Donald Hawkins, a Leawood entrepreneur, combines his experience of working with small businesses with a frustration to find local resources in new markets to develop his latest startup, CitySmart.

“People will typically have more love for their hyperlocal market, the city they live in, more than everything else. And I learned that from working with businesses, they like that connection — it’s kind of what started everything,” said Hawkins. “It was a pain point for businesses and then also my wife getting upset because I ended up making her move twice.”

The application’s primary purpose is to provide local consumers with a direct link to businesses in their community. The secondary purpose is to provide umbrella business organizations, such as a chamber of commerce or municipality, a resource for engaging local businesses with an opportunity to better reach their customers.

“The goal is to help build a more vibrant community,” said Hawkins.

CitySmart is licensed to a specific city through a chamber of commerce or other business association for an average one-time cost of $2,500.

The licensee is responsible for populating the app with local businesses through a pay-to-play model; the typical cost to a business is $100 a month. Presenting an affordable alternative to advertising, the app provides a business with a profile page featuring intuitive tools that simplify a consumer’s access to the business.

According to Hawkins, the game-changer is the ability to push notifications to consumers through the app.

“The same audience that [a business] built on other platforms, if they get those customers to transfer or either add their profile from whatever CitySmart platform they connect to every day, we allow that business to push one notification to every single person that they’re connected to,” said Hawkins.

An unintended outcome of the app’s intuitiveness is for the licensee, especially municipalities, to push notifications related to safety or warnings.

Consumers can learn about a local CitySmart app via businesses that promote its use.

Hawkins’ hope is that the app brings people together.

“We have all these apps that allow people to just interact with people virtually as opposed to in person,” he said. “What we want CitySmart, the platform, to be used for is to get people out to explore their city.”

CitySmart plans to launch The Leawood Guide in April and is in talks with Olathe, Overland Park and Gardner-Edgerton.

Learn more or schedule a demo at GoCitySmart.com.