%20forwards;%20}%20.teal%20{%20stroke:%20%233e8280;%20}%20/*%20R:%20both%20strokes%20start%20together%20at%20the%20top-left%20corner%20*/%20.r-stem%20{%20animation:%20draw%20.5s%20cubic-bezier(.25,.1,.25,1)%20forwards;%20}%20.r-bowl%20{%20animation:%20draw%20.9s%20cubic-bezier(.25,.1,.25,1)%20forwards;%20}%20.r-join%20{%20animation:%20draw%20.25s%20linear%20.15s%20forwards;%20}%20.e1%20{%20animation-delay:%20.15s;%20}%20.e2%20{%20animation-delay:%20.25s;%20}%20.v%20{%20animation-delay:%20.3s;%20}%20.b%20{%20animation-delay:%20.45s;%20}%20.y%20{%20animation-delay:%20.6s;%20}%20/*%20the%20teal%20bar%20+%20check%20mark:%20bar%20slides%20in,%20then%20the%20tick%20snaps%20up%20*/%20.tick%20{%20animation:%20draw%20.55s%20cubic-bezier(.3,0,.2,1)%201.1s%20forwards;%20}%20@keyframes%20draw%20{%20to%20{%20stroke-dashoffset:%200;%20}%20}%20@media%20(prefers-reduced-motion:%20reduce)%20{%20.s%20{%20animation:%20none;%20stroke-dashoffset:%200;%20}%20}%20%3c/style%3e%3c!--%20R%20--%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20r-stem'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M18%20189.5%20V266'/%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20r-bowl'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M18%20189.5%20H53.5%20A21.5%2021.5%200%200%201%2053.5%20232.5%20H50%20L75%20266'/%3e%3c!--%20short%20bottom-of-bowl%20piece,%20grows%20out%20of%20the%20stem%20to%20meet%20the%20bowl%20--%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20r-join'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M18%20232.5%20H50'/%3e%3c!--%20E%20(middle%20+%20bottom%20bars)%20--%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20e1'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M108%20227%20H159'/%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20e2'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M108%20265%20H161'/%3e%3c!--%20V%20--%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20v'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M191%20189%20L224%20265%20L257%20189'/%3e%3c!--%20B%20--%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20b'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M285.5%20266%20V189.5%20H320.5%20A18.5%2018.5%200%200%201%20320.5%20226.5%20H285.5%20M320.5%20226.5%20H324%20A19.25%2019.25%200%200%201%20324%20265%20H285.5'/%3e%3c!--%20Y%20--%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20y'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M362.5%20189%20L395%20235%20L427%20189%20M395%20235%20V266'/%3e%3c!--%20E%20top%20bar%20+%20check%20mark%20(teal)%20--%3e%3cpath%20class='s%20teal%20tick'%20pathLength='1'%20d='M108%20190%20H161%20L177%20162'/%3e%3c/svg%3e){kind=small}
A Resource Guide for Small Business Support Professionals
At Revby, we spend our days working alongside economic development organizations, entrepreneurial support organizations, municipalities, and other partners helping small businesses build stronger, more sustainable companies.
That work constantly exposes us to new ideas, research, tools, and perspectives on what it takes to support entrepreneurs well. We created this guide to bring some of those resources together in one place.
Sometimes the best ideas for improving small business support come from stepping outside the day-to-day work. These books offer useful perspectives on entrepreneurial ecosystems, community development, coaching, inclusive entrepreneurship, and the role locally owned businesses play in stronger communities.
Pull a book off the shelf to see why it made the list.
What it is
A systems-based look at how entrepreneurial ecosystems actually develop and why they cannot simply be created by copying another community's programs.
Why it’s worth your time
For EDO and ESO professionals, the biggest takeaway is that entrepreneurship support is an ecosystem, not a collection of isolated services. The book offers a useful framework for thinking about collaboration, community leadership, experimentation, and the role support organizations can play without trying to control the system.
Good program design starts with understanding what business owners are actually experiencing. These reports provide useful data and examples that can help small business support organizations make more informed decisions about programming, outreach, capital access, and technical assistance.
Sometimes the most useful ideas come from hearing practitioners talk candidly about what worked, what did not, and what they learned along the way. These episodes speak directly to the realities of entrepreneurship-led economic development and small business program delivery.
Breaking Down Barriers — Economic Impact Catalyst
A practical discussion about designing TA programs, structuring intake, setting advisor expectations, building referral systems, reaching entrepreneurs, and tracking outcomes.
Why listen: This episode gets unusually close to the operational questions EDOs and ESOs face every day. It also addresses both sides of successful TA: delivering a good experience for business owners and producing the impact data funders and sponsoring organizations need.
