other body-pampering treats made from natural Nebraska-grown products.

With the addition of their ecommerce Website in 2007, GROW began 3expanding beyond the borders of Nebraska. Forty-six percent of their electronic sales in 2008 were from outside the state, with customers in 27 states and Canada.

Janell said she never regretted the decision to come home and thrilled to have found a job here that she describes as "absolutely perfect" for her, but also insists that without her experiences away from home she probably would not have learned how to "think outside the box" in the ways that has made GROW Nebraska a success.

"I learned that in order to succeed in the world a person has to be willing to admit what you don't know," she explained. She said becoming a lifelong learner is what has enabled her to meet the everyday challenges of creating something from nothing, keeping it going, and keeping it moving forward.

"If I don't know something, I go find out," she said.

She has had to learn how to do research, use the Internet, understand and develop social marketing skills, and get a handle on the real needs of the rural business owners GROW represents — flexible schedules combined with good salaries.

"I learned that I can always find someone who is smarter than I am who knows things I don't know, to help guide me," she said. "You have to know what you don't do well, and be willing to find experts to join the team to do those things."

Janell credits many such people for helping out GROW Nebraska along the way, including her board of directors, whom she calls "very entrepreneurial, forward-thinking people”, and the statewide advisory committee that makes sure GROW stays focused on its mission. She said she has also received great advice and assistance from economic development professionals at the State of Nebraska, the Rural Enterprise Assistance Project, and private businesses.

"I never could have done this by myself," she said.

Chief among the many people Janell credits for the success of GROW Nebraska is John Koller, president of the Central Plains Foundation and owner of ATC Communications in Arapahoe.  Janell said Koller has guided the program into the economic development model it is today.

"John told me from the beginning he did not want me to be one of those economic development dinosaurs who sit behind a desk or run around collecting grant money but not actually creating or accomplishing anything," Janell said. "John has always continued to challenge me and to insist on accountability, and I am grateful for it, and the program shows it."

Janell said the most important life lessons, though, are those related to human nature.

"When people fail in business it is usually because they give up too soon or really don't do enough marketing," she said. "Also people need to not get offended if not everyone likes them or their product. And they have to have the right attitude. Especially attitude. People who believe they can succeed always have a better chance of actually succeeding."

Growing into the future

Although acknowledging that the job of managing GROW Nebraska has become part of who she is, Janell said her personal goal now is to bring GROW to an operational level that would enable her to move on from being the director.

"The program and I both need to keep growing," she said.

The long-term goal for the program has always been sustainability, Janell said, although she and the board recognize it will probably never be 100 percent self-sufficient simply because they are always starting new members and helping them at every level of their entrepreneurial endeavor.

With retail stores in Kearney and Grand Island and their eBay store now in its second year, Janell said she recently realized GROW Nebraska also needed to be something of an eBay incubator, and so is now helping members and others learn to market themselves directly through the new technology.

In addition, GROW is helping individual members and chambers of commerce around the state become more involved in social media.

"It is my hope that through the use of all these new technologies, anyone selling Nebraska products from anywhere in the state  will eventually be able to have a 24/7 presence in the broader marketplace," Janell said.

In GROW Nebraska, Janell Ehrke has created an opportunity for hundreds of Nebraska entrepreneurs to grow beyond their current boundaries. And in so doing, she has grown beyond her own.

Pat Underwood is a resident of Alma, Nebraska, where she does grant writing, fundraising, and other development work for non-profit organizations and serves part time as Harlan County Tourism Director. She is also a regional reporter for the Kearney Hub. She is a former resident of California, Hawaii, Guam, and Florida and can be reached at 308-928-8992 or underwoodpat@ymail.com.

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