Retail businesses may be storing extra merchandise. Manufacturers might have extra materials or finished product ready to ship. Service and repair companies have to store parts and accessories somewhere.

A sign makes your town look better

If there’s no sign, people will assume it’s an empty building or full of someone’s junk. If there’s a sign, it’s a business. That’s just natural.

And doesn’t an active business building seem better than yet another empty building? Rural expert Deb Brown pointed this out to me, and I agree. Here’s an example building she found. It’s clean and well-maintained, but there’s no sign! It might be someone’s muscle car collection, or a social club, or a local manufacturer. We just don’t know! (And we probably assume the worst.)

Photo by Deb Brown

Before you tell me everyone in town knows, remember that other people drive by. People visiting town have no idea whether it’s junk or an active business. That might include people considering moving to town or businesses considering your community.

Put up a sign on your warehouse and storage buildings, and you’re contributing to a town that looks more active and prosperous. That’s good economic and community development.

It might deter thieves

My first thought about putting up a sign was that it might make your business a target for theft. So I asked someone who has some insight into the thought process of people who break into rural buildings.

Your local thieves already know what’s in there. Adding a sign does not change that. (Hint: Didn’t you just tell me everyone in town knows?)

Thieves are more likely to look for buildings that don’t get a lot of traffic. If there are weeds growing up and not many tracks and no sign, that looks like a better target.

Here’s an example I saw. It’s not as well maintained, but clearly in somewhat current use. The old faded sign could be replaced with something new that mentions the local business that uses this building. And a little paint on the door and trim wouldn’t hurt either.

Photo by Becky McCray

Adding a sign makes it look more like you’re there often, so that makes it slightly less attractive as a theft target. Will a sign stop all break ins? Of course not.

Bonus points: Make a window display

Billy Cook Harness and Classic Saddles in Sulphur, Oklahoma, uses a repurposed downtown building for warehouse and shipping. They’ve put a display of saddles and the templates used to make them in the window along with a sign. You can see by the pile of boxes that I came by right before the shipper picked up for the day.

This window display and sign makes the building and downtown look much better than just another empty building used for storage of who knows what.

Photo by Becky McCray

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This is a great reminder to all of us. Now is the time to check your:

• website
• social media profiles
• Google business profile

Make a list and check over a few at a time.

While you are checking your website, make sure to check each and every page. Sometimes outdated info is lurking on pages you don’t look at very often yourself, but may still be misleading potential customers.

Here’s the checklist of basic info every small town business ought to include on their website.

At the very top:

• Full business name
• Business category, if it isn’t stated in the name

Location:

• City and state or territory
• Bonus: Include the country for people who landed via search
• Local service area
• Areas you ship to
• Street address that works with online directions
• Map of your location, or link to an accurate online map for directions

A word on service territories. Not “tri-state area” because there are an awful lot of those so it won’t be clear to people arriving by search. Give the names of the states, territories, counties or towns that you serve. Too many to list? Make a simple map.

Get in contact:

• Phone number
• Email address
• Mailing address
• Bonus: social profiles where you are active

Come on in:

• Business hours
• Bonus: picture of your building or front door from the street

Buy something:

• Lines of business
• Specific brand names

Take time to check your site. You might be surprised at what’s missing.

And don’t bury these essentials in small type, or hard to find locations. Make them big, bold, obvious, and maybe even repeat them.

Yes, this still matters in a small town. You have visitors and new residents who need to find you.

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One pop-up is just a pop-up, but a group of pop-ups is a market. Photos by Forest County Business Alliance, Austin Moore, CC by Jeffrey Grandy.

When you’re planning to add pop-up businesses or shed businesses to your small or rural community, concentrate them in one area.

Better to have four sheds or pop up businesses together on a single lot, than fourteen vendors spread out all over.

Your goal is to make it feel like a concentrated burst of new activity. If your pop ups are too spread out, people will never notice them. Remember that nothing draws a crowd like a crowd, and put your vendors close together.

Tionesta Pennsylvania clustered 10 sheds into one market village along contiguous empty lots.

Wolfforth Texas clustered a set of sheds to use as a farmers market.

