Wash-o-mat sign from the small town of Clovis, New Mexico. CC by chames richalds

Lots of small towns have no self-service laundry facilities, so it’s a smart business to start. It also adds a valuable service and amenity to build your community.

Laundromats are notoriously expensive to get started, and rural businesses have to start with the minimum startup expenses.

The Idea Friendly Method was designed for these small towns and small business realities. An Idea Friendly approach to starting a self-service laundry place in a small town would be to:

Build connections to find what you need without spending any more than you have to at first.

Take small steps and experiment with extra services cheaply to find which ones people use.

Here’s what Building Connections could look like:

• Often, hotels and motels offer a laundry area, maybe just one washer and dryer pair. See if you can build on that.
• Or, ask churches if they have laundry capability and could open it further to the public even during limited hours.
• Deb Brown told me about a Chicago sports bar that offered laundry in the back room.

Ask around for other groups or people in town who might be good partners.

Here are some extra services to experiment with by Taking Small Steps:

• Reader Emily Karsjens Perry mentioned 24 hour vending machines and exercise equipment. (If your Idea Friendly mind went straight to asking around to find donated or thrifted exercise equipment, 5 bonus points!)
• Sheila Scarborough mentioned the combination businesses Frama Coffee at Tumbleweed Laundry formerly in Marfa, TX. (Idea Friendly version: single serve coffee machine?)
• Deb Brown said another laundromat in Thomasville, NC, was near a bingo parlor. Deb said you often saw folks waiting on laundry who would fill their time by crossing the parking lot to play bingo. (Idea Friendly question: could you try a pop-up laundry, maybe in an empty building near an attraction like bingo?)

What ideas would you throw in the wash?

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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

Could a simple backroom tour be better for supporting startups than a full 14 week course? Photo of Bonnieheath Estate Lavender & Winery backroom tour, Ontario, by Becky McCray.

Because I’ve been an entrepreneur since junior high school, I’ve been asked to help with all kinds of entrepreneur support over the decades. I’ve taught entrepreneur classes, I’ve been part of day-long entrepreneur events, I’ve taught workshops and I’ve been a mentor in formal and informal ways. And I’ve been thinking lately about what works and what doesn’t work that well for people in small towns.

Not everyone learns best from the usual kind of formal trainings in a classroom with a lecture from an expert. 

And it’s not easy for would-be entrepreneurs to get to the classes because of timing and conflicts and they’re busy.

And the topics we had to cover in the trainings I was involved in, often focused on things that weren’t necessarily helpful for entrepreneurs. Or weren’t what they most needed to know.

In fact, I just got an email from an educational institution that they’re doing a six week entrepreneur training. When I looked at their list of topics, it struck me as exactly what is wrong with our traditional entrepreneur training:

It’s focused on writing out business plans and legal entity formation, and even the outline is full of jargon like “owner’s equity” and “Calculating Revenue to Break-Even.”

I’m convinced that training curriculum is not the right way to get more entrepreneurs actually doing business in a small town.

In small towns, we have a lot of potential entrepreneurs. They just don’t all fit into the “traditional startup business” model that Old Way courses assume. Think about all the people in your town who could be non-traditional entrepreneurs.

• People doing side hustles already
• Students making things in school classes or organizations
• People with talents they aren’t using in their jobs
• People who want to go into business some day
• People who have a business started but need some help
• People who have been in business before but want to try a different business
• People who are thinking of starting a retirement business

Old Way traditional entrepreneur trainings take all these different kinds of people and assume they all need the same 14 lessons. They assume they’ll all get everything written out and perfectly planned, before they go into business. This is that “traditional startup” model that was assumed a long time ago.

In this Old Way model, startups need to have all their ducks in a row in order to go into business. Everyone needs to have great credit, deep pockets, good connections, be clean and sober, have strong business skills, and a solid support network. Think about your town, there aren’t really that many people who have all those qualifications.

There is an Idea Friendly alternative, one that gives you practical steps to get your entrepreneurs to train each other in a way that is self-sustaining: 

Learn more in our latest video at SaveYour.Town.

Easy summer business for teens: helping seniors with their cell phones.

Looking for the perfect instant summer business idea for young entrepreneurs? Try phone clinics.

