AVL Biz Weekly — May 20–26: She Owns It AVL, Get More Local Customers & Future Islands

Welcome to AVL BIZ Weekly—your local cheat sheet for what’s happening in Asheville’s small business + creative scenes.

Each week: hand-picked events, marketing ideas that actually work, and a little local flavor to keep things fun.

My name's Jason and I'm writing this (connect with me here).

Hey friends,

This week is very “leave the house and talk to people” coded.

We’ve got women business owners gathering at Ginger’s Revenge, coworking hangs for remote workers trying to remember how motivation works, a Small Business Appreciation Night at the Asheville Art Museum, and resilience workshops for anyone currently holding their business together with coffee and Google Docs.

On May 27, my friend Amber Jenkins from The Creative Social and I are running a $27 workshop for local service businesses: Get More Calls From Local Customers. Google Business Profile, social credibility, and follow-up that converts — plus a free 15-minute Local Lead Audit for every attendee. Details below.

Outside the business world? Memorial Day weekend is doing Memorial Day weekend things.

Pack Square gets artsy, roses take over the Arboretum, yoga moves into the Museum galleries, Seussical hits Wortham, and Asheville once again proves it can turn literally anything into an art event.

Let’s get into it.

📋 On Deck

• Featured Workshop: Get More Calls From Local Customers — with Amber Jenkins (The Creative Social) and Jason De Los Santos (Pixelated Stories). May 27 at Ernest Co-Working.

• Business Events: Women-owned business conversations, coworking hangs, small biz night at the Museum, and resilience workshops.

• Marketing Quickies: What to do after you meet someone so the relationship doesn’t die in your notes app.

• Fun Stuff: Memorial Day art, roses, yoga, Seussical, craft fair finds, immersive art installations, and Art Deco architecture tours.

• Bands & Shows: Josh Ritter, Future Islands, Smoakland, Highland Meadow shows, Ginger’s Revenge jams, and more.

🙋 Want your biz featured in front of a few really smart AVL business owners? Email me for details

🗓️ Business Events

• 🗓️ She Owns It AVL — Wed, May 20 · 6–8 PM (Ginger’s Revenge, Riverside Tasting Room)

  This month’s featured guest is Tera Pruett, founder of Unstoppable AVL, talking strength, resilience, confidence, and building from the inside out. A strong pick for women entrepreneurs, creatives, professionals, and anyone looking for a room with more substance than “so what do you do?”

• 🗓️ Getting Unstuck: A Practical Workshop for Remote Workers — Thu, May 21 · 3 PM (Plant Bar, South Slope)

  Local coach Kai Northcott leads a practical workshop on getting unstuck, finding motivation, and actually starting the work that matters. For remote workers, freelancers, and anyone who has ever opened their task list and immediately decided the dishes were urgent.

• 🗓️ Small Business Appreciation Night — Thu, May 21 · 5–9 PM (Asheville Art Museum)

  Bank of America presents Small Business Appreciation Night during the Museum’s Third Thursday, with gallery access, hands-on creativity, and live music from Jackson Grimm and Clint Roberts of Holler Choir from 6–8 PM. Small business owners get a reason to leave the laptop and pretend they are cultured for an evening.

• 🗓️ Resiliency Champions — Tue, May 26 · 9 AM–4 PM (Goodwill Training Center, Asheville)

  Resources for Resilience hosts a free in-person workshop for past Reconnect participants who want tools to build resilience in their organization or community. Good one for team leaders, nonprofit folks, HR-adjacent people, and anyone still holding Western NC together with coffee and shared Google Docs.

Hosting something cool?

📬 Hit reply and tell me what you think. Or share an event!

💡 Marketing Quickies

Your Google Business Profile is either working for you or against you right now. There's no neutral.

1. Send the “good meeting you” message before the day ends.

   After an event, send a short note while the conversation is still warm. One sentence referencing something specific. Here’s your info if it’s useful.

   The goal is to be remembered without being a pitch.

2. Tag people by context, not just name.

   In whatever you use to track contacts — CRM, notes app, spreadsheet — add one quick tag when you meet someone.

   Examples: Met at She Owns It / Interested in website help / Follow up in June / Potential podcast guest

   You won’t remember the context three weeks from now. I always add the date we met, how/where we met and something interesting about the person

3. Build one 30-day follow-up loop.

   The Show Up and Follow Up System works best when the next touch is already scheduled.

   Simple version:

   Day 1: “Good meeting you”

   Day 7: Send a useful link, intro, or resource

   Day 30: Check in with one specific question

   Most good conversations die because nobody planned the next step.

   Want a follow-up system that runs while you’re doing everything else?

   Reply to this email and we’ll help you build one.

Local Spotlight

Story

Kimi McBurney didn't do well in science in high school. She's quick to say so. These days she can explain what an alpha particle is, why it behaves differently from a gamma ray, and why that distinction matters when a homeowner's test just came back at 169 pCi/L — the highest radon reading ever recorded in Buncombe County. She recently walked into a home and found a physicist on the other side of the conversation. She held her own.

Western North Carolina is an EPA Level 1 radon zone. More than half of homes here test at or above the recommended action level of 4.0 pCi/L — a product of the region's mountain geology, which concentrates the gas in ways flatter terrain doesn't. Radon is colorless, odorless, the second leading cause of lung cancer in the country, and the only way to find out if it's in your home is to test. Most homeowners in WNC have never thought about it.

Kimi co-founded Carolina Radon in 2023 with her partner Zeke after years in the home inspection world, where radon kept showing up in transactions and buyers kept having no idea what to do with it. The fix, she found, is less complicated than people expect. Radon is an alpha particle — it can't penetrate skin, so the only hazard is inhalation. A ventilation system pulls the gas from under the house before it enters the air. Carolina Radon guarantees their work. North Carolina doesn't require certification for any of this. They're certified anyway. "Make sure you have a certified installer," Kimi says. "Even if you don't choose us."

