The Underdog

Every summer, downtown puts together a free concert series called Fridays After 5. If you're walking through King Commons after about 6:30 on a Friday in July, you'll hear the guitar before you ever spot who's holding it. It's usually the same handful of people, playing a set for five folks the same way they'd play it for five hundred.

At FoundersForge we spend most of our time talking about businesses that look like businesses: a product, a storefront, a menu. But entrepreneurship takes a lot of forms here, and it's easy to forget that when you live where we live. We're a couple hours from Nashville and about forty-five minutes from Bristol, the birthplace of country music. Growing up around here, wanting to make a living playing music isn't some far-off fantasy. People do it, right here in Northeast Tennessee, without ever needing to move to either place, something we've written about before.

Trevin Sluss is one of the ones doing it. He's built songwriting and live performance into a full-time job, running it the way you'd run any small business: quotes, invoices, marketing, a brand, no team. When I sat down with him, he didn't dress up how much work sits underneath all of it. He didn't dress up how much he still loves it, either.

A Real Slice of the Economy

Tennessee's music and entertainment industry adds an estimated $6.4 billion to the state's GDP every year and employs roughly 15,000 musicians, songwriters, and producers. Nashville accounts for most of that, but not all of it.

Closer to home, the Northeast Tennessee Music Census, a 2024 study covering our eight counties and Bristol, found that musicians in this region generate $75.9 million in annual earnings and support more than 500 full-time positions, all without a Nashville-sized industry behind them. The same study found something that lines up exactly with how Trevin runs things: most working musicians here handle their own booking, publicity, and merchandise, because there isn't much local industry infrastructure to do it for them.

Basically, if you're a working musician in Northeast Tennessee, you're already running a business, whether you meant to or not. Trevin is a pretty clean example of exactly that.

Growing Up Surrounded by Sound

"It's been a part of my life since I can remember," he told me. "Not necessarily playing it, but listening to it."

His family listened to southern gospel growing up. Not really his thing, he said, laughing about it a little. But even as a kid he couldn't help picking out the melodies hiding inside those songs anyway. His mom and grandma leaned more toward AC/DC and Earth, Wind & Fire, and that groove is what he really fell for. Somewhere around age five or six, once he understood what music actually was, he decided that was the plan. What the plan looked like kept changing over the years. The decision didn't.

"Ever since I was, you know, maybe five or six years old, when I understood what music was, that's what I wanted to do. Ever since I was a little kid." Trevin Sluss, musician, Johnson City, TN

His first real gig was eighth grade, guitar, a church band. "It was awful," he told me, laughing. "Sounded really bad. But I fell in love with it."

College came next, ETSU, class of 2021. He minored in the bluegrass program and liked that part fine. The rest of school, not so much. Support for the music plan was thin too, and he doesn't hold it against anyone. Most people hear "I'm going to do music full-time" and think it sounds like a bad idea.

"When has, you know, not taking risks ever been coexistent with a successful person or career?" Trevin Sluss, musician, Johnson City, TN

So out of college he worked a day job, played every gig he could get, and gave himself two years to build up enough consistency to walk away from it.

The Day He Quit to Make It Work

Three years ago now, a little over, he quit. Music wasn't covering the bills yet. He quit anyway, on purpose, so it would have to.

"That really pushed me to get gigs so I could eat and pay for rent. So that was the turning point, was quitting, for sure." Trevin Sluss, musician, Johnson City, TN

In 2026, This Is a Business

People still picture a musician as somebody who just shows up with a guitar. That's not what it looks like anymore, and it's definitely not what it looks like for him. It's a one-person business, no employees, no manager, which means every part of it, the booking, the invoicing, the marketing, the actual playing, runs through him.

"I'm booked 29 times in July," he told me. "There's two days that I don't have music in July, and I'm really sleepy." Around the actual shows there are rehearsals, quotes to send out for new bookings, and content to film for social media whenever he can grab a minute, because there's no time to sit in front of a phone for two hours a day in the middle of wedding season.

