When Deb Brown and I spoke at the RuralX Summit, one of the ideas we mentioned was the tiny business village, where businesses pop up inside of storage sheds in Tionesta, Pennsylvania. Dylan Fulton and Camden Breitling, high school students from Miller, South Dakota, heard that idea and ran with it. Together with some supportive…
Seems like every rural downtown has a few: empty buildings or buildings used for storage. Those empty buildings are actually a potential advertising tool. Look at these examples that Vienna Lee showed me in Elkhart, Kansas. Both buildings are empty, with only the front windows used to advertise other businesses. The hardest part may be…
Melissa W. asked: What types of businesses would work in very small communities – less than 100, less than 250, less than 500? No matter what kind of business you want to start in a really small town, start small. Use the Innovative Rural Business Models (Tiny, Temporary, Together, Trucks and Trailers) to build up…
Working where you have a view of nature makes you more productive. There’s a business idea in that. One company is creating and renting out tiny offices in natural settings. They’re all decked out with wifi and their own solar power. So far, it’s only in Europe. Sounds like a winner for a small…
A young man approached me at a conference last month, trying to figure out how to get started on his big idea. He’d like to start a maker factory in Alberta, Canada. He can picture it filling thousands of square feet downtown with maker equipment, tools, specialized workspaces, and room to grow. But he…
How can local businesses build more sales through social media? Just ask for requests, then answer them. Your fellow reader Julie Barr wrote in with this example she spotted: Hi Becky, I knew you would appreciate how our local liquor store took to social media to increase their business! Here’s what they did: The…
By H. E. James, MBA Rural businesses occupy a unique place in their communities. If you own one, you know that you have a corner on your market while possibly having a market on the corner. This is especially the case for niche businesses like real estate agents. In small towns, there is unlikely…
Rural and small town businesses aren’t limited to the downtown mom-and-pop stores or the businesses recruited into the industrial park any more. In fact, rural businesses today don’t really have to look like any of the traditional business models for small towns. The traditional way to go into business in a small town was to…
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