Day in the Life

1. Favorite coffee or breakfast spot? Dripolator for coffee, Old Europe Pastries for quiche and pastries.

2. Fitness routine? Burn Boot Camp on Long Shoals in Arden, five days a week when she can make it. Free child watch — she recommends it to parents specifically.

3. First-time visitor to WNC? Biltmore Estate, Rocky's Hot Chicken Shack, 12 Bones for barbecue, and the Triple Falls hike at DuPont State Forest.

4. Nonprofits she supports? MANNA FoodBank, Habitat for Humanity, and Fairview Strong / Rebuild Haywood — still helping people rebuild from the storm.

Want to work with them?

Visit carolinaradon.com or find them on Instagram at @ashevilleradonmitigation.

Current offer:

Free radon testing for the first 50 homeowners who sign up — a $150 value. Offer runs through June 19, 2026, or until spots are gone. Sign up or call 828-214-5101

🎉 Fun Stuff Around AVL

• 🗓️ Electric Garden: An All-Ages Interactive Art Installation — Wed–Sun · 11 AM–6 PM (Third Room)

  Third Room’s daytime immersive art installation features augmented reality, laser graffiti, kinetic light sculptures, and visionary gallery art. Good option if your kid, your date, or your overstimulated creative brain needs something better than wandering Target.

• 🗓️ Slow Art Friday — Fri, May 22 · 12–1 PM (Asheville Art Museum)

  A slower, more relaxed way to experience art with guided looking and conversation. Basically the opposite of scrolling Instagram while your coffee gets cold.

• 🗓️ The Asheville-Blue Ridge Rose Society Exhibition — Fri–Sun, May 22–24 (The North Carolina Arboretum)

  More than 100 varieties of WNC-grown roses will be on display, with rose experts available for gardening tips and questions. Great for plant people, garden people, and people who buy plants with full confidence and then immediately Google “why is it crispy.”

• 🗓️ The Art of Yoga — Sat, May 23 · 9:30–11 AM (Asheville Art Museum)

  Yoga inside the Museum, paired with mindful looking in the galleries and tea afterward. Bring a mat, or borrow one there if your current mat is still living in your trunk from January.

• 🗓️ May Craft Fair — Sat, May 23 · 12–5 PM (Sweeten Creek Brewing)

  Nine local artisans and small business owners set up in the field at Sweeten Creek Brewing for an afternoon of handmade goods, beer, and casual browsing. Perfect for a late Mother’s Day gift, early Father’s Day gift, or “I blacked out and bought a mug” gift.

• 🗓️ Downtown Asheville Memorial Day Weekend Festival of the Arts — Sat–Sun, May 23–24 · 10 AM–5 PM (Pack Square Park)

  Pack Square fills with local and national artists for a free outdoor art festival over Memorial Day weekend. Jewelry, painting, glass, sculpture, and the full “I was just going to browse” danger zone.

• 🗓️Seussical the Musical — Fri–Sun, May 22–24 Wortham Center for the Performing Arts

  Asheville Performing Arts Academy brings a cast of nearly 70 to the stage for a family-friendly production of Seussical. Strong option for families, theater people, and anyone who can still hear “Oh, the thinks you can think” in their head from childhood.

• 🗓️ Sedges in the Wild and Garden — Sun, May 24 · 10 AM–12 PM Asheville Botanical Garden

  Botanist Gary Kauffman leads a class on native sedges, how to identify them, and why they matter in Southern Appalachian landscapes. It is niche, yes. But Asheville loves a niche.

• 🗓️ Asheville Art Deco Architectural Tour — Sun, May 24 · 2–5 PM Starts at Asheville High School

  A trolley tour celebrating 100 years of Douglas Ellington architecture, with stops at Asheville High, S&W Cafeteria, City Hall, First Baptist Church, and Ellington’s Chunns Cove home. For history buffs, architecture nerds, and anyone who has ever looked at City Hall and thought, “Okay, but why is it like that?”

🎧 Bands on the Horizon

• Josh Ritter — Wed, May 20 · 8 PM @ The Orange Peel

• Josh Ritter (day 2!) — Thu, May 21 · 8 PM @ The Orange Peel

• Well-Crafted Music Series with Kevin Smith — Wed, May 20 · 6 PM @ Highland Brewing Meadow

• Future Islands — Fri, May 22 · 8 PM @ The Orange Peel

• Meschiya Lake and the Mood Swingers — Fri, May 22 · 7 PM @ Highland Brewing Meadow

• Sit A Spell Celtic Session — Fri, May 22 @ Ginger’s Revenge

• Future Islands — Sat, May 23 · 8 PM @ The Orange Peel

• Elizabeth and the Workin’ Men — Sat, May 23 · 6 PM @ Highland Brewing Meadow

• Smoakland w/ special guests — Sat, May 23 · 9 PM @ Third Room

• Tasty Vibrations — Sun, May 24 · 2 PM @ Highland Brewing Meadow

• Jazz Jam Sundays — Sun, May 24 · 2:30 PM @ Ginger’s Revenge

• Asheville Jazz Orchestra Memorial Day Performance — Mon, May 25 · 2 PM @ Highland Brewing Meadow

• Woody Wood & Abe Reid — Mon, May 25 · 6 PM @ The Grey Eagle

• Woody Wood & Abe Reid — Tue, May 26 · 6 PM @ The Grey Eagle

That’s the week.

And if you know a business owner who should be in here, send them this email or tell them to check out AVL Biz Magazine.

See you around town,

Jason De Los Santos
Pixelated Stories Digital Marketing
(828) 585-4293