What if growing your business started with giving instead of selling?

In this conversation, we explore what it looks like to become part of the fabric of your community—to serve, connect, and build genuine relationships before asking for a transaction. We talk about supporting local organizations, partnering with other businesses, sharing your values openly, and finding ways to use your business to make a meaningful difference.

We also unpack the idea of “serve before you sell” and why generosity can become one of the strongest trust signals a local business has. In a world where technology and AI can make it harder to know what—or who—is real, people are still looking for something technology cannot replace: human connection.

For us, thriving communities are built on something simple: being neighborly. Neighborly in our homes. Neighborly in our businesses. Neighborly in the way we notice people’s needs and choose to help.

If you’re standing at the fence wondering how to make a difference where you live, maybe the invitation isn’t to do something bigger. Maybe it’s simply to step in, get connected, and start serving.

Break Free Blueprint (Today’s Takeaway)
• Serve before you sell.

• Find something you genuinely care about and become part of it. Support a local organization, connect with other businesses, help a neighbor, or use your gifts to meet a need.

• Don’t wait until everything is perfect. Get involved, build trust, and let your relationships open the door for what comes next.

Connect & Subscribe
If this conversation encouraged you to think differently about business, community, and connection, we’d love for you to stay connected with us.

What happens when a community refuses to say, “We’re done”?

In this conversation with Kim, we explore what it looks like to keep showing up, investing in people, and building a community that continues to grow. Georgetown’s recognition as the inaugural Best Downtown in Texas became more than an award—it became a reminder that meaningful work is never finished.

We talk about the power of collaboration, the role of local businesses and volunteers, and the importance of staying connected to the people around us. Kim shares how Georgetown continues to raise the bar, not because everything is perfect, but because there is always another opportunity to serve, improve, and invite more people into the community.

For those of us standing at the fence wondering how we can get more involved, this conversation is a gentle invitation: start where you are, get connected, and keep showing up. Sometimes transformation happens simply because people are willing to say yes again and again.

Break Free Blueprint (Today’s Takeaway)

• Don’t wait until you feel finished or fully ready.

•Take one step toward connection today. Volunteer. Reach out. Support a local business. Join the conversation.

•We don’t have to do everything. We simply have to be willing to obey the next invitation God places in front of us—and trust that small acts of faithfulness can become part of something much bigger.

Connect & Subscribe

Stay connected with Be Locally Loved and keep discovering the people, businesses, and stories shaping Georgetown.

Follow the City of Georgetown and Visit Georgetown, and look for opportunities to volunteer, get involved, and build deeper connections in your community.

In this episode of Be Locally Loved, Laura Capes Terry sits down with longtime marketing strategist and community connector Liz Hamm to unpack what local business owners often misunderstand about marketing. Rather than chasing every new platform, trend, or “shiny object,” Liz explains why effective marketing starts with understanding the purpose of each tool, knowing where a business stands, and making thoughtful choices based on its goals, budget, and market.

Liz shares lessons from decades in marketing and communications, along with her experience as a BeLocal area director in Richmond, Texas. She explains why businesses should first strengthen their foundations—including their brand story, digital presence, community involvement, and customer experience—before adding more sophisticated marketing efforts. She also explores the value of maximizing partnerships businesses already have instead of immediately assuming they need something new.

A major theme throughout the conversation is the power of reputation, relationships, and being present in the community. Liz encourages business owners to step out from behind their logos, participate in local organizations, support schools and charities, and use those relationships as meaningful parts of their marketing strategy. She also discusses how AI and an increasingly noisy digital landscape are changing visibility and why businesses need to show up consistently across multiple places.

The conversation also introduces Liz's community resource, Let's Go Locals, a centralized online calendar and community information hub designed to make it easier for residents, businesses, schools, charities, and organizations to share what's happening locally. At its heart, the episode reinforces a simple idea: marketing is a system, not a single tactic—and building a business people know, trust, and choose takes consistent effort and genuine community connection.

