Experts urge Aurora businesses to embrace change

How a community and business can better anticipate and deal with change, the importance of first impressions, quality customer service and more were among the highlights of a “fireside chat” Thursday with two entrepreneurship experts featured at this year’s Aurora Chamber of Commerce annual awards banquet.
Numerous award winners were recognized for their contributions and accomplishments in 2025 as part of a celebration which drew more than 115 people to the Bremer Center (See photos on Page A10). Rather than a traditional keynote speaker, Chamber Executive Director Tamar Jimenez hosted a 40-minute discussion designed to explore the challenges rural businesses are facing in a rapidly changing economic environment.
“Everything that you do in your businesses, in your profession, in your neighborhood, these kinds of meetings, it’s all about the experience, and we can thank Disney for that,” said Lisa Tschauner, an author and entrepreneurship professor at UNL. “We’re seeing our economy shift and I think we would all probably agree that people are becoming a little more particular about how they spend their money. When you can rely on somebody, you go back to their business and you are a return customer, so I think building those experiences for people has never been more important than it is right now in order to ensure success for your business.”
Tom Field, a Colorado native, fifth-generation cattleman and current chair of UNL’s agribusiness entrepreneurship program expanded on that same concept.
“I think you can feel stories in places,” Field said. “You guys travel to watch your kids play and you know the schools you can walk into and within two minutes you know if it would be okay if my kid went to school here, or thank goodness my kid doesn’t go to school here. You can feel it, and it’s really kind of unique.”
The same holds true, Field said, for businesses, and entire communities, based in large part on the level of hospitality.
“If you’re running a mechanic shop, you can be hospitable,” he noted. “If you’re a great plumbing service, you’d be hospitable. It doesn’t matter what you do, hospitality matters and it changes people. I think at the end of the day … businesses are just people, right. Without people, there’s no business, so it all comes down to relationships. And what do you see you see in the first few minutes in town? Are people taking care of things? Is there a story? When people drive past you are they smiling or growling? I think we send those signals pretty quickly.”

Sense of belonging
Jimenez asked her two guests how communities build a sense of belonging, pride and identity, to set themselves apart.
“I think communities make a decision, whether it be magnetic or not,” Field responded. “I think the magnetic communities do a couple of things really well, and the first thing they do is acknowledge that they can fight well together, that solving problems involves some conflict, but they fight well. You can disagree and still go have coffee. You can disagree and sit next to each other at your kids’ basketball games and cheer for those kids. And we can find places where we don’t agree and still be in community government, and that’s really critical.”
A native of Colorado, Field said it was a breath of fresh air coming to live and work in Nebraska.
“There are a lot of places where there’s just sort of this notion that somebody’s going to come rescue us -- a big company, some government program, whatever,” he said. “Ultimately, we’ve got to live by our wits … The communities that decide we’re going to build this our way, with a focused vision for the future, I think are the ones that really make it happen.”
Having spent more than 20 years building and supporting the entrepreneurship ecosystem in central Nebraska as an educator, author, consultant and community advocate, Tschauner said she and her associates have sometimes been viewed as someone who will come in and help save a community.
“We can’t save your community,” she said. “You’re going to save your community. There is no knight in shining armor riding in on a white horse. Aurora, I think, has demonstrated that over and over with all the cool innovation that you have and the business growth that you have, with the whole mantra of Aurora ‘Where opportunity grows.’ You guys are making it happen, so that’s very good.”
Tschauner later noted that businesses and small communities have to rely on and support each other in today’s world.
“In order to be successful, you have to be confident that your neighbors and your friends and the other members of that community are going to do business with you, help promote your business and support your business,” she said. “I think that’s a big part of having those legacy businesses and those generational businesses to continue on, because that then leads into how you market your community as well and create some of those important experiences.”

Embracing change
Jimenez then asked the two-person panel to help define the line between honoring tradition and resisting progress.
“I strongly believe that a community has to be open to change,” Tschauner responded. “I talk a lot, especially with my students and those amazing entrepreneurs, about the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset, and that ‘we’ve always done it that way’ is definitely part of that fixed mindset. You can encourage people inside of companies to be entrepreneurial, to be innovative, to grow, and that’s how those businesses get bigger and expand and take on more market share is by having space for those innovative thinkers, for the people who thrive on change.”
Field added his perspective on change, noting that human beings, communities and businesses need both anchors and sails.
“The challenge is knowing when to put the anchor down, when to lift it up, when to furl the sail or unfurl the sail, right,” he said. “That’s the generational conversation, anchor and sail, but the key is if we have a compass. We know the compass, the nonnegotiable, is the value system.”
Field cited famed explorers Lewis and Clark as an example model of someone with undaunted courage, who knew how to deal with change.
“At some point in time, you’re going to run out of water,” he said. “You’re going to have to sell the boats and buy horses. That’s how you’re going to get over the mountain. That’s hard, but it’s a necessity. If you have a compass, that change is doable. Without the compass, change is hard.”
Jimenez then dialed up the subject often referred to as “brain drain,” asking the panel why talented people sometimes feel they need to leave small towns, and why some eventually come back.
“What’s really interesting is that 95 percent of our graduates who are Nebraskans stay in Nebraska,” Field said of UNL’s agribusiness entrepreneurship program, which has approximately 550 alumni. “When we first came here, there was some real opposition to having a mentoring program in the College of Ag because people were saying what you do is create kids with big ideas and they’re going to leave Nebraska. We’ll never see them again. Actually, I think talent will stick when they know that there’s a place where they can work, live, play and lead in collaboration with other generations.
“I think it’s really important how we talk to alums,” Field continued. “It’s okay to go set sail somewhere. Give it a run, but keep the connection and bring them back. It’s okay to have some outflow, so long as there’s a magnet to bring them back.”
Tschanuer echoed that thought, saying it’s critical that what she called “boomerang residents” know they have a voice in the community that will be heard.
“I guarantee you when they go off to Chicago or Kansas City, LA, or whatever, and they become this very small fish in this very big bowl, they’re going to remember how good if felt and how much they belonged when their voice was heard in that smaller community,” she explained. “I think that’s the way that you can kind of lay that groundwork and build that foundation, knowing that eventually they’ll come back.”