Well, what does it mean for a business to be neighborly? And how is that different from simply being a good business?

Well, that's a great question, and it's taken a few years for us to get to this point for this particular award.

Missouri Good Neighbor Week has been in place for five years, signed into law by the legislature, but it is heavily promoted in a program of the University of Missouri Extension.

In the past years, we've given awards every year for the most engaged neighbor.

and people nominate neighbors and we have a rubric criteria that we look at those.

Then starting three years ago, I believe, from some research that we had done, looking at how businesses that are creating social capital in their community and connected with their community, how that positively impacts their business and the community.

And so it came out of some of that research, some of that discussion, a workshop that we did at what we call our Creating Entrepreneurial Communities Conference every year.

Why can a local business be so important to the social life of a small town?

I'm curious, was there individuals when you were young that modeled good neighboring, or how did you kind of fall into it? Was it just an epiphany one day? Tell us.

It was a bit of an epiphany for me after I had fallen away from it.

I grew up in the small town of Ash Grove, Missouri, population 1,200.

Population 1,200 then, and I think population 1,200 now still.

And certainly we knew all of our neighbors growing up.

In fact, I mowed all of my neighbor's lawns.

That was probably one of my first, you know, big moments where I was thinking about neighbors.

What is your, where does your inspiration come from? Do you have a higher power or?