Winter looks nothing like that. "Everybody wants to save money for Christmas, so nobody wants to book musicians," he said. Those weeks turn into building content, updating the website, ordering more business cards, sending emails, trying to network. Different scale, different tasks, same amount of work.

The trade-off is constant. Every hour spent filming or editing is an hour not spent rehearsing or emailing a venue about a booking. In July, with 29 dates on the calendar, that math doesn't favor content, so the camera waits. In January, with half the month open, it flips. No two weeks look alike, and that's just what running the business looks like when you're also the product.

Social Media Leveled the Playing Field

"I think that anybody can be successful using social media if you use it the right way," he told me. There's no single right way exactly, but there's a path: consistency, a real brand, marketing that's a lot easier when you have a team behind you. He doesn't have a team, so it's something he has to make time for on top of playing the gigs that actually pay the bills.

He's watched it level the playing field in a way that wasn't possible before. "You can live in a city that has nothing to do with music, a small town of 400 people, and still make it," he said, "because someone's going to see your reel." A handful of videos got him the following that's now bringing him gigs outside of Johnson City entirely.

He'll be the first to say he's not great at keeping it up, though. "I'm better at playing gigs than I am being consistent on social media," he admitted. He'll get on a good run, posting every week for a month or two, watch it pay off, and then let it slide. He knows it's the part of the business that needs the most work. He's just honest that it's still a work in progress.

Why He Stayed in Johnson City Instead of Nashville

Ask him about Nashville and he doesn't dance around it. "There's such a competitivism and an oversaturation in Nashville," he said. "All of these musicians are cutthroat. They're trying to steal gigs from other musicians." Johnson City isn't a music industry city, not yet anyway, and it's growing. But it doesn't carry that same edge. If a local artist can't take a gig, they hand it to a friend instead of sitting on it.

He played a show last week at 1976 Flowers downtown, alongside five or so other local vendors, and nobody was elbowing for space. People were sending customers to the booth next door instead.

"It's not a competitivism thing. It's familial, almost, in a way, and I think that's beautiful. I love that about Johnson City." Trevin Sluss, musician, Johnson City, TN

It's not only musicians who feel this way about downtown, either. Nearly every business owner we've sat down with for this blog says some version of the same thing. Calli Rose had Some Apparel hand her the storefront and a set of "business parents" to help her run it. Maren Close of Lazy Lady Bakery built her wholesale accounts off relationships, not competition. Sentimental Journey is 130 small businesses sharing one roof instead of fighting each other for foot traffic. That's the water Trevin's swimming in.

He doesn't hedge on this, either. In his words, Johnson City is one of the most unique places to be an entrepreneur, musician or otherwise, because of how much room there is here to fail and try again. He points to how many local businesses have opened in just the last few years and are already thriving, The Generalist among them, along with a wave of coffee shops downtown that all seem to be doing well at once. Watching that happen around him is part of what convinced him he didn't have to leave.

"There's so much freedom here. There's freedom to mess up and keep trying." Trevin Sluss, musician, Johnson City, TN

It's a big reason he's still building his career here instead of in Nashville. He thinks it might genuinely be easier to make it in Johnson City, and cheaper.

Prepare Your Field for the Rain

Ask him for the one thing he'd want a young musician to know, and he doesn't talk about marketing or money. He tells a story about two farmers.

"There's two farmers in a village, and the only way they provide for their family is through their crops. A drought comes through for months and months, and nothing's growing. They start praying for rain, really praying. One farmer goes out and sows seed on this dry, barren land anyway. The other one just stays in the house and keeps praying. That night, it pours. The farmer who planted wakes up to a field that's about to take off. The other one wakes up to a field of mud he can't do anything with." Trevin Sluss, musician, Johnson City, TN

He goes back to that story on the days he doesn't feel like filming content, or rehearsing, or sending one more email asking someone to let him play.

