The original WEST Company—Women’s Economic Self Sufficiency Training—was founded more than thirty years ago by an intrepid team of Mendocino County women. Today, the recently renamed West Business Development Center, has morphed into a Twenty-first Century no-cost small business consulting and training center that reaches every corner of our rural county. With dynamic educational programs and consulting for small businesses owned by all genders, WBDC is changing lives and helping our county’s economy to survive the usual dilemmas presented to owners of small businesses, along with unusual ones, like the pandemic, and turning paycheck-to-paycheck firms into sustainable, thriving enterprises.