Part of our Global Entrepreneurship Week celebration Nov 13-19, 2023. Guest post by Mike Humphrey, Japan Skiing has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why my parents decided skiing would be our family sport. They were not avid skiers, and we didn’t live in a ski…
You’re familiar with the traditional way of handling community engagement. Once every few years, an outside consultant comes in and leads a community engagement planning meeting. There are lots of flip charts and post it notes. Most of the people who attend hold official titles or formal leadership roles. Almost all are professional middle class…
Be frugal. One of the Small Town Rules is to spend your brain power before spending dollars. Be creative about how you handle challenges rather than to throw money at the problem. Venture capital vs. Bootstrapped We’ve all heard about startups that have been funded by whatever venture capitalist or angel that has just dropped a…
Survival skills for small town businesses in the Coronavirus era By Chris Brogan As the world starts to ask what’s going to happen when this pandemic is finally over and we can look at what it will take to jumpstart the economy again, one venture capitalist says we have to save Main Street and not…
Think back to the last meeting in your small business? Does your memory make you cringe? Or was your response that you only have a couple of meetings and you talk every day, so maybe you never bother with a meeting. And how did the meeting go? Was most of the conversation off-track and non-business…
Innovation for the sake of innovation might not be the answer to building your business. And yet today as we scan the business world, it would seem that the opposite is true – innovate or disappear. So what’s the truth? The truth about successful innovation is “it depends.” And it depends on your current customer…
If you want to increase the sales of your product, you must get it in front of more people. While there are many ways to make that happen, a way used by many small businesses is an affiliate marketing program. It’s simple in the concept, one business agrees to carry another’s person’s products, usually on…
It may be that I grew up in a small town area, but mention “small-town service” to people and they will know what you are talking about. So when I saw the tagline on this business sign, I felt I understood how this business treated their customers. (You can read more about developing the tagline…
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