Econ Dev Show — with Peter McGee
A conversation about why entrepreneurship support is frequently included in economic development strategies but often receives less structure, attention, and measurement than other economic development functions.
Why listen: The episode makes a compelling case for treating entrepreneurship as an actual economic development program—not simply a referral function. It also explores coaching, business fundamentals, local branding, and why outcomes matter more than counting meetings.
Main Street Business Insights
An episode about interpreting local market data and combining quantitative information with a deeper understanding of community context.
Why listen: Good small business strategies cannot be built from data alone. This conversation offers a useful reminder that market analysis works best when it combines numbers with local knowledge about customers, businesses, places, and community dynamics.
Develop This! Economic and Community Development
A conversation about solopreneurs, freelancers, makers, home-based firms, side businesses, pop-ups, and other enterprises that frequently fall outside traditional economic development definitions of business growth.
Why listen: Many small business programs serve exactly these entrepreneurs. The episode challenges practitioners to think more broadly about what business success and economic contribution look like when job creation or a physical storefront may not be the immediate goal.
These resources cover some of the bigger questions behind small business support: how the field is changing, how entrepreneurs experience support, how we improve access to capital, and how we create more intentional programs and spaces for learning.
Aspen Institute
A 2026 conversation examining how financing, AI, entrepreneurship patterns, market conditions, and policy are changing what it means to own and grow a small business.
It provides a useful future-facing perspective for organizations designing programs today for businesses that will be operating in a very different environment tomorrow.
ICIC + LISC · Playlist · 17 modules
A free curriculum and video series designed specifically for lenders, business development organizations, and technical assistance providers. Topics range from lending and underwriting to credit, debt service, collateral, loan readiness, and building relationships with lenders.
Capital readiness is about much more than helping someone complete a loan application. This resource gives TA providers a deeper understanding of how lenders make decisions and provides practical tools for helping business owners become better prepared to navigate financing.
Ernesto Sirolli
A widely viewed TED talk built around a simple idea: before trying to help entrepreneurs, listen to what they actually want and need.
The talk is more than a decade old, but the message remains highly relevant to technical assistance. Effective support starts with the entrepreneur—not with a predefined solution, curriculum, or assumption about what is best for them.
Priya Parker
A short talk about designing meetings and gatherings intentionally around purpose, people, and the experience you want participants to have.
EDOs and ESOs bring people together constantly—through workshops, cohorts, networking events, peer groups, stakeholder meetings, and community convenings. Parker offers a useful lens for making those experiences more purposeful and valuable.
Jay Bailey
A talk about entrepreneurship, belonging, untapped potential, and what can happen when people who have historically been excluded from entrepreneurial networks are given space and support to build.
Bailey brings the entrepreneur-support conversation back to something programs can easily lose sight of: talent is widely distributed, but access and belonging are not. That is an important perspective for organizations working to build more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Not every useful resource needs to be a long report or a book. These accounts regularly surface research, examples, ideas, tools, and stories that can help small business support professionals stay connected to what is happening across the field.
A strong visual source for placemaking, public markets, community engagement, downtown activity, public space, and the ways people interact with the places where local economic activity happens. It adds a useful place-based perspective to the guide.
Follow
Fed Communities regularly surfaces Federal Reserve research, events, data, and perspectives on small business, credit access, economic inclusion, rural communities, workforce issues, Native communities, and community development. It is a good way to encounter useful Fed research without having to constantly search for it.
Follow
EIC sits very close to the day-to-day work of entrepreneurship-led economic development. Its content regularly touches on ecosystem building, TA program delivery, referrals, program management, data, impact measurement, and the infrastructure organizations use to support entrepreneurs.
Follow
A useful source for staying connected to what small business owners are experiencing, particularly around access to capital, workforce issues, operating conditions, policy changes, and the needs of diverse entrepreneurs and microbusinesses.
FollowWe also asked economic development and entrepreneurial support professionals who work directly with small businesses what content has influenced how they approach their work. Here’s what they recommended.
This episode offers a practical look at how entrepreneurship programs can be designed around the real needs of a community, rather than simply filling seats or meeting funding requirements. Its focus on intentional program design, the whole entrepreneur, relationship-building, and measuring outcomes makes it especially useful for anyone working to build a stronger and more responsive small business support ecosystem.
Help us keep this guide fresh by recommending a book, report, podcast, video, or other resource that’s been valuable in your work.
Recommend a ResourceThe best resources are rarely valuable because they give us every answer. They are valuable because they make us reconsider a question, try something differently, or see the people and communities we serve from another perspective.
We hope something in this guide does that for you.
If your organization is thinking about how to strengthen its small business technical assistance, improve program outcomes, expand access to capital, or better support the entrepreneurs in your community, we’d welcome the conversation.