"I can hope and I can pray and I can want my career goals to happen. But if I don't go out and prepare myself, none of that's going to happen." Trevin Sluss, musician, Johnson City, TN

Three years ago he quit a job with nothing lined up but grit and a few gigs on the calendar. Now he's booked 29 nights in July, sending his own invoices, filming his own content, turning down more work some months than he takes. Wanting it got him in the door. Showing up for it, gig after gig, is what's kept him there.

Follow him on Instagram to keep up with where he's playing next.

Every day, we walk the aisles of Kroger, Publix, Walmart, or Earth Fare and mindlessly place food in our carts. We don't think about the farmer who took out a second mortgage to buy seed for this round of crops, or the one whose fields just got wiped out by flooding. The food shows up on the shelf, and that's usually where our thinking about it stops.

Mama's Grocery wants to change that. Ariel and Zach White are opening a neighborhood bulk grocery store this year at 413 W. Walnut Street, a walkable, one-stop shop where you can buy flour, honey, laundry detergent, and produce, and know whose hands it passed through to get there.

I sat down with Ariel to talk about the name, the leap from software into groceries, and what it's like watching a bank account start to drain before you've sold a single scoop of anything.

Where "Mama's Grocery" Comes From

The name is about as literal as it gets. "I'm a mama, and it's my grocery store!" Ariel told me. She and Zach wanted something that felt comfortable and inviting, a name that signals what they're actually trying to build: a place to feed their community.

Ariel grew up going to a Piggly Wiggly in a small town in North Georgia. It wasn't an overwhelming experience, she said, because there were just a couple of options for each item her family needed. The produce came from a farm stand, and Ariel grew up alongside the kids of the farmers who grew it. "Knowing where your food comes from builds a different connection with both your community and the items you're purchasing," she said.

Leaving Software Before It Leaves Her

Ariel has spent almost eight years in the software industry, work she's genuinely enjoyed. But 2026 has been a hard year to feel settled in tech. According to tracking from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI has already been cited in more than 87,000 layoffs this year, 22% of every job cut announced, blowing past the roughly 55,000 layoffs blamed on AI in all of 2025 combined. A running tracker of AI-tied layoffs by company puts Oracle's cuts alone at 21,000 jobs, Amazon's at 16,000, with Microsoft, Meta, and IBM not far behind, all while pouring money into the same technology doing the cutting.

Ariel's job isn't one of the ones eliminated, at least not yet. But watching an entire industry reorganize itself around a technology that's replacing the kind of work she does was enough to make her rethink what she wanted her career to look like. She's not the only one thinking that way.

"While I don't believe my position is in jeopardy at this time, the direction of the industry no longer aligns with my values. I don't want to stay in it long enough to hate it." Ariel White, co-owner, Mama's Grocery

The same uncertainty pushing people out of tech is pushing plenty of them into business ownership. Entrepreneurs launch new ventures about 67% more often in the months right after a layoff than before one, AI-driven cuts included. More than a million Americans started a small business last year, and interest keeps climbing: 43% of Gen Z say they're considering starting one this year, more than double the rate of Gen X. There are now 36.2 million small businesses in the U.S., employing close to 46% of the private-sector workforce. A career built on being irreplaceable feels less certain than it used to. A career built on something you care about is starting to look like the safer bet.

The idea for a grocery store had been sitting in the back of Ariel's mind for years. This felt like the moment to act on it, not because she had to, but because she wanted to build something around what she's passionate about: feeding her community.

For now, she's running both. Zach keeps his current job as a builder, unless Mama's Grocery turns out to be, in Ariel's words, "wildly successful." Ariel is working her remote position through the build-out, and once the doors open, she'll run the shop during Zach's business hours, with him joining her after his shifts.

As more people step into this era of entrepreneurship, it's worth remembering success doesn't look the same for everyone. For some, success is making enough to live comfortably. For others, it's building a multimillion-dollar company. Either one is fine. It's less about the size of your valuation and more about whether the work gets you closer to happiness, security, and freedom in your own life.

