With the rise of remote work, more people move to small towns even temporarily to work remotely. Small town businesses have the opportunity to tap remote workers as new customers. Why remote workers are hard to market to New residents who work remotely can be hard to find: they aren’t all working at the same […]
Survey of Rural Challenges 2023 results
To find out what rural people felt were their biggest challenges, SaveYour.Town and SmallBizSurvival.com surveyed 315 rural people from the US, Canada and Australia between November 2022 and January 2023. The results make up this fifth edition of the Survey of Rural Challenges. Download the PDF Report Survey of Rural Challenges 2023 by debworks Top conclusions […]
Rural and small town ideas from the OU Placemaking Conference IQC 2023
Recently I attended the OU (University of Oklahoma) Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) Placemaking Conference This was the 10th annual event. There were 600 people attending from 40 counties in Oklahoma and 6 surrounding states. I attended the 2017 event along with my colleague Deb Brown. The focus was inevitably on big cities, but I […]
Local leaders: Start with intuition about your community then add data
How do decisions about your town’s future get made? Do government officials and volunteer leaders rely on what they already know, or do they rely on data generated by outside experts? Or might it be both? By Paula Jensen Intuitive decision making is based on gut feelings, past experiences, and personal judgment. It involves using […]