Since our book Small Town Rules was released by Que Publishing this spring, Barry Moltz and I have been sharing lots of videos, interviews, and guest posts all over the web on the ideas in it. Because I’m so close to this subject, I forget that you haven’t seen much of it here. I finally realized…
Every business, no matter how small your town is, has to compete with someone. What advantage will you play up to your customers? Red’s, a barbecue place in my hometown, is promoting its location. See, 14 miles away in another tiny town is a terrific barbecue place. So Red’s is basically saying, “don’t make the…
When small town entrepreneurs prosper, they help their community prosper. It’s one of my core beliefs, and it’s supported by some scholarly research. Charles M. Tolbert, Baylor University, looked at the effects of small business on their local community. His research shows that more locally-oriented business establishments are associated statistically with: higher average income levels less…
Educator Kevin Honeycutt of Inman, Kansas, (population 1300) is working with other locals to create a “New Billboard”: a combination QR code, Foursquare tour. If you can’t see the video, click through to Small Biz Survival. The basic idea is to draw in visitors from the highway, and use tools like QR codes and Foursquare…
“What do you consider a small town?” I get asked that quite a bit. The answer isn’t that simple. Places come in too many sizes to fall neatly into just three categories: big city, small town, suburb. What We Think In general, I think of small towns as being under 10,000 in population, and really…
You remember your small town back when there was a drugstore downtown, and lots of shops, and the theater was a happening place. You remember two hardware stores and independent gas stations. But it’s not like that anymore. You feel so sad when you think of what your town is now. Can you ever revive…
HP offered us the chance to review an HP Folio 13 UltraBook, and to give away another one to you. Enter the giveaway at Sharing the HP Folio 13, deadline is Friday! (June 15, 2012) I’m a sucker for a great keyboard. I’ve worked with the Folio 13 for a couple of weeks now, and…
Burnet, Texas, has a neat small town development idea, to encourage building close in, instead of out on the edge in suburb-style developments. Downtown Burnet, Texas. They call it the Hometown Housing Program. For new houses on empty residential lots in the targeted core area, the city rebates 100% of water, sewer and electric tap…
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