Hyannis Massachusetts spread their sheds within the port area which is popular with tourists. Their artist shanties don’t stand shoulder to shoulder, but they are all within a very small area.

Get more ideas to turn your empty lots into bustling commercial spaces with SaveYour.Town’s video Empty Lot Economic Development.

Once every few years, an outside consultant comes in and leads a community engagement planning meeting. There are lots of flip charts and post it notes. 

Most of the people who attend hold official titles or formal leadership roles. Almost all are professional middle class white people, in their 30s to 60s. The Same Ten People who seem to be on every committee and board are there. Not many other people outside those groups attend. 

The consultant leads a discussion of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats as these people see them. The usual people bring up their usual topics.

Several ideas are written on big pieces of paper and mounted on the walls. Everyone gets some sticky dots they can use to vote for the ideas they like best. The ideas with the most dots are the winners. 

Maybe a survey is printed in the paper to gather more input. 

The consultant gathers up all the papers, goes away and writes up a plan. It more or less reflects what was on the papers. 

The resulting plan is submitted to the town government several weeks later in a really nice binder. It goes on the shelf in city hall. 

Who is missing from this view of “community”?

When we get these same people together, who speaks for those outside the professional middle class: the wait staff, the retail clerks, the nurse aids, the mechanics, the truck drivers, the office staff? Who brings the perspective of different ethnicities and cultures? Who speaks with a younger voice about the future?

Idea Friendly community engagement

Here’s an Idea Friendly version of community engagement. It doesn’t start with a meeting.

People from throughout the community are encouraged and supported in trying their own ideas all year long.

Small spaces are available to try micro business ideas. People are able to connect with each other at frequent networking and learning events so they can work on even bigger ideas. The whole town is idea friendly.

Throughout the year, the officials are engaged in helping with and watching the experiments.

When someone brings an idea to a city official anytime, they are met with, “Great! What would you need to test that out?”

The existing plans are revisited and revised throughout the year based on the exciting experiments and developments going on throughout the community.

During the next planning cycle, lots of people are personally invited to attend and participate, and ideas that are being actively tried and proven right now are incorporated into the plans. 

Before you write your next plan this way

There are more alternatives! You can use a calendar, a few sheets of blank paper or even a big mock up in a parking lot. You have lots of alternatives to inviting the Same Ten People to write the same old plan. Find out more in the video: Before You Write Your Next Plan from SaveYour.Town.

The same ten people are here! We can get started updating the old plan.

I watched Jon Stewart’s Political Comedy ‘Irresistible’. The story is set in small-town Wisconsin. The community has recently suffered a devastating loss of their main employer. In response, a failed political consultant from Washington, D.C. lands himself a gig helping a local veteran run for Mayor against the long-time incumbent. The consultant, planning to use this situation for his own political gain, sends out his first press release to the national media titled, Small Town Small Minds. When I saw that headline on the screen I said to my husband, who was half asleep, “Did you see that headline? I can’t believe it said Small Towns Small Minds!” This is where you tell me — it’s just a movie – but why are small towns almost always portrayed as marginal, fragile communities disjoined from the rest of the nation?

In a January 3, 2020, Washington Post article titled, The harmful, popular misconceptions about rural America, Christopher Ingraham, a reporter and resident from small town Minnesota wrote, “There are as many different modes of being an American as there are towns, or families, or individuals living in this country. The mantle of “real American” — and all the scrutiny, assumptions and mythmaking that come with it — is a burden that none of us should have to bear alone, but rather is one that we can all share.”

Bearing the scrutiny that these rural stereotypes bring on us is a complex challenge. It will need collaboration, innovation and hard work. Communities with strong human capital, regional connections and a focus on available assets can create opportunities to solve this long-standing, complex issue.

