Want to add a new level of interest to your downtown? Take advantage of your rooftop spaces. I was on a walk-though of the small town of Kendrick, Idaho, and a young man pointed up to the top of a one-story building and said, “I bet we could make a cool hangout spot up […]
Six big themes for small town entrepreneurship
On a recent call, Janet Soto from Oregon picked out 6 themes from what I’ve written about lately that she felt were exactly what Oregon small towns most needed to hear as they work on entrepreneurship. There are positive trends for small towns. It doesn’t matter what the numbers say about us, what negative […]
These small town neighbors bought vacant buildings, brought them up to code. Here’s what happened next
Waynoka, Oklahoma, had a lot of vacant run-down buildings in their downtown. In a town of 900 people, the prospects didn’t look great. At an all-class reunion, a group of alumni got together and decided to change that. They called themselves Project Waynoka, our friend and early contributor Jeanne Cole said. They started raising money. […]
Where your future entrepreneurs and business leaders come from
A reader wrote to me about an influx of low-income people into his town, using subsidized housing and other community services. He said a town council member had talked about them as “a drain on resources” and “dead weight.” I got angry when I read that. But it took me awhile to figure out […]
