Entrepreneur Nick Koger has first-hand experience in the struggles of starting and maintaining a small business. 

“Not only can I hear what business owners are saying, but I experienced it myself. I did website consulting and that influenced a lot of what I’m doing today. It’s been very encouraging, but then also sad to see that business owners have this phenomenal product or service, but people just don’t know about them. They don’t have this enormous marketing budget, like large businesses do,” Koger said.

Those experiences inspired the creation of his app, BeCardless. Unlike payment applications such as Apple Pay or PayPal, BeCardless serves as a cheaper marketing tool and online business card where brick and mortar shops can highlight their products, hours, locations and other aspects of their business to attract customers. Results can be filtered based on what customers are looking for before being purchased in-store.

Carlynn Patten, a local spa owner, started her business, Uplift Studio, in April 2021, but joined BeCardless recently. She said her biggest struggle has been making a presence in the community and getting people to know her company is there.

“I am a single, private studio that does facials, manicures and pedicures, and I don’t have any employees. I don’t have a storefront that you can see with a neon sign,” Patten said. 

Koger’s goal is to support and provide resources to local small businesses because he said they are important to the community.

“During COVID, a lot of businesses shut down and the few that did survive really had to regenerate their customer base. I also work at a nonprofit in Staunton [as my] day job and we support entrepreneurs,” Koger said. “ A lot of them need additional support and help in strategic ways to find new customers. This is a huge problem in the community and that’s what I’m trying to solve.”

Koger reached out to Patten when trying to recruit members for the site.  

“Nick pursued me. He has been on the hunt for all the small businesses and he saw through social media that I was running a spring market. He wants events like that to be posted onto his app and so he contacted me,” Patten said. 

The app sparked Patten’s interest because she wants people to know more about her business without the trouble of creating a Facebook or Instagram page.

“To me, the app looks like a local Instagram page where instead of having to search through Instagram to find local businesses, they’re all right there, and I think that’s a great way to support your community and see what’s happening,” Patten said. 

By focusing on small businesses, BeCardless will make it simpler and more cost effective to reach new customers. 

“I found that there is an ongoing campaign to ‘shop local,’ but it’s hard. You have to know someone that knows someone,” Koger said.

For Patten, advertising her business has taken a lot of time and experience that she feels she doesn’t possess.

“I’ve had to walk the streets and pass out my business cards, go into different businesses and be present on social media, which is a lot of work for one person,” Patten said.

Patten said, thankfully, she has not yet had to consider closing her doors as many small businesses do in their first few years. 

“Not yet, girlfriend. Not yet,” Patten said. 

Koger is a part of the “B-Cubed Program,” the “Black and Brown Owned Business Growth Program” in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County that supports minority small business owners. Small businesses often face difficulty in staying open due to lack of resources and in result, a lack of customers. These issues are addressed through the B-Cubed Program. 

“They give you one-on-one training. At the end of that training, once you’re more established, they grant funds to your business to help sustain it. I’ve been honored to be a part of it,” Koger said. “They helped me a lot with marketing and engaging with the community. One thing that’s been very beneficial is they have networking events. I’m technically selling to business owners, so that gave me an opportunity to interact with a lot of other Black and brown business owners that are local and can actually utilize my app.”

BeCardless is still in the developing stages, but Koger said it will be released in August in Harrisonburg and eventually throughout the Shenandoah Valley to highlight local businesses.

“Right now, we have about 10 registered,” Koger said. “As a consumer, it’s completely free and anyone can download it. We are charging businesses because businesses are making money off of this platform, but we charge based upon the number of employees that you have. The idea with ‘shop local’ is that we’re promoting those businesses with people that have one to three employees, and that’s shown in our pricing model.”

Koger’s ultimate goal is to make connecting with the community accessible and at everyone’s fingertips.

“I find people saying. ‘I’m new here. What can I do?’ I want BeCardless to be their entryway to discover everything they can do in their local community. Oftentimes, it probably takes two, three, four years for something to be ingrained. I want them to be able to have that same knowledge from the community all in minutes just from downloading and utilizing the app,” Koger said. 

Patten founded Uplift Studio by herself to make people feel better about themselves, and hopes that BeCardless can help her grow her business and spread her message. 

“In our world today, things are really hard and a lot of people look at beauty services as just something to do, but I think it really can inspire your day or week and make you feel more cheerful. You leave the building feeling better about yourself. My business is all about making people feel beautiful on the outside and the inside,” Patten said.

Koger has just begun sharing his ideas on how to support small business owners, such as Patten. 

“This is just the start, this is just the stepping stone. This is not where we’re ending, this is where we’re beginning to create that community aspect,” Koger said. “We’re adding all these different aspects really to embrace the community and make our community more tight knit and grow it all together.”