By taking a step toward action, reaching across differences, engaging with fellow influencers and focusing on local assets YOU can make your town a good place to live and breakdown rural stereotypes. Here’s a list I jump-started for you:

1. Identify existing assets that offer opportunities for growth and develop strategies to support them. Assets might include infrastructure, skills, cultural, people, social, funding, green space and leadership.
2. Engage all residents and organizations to develop a vision for the community’s future. Stakeholder engagement will ensure the vision reflects existing goals and generate public support that can maintain momentum for change through election cycles.
3. Seek outside support and funding that can be applied strategically to the community’s vision. Even in small amounts, these resources can increase local commitment and incentivize private investment.
4. Encourage collaboration within the community and across the region to strengthen jointly held priorities.

We must not let negative language about our small towns persist. So, get engaged in creating solutions to overcome rural stereotypes that blight our public image.

This is a short sample from the SaveYour.Town video “Refilling Your Business Pipeline” featuring Deb Brown and me.

Small towns and rural communities will need new business startups to revitalize their local economies, but not many people have the resources today to do a startup the way it’s traditionally been done.

Part of what holds your potential new entrepreneurs back is thinking that going into business has to be a big and difficult and long project.

Imagine all the work that “everyone knows” is part of starting a new business:

If you decided to open a retail store, you have decide on your specialty and what kind of merchandise to carry, deciding or guessing whether your town will support it, finding a location and remodeling it or even bringing it up to code, decorating, finding suppliers and getting started with them, getting your local banking established, securing financing, hiring staff, advertising and marketing, and all that before you even know whether your initial concept is actually sound.

In small towns, those problems can be magnified where you may face a shortage of usable buildings, long distances to suppliers who don’t pay attention to small accounts like yours, few local banks, no chance of local financing, few choices for potential workers, and a smaller potential market. It seems like it takes a lot of time, money and work just to get into business.

You have to get all your ducks in a row.

What if I told you there was a much easier way to get into business?

Just get one duck and go from there. 

Imagine building some steps in between. If you could buy just a few products and test them by running a temporary business inside another business for a month or two, you’d learn a lot about what sells in your local market right now. If that works, maybe you could rent a small booth in a shared retail building. If something doesn’t work, you can fix it and try again.

From there, jumping up to starting a traditional store doesn’t seem as hard. You’ve learned what people want to buy. You’ve established relationships with suppliers. You’ve gained a loyal following. All those smaller steps lift you up closer to jumping over that hurdle of starting a traditional business. And if you miss a jump at a smaller step, it’s easier to recover and try something new.

Why this works

That’s the purpose of the innovative rural business models. They put people in a much better position to succeed, or to fail in a manageable way. It cuts time and money off the process of getting into business. 

For economic developers, these give you an easy way to add entrepreneurship promotion to existing projects and activities. It’s not about starting new things from scratch. It’s about finding and building on the small steps that already exist in your area.

Get the full video

The entire 30 minute is available for purchase at SaveYour.Town: Refilling Your Business Pipeline.

Learn more

How do we convince the mayor and economic development group?

Big old factory buildings can be intimidating to revitalize. Should you start with grants? Make a presentation to the economic development leaders? The Idea Friendly Method can help. Photo by Deb Brown

The empty factory building

A reader wrote in to ask about converting and dividing up a huge old building. Because my answer isn’t quite what the reader asked for, I’ve taken the details out. This could be your town, too, couldn’t it?

I absolutely love your articles about turning vacant buildings into small shops and creating a retail space to revitalize small towns. Honestly, I have long thought something like this would do well in my small town. There was once a manufacturing plant that has been shut down for years. The building is huge, yet it is slowly falling into disrepair because it has been sitting empty.

I think this would make a wonderful shopping area if it were broken up into smaller shops. Not only that, but there is a large covered area that would make a great covered farmer’s market.

However, we live in a small rural town where most of our officials in the city office as well as the economic development authority, do not really think outside the box. I would like to pitch this idea to them; however, I do not think they will be receptive if I do not have information such as possible grants or an expert’s advice.

So my question to you is:

1) Can you give me some ideas on where to search to find grants for vacant building restoration?

2) Can you give me examples of other towns/cities that have offered incentives to potential businesses to fill up the spaces? and

3) If the first two options are not persuasive enough, would you be willing to come in and give a presentation to the economic development association and mayor?

Any assistance you can lend would be greatly appreciated. I would really like to help our town become a better version of itself for my children to grow up in.

