Back on April 24, Locally Laid was honored with a Labo – that’s short for a Joel Labovitz Entrepreneurial Success award presented via the UMD Center for Economic Development. It recognizes small business owners and according to their website “those who dared to dream, taken risks and invested in the region.”
We get that.
Starting a business, especially a farm with livestock, is an incredibly difficult endeavor. Honestly, harder than either Jason or I could have believed. So to get an award specifically for building environmental considerations into our business – well, it’s the “atta gal” that our Lola needs.
During my (Lucie’s) portion of our stunned acceptance speech in front of a packed ballroom of the Northland, I joked that our 9-year-old son Milo had warned me that morning to “not get my hopes up.” His reasoning was that one of the competitors in our category, our friends at Duluth Coffee Company, are just so much cooler. “Mom, they deliver coffee on their bikes, you just plant trees and use solar.” He had a point there.
But I wish I had said something else. Like how incredible it is that the Labo now recognizes the value of the environmental entrepreneur. It lifts our choices like creating an egg carton return program, planting a tree with every delivery and using only American-made t-shirts – from simply nice to an important business decision with long-term financial gains. (You can read the books Stirring it Up: How to make Money and Save the World and Force of Nature for examples of successful green business.)
The more environmentally conscious commerce is lauded for its successes, the more businesses will include environmental considerations into their planning. And that’s good for everybody – and why Lola loves her Labo.