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Boost your rural retail business with this trick

By Deb Brown

Shoppers at a furniture store find temporary displays of jewelry and skin care products.

By Deb Brown The old way of doing business is one building, one business. What if you could test an idea and have a business inside a business? Anyone of us either knows or can find someone who is making things from their home and selling it. What if you encouraged already existing home-based businesses […]

November 5, 2021 Filed Under: economic development, entrepreneurship, ideas, rural Tagged With: building community, Deb Brown, economic development, entrepreneurs, guest post, pop ups, retail, rural, store

Refilling the rural business pipeline

By Becky McCray

Becky McCray and Deb Brown present Refilling the Business Pipeline

This is a short sample from the SaveYour.Town video “Refilling Your Business Pipeline” featuring Deb Brown and me. Small towns and rural communities will need new business startups to revitalize their local economies, but not many people have the resources today to do a startup the way it’s traditionally been done. Part of what holds […]

July 7, 2020 Filed Under: economic development, entrepreneurship, failure, mistakes, rural, success, trends Tagged With: Becky McCray, building a business, Climate, Deb Brown, economic development, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, idea friendly, Idea Friendly Method, Innovative Rural Business Models, recession, rural, SaveYourTown, small business, small business success, starting, startup, startups, take small steps, video

Business plans are not worth the paper they’re written on

By Deb Brown

Small Steps with kettle corn

by Deb Brown At least, the old way of doing them Writing a business plan is an intense project that takes up a lot of your time. You spend weeks and weeks on it, and you’re not even sure everything in it is correct. Your financial projections are just wild guesses. You’re not even open […]

February 6, 2020 Filed Under: economic development, entrepreneurship, family business, planning, rural, success Tagged With: Building Possibility, business plans, Deb Brown, entrepreneurs, guest post, idea friendly, pop ups, small business, small steps, small town

How to get the city to suspend the rules for you

By Deb Brown

A woman carries an up-cycled chair she bought at Junque Fest surrounded by a diverse crowd

  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 […]

January 7, 2020 Filed Under: community, entrepreneurship, rural Tagged With: Climate, community, Deb Brown, events, permission, regulations, rules

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We partner with campaigns and organizations that we think best benefit rural small businesses. Logo with "Shop Indie Local" Move Your Money, bank local, invest local Multicolor logo with text that says "Global Entrepreneurship Week" Save Your Town logotype

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Holyoke Hummus Company cart

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