Where not to start

As Carlos Moreno points out, “they” are never coming to save us. Small towns are on our own playing economic self defense. Photo by Becky McCray.

Not everyone who says they’ll help your town is telling you the truth. 

If you want a resilient small town economy and prosperity for the people in your town, I have some self-defense ideas for you. 

Focus more on your own people, less on attraction. 

1. Stop paying people to bring business to your town that will drain resources out. Forget about retail attraction. Skip trying to attract outside entrepreneurs. Never, ever give incentives of any kind to chain businesses. Never even read the corporate site selection RFP list. 
   1. Instead, support your own local entrepreneurs. Cut down the barriers to entry so even a one square foot business idea is valued, encouraged and possible. Create more shared spaces. 
2. Stop fretting about what will bring people to town. Tourism comes after. Recruitment is best seen as being attractive. 
   1. Instead, focus relentlessly on being such a great place for your own people that others can’t help wanting to be part of it. 
   2. Be open to people’s own ideas and dreams. The town you want to live in is the town you could be building together. 
   3. Eschew formality, regulation and red tape. No one is attracted to the moribund. 
3. Stop letting the same ten people dominate your leadership. When you–without even thinking about it–expect people to have plenty of resources in order to participate, you miss out on some of your best people.
   1. Instead, reach out to everyone in town, every single one. Give people small but meaningful ways to participate.
   2. Actively connect to diverse people including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. You need innovative ideas to survive, and you’ll find more innovative ideas when you bring together people who don’t all share the same backgrounds and all think the same.
   3. Involve people with disabilities and people with less financial resources by giving even smaller but still meaningful ways to participate. Not everyone can do the same things or afford the same things. Everyone has gifts to share.

Focus more on trying ideas in small ways, less on paying others to pick ideas for you. 

1. If you can test an idea with duct tape and cardboard, you don’t need a feasibility report. 
2. Never pay for predictions. A professional guess is still a guess. 
   1. Instead, your own people can and will run experiments once you get out of their way. 
   2. Crowd source the answers you need by testing tons of different ideas.
   3. Tiny failures are almost free, high quality evidence of what doesn’t work. Big failures are evidence you didn’t experiment small enough.

Focus more on local investing, less on creating profits for outside people 

1. Create a local investment team to take these actions: 
   1. Buy up rent houses, so outside real estate investors won’t destroy their value for profit. 
   2. Loan money to local businesses in tiny amounts that big banks can never touch. Loans under $50k are economically infeasible for banks, but arguably the most important for your would be tiny businesses.
   3. Fund community projects with a bias toward tiny individual informal experiments, and away from existing formal organizations. 
2. Move your money to local banks and credit unions. Run a campaign to get more people to join you. 
3. Drive out payday lenders. 

You probably know that I don’t normally cast my opinion in such strong language.

While I was working on videos to help small towns recover, I couldn’t get away from the bad economic decisions we see town officials make over and over.

And I wanted to help you avoid some of those.

What I want most is for your town and your people to prosper. I want you all to build a town together that you are happy to live in. I want you to create something so amazing together that other people want to join you. I want you thrive together.

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The Blue Yeti USB Microphone is highly popular, but its sensitivity can overwhelm you. Photo (CC) by LTD Team

The drawback to Yeti Blue USB Microphones for podcasting

Yeti Blue microphones are widely popular for podcasting and home sound recording. They do have a big drawback of being overly sensitive. They pick up too much background noise even when the gain is turned way down. I know because I bought one for my own podcasting and video streaming and had a hard time getting good sound with it.

The Wrong Advice

Most of the advice I found online says to turn the gain knob on the Yeti down to the absolute minimum. That avoids picking up too much background sound, but then the audio is really quiet and almost unusable. The wrong advice says to amplify that sound at the computer or in your software.

The resulting sound I got using this advice was what I would describe as hollow.

The Contrarian Advice that Works Better

A few contrarians online say to turn the gain knob higher and turn down input level at the computer or software. That worked for me. The sound was much richer, and without picking up all the background noise.