The Paperwork Is the Scary Part

Ask Ariel what's been hardest about starting a business, and it's not what you'd expect. The space was easy. She knew exactly where she wanted to be, and she got it. The money was there to start. What keeps her up at night is the paperwork.

"Getting the business license, establishing the LLC, and getting the permits to operate have been relatively easy to do but are the most anxiety-inducing part of the process," she said. "I don't want to believe that I have everything in order and find out months down the line that I've done something wrong."

She's working through it with a mentor, who's talked her off the ledge more than once.

"It's not the end of the world. There are people who do it wrong on purpose, and I am not one of those people. Just fix it and move on." Ariel's mentor, on paperwork anxiety

Now that planning is behind them and the build is underway, Zach's background as a builder is carrying a lot of the weight. "I have all the confidence in the world that the build will be done right and on budget," Ariel said. "He's very good at this part, and we're very lucky that he speaks that language."

How Bulk Shopping Actually Works

If you've never shopped bulk before, here's the rundown Ariel gave me:

A few things Ariel wants first-timers to know: you can't mix items in one jar, and there's a "clean scoops" bin and a "dirty scoops" bin so nothing gets cross contaminated. Bins and scoops get sanitized regularly. If you don't have your own container, Mama's Grocery keeps donated jars on hand.

And you don't have to commit to a full container of something you've never tried. "There's no shame in a $0.50 purchase," Ariel said. "We would rather ring you up for pennies than for you to get something that you hate and feel stuck with it."

If you get stuck mid-aisle, she has one piece of advice: "Just turn around and cry for help with your eyes, and I'll come rescue you."

A Store You Can Walk To

Mama's Grocery sits on W. Walnut Street, between the Tree Streets neighborhood, downtown, and ETSU. Ariel expects her closest customers to be people who can walk or bike in, or who pass by on Roan Street or State of Franklin on their way across town.

The nearest comparable stores are in Abingdon, Knoxville, Burnsville, and Asheville, towns people already drive out of their way to reach for refill shopping. Johnson City has specialty markets and plenty of big box chains, but nothing like this close to home. "What we don't have is a one-stop shop in a neighborhood market," Ariel said.

What's Landing on the Shelves

Ariel and Zach have been showing up everywhere, at the ARC&D farm tour, at local markets, meeting farmers and makers face to face. The response caught them off guard.

"We've had an overwhelming amount of messages from local farmers, makers, and bakers who are excited about the shop," Ariel said. They already have offers for almost every item they intend to sell, and they're now putting together a vendor packet and application to keep it all organized.

Where they can't source locally yet, Ariel wants that gap to be visible too, not hidden. "We want to show you where it came from and why we chose it, until we can find someone who is making it closer to home."

More Than a Grocery Run

What Ariel is really after goes beyond the shelves. She wants Mama's Grocery to be a place where neighbors talk to each other, and where people leave knowing more than they walked in with. That's why she and Zach are planning workshops on canning, pickling, foraging, and cooking, teaching people how to use what they're buying, not just ring it up.

It's a small shift, but it changes the relationship. You're not just picking up flour, you know the mill it came from and maybe how to bake with it better than you did last week. "We want to learn together and eat together," Ariel said.

Ariel and Zach are conservatively aiming to open by Thanksgiving, with hopes of getting there sooner. The first week will be a soft opening with limited hours, mostly so Ariel can talk to people and learn what to stock before a bigger grand opening, possibly a block party with other shops on W. Walnut and downtown.

Ask Ariel what she wants the store to feel like walking in, and she doesn't hesitate: home. A place where whatever you grab off the shelf is backed by people standing right there behind it.

Ariel carried this idea for years while she built a career in something else entirely. Now there's a building on W. Walnut Street, a bank account that's about to start draining, and farmers already lined up to fill the shelves.