• Why marketing is not a one-size-fits-all strategy and how businesses can choose tools based on their specific goals, market, and audience.
• How to identify and maximize the low-hanging fruit in marketing efforts and partnerships you already have.
• Why a strong foundation—your brand story, digital presence, messaging, and customer experience—should come before adding more marketing channels.
• How community involvement, local partnerships, schools, sports leagues, and charities can build goodwill and brand awareness.
• Why businesses should look beyond immediate ROI and recognize the value of reputation, relationships, familiarity, and trust.
• How to make the most of existing partnerships by turning collaborations and sponsorships into content, social media opportunities, and additional visibility.
• Why local businesses need to stay adaptable as AI, digital platforms, and consumer behavior continue to change.
• How Let's Go Locals was created to give communities a centralized place to discover and share local events, milestones, fundraisers, and other community information.

For local business owners, marketing can quickly become overwhelming because there are so many possible places to spend time and money. Liz's approach brings the conversation back to fundamentals: understand your business, know your audience, strengthen your foundation, maximize existing relationships, and then decide what to add next.

This episode is especially relevant for business owners, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and anyone involved in local organizations. It offers a practical reminder that building a locally trusted business isn't only about advertising. It's also about showing up, creating relationships, contributing to the community, and consistently giving people reasons to know and trust you.

Listen or watch the full episode to hear Liz and Laura unpack what thoughtful, community-centered marketing can look like.

If the conversation gives you a new way to think about marketing your business or supporting your community, share it with someone who cares about their town—and subscribe to Be Locally Loved for more conversations about the people, places, and ideas that help communities thrive.

If your website looks great but sales aren’t increasing, your leads aren’t converting, or your happy customers aren’t becoming repeat customers and referrals, the problem may not be one marketing tactic—it may be that the pieces of your business aren’t working together.

In this episode of Be Locally Loved, Laura Capes Terry sits down with Trisha Hendrickson, founder and chief of big ideas at Moxie360 Marketing. With 35 years of marketing experience, Trisha shares a practical framework for understanding marketing as an interconnected puzzle, covering everything from positioning and digital foundations to sales, retention, reputation, legal considerations, and metrics.

The conversation explores why attracting more leads isn't always the goal—attracting the right leads is. Trisha and Laura also discuss the importance of building authentic relationships, creating a friction-free customer experience, owning your customer data, using AI thoughtfully, and understanding what the numbers are actually telling you.

At the heart of the conversation is a simple idea: marketing isn't something you can set and forget. Businesses change, customers change, technology changes, and the marketing strategy has to adapt. When the different pieces are aligned, marketing becomes part of a much bigger system that helps a business build trust, serve customers well, and grow.

💡 What You’ll Learn

• Why clarity and positioning are the first pieces of an effective marketing strategy—and why knowing who isn't your ideal client matters too.
• How your digital foundation—branding, website experience, SEO, Google Business Profile, analytics, and authentic content—supports everything else you do in marketing.
• Why relationships and visibility still matter in an increasingly digital world, including networking, public speaking, community involvement, and earned media.
• How to think about paid and owned channels as complementary parts of a larger marketing system rather than relying on a single channel.
• Why marketing and sales need to work together—and how a repeatable sales process, CRM, lead tracking, capacity, and KPIs can affect conversion.
• How friction in the customer journey can cost you sales, and why businesses need to meet customers where they are.
• Why onboarding and delivery are critical to building trust, retaining customers, and creating opportunities for referrals.
• Why business owners should pay attention to retention, referrals, reputation, legal considerations, and data instead of focusing only on acquiring new customers.

🤝 Why This Conversation Matters

This conversation is especially relevant for business owners who feel like they're doing everything “right” with their marketing but aren't seeing the results they expect. Instead of immediately adding another tactic, Trisha encourages business owners to step back, look at the entire system, and identify where the disconnect might be—from the first message someone sees to the sales process, customer experience, and follow-up.

