Rural speakers

Deb Brown just told me that “cohort based learning” is trending according to Trends.co. They said learning in a group leads to 80-90% higher completion rates than learning alone. I’ve seen similar numbers before.  So if you want people in your town to learn more about the Idea Friendly Method or any topic at all, start a…

When I share the Survey of Rural Challenges with people, about half the time someone will ask, “How do you define rural?” I don’t. I let you decide if you’re rural. Whether you live in the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK or another country, we all face some common challenges. In those different countries, different states…

Back during the spring of 2020 in Irvine, Kentucky, for awhile most everything was closed and folks were staying home as much as possible. Your community too, probably. Remember those feelings of uncertainty and isolation, maybe loneliness? That’s what they felt in Irvine, too. Then somebody went up the hill and turned on the star….

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….

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…