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The 2025 Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference ended with a call to action – one centered on civic pride, collaboration and the simple power of caring for the places people call home. Excelsior Springs leaders, volunteers and visitors from across Missouri and neighboring states gathered for the closing session, wrapping up two days of workshops and discussions which explored ways small communities can strengthen entrepreneurship and foster local investment.

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When Dr. Mallory Rahe embedded herself in small towns across Iowa to study what made local projects succeed, she expected to find answers in data and budgets. Instead, she found relationships, not resources, were most often the determining factor in whether communities could thrive. She shared those lessons during the Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference in Excelsior Springs.

Faith, mindset and hard work were the focus of agricultural consultant Deana Imhoff’s presentation during the Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference. She described ways small daily choices and determination helped her grow from a struggling single mother to the owner of a thriving 100-acre farm.

When two former colleagues met for coffee in late 2022, they had no intention of launching a new venture. Yet that simple conversation would set the stage for a growing network of collaborative workspaces now helping entrepreneurs reimagine what community can look like.

Neighbors can make or break a community, and the relationships they form ripple out to strengthen local businesses, civic life and even the economy. That was the central message delivered during the recent Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities (CEC) Conference session “Building Better Neighborhoods, Building Better Business” held at the Elms Hotel.

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