Glenn Muske wrote Your Small Business Needs a Sign. Ouch! This really hit home for me. Our store sign was damaged by wind and hail, and we left it there for way too long because it seemed like such a big job to do anything. Too many questions: how much will it cost? Which big city…
One of the limits we deal with as small town businesses is our suppliers. Rural retail businesses depend on wholesale suppliers for inventory, manufacturers need raw materials and restaurants need food to cook. Then we all have basics, like cash register tape, circuit breakers, and those 8′ long light bulbs you can’t seem to…
“Becky….we are looking at installing a downtown wifi area. What are your thoughts on that? I think it is awesome but I know I am going to get….’oh, sure…now the development corp is going to supply free wifi to people! They can pay for their own!’” Angie Schmidt Benz Moffit, North Dakota Here are four…
What is being in business all about? I got my first answer from Paul Hawken, in his book Growing a Business. He said he kept working for the time when he’d get his business running like it should, and there wouldn’t be any problems. He wanted that magic state with the business running smoothly…
I operate with a set of assumptions about rural places and small towns. I want to share them with you so you’ll know what I’m assuming whenever I talk with you. (Yes, I know what happens when you assume. Call them basic beliefs instead of assumptions, if you prefer.) When I tell you that…
Twice recently, the question has come up: who is going to buy the stores in my town when their owners retire in a few years? The answer is no one, unless you start growing your people. In small towns, this is a pressing question. If you lose a key business because the owner can’t…
Every retail store in a small town has slow days, times when you know you just won’t have many customers. One of your fellow readers wrote in with this tip for slow days in retail stores: I run a clothes shop in a small town in Oviedo in the north of Spain. I never…
Beauty salons. Even really small towns probably have one. But when was the last time an economic developer considered them as important business development tools? I was speaking to the Northwest Oklahoma Workforce Board about the 8 Innovative Rural Business Models. When I got to the Business Inside a Business model, my own local…
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