In August, I was planning on visiting and presenting in local communities for the group What’s Next, East Kentucky?! Then awful flooding disrupted their lives and communities. In September, the Brushy Fork Leadership Institute invited me to their Leadership Summit in nearby Berea, Kentucky, to address flooding, disasters and recovery, and maybe resilience, too. They…
Whether you divide up one big building into lots of small retailers or you stack up some sheds to build a tiny business incubator, I love shared retail spaces. They generate prosperity for rural areas and small towns when they: give small business ideas an affordable foothold create experiences that draw customers in build on…
If you have trouble getting local businesses to say yes to cooperative projects, try Art on the Walls. Goffstown, New Hampshire, places local art on the walls inside local businesses, then changes it out once a quarter. No really, that’s it. We’ve seen this in lots of local coffee shops, but why stop there? Hit…
Those fancy placemaking masterplans are worthless if people won’t use the place. So here it is: the cheapest placemaking idea. Go sit on a bench or at a table downtown. Text a friend and invite them to join you. Just have a good time talking for awhile. Bonus points if you take a meal and eat there….
What if you didn’t ask people to be on committees? What if volunteering with you looked a lot more like joining a fun challenge? Can you imagine asking people to try something that might take a lot of effort, but just for a very short time? How can people put their own spin on the…
I have a monthly call with 2 international business friends where we share our work and mentor each other. Last week, one of them asked how we felt and what we planned for possible recession. Erno studies the stoic philosophy and says not to worry about this kind of issue. Focus on what you can…
Tony Guidroz, from San Saba, Texas, told me he was shocked when he found out there were 702 kids in the local school district, and more than 400 were considered “at-risk” either because of grades or language barriers. Tony wanted to give them more choices and more chances. So he shared his idea for a…
The most chosen small business challenge on our 2021 survey was … workforce. In 2019…also workforce. In fact, workforce issues have always been in the top 5 challenges every time we’ve run our survey. The percentage who pick the workforce as a challenge keeps going up, and in 2021 it was 64%. That’s almost 2/3rds. …
The first thing people ask us about remote workers is how to attract them. To find out what will make your town attractive, let’s look at what attracts people to your town right now. Every town has some people moving in every year, and we don’t notice them. We are far more aware of the…
Remote work was always the trend that was going to happen really soon. I can’t tell you how many years were declared the Year of Remote Work, yet the percentage of jobs done remotely barely changed. For rural people like you and me, distance work has always been our reality. Just as soon as any…
Old Way economic development assumes that it takes a lot of time, money and work just to get into business. Entrepreneurs need to have all their ducks in a row. They need to have great credit, deep pockets, good connections, be clean and sober, have strong business skills, no criminal record and a solid support…
Do you give awards? Lots of economic development organizations, chambers and other groups give awards for entrepreneurs and businesses. That’s an opportunity to show that you value people. At SaveYour.Town, Deb and I have been thinking a lot about including everyone in your community fairly. For example, Norfolk County, Ontario, gives the usual kind of…
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