Author: Becky McCray

Have you counted the empty buildings in your downtown? Does the number scare you a little? Deb Brown did that. Around the time she first started as the chamber of commerce director in Webster City, she counted empty buildings and found 14 in a town of 8,000 people. That scared her a little. So you’re…

I’m a fan of business fairs. These are the kind of event where different businesses come together in one place and set up booths or displays. Good fairs bring together business people with new customers and with each other. It’s good for everyone.  In my area, we often see craft fairs where people who make all…

In my email this week was a question about outside food trucks invading a town of about 2,500 people. It’s a good question, and I’m glad to have a chance to share it with you.  I am having a hard time in our small town with food trucks wanting to set up for a couple…

Mandan, North Dakota, has this great downtown. There’s all kinds of housing right downtown, so that’s a big asset keeping people spending time downtown. There’s a mix of new and old retail space downtown, so there is room to expand on what they already have. And that’s a problem: the new retail space is sitting…

With a statewide population of 740,000 people, spread across 69,000 square miles, North Dakota is spread out. That’s a statewide average of 9.7 people per square mile, or 4.1 people per square kilometer. Since more than half of the people live in urban areas, that leaves a lot of empty territory.  Except it’s not empty….

“We tried that once.” It’s like the ultimate small town insult to your big ideas.  My friend Deb Brown has the best comeback. She always answers with, “Great! What did you learn?”  “We already tried that” often comes off as a personal attack. “You’re too stupid to realize we already tried that.”  The reality is…

A downtown retail store owner told me she closes at 5 pm because she hates to stay later. She gets to work at 8 am most days, and so at 5 pm she’s ready to go home. She doesn’t like to delegate at all, she told me, and she wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything…

Last weekend I got see an idea made real. Jeanne Cole and the Waynoka Chamber of Commerce took the ideas from our Pop-Up Mini Course and brought them to life in their downtown. It was only 18 miles from my house, so of course I had to be there. And I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all…

In a small town, you aren’t supposed to brag about yourself, whether personally, at work or in business. One of the unofficial small town rules. Take you for example. You’re probably uncomfortable talking about your accomplishments. When you have a project or business to get out the word about, you try to walk the fine line of…

The only way to go is forward. Build the town you want to live in.  As a kid, my friend Sheila hated going to the small town Winnsboro, Texas, with her mom in the summers. It was hot, miserable, and there were no other kids. (Or that’s the way she remembers it.) It was not the…

I sat at one of those planning meetings, where we all sit at tables and brainstorm about our region’s direction for the next decade or so. I looked around. Nearly everyone in the room fit a pattern: professional middle class, in their 30s to 60s, and white. A few people fell outside the pattern, but…

Us vs. Them is a myth. There is no them. There is only us. I’ve been saying that for a while. I think I first heard a version of it from Jon Swanson, who works at a small town church in Indiana. I even put it on my business card backs. I like how it sums…