Owning his own business has always been a goal of Jeremy’s. Throughout his career he strived to be able to work for himself, be his own boss. When the opportunity presented itself to purchase a restaurant in Arcadia Valley, I saw a spark in Jeremy that I had not seen in a while. He, of course, was determined to own this restaurant.

After meeting with the bank, we left feeling defeated. 20% down payment!? How do people like us do that? We did not have that kind of money! Jeremy started his mission to figure out a way to get the money and we didn’t have to look far before someone referred us to SEEDS.

What a blessing!

From the first encounter with them, the people at SEEDs made us feel at home. They truly understood what struggles we were having and immediately met us with solutions. Before long, we had a closing date. SEEDs came to our rescue.

Their program made it possible for us to buy our first business. They made the process comfortable and gave us peace of mind through the whole thing. Successfully, we opened Baylee Jo’s in September 2019.

But wait…there’s more.

SEEDs came to our rescue again in 2021 when we purchased the Shepherd Mountain Inn and Suites in Arcadia Valley. The property right behind our restaurant became available and Jeremy couldn’t help but want to buy it. Again, we went to SEEDs and they made Jeremy’s dream come true.

I cannot say enough good things about this program. The people who work there are truly doing community service, as they work to make the impossible, possible.

There aren’t enough good things about this organization and the people who work there. They made the process of purchasing not one, but two businesses (during very trying times, mind you) feel easy.

Thanks SEEDs! There is no way we could have done this without you!!

In 2021, my sister and I decided to launch our first small business. After 20 years in social services and the non-profit sector, I desired a change of career. My sister had always wanted to start a pie shop, but as an educator had only thought of it as something she did on the side out of her house, but after teaching through Covid and becoming a foster to adopt parent, she also desired a change. Although we had worked in grassroots non-profit, launching our own small business was outside the scope of our skill sets, and at times felt daunting. When we were referred to SEEDS, we naively assumed the agency only offered loans. We were not aware of the depth of their services. While working with the SEEDS team, we were assisted with developing our story which led us to our business plan as well as our marketing plan. We were able to establish a financial plan and set goals which aided us in deciding the equipment needed, necessary expenses versus expenses we could plan for but did not need immediately, and whether we should purchase or rent for our first brick and mortar storefront. They introduced us to developers and processed each property with us until we were able to find our location. November 18, 2021 we met our first goal by launching our business in time to take pie orders for Thanksgiving. By January of 2022, we had expanded to offer dine-in options and were financially stable enough for the business to start paying for itself. By April we were seeing small profit margins. In 2023, using the same steps SEEDS led us through last fall, we expanded to be full-time pie shop. We were able to do this without accruing debt thanks to the guidance of the team at SEEDS.