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Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals

By Becky McCray

2020 has taken a toll on downtown shopping and placemaking. There’s no time to waste on big master plans and no money for expensive consultants. Start taking action now to show life and new activity with small inexpensive steps. Murals add life and color to a downtown and are highly visible even to people driving […]

September 11, 2020 Filed Under: community, rural, shop local, survivors Tagged With: 2020, art, cheap, Climate, downtown, idea friendly, inexpensive, murals, placemaking, recession, shop local, tactical placemaking, tactical urbanism, temporary

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

Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate?

By Becky McCray

A large industrial-looking empty building

Should we offer incentives to fill it with small retailers? How do we convince the mayor and economic development group?   The empty factory building A reader wrote in to ask about converting and dividing up a huge old building. Because my answer isn’t quite what the reader asked for, I’ve taken the details out. […]

June 9, 2020 Filed Under: economic development, mistakes, rural Tagged With: economic development, empty buildings, factories, funding, gather your crowd, grants, idea friendly, manufacturing, revitalization, take small steps

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

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