From sweeping the floors of a loading dock to owning his own multimillion dollar company, Nick Delgado knows what it means to build a successful business from the ground up. One of the most important parts of his achievement? His family.

Years before farmyard fowl and humans would begin jiving to the infectious tune of Louis Jordan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens,’ the founders of Miller Poultry bought a small farm. And with food ethics concerns and allergy issues on the rise, it helps to know that there are U.S. chicken producers like this.

Sweet, succulent, nutritious Medjool dates are the pride of Morocco, where they have a history of cultivation stretching back thousands of years. However, happily for North American date fans, horticulturists brought Medjool shoots to the U.S. in the 1920s, and today, the descendants of these trees thrive under the watchful eye of the Bard Valley Date Growers Association. Once harvested, the dates sorted, graded, and packed by Datepac and shipped around the world.

In 1978, Frank Bonamie, an enrolled member of the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York, set out building pallets in a barn in Spencer, New York. His first client was Kodak and he experienced so much success that it changed the trajectory of his business and his future.

Since 1965, Swiss Automation has been a supplier of precision turned components, and its work has been rewarded with contracts that extend to the aerospace, defense, medical device, firearms, and hydraulics markets. We spoke with National Sales Director Tom Irvin to find out more.

With customers in the chemical, water, and food processing industries – not to mention aerospace, medical and other high-stakes sectors – there is no margin for error. Jrlon recognizes this and continues to deliver parts, solutions and service of the highest quality, doing so by growing its capacity and expertise across materials and manufacturing processes.

In 2012, David Campbell co-founded a company in the little province of Prince Edward Island, Canada called Origins Xtractions Limited that focused on making equipment for the nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries. At the time, cannabis was not legal, but he suspected that someday it would be.

For industries like mining, power generation, steel mills, pulp and paper, sand and gravel/aggregate and water treatment, downtime from equipment failure can be catastrophic. They turn to GPM, Inc., known worldwide for its reliable submersible and horizontal pumps, and the toughest of all, the GPM-Eliminator™.

The Marathon County, Wisconsin development corporation MCDEVCO has been around for forty-one years, and it is difficult to think of an entrepreneur here who has not been, in some way, influenced, encouraged, or helped by the corporation to follow through on their dreams of starting a new business. The organization was founded with the development and wellbeing of the economy in mind and works toward developing new companies, maintaining existing ones, and finding new ways to give entrepreneurs the tools to succeed by integrating of resources.

Oak Lawn, Illinois, is a village in Cook County that has become a site of burgeoning marketplace development in several sectors, especially since this publication’s last profile on the village in the February 2017 issue.

Where the two mighty river systems of the Mississippi and the Arkansas meet, with access all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, that’s where you’ll find the capable Port of Rosedale, doing business for American business.

Opportunity is in abundant supply in Logan County, Ohio, and leaders from all parts of the economy and community are coming together to make the most of the growth that follows – building a community that everyone can love.

Holmes County, Florida is on the brink of transformation into a center of everything sustainable and green, with the potential to make the rest of the nation sit up and take notice. Its slogan, ‘Green Gateway to the Beaches,’ certainly sums this up.

The northwest corner of Washington State along the Olympic Peninsula is surprisingly rural. With one road in, bridges that close access in 50 mph winds, and an erratic ferry, Clallam and Jefferson Counties can feel more like an isolated island than a peninsula. Now, opportunity knocks.

Arkansas is a unique place known for its diversified economy; as such, it is somewhat sheltered from the national ebbs and flows. The City of Conway is no different and has managed, through astute city and state planning, to develop into a successful hub of activity with advanced urban planning. Business in Focus spoke with Conway Area Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Jamie Gates to find out more.

The County of Midland, Michigan is a hub of business activity with a diverse range of small businesses, retail, manufacturers, and Fortune 500 companies. It is no wonder why the Midland Business Alliance (MBA) is one of the busiest groups in the county.

Nestled into the southern region of Wyoming is Sweetwater County, with its many points of interest, such as the start of the historical John Wesley Powell Expedition of the Green River that runs through Wyoming before joining the Colorado River system. The two largest cities in Sweetwater County, Rock Springs and Green River, host tens of thousands of people annually who have come from all over to take in the natural splendor of Sweetwater County – but there are also those who arrive to make this diverse and community-driven county their home and potentially, their place of business.

The Berkshires area, between Boston and New York in the state of Massachusetts, is steeped in American culture, history, and technology. It has gone through many changes but has always remained relevant, and this famous area is once again reinventing itself and blazing new trails.

When delegates arrive in Brookhaven on September 12 for its first-ever developers’ day, they will find a superb location with excellent transportation links, an educated workforce whose average age is just thirty-four, national and international corporations happy to call this home, and a detailed economic development plan that is looking ahead to 2034.

Believing in local businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit can become a matter of faith when the nation is doing its best to recover from an economic slump. During the 2008 recession, Mohave County had to believe in any businesses that came its way, simplifying its goals to help any business it could as well as overseeing the development of infrastructure.