ABOUT US

Sometimes you need to read the writing on the wall and be willing to make a change.

We have done this multiple times in our working life, and it has helped build our professional pride and joy, Incredible Towns, and Incredible Business Networking (IBN). We hope you enjoy reading our story, and take from it the importance of having a willingness to adapt. 

From rural Wisconsin to Incredible Towns … 

Our first moment of change came during the Great Recession of 2007. My wife and I owned a farm-to-table restaurant in rural southwest Wisconsin. I had been in restaurants for a while before that and worked about every job you could have, from dishwasher on up. We were open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and made many of our dishes from scratch. There were many times we would be at the restaurant from 4 a.m. until midnight, come home, take a nap, and go right back. When you own a restaurant, you're always there. Unfortunately the recession in 2007 hit us hard and we had to close. 

My wife, Laura, and I decided to relocate. When evaluating our options, we had several criteria on our checklist: a good climate, good food, access to the outdoors, and professional opportunities. After doing some research online, we decided on Asheville, NC and we moved there on a prayer. 

I worked at a couple of different jobs and then took a position selling advertising with the Yellow Pages. One day, the Vice President of the entire company flew into North Carolina and assembled everyone who worked for Yellow Pages in the state for a meeting in Hickory. I'll never forget this meeting. His big announcement was that the Yellow Pages, which was a print company, was going to start selling Internet ads and then give away ad space in the print version of the Yellow Pages for free, according to how much online advertising that client bought. I turned in my notice that afternoon and told my manager that they would be out of business within the year. Six months later, that company went bankrupt! 

When I saw that a print company was going to start giving away its main product and pushing online advertising, I immediately knew I needed to pivot to Internet marketing. Laura and I started with an existing company that is no longer active in the area and ran the Asheville territory for them. We did that for several years, until the owners of the company decided to buy a yacht, sail the world and retire. This would turn out to be a blessing in disguise, although it didn’t feel like it at the time. We created our own company, which we still to this day own 100 percent as equal partners. We engaged a local web design firm to build a site for us and then we were off to the races. 

Incredible Towns started on March 10, 2017, and it has been going strong ever since. Our business is two-pronged; we offer web marketing as well as business networking. We are proud to say that we bootstrapped the company with no other investors. Here we are, eight years later, it has grown into a multi-state operation and continues to grow. 

A very different kind of web marketing agency 

Your traditional Internet marketing business can make a website for you and manage your social media. Then you pay them for their digital marketing services. There is value in that, but we have chosen a different path by creating third-party search engine optimization (SEO) content. Now, you might be wondering, what does that even mean? In addition to inclusion in our Business Directory on incredibletowns.com, we talk about your business online and create engagement, or online “real estate” and use that to create a storm of back links to help raise your exposure when people make searches online that are relevant to your business.

In other words, we create multiple ways to tell the search engines that you are a good result when someone is looking for your product or service in your geographical area. Our work amplifies whatever you are doing online. To achieve that, it might mean working with other marketing agencies or advertising companies – which we love doing.

Our work makes your business look better by amplifying what you are doing everywhere else. In addition, clients can guest blog, submit social media posts for sharing, and take advantage of optional banner ads and other tools to increase their visibility. 

For example: Let's say you put up a billboard and someone sees it while they are driving down the road. Obviously, we hope you are not going to pull out your phone and look up the business on that billboard while you are driving. Or maybe they saw an ad for your business on TV or in print or heard a commercial on the radio. Most people are not going to search right then but when they do, they're going to remember that billboard, that ad, but what are they going to do? They're going to pick up their phone or their computer and search on Google. The work that we do helps your business show up more prominently in those searches. It's so important.

Whatever else you do for marketing or advertising, when it comes time for a prospective customer to look for your product or service, they are going to search for you online. 

One key item to mention is that with all of the powerful tools we use to promote businesses, our services are affordable to any business. Many have asked why we don’t charge more for what we do. The answer is simple, we could, but it is more important to us to make all of our Incredible Towns Web Marketing Plans accessible to anyone that needs it, from the solo entrepreneur on up. 

Interested in knowing more about Incredible Towns Web Marketing? Visit Incredible Towns Marketing to learn more. 

Currently, Elizabethton, TN is our home base. That was initiated from a desire to expand Incredible Towns beyond the Asheville, NC market. We also wanted to find somewhere with a lower cost of living and better real estate prices. The Tri-Cities checked each of those boxes. We engaged the services of Steve Jencks, a local networker we knew there; he continues to successfully run our Western North Carolina operations. Since then, we have expanded from the Tri-Cities to Knoxville, Southwest Virginia, and then Chattanooga. Most recently, we added the North Carolina Triangle – Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, NC, and Huntsville, AL Regions to the fold. More to come!

We continue to find new ways to grow and adapt. After concluding a process of about 10 months, we engaged another local company, Unbound Digital, to complete a major upgrade of our website and develop a web app as well. The new site fully launched in April of 2024 and gives us the functionality to expand from a regional level and go national. That's incredibly exciting for us! 

When I (Choya) was growing up, my dad was in the US Air Force, so we lived all over the planet. Moving around so much helped me learn how to get to know people quickly. It also made me an extrovert in a very positive way. I like learning about people and meeting new people and figuring out how I can help them. 

I also spent some time in a past career as a national trainer for Select Comfort Corporation, which is a NASDAQ 500 company. I managed stores for them, as well as wholesale territories, and also worked as a national trainer for their wholesale division. Through that work as a trainer, I traveled the country and got to meet all different kinds of people. All of those skills help with what I do now and have combined into what I do today: working in restaurants and appreciating how people work and how hard it is to run a small business, and also working for a big national company. 

