CEO'S CORNER

The Evolution of Rosie's List

The decade-long journey of what would become The Rosie Network began with a simple, yet grand idea: What if American consumers could easily locate and patronize verified veteran and military spouseowned businesses? How would that impact military families around the country?

I say 'simple' because who wouldn't support that idea, yet 'grand' because the work to bring Rosie's List to life was anything but simple After more than a year of interviewing hundreds of small business owners and working with the veteran who built the original search tool, Rosie's List was born. But, like many early-stage entrepreneurs, my vision and mission shifted. I recognized that it was not enough to provide a way to find these businesses, we needed to help them launch and grow. Eventually, that led to our national award-winning free training and mentoring program called Service2CEO, which graduates over a thousand transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses every year

While our core mission shifted, we continued to work on what our vision for Rosie's List should be: do we build an e-commerce site or remain an e-directory? One thing I've learned over the yearsthrough good times and bad - is when you approach any decision with a focus on how it will affect those you serve, the answer will show itself. Staying true to our core mission of empowering the next generation of military-connected small business owners, we chose to collaborate on the long-awaited relaunch of Rosie's List with Spouse-ly, a military spouse-owned e-commerce platform.

Today, the new Rosie's List is better than ever! We still verify military affiliation so you can shop with confidence, but we've also added features to benefit our member businesses, like an advanced geo-fencing search experience, making it easier to find and hire the right professionals and products to buy If you want to purchase a product, we provide a link to that vendor's shopping cart on Spouse-ly, which benefits everyone

Great things can be accomplished with a simple idea, but true impact only happens when we put others before ourselves

Stephanie Brown

CEO and Founder, The Rosie Network