Straight from my email, meet Benjamin M. Martin. He’s looking for help with a small town restaurant: I live in Clarendon, Arkansas, population 1,700 or so (yes, seventeen hundred, lol). It’s in eastern rural Arkansas, commonly referred to as the Delta. The vast majority of people here are farmers and ‘old school’ where the fast…
What will be the biggest trends for rural small businesses in 2009? Anita Campbell of Small Biz Trends asked me. I came up with 11 trends to consider. I must admit that I didn’t make up the phrase, “the Atwoods effect.” That was my husband’s idea for trend #6: Many new residents will be of…
Karen Wylie is writing a terrific new rural small business blog, Backroads Business. Karen is the owner of The Blue Ridge Soap Shed in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She focuses on rural business, seasonal business and home business. Karen’s just getting started, but it’s well worth a look. Tell her I said hi!…
If you’ve started a new business during the past year, you may be wondering how to file your first tax return as a sole proprietor. Here’s the run-down for businesses in the USA. How do you know if you’re a sole proprietor? If you haven’t incorporated, you are a sole proprietor. If you formed an…
Success and failure is like the hero and the sidekick, they are companions. @TiaParker via Twitter @GlobalPatriot added, “And like the sidekick, failure is there to inspire success!” New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
I’m excited to announce a new contributor at Small Biz Survival, our friend Mark Hayward. We connected first on Twitter, and I’ve been impressed with his small business smarts. When he wrote the NO Cost (Six Step Small Business Social Media and Online Marketing Plan, I invited him to join us regularly. I’m glad I…
Imagine with me…. Every day, as you start work, you know exactly what you’ll work on first. And what comes after that, and what comes after that. Not a vague sense of a looming to do list, but an exact knowledge of the few most important things to work on today, in order. It’s do-able. When…
I saw this warning poster in a Dallas restaurant yesterday. My husband asked, “Does this still come up?” Yes, unfortunately, it still does. Right now, about 27 million worldwide people are forced laborers, slaves. Really. Sad, isn’t it? It’s so common, the State of Texas printed posters about it. Diana Scimone works all the time…
Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.
We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.
Meet our authors on the About page.
Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.
Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.
We partner with campaigns and organizations that we think best benefit rural small businesses.
Copyright © 2006–2026 Becky McCray • Site by Webdancers