Many small towns face an incredibly expensive hurdle to saving and using their downtown buildings: code compliance costs. Most municipalities have adopted one of the standard international building codes. Which are, well, standard. And no matter who does the inspections or enforcement, everyone thinks their compliance person is over-zealous. I can relate. One smart move…
I’m not a big fan of business plan or startup competitions for small towns. I especially don’t like shark-style pitch competitions. I do love that you’re taking action to support more startups and entrepreneurs. I like that you’re including training and support for everyone who participates. (You are, aren’t you?) I can even live…
Next year, Kristina Vonberge’s town is going to face bridge construction and a major traffic detour. She asked for ideas during the discussion session of our SaveYour.Town webinar on the arts. People coming to town are going to have to detour 17 miles out of the way to get to town. How can she draw…
On a recent call, Janet Soto from Oregon picked out 6 themes from what I’ve written about lately that she felt were exactly what Oregon small towns most needed to hear as they work on entrepreneurship. There are positive trends for small towns. It doesn’t matter what the numbers say about us, what negative…
Waynoka, Oklahoma, had a lot of vacant run-down buildings in their downtown. In a town of 900 people, the prospects didn’t look great. At an all-class reunion, a group of alumni got together and decided to change that. They called themselves Project Waynoka, our friend and early contributor Jeanne Cole said. They started raising money….
When I saw this news article, the light went on over my head! This is such a great fit for small towns to boost their tourism. Norfolk County, Ontario, is hosting the culinary industry at the Terroir Rural Retreat. It will be the day after the major Terroir Symposium held in big city Toronto, almost…
By Becky McCray When you ask small town people what challenges they want help with, the responses provide an interesting insight into rural areas today. SaveYour.Town and SmallBizSurvival.com conducted a survey among subscribers and visitors to their sites during 2017, receiving 250 individual responses. Participants included 215 from the USA, 25 from Canada, and…
I love pop-up businesses. We’ve talked before about how to get building owners to host pop-up businesses in empty buildings. You can also host pop-ups inside existing businesses, but business owners have a slightly different set of concerns than building owners. First, let’s talk about who benefits. The pop-up business gets the chance to…
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