Tending the Threshold — Series Opening Night in Richmond, VA
Opening Night
At the end of January, we officially opened Tending the Threshold -
my advisor-led focused co-working series hosted at Headquarters here in Richmond, Virginia.
To celebrate and kick-off this new series, we ate snacks, had the Super Bowl on in the background, and put in the work planning for what’s ahead.
This series opener allowed us to work through business objectives in a grounded, intentional way. Mixing party with business, this event allowed the pressure valve small business owners face to release.
For anyone looking for small business help in Richmond, VA, this is the kind of environment I believe actually moves businesses forward. Social, casual, fun and inspiring with a dose of focused objectives and advice.
Why I Created Tending the Threshold
Over the last decade, I’ve worked inside small business from nearly every angle.
I started during my time at VCU for Craft and Material Studies, lucky enough to land work with a few small businesses with regional notoriety. Later, I ran my own jewelry business. I worked in a variety of mediums like clay, leather, and product-based brands. I operated behind the scenes for notable Richmond founders building lean companies. And I got to peak behind the curtain a lot!
This showed me a real, raw version of what lean operations, DIY mentality, and creative solutions looked and felt like.
Most recently, I served as Executive Director of a nationally recognized Women’s Business Center, designing educational programming, incubators, and advising more than 300 small businesses across the region.
What I learned was founders don’t always need more information or education.
They need:
Structured thinking time
Frameworks to get started
Light guidance from topic experts
Accountability within group settings
A room that supports connection over noise
I’ve Been Here Before
In early 2025, I started my first series like this called Marketing Mondays.
During this time, I invited dedicated small business owners in their foundational phase to collectively work through marketing challenges.
I curated a group of about 15 founders who had noted needing help with marketing in their advising sessions with me.
I knew that diversifying advice and moving away from myself as the single source of information would get us all further along.
Meeting monthly, we shared tips and crowdsourced solutions and best practices. If we needed more help, we recruited experts in social media, google business profiles, and SEO to share the latest insights to propel our businesses forward.
Tending the Threshold was built from that experience.
What We Did on Opening Night
Unlike so much of what I’ve experienced in the small business support ecosystem, our first session wasn’t a lecture, workshop, or panel. It was orientation and a chance to take the first step organizing where we are headed for the year.
We used GrowthWheel fundamentals as a grounding lens to help each founder identify where they are right now and what actually deserves focus this season
Attendees chose to focus on a variety of topics like:
Revenue and pricing
Operational systems
Customer and market clarity
Funding and finances
Instead of trying to “fix everything,” we asked “What matters right now?”
Because small business owners don’t struggle getting started, they struggle with overwhelm and crossing the finish line.
The Energy in the Room
A group of small business owners in Richmond VA gather at Headquarters for a small business co-working series kick-off while enjoying snacks, working on strategy, and watching the Super Bowl.
There was something quietly powerful about the night.
Super Bowl playing quietly in the background, shared snacks, and a casual camaraderie made this feel less like work.
After introducing the worksheet, a single page to fill out which included an assessment of the business as-is and space to set goals for the business, founders got to work.
Then I made my way around the room.
Making sure I talked to each person individually about what they were writing on their sheets and what their businesses are challenged by. I was excited to dig in and answer questions as they arose.
This light-handed education blended with focused work is empowering to witness and facilitate. Themes emerged and lightbulbs went off. And I learned what shape this new series would take.
Patterns I Continue to See
After advising hundreds of small businesses, and building my own twice, I continue to witness the same patterns over and over:
Burnout and fatigue in small business doesn’t come from laziness.
It comes from:
Not knowing what to prioritize first
Building up before systems and foundations
Underpricing !!!!
Fear of taking the wrong steps
Isolation
When founders are given protected space to slow down and sequence with the guidance of an advisor and gut checking against their peers, the tone of their business shifts.
Clarity and trust-of-self replaces urgency. These AHA! moments are so sweet - like medicine.
Taking a Dose of My Own Medicine
Co-working with my husband who is also a small business owner of a fly fishing charter service, Current Culture Fly.
With Nicole Parker Consulting still in its first year, I am met repeatedly with what I’m calling “taking a dose of my own medicine. There is a distinct difference between a small business consultant telling you what to do, and one who practices what they preach.
With that, I’m holding myself to the same standards I teach:
Building systems before scaling
Protecting my advisory capacity
Revisiting my pricing and revenue structure almost weekly
Collecting and rooting into the data to drive decisions
Creating structured thinking time
Participating in focused co-working sessions almost every week right now is holding me to that flame.
If I’m advising founders to build sustainably, I need to build that way too. And building alongside others makes the work feel easier somehow.
What Is Tending the Threshold?
Tending the Threshold is a focused co-working series at Headquarters in Richmond, VA. It is structured, strategic co-working designed to help small business owners in Richmond to work on anything they need help with in their business.
The series offers:
Certified GrowthWheel advisor + frameworks and tools
Community of small business founders
Monthly 2-hour sessions to do the work
Quiet and comfortable co-working venue
Focus on topics like:
Clarifying pricing and new offers
Strengthening financial systems
Prioritizing growth decisions
Protecting capacity, (no burn out here!)
Building systems
Marketing and customer acquisition
Who This Is For
If you are:
A creative founder
A micro business owner or side hustle
A product or service driven brand
A Richmond-based entrepreneur navigating growth
Ideating on a new business you want to launch
And you are searching for small business help in Richmond, Virginia, this series was designed for you.
Especially if you feel like you’re standing at a threshold of growth, operational complexity, or capacity strain and need something to help you move out of overwhelm each month.
Why Local Context Matters
Business advice is everywhere and even more complicated with the advent of AI.
Local, regional, and community context matters. Founding a new business alone comes with nuance of steps and complexity based on locality. Who better to consult than folks who have been through the process before right here in our community?
