When your customers want a product or service your carry, is your store the first place they go? People use habits and routines throughout much of their life. Habits and routines make life easier and free up the brain for other decision-making tasks. We operate much of our lives on autopilot. The autopilot mode can…
Donna Maria Interview Donna Maria is one of those people who just makes me happy. She’s a practical business owner, she’s a mentor to others, and she knows that it’s up to us to create our own future. Donna Maria saw a recent news story with yet another negative view of rural that…
Business in rural areas just isn’t the same as what urban business pundits assume. I like to break through that urban bias with special trends for rural small business. I’ll share a short overview here, and you can download the full report here. No cost, and no sign-up needed. Trend 1. Stage 2 businesses bloom…
The Brag Basket is open! This one is for January 17-19, 2014. What can you do in the Brag Basket? introduce yourself share some great news from this week congratulate a friend applaud for each other How do you join in? Below this post is the comment section. Add your brag there. If you…
You have heard that a competitor is coming to your community. Now what do you do? This is the typical response of most business owners. And, of course, the bigger the competitor, the greater the fear of the new competition. When such rumors start circulating, and after the initial shock, business owners start to wonder…
Ben Winchester Interview Part 2 Ben Winchester has a positive view of rural for good reason: he’s done the research. The media loves to talk about the brain drain of young people leaving rural communities. Ben’s research says there’s another trend, maybe more powerful. Adults age 30-44 are returning to rural communities, bringing higher incomes,…
There’s a saying in many organizations: Those who show up, go up. It’s not that all you have to do is show up. It’s that the people who consistently make the effort to show up are the same ones who make the effort to do the work. They are the ones who read and study the…
Lots of small town business have turned to Facebook for a big part of their online presence. It’s easy to create a page, easy to post photos and updates, and easy to attract locals as fans. The problem is that Facebook is changing the rules so that almost no one sees what you share,…
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