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Every time I tell my friend Rob Hatch some new idea, he always asks, “What would that look like?” He wants to know how something would play out in the real world. When I explained Idea Friendly to him, of course he asked, “What would that look like?”  I came up with some comparisons of what…

Yes, I really do own a small town liquor store and a cattle ranch. It gives me a down-to-earth perspective. Besides that, I’ve been a city administrator for a town with a population under 1,000 and a nonprofit executive working the broad stretch of rural counties that no one else wanted. I’ve been an antiques…

Sometimes, when someone is telling me about their town, they’ll say it.  “We have nothing here! Nothing!”  It bothers me. Surely you have something good to work with?  Des Walsh is a friend of mine from Australia who has strong rural ties. He told me about a village that said they had nothing.  “Many years…

Deb Brown and I are getting ready to talk about how to fill up empty downtown buildings next week. And we’re up to the part about building owners who are a real pain in the neck. I’m sure you have some of these, too, so let’s talk about them.  Your fellow reader Rebecca Davis has…

Counting your empty buildings is the first step to filling them. And filling those empty buildings boosts the prosperity of your town: more businesses, more activity downtown, more people with jobs.  So how do you do that in a small rural town? We have a dozen ideas for you, all tested in small rural towns. …

You have this idea for a fun new event. You bring it up in the meeting, you’ve got ideas bouncing around, and people are excited. Then that one person who always likes to burst your bubble says it.  “What about liability?”  It’s like a stick they use to poke holes in all the best ideas. …

In the open discussion session at the RuralX Summit, I put forward the topic of serving multiple small towns. People from extension, regional banks, county-wide organizations and state-wide organizations all sat down to talk about the challenges and to make suggestions of what works when you have a lot of small towns to serve.  Here are…

Your small town is like a website; you may need to clear your cache to see the current version.  Your town is changing all the time. People move out, and people move in. People are born, and people die. Businesses start, and businesses stop. Staff turns over, and new people are working in different jobs….

I got asked to list a belief that holds back growth in rural areas. I said it was the idea that somehow we could go back to the way things used to be. You probably hear some variation of that one about twice a week. “I remember when this town was….” Or “We’ve always done…

Your downtown has an empty lot, right? Or a park where there used to be an empty lot?   I hear about a lot of towns turning old empty lots into small mini-parks or pocket parks. Sometimes, they put in a stage. There’s a tiny one with a tiny stage in my hometown of Alva,…

I saw a note in my notebook about spiral learning that I wanted to talk with you about. My note just said, “spiral learning – we tried that once, and it didn’t work.” I think I was talking with Rob Hatch when I wrote it down, so I probably stole the idea from him. Today…

When you picture rural people, what comes to mind? While the common view of the rural US is basically older white people, the demographics are shifting. Racial and ethnic diversity are increasing in rural America. “Racial and ethnic minorities made up 21 percent of rural residents in 2014….Overall rural population loss (which was -0.2 percent…