It's also a valuable conversation for anyone building a local business and trying to balance technology with genuine human connection. The discussion reinforces that strong communities are built through trust, relationships, service, and businesses that understand the people they serve.

🎧 Listen & Share

Listen or watch the full episode, then share it with a business owner, community leader, or local entrepreneur who could use a fresh look at their marketing puzzle.

And subscribe to Be Locally Loved for more thoughtful conversations about the people, businesses, and ideas helping communities thrive.

What if the work you do could help more than your business grow? In this episode of Be Locally Loved, Laura Capes Terry sits down with Candice Ellensohn, an entrepreneur, community builder, and longtime N2 Company franchise owner who has spent more than a decade using local media to connect residents, support businesses, and strengthen the communities around her. Through Stroll Foxville and BeLocal Tri-Cities, Candice has built her work around a simple idea: helping people find and connect with the local resources around them.

Candice shares how her own experience moving from the city to the suburbs helped her understand the value of having a trusted local guide. She explains how BeLocal helps new homeowners discover businesses, restaurants, activities, events, and other resources, while also encouraging longtime residents to rediscover their own communities.

The conversation also explores why local business visibility is about more than immediate transactions. From partnerships with chambers and downtown organizations to supporting nonprofits, local events, and community initiatives, Candice describes how her platform can connect businesses, residents, and community organizations in meaningful ways. The result is a model centered on awareness, trust, relationships, and giving back—not simply advertising.

💡 What You’ll Learn

• Why new movers are such an important audience for local businesses—and why their needs go far beyond home services.
• How BeLocal helps newcomers discover trusted local businesses and feel more connected to their new community.
• Why local businesses need to build brand awareness as new residents enter the market and existing customers move away.
• How a local guide can help longtime residents break out of their routines and discover new restaurants, events, businesses, and activities.
• The importance of being a credible first impression rather than focusing only on immediate conversions.
• How print, digital, social media, community relationships, and a local team work together as part of the BeLocal approach.
• How Candice uses her relationships and platform to support business partners, local organizations, chambers, and community events.
• Why supporting the community can create a ripple effect where residents, businesses, and local organizations all benefit.

🤝 Why This Conversation Matters

For business owners, community leaders, and residents, this conversation offers a practical reminder that local growth is about relationships as much as transactions. Candice's experience shows how a business platform can become a connector—helping people discover their community, helping businesses become known, and helping local organizations reach more people.

At its heart, this episode asks us to think differently about the role our work can play in the places where we live. When businesses use their relationships, platforms, and influence to connect people and support local organizations, the impact can extend far beyond their own businesses.

🎧 Listen & Share

Listen or watch the full episode, then share it with someone who cares about their town and wants to see their community thrive. Subscribe to Be Locally Loved for more conversations about the people, businesses, and ideas helping communities grow stronger together.

What happens when one click brings your business to a standstill? In this episode of Be Locally Loved, Laura Capes Terry shares her firsthand experience of being hacked after clicking a link that appeared to come from a trusted contact. Within minutes, she lost access to email, social media, software, and multiple devices. What followed was days and weeks of stress, lost productivity, password resets, device wipes, and rebuilding.

Laura is joined by Greg Torosian, owner and president of TeamLogic IT of Round Rock, who has more than 25 years of technology leadership experience. Greg explains how attackers can exploit trusted relationships, SIM swapping, stolen credentials, and vulnerabilities across connected accounts and devices.

The conversation goes beyond what happened to Laura and focuses on what business owners can do before an attack happens. Greg walks through practical layers of protection, including multi-factor authentication, authenticator apps, password managers, software updates, mobile device management, email threat protection, and secure network connections.

For small businesses, cybersecurity isn't just about protecting data. A technology failure can mean lost time, lost productivity, lost access to critical systems, and potentially lost revenue. That makes prevention an important part of keeping local businesses—and the communities that depend on them—strong and resilient.

