Howdy!
Glad you dropped in to the rural small town business blog.
Becky McCray,
Glenna Mae Hendricks,
Jeanne Cole and
Jon Swanson.
Let me give you a
guided tour, read our disclosure, or give us a holler via email.
Small Town Shop Local
All works published here are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Tommy Hilfiger had to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy at age 24. He started over, even bigger.
-Heard on the CBS Sunday Morning.
Consider this your reminder that you might have to start over, several times.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. This weekend, I'm in transit. So I'm asking you to take the lead and cheer for each other.
This is designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.
Think that bragging is a bad thing? Read how Tony explains the Brag Basket.
The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)
Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! Make it personal, and not just an ad. You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
I seldom rent cars. Seldom means twice in my life. However, because a couple of us needed to take a trip for work, we rented a car. It was half the price of paying mileage.
I picked up the car at the airport on Sunday afternoon. That location was further than others, but it was the only branch open on Sunday.
The airport in Fort Wayne in empty on Sundays. Even when it is full, it is empty compared to other airports I have known. I had to wait in line for one other person, but that is because his plane had just arrived. And I didn't wait long.
And then it was my turn. I met Timothy. In the next five minutes, as he took car of the paperwork that would get me the car, I learned a lot from Timothy.
Hometown boy Phil Gerbyshak shares his thoughts on personal branding in small towns.
Shot at SOBCon '09.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
With the publication of our ebooks, Sheila Scarborough and I are starting something new. We're collaborating to help you learn much more than you can from just reading this site.
Starting now, Sheila will be focusing on helping you with Tourism 2.0. Sheila is a traveler and travel writer, who has spent years developing her expertise in the online world. You can find her at Sheila Guides You to the Good Stuff. My focus remains on small town business. How do we fit tourism 2.0 together with small town businesses? We see them both as part of a greater economic development whole. Together, we'll be developing tools for you:
Social media sounds like the solution to all our small town tourism problems. But who is going to put together all the 1,000 parts and make it make sense?
That would be Sheila Scarborough. She's spent hours, years really, getting good with web 2.0, social media, marketing, and how this all comes together as tourism 2.0. Here's the result of all this deliberate practice: Social Media – What It Is and Why It Matters to Travel and Tourism. It's a $9 ebook, and it is worth 10 times that as inside information for tourism professionals.
Together, Sheila and I are creating something new. More about that in a separate post, coming right up. You're going to love it.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Shop local and buy local campaigns can significantly impact your hometown economy, but the instructions available online assume you are a big city. That's why I decided to create a step by step guide to starting a shop local campaign in a small town, as a downloadable e-book.
It includes solid research that shows whether buy local campaigns actually work. If you have to convince others to back your project, this could make your job easier.
Next it goes through six steps to building a truly effective campaign:
"I would encourage all small town chambers of commerce or merchant associations to order this guide. It will point you in the right direction to making buy local work in your small town!"
Jack Schultz, Author of BoomtownUSA
Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.
Think that bragging is a bad thing? Read how Tony explains the Brag Basket.
The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)
Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! Make it personal, and not just an ad. You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Here's why we're giving away 15 copies of QuickBooks to small business people who aren't using QB yet: I want you to get a better handle on your business.
I've taught QuickBooks courses dozens of times. When we get to the section on reports, I see eyes get wider. Most small business people actually improve their finances, once they learn how to track the money coming in and going out. Seeing those reports, with the results of bad decisions or lack of discipline instantly available, can motivate you to change. I've watched it happen.
So, if your business has outgrown your current accounting system, but you've been delaying shelling out a few hundred dollars for the top of the line version of QuickBooks, it's time to do something about it. That's why I'm glad that Intuit has arranged for us to give away 15 copies of QuickBooks Premier to people who do not currently have QuickBooks. We have 10 downloadable copies, and, knowing that some of you are on dialup or other unreliable connections, we also have 5 boxed copies.
If you don't have QuickBooks, but you have been wishing for it, I want you to enter. Especially if you are a small town business person. Now, QB Premier is not the right choice for most tiny or one-person businesses. It is great for larger small businesses, say, those with a few employees. So check out the product specs for QuickBooks Premier, and make sure you can use it before you enter.
How to enter:
@mriggen: Biz idea for clothing manufactures: easy on/off clothing for seniors that isn't insanely ugly (looking for g-ma)There's a huge need for clothes that are easy to manage. The choices right now are terribly limited. The demand is just going to grow.
