As Deb Brown and I drove away from the small town we had just visited, we talked about something that the town was missing. It wasn’t one specific business or an amenity. It was a characteristic. It was hustle. We didn’t see that entrepreneurial drive we’d both noticed other places. There were businesses and entrepreneurs…
This week at SaveYour.Town, we’re sharing how to take big empty buildings and divide them up for multiple small businesses. One model is co-working spaces, which offer shared office and workspace. Then our friend Jon Swanson sent us an article on rural churches doing innovative things, including one doing a co-working space. This seems like…
There have been too many years of disinterest and disinvestment in rural America and at times I grow weary of defending the value of the rural place I call home to a national audience. I have read multiple articles about the rural underclass and the poverty that plagues our landscape from Bloomberg Business, NY…
Guest Post by Deb Brown When I visited Decatur County, Iowa, several people said that wanted a brewery. They talked about the big barriers in their way: finding the right building, the right funding, the right people. The big idea seems really hard this way. Why not start smaller? Start by using the Idea…
A small town official wrote in to ask me what business would work on empty land. This town had acquired an old industrial site with 30 acres of empty land in the middle of town. They’d like to build a city within a city, maybe a mix of residential and commercial. To get there,…
Brother released their small business trends for 2019, and two struck me as particularly good for small towns and rural businesses. Remote workforces will continue to rise Brother says: “2018 was a pivotal year for remote working and as we head into 2019 that is not going to slow down. Good talent is becoming…
Guest post by Jimi Coplen Executive Director, Development Corporation of Haskell, Texas In rural America, we know the “Brain Drain” is a real issue. We do a great job educating our kids, teaching them good work ethic, and turning them into amazing adults. Then, they leave for college, never to be seen again. Employers are left…
Necessity breeds innovation, and rural people have always been innovative. Working with limited resources makes us more creative thinkers. That’s just one of the reasons that small towns and rural places are the perfect testing grounds for the future. The infrastructure of future technology will be the result of rural testing. Drones and UAVs – perfect…
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