My friend Deb Brown is the new director of the Webster City, Iowa, Chamber of Commerce. It’s her first job as chamber director in her long career of wide experiences, so she doesn’t look at chamber things the way most people do. Deb looked at the empty store fronts downtown and other available buildings around…
I just got back from 3 weeks unplugged. I’m exhausted! This week, I wanted to talk about local investing. Small town businesses are starved for capital, at the same time as small town people bank and invest their money with corporate behemoths based on Wall Street. And we don’t notice anything wrong with that. What…
This week, I wanted to share the idea of “Investment Ready Places.” That is a new description of small towns and mid sized cities, from the team at Street Sense. “Mid-tier towns and cities are our most dynamic urban settlements and have the largest untapped potential for fostering economic growth. They vary in size from…
I’m spending some time unplugged, but I scheduled this email to keep up our shared Positive View of Rural. This week, I wanted to share this idea from Tony Guidroz, Director of Economic Development from San Saba, Texas, (population 2,600). Tony came up with the idea for a Blue Collar Career Fair in 2012, and…
This downtown art project comes from my neighbors in Waynoka, Oklahoma, population 927. Far from a dressy, stodgy downtown, they have a casual attitude. It’s a working class town with history as a railroad community. Last year, the downtown utility poles were in bad need of a new coat of paint. You know, that boring…
Katie McCaskey has lived a rural pattern that you’ll recognize. She grew up in a small town, left for education and opportunity, moved back to a different small town later, and started a business. She’s come to see small towns as a center of opportunity, as a place where entrepreneurs can step up and make…
My email last week about banning “shop local” generated a lot of positive reaction. Surprisingly, I didn’t hear from anyone who disagreed with me. Maybe you all were just being polite. I’m glad it got people talking. What I said about shop local is tied in to a bigger concept. The future of small towns…
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m something of a shop local champion. So why am I ready to get rid of “shop local”? Because I’m afraid it has lost all its meaning. People have been beat over the head with “shop local” so much, that their heads hurt. They got the “shop local” part,…
You know I have an unashamedly positive view of rural. My small town has a future! Well, I want to introduce you to someone who is even more positive about small towns: Ivan Emke, with the Grenfell Campus of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, in Canada. Emke did a TEDx Talk on How Rural Will…
Volunteers and nonprofits: I’m not sure a small town could even exist without them. A couple of you recently brought up the role of volunteering and nonprofits, and that got me thinking about the common problem, “we can’t find any volunteers!” See, small businesses play a role in supporting nonprofit organizations, and nonprofits are important…
I want to tell you three stories that people told me last week. Kat Long told me about Ponca City, Oklahoma (population 25,000). They have lots of good news, lots of positive developments, but feel like the national drumbeat of bad news tends to drown it out. To work against that, Kat plans to feature…
Last week, both my friend Rob and I took time out from all that demands our attention to spend time at conferences that energize us. We both work from our homes in small towns, so we both value that in-person time to focus and think. Even though we were at very different events, we got…
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