Marci Penner, executive director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, has lots of ideas of how to solve the volunteer shortage. She's looking at all new ways to involve and engage people in small towns, with the WeKan volunteer program!
Apologies for the dark video. It's really dark in that barn!
Marci also has a new take on small town tourism: the Kansas Explorers Club. Could you create an explorer mindset in your state?
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Overhead a great discussion on Twitter today. Cody Heitschmidt is on vacation in Texhoma, but his brain is still coming up with small town promotion ideas.
@codyks:
Small towns: when u have visitors, do u knock hospitality out the park? Its dirt cheap 2 do but leaves priceless memories. Take em coffee...what if someone from your town just stopped in and check on people like a simplified concierge. Its free but people would talk.
@debworks:
I'm liking this idea ............hmmmmm How would you know if someone was visiting though?
@codyks:
hotels managers. Bed and breakfast owners. Its easy.
Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.
Think that bragging is a bad thing? Read how Tony explains the Brag Basket.
The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)
Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! Make it personal, and not just an ad. You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Two examples of customer service opportunities.
The other day I walked into a donut place for a cup of coffee. I was pretty focused on my next task as I ordered a small decaf. I got my coffee, paid my $1.39 plus tax. As I turned to walk out, I saw the sign. "Large coffee .99. Limited time only."
We were still within the limited time.
The server heard "small" and assumed I would want a small. What would have been wonderful is if she would have said, "Did you see our special?" What would have been wonderful is if she had charged me just .99.
The next day, I ordered a large.
---------------
We visited a museum in Chicago. Our daughter purchased an aluminum water bottle. It's pretty cool. For $16, it should be. When we got home (180 miles away), she put water in the bottle. She felt water on her arm. The bottle had a pinhole leak.
I wrote to the museum store. I waited a week. I wrote again. I an apology for the delay in responding, and permission to send the bottle back. We did, paying the postage. Within a week, we got the new bottle. It doesn't leak. It also didn't have a note. It didn't have a refund of postage.
After paying $16 for parking, $13 each for admission, and $16 for the bottle, the cost of postage was a small additional percentage to us. However, a note, a credit or even a piece of candy would have been a nice way to apologize for the leaking bottle.
I understand museums are looking for support, but you build support by building relationships.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Dave Ivan of Michigan State University Extension rocked the house at the Michigan Small Town and Rural Development Conference with his "Can Small Towns Be Cool?" presentation.
He showered us with ideas and examples gathered from 250 community visits, a literature review and the Michigan "Cool Cities Initiative" survey of young professionals. He grouped his results into success themes.
1. Strong engagement between citizens, community organizations, and government.
St. Joseph, MI, approx. 8000 pop, does neighborhood town hall gatherings of 75-120 people, in backyards all across town. They also produce a unified community calendar and hand-deliver it to residents.
Marshall (I think in Michigan) did an amazing community-wide visioning process. They created a "meeting in a box" to involve a big swath of the public. The result was a whole different data set of what was important to residents than the usual results from having the same ten people involved.
I loved how Coopersville, MI, uses their town entry sign to salute a different nonprofit, business person, and teacher each quarter.
2. Local Entrepreneurial Investment
Ivan said this is often initiated by a local entrepreneur, and that then served as a tipping point to get others to invest.
In New Carlisle, IN, Bill Owens expanded a floral shop into gifts, a furniture store, and transformed the community into a regional destination.
This can also be a community initiative, such as economic gardening to grow entrepreneurs, where you may have village staff used to make things work for business.
Ord, NE, is a ranching town. They developed a wealth transfer plan to strategically fund their community economic development initiatives. By asking people to give 5% of their estate back to the community, they now have $8.5 million in hand or in pledges.
Ivan also praised Fairfield, IA, the "Silicorn Valley" mentality that has a mentoring program, local angel and venture capital funds.
3. Willingness to Change
This may be the hardest part for many towns.
These new opportunities may require changes in all sorts of local laws, including zoning. Suttons Bay MI, was one of the first towns in North America to adopt form-based zoning.
Having dealt a bit with municipal zoning issues, I think this may be one of the biggest hurdles.
4. Actively pursues cultural elements to Economic Development
The most common cultural elements include the arts. Ivan mentioned many arts incubators and arts districts.
Bellow Falls, Vermont, used state housing rehab dollars to renovate an old building into an artist live-work facility.