• Why even a message from a trusted contact can become the starting point of a cyberattack
• How a SIM swap can allow attackers to intercept SMS-based authentication codes
• Why authenticator apps or passkeys can provide stronger protection than SMS-based MFA
• Why you should never reuse the same password across multiple accounts
• How a password manager can securely organize passwords and help with account recovery
• Why storing passwords in a computer file or browser can create additional security risks
• Why keeping operating systems and apps updated is an important layer of protection
• How mobile device management and email threat protection can help identify and block malicious links
• Why businesses should consider layered security rather than relying on a single tool
• Why preventative cybersecurity measures can be far less disruptive than recovering from a compromise

Small business owners are busy building their businesses, serving customers, and supporting their communities. Cybersecurity can easily become something they put off until something goes wrong. But as Laura's experience demonstrates, recovering from an attack can consume significant time, create enormous stress, and disrupt the ability to operate.

This episode is especially valuable for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and anyone whose business depends heavily on technology. The message is practical: security doesn't have to mean doing everything at once, but it does require taking reasonable steps before an incident happens. Protecting the technology behind a local business is ultimately another way of protecting the people, customers, and communities that business serves.

Watch or listen to the full episode to hear Laura and Greg's conversation about cybersecurity, prevention, and the real cost of a business disruption.

Share this episode with a business owner or entrepreneur who needs to hear it, and subscribe to Be Locally Loved for more conversations about the people, businesses, and ideas helping communities thrive.

For decades, Jack Gilmore has helped shape Central Texas' culinary landscape by building restaurants that people don't just visit—they return to because they feel genuinely welcomed. In this conversation, Jack shares how growing up in South Texas taught him that hospitality isn't a business strategy; it's simply the way people should treat one another. That philosophy has become the foundation of every restaurant concept he's helped create.

The conversation explores the values behind Jack Allen's Kitchen, Salt Traders Coastal Cooking, and Daymaker—from sourcing fresh ingredients and supporting local farmers to hiring for personality before skill. Jack explains why long-term relationships with producers, employees, and guests matter more than short-term growth, and how consistency, humility, and listening have shaped his approach to leadership.

More than a conversation about restaurants, this episode examines how local businesses become gathering places where communities grow stronger. Whether it's supporting local farmers, feeding teachers, partnering with nonprofits, or creating spaces where families and friends naturally come together, Jack demonstrates that thriving businesses are built by investing in the people around them.

This episode reflects the mission of BeLocal by showing how businesses can strengthen the communities they serve—not through marketing alone, but through genuine hospitality, meaningful relationships, and a long-term commitment to giving back.

💡 What You'll Learn
How authentic hospitality begins long before someone walks through the front door.
Why supporting local farmers creates stronger businesses and stronger communities.
The importance of hiring for personality and teaching skills afterward.
How consistency and high standards help build a trusted local brand.
Why listening to customers is essential for long-term business success.
How restaurants become community gathering places for celebrations, conversations, and everyday connections.
Why giving back should be part of a business's identity rather than a marketing initiative.
How thoughtful, sustainable growth depends on investing in people before expanding locations.

🤝 Why This Conversation Matters
Strong communities don't happen by accident—they're built through thousands of everyday interactions between neighbors, local businesses, and the people who choose to invest where they live. Jack's story is a reminder that hospitality, generosity, and consistency can create lasting community impact.

This episode is especially valuable for local business owners, entrepreneurs, restaurant professionals, community leaders, and residents who care about helping their towns become places people love to live, work, and gather. It offers practical lessons on building trust, supporting local economies, and creating businesses that become part of the fabric of a community.

🎧 Listen & Share
Listen to or watch the full episode to hear Jack's inspiring perspective on hospitality, leadership, and building community through local business. If this conversation resonates with you, share it with someone who cares about strengthening their town, and subscribe to BeLocal Loved for more conversations about the people, places, and ideas helping communities thrive.