Takeaways for improving rural workforce: Bring together students, employers and multiple levels of education Build and document employee skills with micro-credentials Use apprenticeships to build skills, increase awareness of local job options Stitch together multiple programs to build your own workforce To add a new program in the public schools, hire dedicated program staff (at…
Building community in your small town sounds like a daunting task. It’s easy to get bogged down, thinking there’s too much to do, that you’d need too many permissions or it would take too much money. The reality of building community is it’s a change of mindset to Take Small Steps. 99% of the best…
Get better at connecting with people. Charles Duhigg’s new book Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection offers practical ways to hold deeper, more meaningful, less conflict-driven conversations. Given the divisiveness in small towns and rural communities today, these are essential community-building skills. It’s also relevant for rural small business owners who face a…
Promote local shopping with a letter to the editor or editorial Step by step instructions Ready to promote local shopping to more of your community? Try an editorial or a letter to the editor. You can submit this to your local newspaper, share it in any organization newsletters, and post it on social media! Step…
Part of our Global Entrepreneurship Week celebration Nov 13-19, 2023. Rural business people are trying a variety of different business models today, including pop-ups, shared buildings, businesses inside of other businesses and more. Entrepreneurs are using these smaller-scale experiments and tests to learn what works before making a huge investments. Learn how these Innovative Rural…
Part of our Global Entrepreneurship Week celebration Nov 13-19, 2023. Last year during entrepreneurship week, I saw lots of articles about what big cities can do to support entrepreneurship. Advice for small towns got left out. Again. So I wrote this entrepreneur week advice for small town economic developers and chambers of commerce, whether you…
Part of our Global Entrepreneurship Week celebration Nov 13-19, 2023. Find this and other Global Entrepreneurship Week events listed on the official calendar at GenGlobal. The old way to go into business Imagine all the work that goes into starting a new business. You need to be a good business manager, a marketing guru, and a…
I’m sharing notes from sessions and conversations at the International Economic Development Council annual conference in Dallas. First up: Retail! Lacy Beasley of Retail Strategies moderated a panel on retail real estate and development. While it was mostly big city stuff, several topics were relevant for smaller towns. How to convince a property owner to…
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