A young man approached me at a conference last month, trying to figure out how to get started on his big idea. He’d like to start a maker factory in Alberta, Canada. He can picture it filling thousands of square feet downtown with maker equipment, tools, specialized workspaces, and room to grow. But he…
In addition to my articles here, I write a weekly newsletter called A Positive View of Rural. There’s no cost, if you’d like to sign up. Occasionally, I also write guest articles for other sites, and I want to be sure you get a chance to catch those as well. These are some of my recent…
Rural and small town businesses aren’t limited to the downtown mom-and-pop stores or the businesses recruited into the industrial park any more. In fact, rural businesses today don’t really have to look like any of the traditional business models for small towns. The traditional way to go into business in a small town was to…
When Google has you in the wrong place, it matters! Google Maps, Google Local, and mobile Google searches all share the same basic data, so if your address is wrong in one, it’s wrong in all of them. When I view the Google insights for my own business, it reports hundreds of people viewing my…
Seems like there’s been a lot of retirements announced in my small town newspaper lately. There’s usually an ad giving a profile of their career, their smiling photo, and details of the retirement reception. As I read the latest one, I thought it seemed like a shame. Here was the story of a well-qualified person,…
Sometimes, when someone is telling me about their town, they’ll say it. “We have nothing here! Nothing!” It bothers me. Surely you have something to work with? Des Walsh is a friend of mine from Australia who has strong rural ties. He told me about a village that had nothing. “Many years ago I…
It’s a fad you’ll be hearing about everywhere. It’s all about comfort, coziness and connectedness. It’s the subject of a rush of new books. It’s a fad, and it won’t last forever. But it’s also connected to larger trends in society that are good for rural. If we can just figure out how to say it….
What holds local businesses back from selling online? Local retailers have a lot of natural advantages in selling online. It’s part of being Rural OmniLocal, but several key challenges hold them back. This article is adapted from an interview I did with Bob Dunn. Hear the whole interview or read the transcript at BobWP.com The first…
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