Rural speakers

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…

When I started as administrator for a city of 993 people (yes, we were a city under Oklahoma law), I was frustrated trying to make sense of the list of properties the municipal government owned. I sat down with the list, a town map and a highlighter, deciphered the legal descriptions from the list and…