As you work to promote your small town, you’re looking for your special qualities. Marci Penner, executive director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, walks us through the eight rural culture elements. Using this framework, any town of any size can answer the question, “what is there to see or do here?” Read more about the…
One more thing. Never be afraid to make a mistake. Sometimes a “good mistake” becomes someone elses big discovery and innovation and contribution to the world. Many of the things discovered during the past 100 years came not because someone was out to discover them but because someone was trying to do something else and…
Make it easy for your people to serve customers. They shouldn’t have to say, “Don’t tell anyone I did this for you.” Instead, be the Ritz-Carlton. Each employee is given an individual, daily budget to create a wow experience for a customer, or for “service recovery.” (That’s to fix, or even over-fix, an error or…
The old definition of success for rural counties was growth. But growth frequently means more problems, high land prices, loss of shared values, etc. So if you are growing, you aren’t happy. If you aren’t growing, you’re stagnating, so you’re not happy either. So no one is happy. But the new definition of success may…
More rural and small town folks are getting on Twitter. As I get to speak to more and more groups about it, I think we need a special guide to link you up with some friendly faces on Twitter and some resources to help you get started. Like a bus full of friends to show…
At the Rural Partners of Michigan, I met some wonderful folks. Maybe you saw some of the live-tweets with the tag, #ruralconf. Together, we launched a whole new group of Twitter users and social network participants. Here are the folks from the conference who I’ve found so far: AlHooper / Allan Hooper, conference chair BL5GR7…
When I saw what an exciting thing the Third Thursday downtown in Hutchinson, Kansas, was, I grabbed my cell phone, and Jim Seitnater, the Downtown Development Director for Hutchinson, and did a quick interview. I admit, the quality of my cell phone video is awful, but the content is terrific, so there is a…
Carl’s Bar had a long history in Hutchinson, Kansas. Then an upstart new owner, Dan Heimerman, who moved back home, moved it to a new location, and revived a local tradition. While on the #Hutch blogger tour, I got a minute of Dan’s time to talk about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Dan…
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