Remote work will dominate the future small town workforce Your current residents Your current small town residents will increasingly work from home or remotely. Gallup looked at jobs that could be done remotely and the locations where workers actually did them. Four times as many workers will work remotely going forward, compared to the number…
Pew Research released a major rural vs urban study, and the headlines missed the best bits. Pew Research’s new social trends study has shown up in a lot of news stories with widely varying headlines. Pew themselves titled it “Americans Are Less Likely Than Before COVID-19 To Want To Live in Cities, More Likely To…
By Paula Jensen Have you ever experienced a time when you could envision what needs to happen but had no idea what to stop doing in order to reach the point of success? Here is a simple example: This year at Santa Day in my community someone asked, “Why do we give away turkeys to…
By Deb Brown When I was Chamber of Commerce Director in Webster City, Iowa, one of our big events was Junquefest, a three day event where vendors come to town and sell all kinds of junque. We wanted to close the streets and let the vendors park their trailers by their booths. That was…
What small town people see as their biggest challenges And what topics rural people most want help with Wouldn’t it be great if the people who say they want to help rural people would actually listen to rural people’s own challenges?! That’s why we created this survey! We use the results to create practical steps…
At the Main Street Now conference, I sat in on a session about coffee shops. I wrote down bunches of ideas that the audience shared. I thought you might know a coffee shop person, or you might think of ways to use these with other types of small town businesses. Hold trivia nights or…
Small businesses form the cornerstone of local economies. In larger cities they are important, but in rural areas, they are crucial, not only economically but for the variety of products and services they provide. To begin with, the economic impact of the small business is sizable. Research shows that for every $100 spent, $68 dollars…
May 4-8 is Small Business Week in the U.S. this year. So what do you see when you walk into or drive by your local small businesses? If you are like many of us, you see a place that offers you goods and services, a place you can go to and get what you want….
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