Stop dreaming, start your business now.

Small to mid-sized local businesses, founders, and entrepreneurs keep jobs, money, and decisions in the community, improving connection, communication, and civic pride. Small businesses power job growth for the global economy, reduce individuals’ carbon footprint and improve the financial well-being of the communities they serve but often struggle as they lack the resouces of bigger brands. This toolkit was developed to help local businesses compete and succeed without wasting money.

Main Street Brand Strategy built this toolkit to help local businesses with limited budgets and little time to search for answers. Main Street has 20+ years of experience helping companies of all sizes win in the marketplace. As small business founders, we found it hard to find these resources and wasted time and money on trial and error.

The Main Street Toolkit is designed for local small businesses. It is geared towards those who may be just starting out or who may want to grow their existing local business. The tools apply to many businesses, but they focus on local businesses. Long story short, of course this will help you grow any business, but the examples and point of view are targeted towards local businesses.

This toolkit includes over 20 resources designed to help you succeed, everything you need, nothing you don’t.

📚 Core Strategy Guides

Build your foundation. These five essential guides help you define what your business stands for, who it serves, and how it fits into your community.

• Main Street Brand Strategy Framework
  Learn the four pillars of a winning brand strategy built for local businesses—and how to bring them to life step by step.

• Who You Are
  Define your mission, values, and personality. This guide helps you clarify your identity and build trust with customers.

• What You Do
  Discover your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) so customers know exactly why to choose you—and keep coming back.

• Who You Serve
  Get crystal clear on your ideal customer and learn how to speak directly to the people you’re meant to serve.

• Your Community
  Understand your local market, neighborhood dynamics, and how to position your business to thrive where you are.

🧹 Execution Playbooks

Put your strategy into action with detailed how-to guides for key areas of daily business.

• Main Street on Marketing
  A down-to-earth guide to creating a marketing plan that works for real life—and real budgets.

• Branding Your Business
  Bring your brand to life visually. Learn how to create a consistent, memorable identity with logos, colors, and more.

• Service Excellence Guide
  Elevate your customer experience with small, powerful service moments that turn one-time buyers into loyal fans.

• Hiring Smart
  Learn how to find, attract, and keep the right people without wasting time or money.

• SOPs & Checklists Guide
  Create systems that make your business run smoother, faster, and more consistently, regardless of who’s working.

• Setting Prices Guide
  Set prices with confidence using strategies that support your goals, cover your costs, and reflect your value.

💰 Money & Measurement

Feel confident managing your finances and tracking your growth.

• Main Street on Money
  A simple, practical guide to handling your business finances—even if numbers aren’t your thing.

• Main Street on Measurement
  Learn what to track, how to track it, and how to use data to make better business decisions every day.

• ✅ Financial Google Sheet Toolkit (BONUS)
  Plug-and-play calculators for:

  • Startup Costs

  • Cash Flow

  • Pricing

  • Profit & Loss (P&L)
    No spreadsheet skills required!

🧠 Mindset & Motivation

Start with belief. These guides help you get in the right headspace to succeed as a Main Street founder.

• Manifesting Main Street
  Cultivate a mindset for success and resilience. Vision, belief, and bold action start here.

• Why Main Street Brand
  A powerful reminder of why local businesses matter—and why your story is worth building.

📝 Actionable Workbooks

Hands-on tools to turn your learning into action.

• Main Street Brand Strategy Workbook
  Bring your brand to life on paper with guided exercises from purpose to positioning.

• Main Street Measurement Workbook
  Map your customer journey, set smart metrics, and create a clear, repeatable tracking plan.

• ✅ Startup Checklist
  Step-by-step setup for launching your business right the first time.

• ✅ How to Use This Kit
  A quick-start map showing what to read first, how to stay on track, and what to focus on each week.

🚀 Business Foundations

The essential tools for planning and communicating your business idea.

• ✅ Business Canvas Guide
  A one-page business model snapshot to define your value, audience, and operations at a glance.

Exact resouces available may change from time to time but always with the intention of getting Main Street Businesses the information they need.

Independent research shows that stacking just five of the practices taught in the Main Street Business Toolkit—writing goals down, cultivating a growth mindset, leading with purpose, building a documented marketing plan, and tracking the right KPIs—delivers outsized results. People who write their goals are 42 % more likely to achieve them (Dr. Gail Matthews, Dominican University of California, 2015); employees in growth‑mindset cultures are 34 % more committed (Harvard Business Review, 2014); purpose‑led brands grow 2 × faster than their peers (Kantar “Purpose 2020” study, reported in Forbes, 2019); marketers who plan are 331 % (≈ 4.3 ×) more likely to report success (CoSchedule State of Marketing Strategy Report, 2019); and small firms that monitor KPIs in real time are almost twice as likely to hit growth targets (Geckoboard UK SME KPI Survey, 2016). Multiplying these independent lifts (1.42 × 1.34 × 2 × 4.31 × ≈ 2) yields a theoretical advantage of roughly 33 ×. We quote “over 15 ×” to keep the claim conservative and well within the research‑backed range.