My online friend Rick Wolff asked about folks who educate artists on marketing their work. He drew lots and lots of responses. I think artists are important businesses in small towns. We have plenty of creative and interesting people who paint, sculpt, make pottery, do all kinds of traditional arts, and that’s not counting our…
Download file | Duration: 3:20| Size: 3.1M One of the most common questions I hear from small town businesses that make a product is about wholesaling. Should they sell at direct markets? Should they sell to retailers at a discount? If so, how do they ever afford it? So I asked Donna Maria from Indie Biz…
Guest Post by Anne Pyburn Craig It happened to cities and towns throughout industrialized America in the late and middle years of the 20th century. Big employers who’d propped up local economies for decades downsized or left, creating a brutal ripple effect on smaller businesses. Three towns in the Hudson Valley of New York…
When you bring together the idea of pop up (temporary) businesses with the tiny house movement, you get tiny business villages. They make great sense for small towns and rural places. Garden Sheds Turned Incubator: Tionesta Market Village Tionesta, Pennsylvania, (population 500) had a lot that was vacant for 10 years after a fire…
I’ve got a new email technique to help those of you who get a crazy amount of email every day. It starts with a framework I’ve used before. Have your email sorted automatically, before you ever see it, into groups based on the frame of mind needed to act on it. Frame of mind might…
“Man, getting iPads was like discovering fire,” Lance Morgan, CEO of Ho-Chunk Inc., told me years ago. It’s still true that tablets can revolutionize business, but they can also be a boost to your personal productivity. We talked about ways to use tablets in retail businesses, and this time we’re talking about ways you can…
Guest Post by Deb Brown, Webster City, Iowa, Area Chamber of Commerce My friend Kevin told me a story. Kevin has just bought the business he’s worked in for over 15 years, located on Main Street in my small town, Webster City, Iowa. He’s renamed it Interior Spaces because he’s a decorator and he…
I run a retail store in a small town, and I love technology. That’s why I came up with these ten ways you can put an Android tablet or iPad to work in your rural retail business. 1. Take payments at the Point of Sale Throw away your old cash register. A tablet makes…
Since 2006, this site has been helping people like you in small towns move forward without waiting on outside experts, big budgets, or perfect plans. You don’t need any of that to get started.
If you care about your business, your downtown, or your community, you’ll find ideas here you can actually use. Take one. Try it out. Let me know how it goes for you.
Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.
We partner with campaigns and organizations that we think best benefit rural small businesses.
Copyright © 2006–2026 Becky McCray • Site by Webdancers