The value and power of networking 

Incredible Business Networking serves multiple purposes. Internally, we use it as our primary means of meeting new clients. However, we also keep our regular networking events free so that it serves as a primary funnel for everyone to meet new clients. We see it as our way to pay it forward. Networking built our company and we want to help it build other companies as well. Through networking, we have made good friends, met longtime customers, and learned about a wide variety of products and services.

“If you're not working, you should be networking.”

We are big believers in it because people want to connect with other people and want to do business with other people and businesses that they like, know, and trust. 

Why Attend Incredible Business Networking Events? 

• Free to attend, no dues or fees 
• No membership required 
• No attendance requirements 
• No category restrictions 
• No exclusions - All Inclusive 
• Buy Food/Drink if you wish (optional) 

 

How can it be free? We keep our networking meetings free for general attendees through Sponsorships. In each geographic Region, we have up to 12 Industry Specific Sponsors; these are companies that invest in supporting IBN. In turn, they get marketing services in person and online through our website, social media channels, and directly through our Meeting Leaders. Whether a Sponsor is present or not at meetings in their region, they will be represented and their business presented to the attendees. 

IBN networking events are held at restaurants. That way, food and drink is available for purchase (optional, but tasty!). We have many different formats, including but not limited to: 

• IBN Breakfast Club 
• IBN Coffee Connection 
• IBN Biz Lunch 
• IBN Biz Dinner 
• IBN Evening Social 
• IBN Cash Mob 

Our networking meetings are very interactive. Everyone is truly welcome – even other marketing agencies. Attendees have multiple opportunities to speak and interact with everyone at each meeting. We have an abundance mentality, and believe that everyone can win by supporting each other - the pie is infinite. We are collaborative capitalists, which is a term we love.

In addition to our many free events, which number 55+ and growing right now, we also have some large events too. Every year in February (Knoxville, TN), June (Hendersonville, NC) and September (Johnson City, TN) we have our Premier Event: Incredible Business SPEED! Networking. It's a ticketed event and the best way to describe it is that it’s power networking on a mass scale! You get to present your one minute presentation to seven to nine people at a table at a time, for 12 rounds. This allows you to get past the gatekeepers and speak directly to the decision makers, have face time with them, get rid of the “stranger danger,” get their contact information, get questions, get answers, set up one-on-ones and do it almost a hundred times in just a few hours. 

We are currently working on a new Speed Networking format to expand this concept for use around the country as we grow. Watch for new events sprouting up to serve more communities in the near future. 

Want more information about Incredible Business Networking (IBN)? Visit incrediblebusinessnetworking.com for details and our event calendar. 

Serving the community 

In the first years of our new company, our goal was to hire a Regional Manager to run each region and we were getting ready to expand in multiple major markets across the country in early 2020. Of course, COVID put all those plans on hold. What changed was the inability to network in person, but with that came the realization for so many companies that, to reach people, they had to go advertise on the Internet. On the other end of the pandemic, we strengthened our networking model to include online capability with Zoom but we also realized our current model and structure were not going to work. So we developed a crowd sourced operations system (more details in a minute), and we made a decision to invest in the website with more modern features. It made us so much more streamlined and effective and able to expand rapidly. We were able to bring good things forward. 

So what did we do? We developed a framework of all-volunteer team members who lead meetings in the different markets where we operate our networking.

By recruiting business people and entrepreneurs in each Region to lead the meetings, it freed us up to expand because we didn't have to be at every meeting. The Meeting Leaders get to promote themselves, meet new people, and run the meetings however they see fit within our established guidelines. They also receive complimentary marketing services as compensation for their time. In addition, they also act as an organic sales referral force on the ground, which provides another way for us, and them, to grow business and earn a living. Everyone wins, which is always our goal!

We also offer a Free Events Calendar for the community. Anyone is welcome to post there, whether it be a business event, a church fish fry, a walk run for charity. Whatever. We have a very advanced calendar booking program we use on our website that helps to get the events showing up on Google events and we don't charge the community for that service. If our paid clients choose to post on the calendar, we can also give them extra social media presence and extra exposure at their request.

It’s an extended family business. Choya is the Managing Member of the operation, planning, coordinating and strategically growing the endeavor. Laura manages our online posting, community interest information, client referrals and helps to manage our social media. She assists with a lot of our office and bookkeeping functions and more importantly she keeps Choya on task… and that's the toughest job there is! We have a saying in our company and our family: without Choya nothing would get started and without Laura nothing would get done! 

The extended part? Our family of IBN Sponsors and Meeting Leaders is the magic that makes this all possible. Everyone is invested in the success of everyone else, and this is one of the most rewarding aspects of what we do, being part of a larger team dedicated to helping others succeed. 

Looking ahead 

With the new website upgrade and app complete, we are working on systems and processes to continue to expand. Right now we are actively growing and will be expanding into new regions soon. We feel we have developed a really unique business model. The site can be managed from anywhere with an internetconnection, and our volunteer Meeting Leader model enables us to expand our business networking services in an efficient manner. 

We are in business to provide a living for ourselves, but we only achieve this if we help others succeed first! Our goal every day is to help small businesses grow and succeed. Like they say, a rising tide lifts all ships. 

Lastly, we could not be where we are today without our IBN Sponsors that believe in our mission and us. To see these Incredible Companies, visit our website and please consider them if you need their products and services. 

We have grown so much. It's been a struggle at times, but it's worth it. You help enough people, word gets around, and we all grow together.