Nobody can say Tara Patrick doesn't believe in herself.

The owner of Backroads Biker Leather Shoppe in Everly was told by a small business expert in 2006 that her store would never make it in a town with a population of 600. Fourteen years later, she's still laughing.

"He said I was stupid to do it in Everly and it wouldn't last six months," Patrick recalled. "He said, 'Don't you understand that location is everything for retail?' I laughed at him and said that he didn't understand bikers. If bikers have a reason to get on their motorcycle and ride somewhere, they'll go."

That theory has pr...