Here are the exact steps I followed

The gain knob is the top one on the back of the Yeti. Most advice says turn it as far down as you can. That advice is wrong. Photo (CC) by LTD Team

1. I plugged my best set of headphones directly into the Yeti so I could monitor the sound while I made adjustments.
2. I turned the gain knob on the back of the Yeti all the way up. I could hear EVERYTHING.
3. I opened the Windows Sound Settings by typing “sound settings” into the Windows search box.
4. In the Sound Settings, I scrolled down to the Input devices.
5. I made sure the Yeti mic was selected, then clicked Device Properties.
6. I adjusted the volume down to around 50.

Much better!

I adjusted the two settings a little bit each way, until my voice sounded the best I could get and I couldn’t hear my wall clock ticking.

I ended up with the Yeti gain knob down about a quarter of the way and the Windows volume set at 75.

You don’t have to do it every time

I made these changes one time in Sound Settings, and now Windows seems to remember for me. Whenever I hook or plug in my Yeti, it’s ready to go. I don’t have to do anything extra.

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.  

If you’re interested in small town small business, feel free to check out some of our best stuff: 

• What businesses would work in a small town? Filling empty buildings
• How to set retail prices and markups
• The 7 Most Common Weaknesses of Local Shops And what we’re all going to do about them

101 Ways to Start More Tiny Businesses

If you need more business ideas, 101 Ways to Start More Tiny Businesses is a short ebook detailing ways to spread economic opportunity as well as why tiny businesses matter. Sign up here to download it and you’ll also get our weekly newsletters where Deb Brown and I share practical steps you can put into action right away to shape the future of your town. Download 101 Ways here.
I will never sell or rent your email address to anyone else because I wouldn’t like that either.

By Paula Jensen

Have you ever experienced a time when you could envision what needs to happen but had no idea what to stop doing in order to reach the point of success?

Here is a simple example: This year at Santa Day in my community someone asked, “Why do we give away turkeys to families during this event – it seems like a waste of funds and fundraising time?” My immediate thought was – it’s a long-standing tradition. In my community we have always collected money from local businesses to give away turkeys on Santa Day. Over the decades the number of volunteers hosting Santa Day has decreased along with the number of businesses, so now businesses and individuals generously donate to our local community group to provide turkey donations for Santa Day. The truth is raising money isn’t hard in our community, but no one has ever asked the question, “Do people really want a turkey for Christmas?” How do we continue the tradition of generosity, but do it without the turkey?

Sometimes we get stuck in a cycle that loses the real purpose of why we started something. Communities often just do what they’ve always done and honestly, it is frequently good work. But when that good work stops having a purpose or producing results because our world has shifted, people really can’t understand why. This is where conflict can begin. A good question to ask each other at times like this is — What should our community stop doing to reach our fullest potential? 

The Stop Doing List can be an important conversation for any community, and it should include its companion the Do Differently List. Together they offer an innovative path toward your fullest potential. What could your community stop doing in 2020 that would brighten your future?

Below is my short list of things communities could stop doing and replace with new ways of leading and doing.

1. Stop having meetings. So often we sit in unproductive meetings that go off track, last too long and never produce results. It really makes people not want to be involved. Try setting a purpose for your meeting in advance, ask people to co-create the agenda and then set time limits for each agenda item to keep you on track.
2. Stop saying “rural is dying”. The truth is, if you’re not trying, you’re dying! In the past decade, the communities who are collaborating regionally and actively working on housing, community and economic development will likely see an uptick in population in the 2020 Census. They are trying! You can check https://factfinder.census.gov/ for population estimates in your town or county.
3. Stop relying on elected leaders. While many communities have excellent leaders, others struggle to fill important community positions, contributing to a wide divergence of capacity. Believe in yourself and cultivate the leader within you. Then cultivate leadership in those around you to develop local vision, community approaches to problem solving and generate funding for projects. We all can contribute to local success.
4. Stop believing more jobs is the answer. Entrepreneurship is the key to creating jobs and retaining young residents in small towns. Creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem strengthens communities and regions by building partnerships among education, industry, and financial sectors.

Now it’s your turn — What else would you add to your community’s Stop Doing List that could help reach its fullest potential?