People are happily using smart voice assistants more than ever. You know their names: Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana. It’s so easy (and fun!) to just say what you want, and your magical assistant orders it for you. Then it shows up at your doorstep, and you’re living in the future! This isn’t great for…
I was talking with a friend about finding work as an independent professional. He was talking about finding work speaking for corporate clients, and together we came up with these questions. I think these questions might work for rural professionals like you, too, so I wanted to share them. Who are the next…
Despite the headlines, what we are witnessing is not the death of all retail. Retail is splitting in two. This time, small retailers are the big winners. Future of Retail Webinar Deb Brown and I are making this Future of Retail the subject of our next webinar at SaveYour.Town. We’ll talk about the underlying consumer trend driving this…
As you plan out conferences you want to attend this year, here’s a new rule to consider for after the event: The 2-to-1 rule: Schedule two days for implementation for every one day of the conference. (I heard that from Marc Pitman, who said he heard it from Elizabeth McCormick. ) Your implementation days…
Too often, our planning starts from what we don’t have. We focus on what to improve, what we lack, what we messed up last year. My friend, educator Kristie Pretti-Frontczak suggested a strengths assessment instead. Here are her questions to kick off your thinking: What do you aspire to accomplish within the next year, within…
As you wrap up one year and prepare for the next, your business needs to do the same. You have some accounting tasks to reset and some backups to make. Must do Jan 1 These are the ones you can’t easily do later, so you don’t want to put them off. The good news:…
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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