This approach may not suit every town. Conservative, traditional towns may have conflict with creative artists. In Three Oaks, MI, the creatives are working to integrate with the existing parades and local celebrations. So it can work.
5. Cultural efforts reach out to community youth
New York Mills, Minnesota, established a cultural center that capitalizes on the natural amenities. Each artist to spend time in their space must participate in an outreach project, mostly with the school system. The local superintendent raved about the quality of artists brought in with this program, Ivan said.
6. A deliberate effort to engage youth
There is a continuum of efforts to involve youth. You can do things to youth, or do for youth, or do with youth, Ivan said. It can be tough to get a town moved along the continuum.
One idea was to provide disposable cameras to the youth. Ask them to take pictures of what they like and dislike about the town, and have them present it at a future meeting. Can you imagine the impact this could have?
7. Retaining Youth and Attracting Families
Create economic choices that are appealing to youth. Ord, NE, for example, has a youth entrepreneurship program starting in grade schools.
Brookfield gave kids a mailbox with their name on it. "Brookfield is always going to be your home town. Go out, explore, learn, but come home."
8. Conviction that in the long run you have to do it yourself.
Cool small towns are not waiting for an outside savior.
Argonia, KS, lost their grocery store. But they built a community convenience and grocery store. They are now doing spec houses to sell at COST to new families. And if you enroll kids in the school, Argonia will even cover your closing costs.
The mayor of St. Joseph, Ill, said, "We're always looking for projects we can't afford." That's a great development attitude!
While I was live-tweeting this session, Grant Griffiths of Kansas asked about implementation. "Ideas are great and we have to have them. But how do we get them implemented in our rural towns?"
Ivan's short answer on implementation was strong leadership. And don't let the CAVE people (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) define the community.
The best advice for all small towns wanting to be "cool" maybe a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt. "Do what you can with what you have where you are."
You can download Ivan's presentation, "Can Small Towns Be Cool?" at the Rural Partners of Michigan site. Ivan says he is working on a new website for himself. Watch for it!
Every business has to write. Everything from websites to local ads. Guest author Denise McGill contributed an outstanding series of articles about writing at Small Biz Survival.It was such a great series, so practical, that I asked her to create an ebook of the series, so we could share it further.
Denise put it together, and here it is. Download the booklet, Writing Tips For Small Business Owners.
By the way, Denise has a free online newsletter with more writing tips and hints.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
As you work to promote your small town, you're looking for your special qualities. Marci Penner, executive director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, walks us through the eight rural culture elements. Using this framework, any town of any size can answer the question, "what is there to see or do here?"
Read more about the rural cultural elements.
Apologies for the dark video. It's really dark in that barn!
After visiting all 267 incorporated towns in Kansas, Marci started creating these ten transformational ideas for rural communities.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
One more thing. Never be afraid to make a mistake. Sometimes a “good mistake” becomes someone elses big discovery and innovation and contribution to the world. Many of the things discovered during the past 100 years came not because someone was out to discover them but because someone was trying to do something else and their “failure” lead to the creation of a very good mistake.
Jeff Pulver, Entrepreneur 101: Words of Advice to a Future Entrepreneur
Make it easy for your people to serve customers.
They shouldn't have to say, "Don't tell anyone I did this for you."
Instead, be the Ritz-Carlton. Each employee is given an individual, daily budget to create a wow experience for a customer, or for "service recovery." (That's to fix, or even over-fix, an error or problem for a customer.)
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.
Think that bragging is a bad thing? Read how Tony explains the Brag Basket.
The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)
Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! (Don't copy and paste an ad, though, OK?) You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
Print material is a thing of the past, a dying dinosaur! Have you heard that yet? It was presented as a statement of fact at a meeting I recently attended. Big city newspapers are shutting down. Magazines are opting for online editions instead of print you can touch, so to speak. We can read books online too.
In Woodward Oklahoma Charlynn Fowler doesn't agree. She runs Pixie Dreams Bookstore and sells used books. Almost two years ago she bought a building that was packed full of paperback and hardcover books, most in cardboard boxes. She has turned that into a neatly arranged store full of shelves with books sorted by author and sectioned by topic or area of interest.
Her customers come from two places; walk-in traffic and sales through Amazon on the internet. The times I have been in her store, there is almost always someone browsing the shelves for a book to take home and read. She offers a pretty unique exchange program where readers can bring back the books they have read and get credit towards the next purchase. This has proven to be a resourceful way to keep a dedicated customer base at store front level.
Based on customer feedback, Charlynn's expansion plans include a dedicated reading area with coffee and tea available for customers who want to spend some browsing time in the store. She has customers from several neighboring towns up to 75 miles away driving in to get a good deal on a book or to get something that is hard to find in regular retail outlet stores.
Charlynn found some rare editions and treasurers as she sorted through the boxes and found the internet the best market for the collector editions. Of course she gets multiple copies of some books. She has a "5 book" rule and then has found an outlet for excess inventory that provides reading material to troops overseas.
Pixie Dreams Bookstore found the niche and filled the need in Woodward and area northwest Oklahoma. I personally like to sit with a real book in hand for some quiet time to read and it appears I am not alone.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
[You can download the ebook of this series in our Subscribers' Vault. ]
By Denise McGill
Can’t seem to find the right words to sell your product? Denise McGill is a freelance copywriter specializing in catalog product description, copy makeovers, web content, landing pages, promotional materials, sales letters, articles and more. Visit her website at http://www.mcgillcopywriting.com for more information on giving your business the competitive edge. Also, take a moment to subscribe to her online newsletter to receive more writing tips and hints.
Kenny and Dayna Wederski live in Woodward Oklahoma and opened Competition Sports, LLC, their new sporting goods store in January. They spent about four months in the planning stages before the doors opened. Some of the important steps they took to get to that successful opening included
Kenny and Dayna came to the Oklahoma Small Business Development Center for assistance and got some good information on the start up steps to take; determining a name for the business, forming a legal structure and getting the licenses and permits required to operate. Their counselor continued to work with them as they followed the path to the opening of the business.
Kenny is working towards getting certified to be a golf instructor in addition to the work he does now in customizing golf clubs. They found the two to four hour drive to the nearest sporting goods store that offers the same quality merchandise and more importantly the level of customer service they will provide was a great motivator to start this business. Shops in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, the biggest metropolitan areas of the state, have nothing on this Woodward Oklahoma business!
People wonder about developing an online presence. People question the value of using twitter. People debate whether twitter should be used for marketing or PR or anything significant.
One such conversation was happening at a conference on blogging one Saturday morning recently, with marketing professionals passionately making claims.
During the conversation, I leaned over to the two guys sitting next to me. "Can I do ___ with my Network Solutions domain?" (it doesn't matter what I was wanting to do. I don't want to lose you in the technicalities).
Both of them said, "yes." One of them said "I've done that myself."
I met one of these guys through twitter. You've seen him here, writing about a small business in Chicago. 
Here's the point: Shashi is on twitter as part of his job with Network Solutions. When I was looking for a new place for a domain I wanted, I wanted to go to a place I could trust. Because I knew Becky knew Shashi and I had seen him online, I decided to talk to him.
In the same way that we do business offline with people we know, I love to do business online with people I know. Shashi isn't selling, he's conversing. And so I talked to him about buying from his company, in the same way that I choose hardware stores based on good service and the way I look for car dealer recommendations from friends.
You don't have to sell to bring benefits to your company from being online.
Just be helpful.
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
I was at SOBCon in Chicago and had a problem. I had been traveling for a week and did not get a chance to have a haircut. Now when I realize this on a Friday evening in Downtown Chicago at around 6.30 p.m it's still a problem. I did what a regular internet geek would do, went to Yelp.com and looked up hair cut places. I called the first one on the list and there was no answer. Friday evening, I am sure these places close, I think by 6. My next call was to Carmine's Barber shop which had 3 reviews on yelp. The man who answered the phone said they were closed but asked if I can come back Monday. I told him I was in town only till Sunday and his response was- Can you come in the next 5 minutes? I was so happy and almost sprinted down Madison Ave to Carmine's. (No website, but you can call him at (312) 856-5322.) The old definition of success for rural counties was growth. But growth frequently means more problems, high land prices, loss of shared values, etc. So if you are growing, you aren't happy. If you aren't growing, you're stagnating, so you're not happy either. So no one is happy.
Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.
Think that bragging is a bad thing? Read how Tony explains the Brag Basket.
The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)
Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! (Don't copy and paste an ad, though, OK?) You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.
SPECIAL NOTE: I'm in transit on Friday, so I need YOU to cheer for each other, OK? Thanks! And, congrats in advance!
New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Subscribe.
© Blogger template Newspaper by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009, Banner photo (cc) by Becky McCray
Back to TOP