I saw this idea pop-up in a meeting that involved a cross section of the town of Cathlamet, Washington. People of all ages were there: students from the high school, county commissioners, chamber of commerce members. One of the adults was lamenting that they didn’t know how to fix a certain annoying problem with their phone.

“That’s easy,” one of the students said. “I’ll help you after this is over.”

Immediately other adults spoke up. They had phone issues, too! Could they get help?

That’s a business idea! With just a sign and a couple of chairs, any tech savvy person could set up a booth at an event. Set a price by the job or by time.

There’s plenty of demand from older adults who are online and need some tech support. Maybe not a full time class, just a quick solution.

Especially in small towns, there aren’t a lot of established alternatives, so there’s not too much competition.

More help with Youth Engagement

Deb Brown and I are sharing what we’ve learned from working with students and youth in small towns. Learn more about our Connecting with Kids video here.

What’s the right way to get a microbrewery going? Start small.

Guest Post by Deb Brown

When I visited Decatur County, Iowa, several people said that wanted a brewery. They talked about the big barriers in their way: finding the right building, the right funding, the right people. The big idea seems really hard this way. Why not start smaller? Start by using the Idea Friendly Method: Gather Your Crowd, Build Connections, Take Small Steps.

Here are some of the questions I suggested they ask themselves and each other to help them start small.

Gather Your Crowd

• Who in the county already makes home brew?
• Who wants to talk about finding a place for adults to hang out?
• Who is interested in finding a way to bring a new business to town?

Invite them to come together, over a beer, and talk about the big idea of having a microbrewery. Talk to each other, think about all the ideas.

Build Connections

• Who knows who that already started a brewery? Go visit them. Find out what they had to do to get there.
• Start finding out the things you need to know: licensing, manufacturing laws, etc.
• What resources does your local community already have that you could use? Who do you talk to get access to those resources?
• Who knows other home brew clubs you could visit?

Take Small Steps

• Have your home brewers do a sampling. See if people really are interested in having a brewery.
• Maybe form a home brew club.
• Try things out. Test your market and your product.
• Could you offer free samples in an empty building downtown and then visit about some ways to use that building to bring adults together?
• Could you set up at a local event in a beer tent environment? Maybe use monies collected to support that event?

Again, bring people together, over a beer, to talk about the possibilities!

Apply this Idea Friendly Method to your own big idea

Any idea to make your town a better place can follow the Idea Friendly method. If you’d like some help to see how that would work in your town, check out the SaveYour.Town video Big Ideas? Small Steps!

Photo (CC) by Malin Andreassen, on Flickr

“If only” is a statement I hear often from small-business owners.

Sometimes the wishes are big and grandiose. But most of the time, the wishes are just what one might expect such as more customers, a big order, more space or more money to work with or in the bank at the end of the month.

Yes, often the wishes are just dreaming, yet I have also seen a them come true.

It is great when that happens but, when asked, business owners often reflect that this great positive showed weaknesses in their planning and preparation.

Issues that these owners have faced include: keeping customers happy once they start coming; getting and training an adequate level of staff, needing more space and equipment, finding where to get more raw materials, and, of course, needing more money. Even when things are going good and money is starting to come in, the demand for access to even more cash grows as well.

Business owners comment that they were looking at much larger loans or at new challenges as they considered raising equity capital or working with an angel or venture capitalists.

So should you, as the owner, give up on your wishes? Not at all. For most people, the wishing stage just gets us started thinking about the future. And those thoughts form the start of what all business owners should do, planning.

Wishing is a good lead for the next step, the “what if” statements. How might your business be impacted if a wish does happen? Are you ready to respond?

Being ready to respond will make achieving your wish feel so much better. It also may help direct what you wish for. For example, many people enjoy the creative process. If demand should skyrocket, he or she becomes a manager and loses any hands-on role. It’s something to think about and plan for to ensure that your small business continues to fulfill your dreams and desires.

Wishing or dreaming or whatever you want to call it is a huge motivator. It keeps us motivated. And that will build your business.

As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” The key to this story is do not let your wishes be the end of your dreams.

Photo (CC) by Helen Gordon, on Flickr

Getting a business up and running takes a lot of hard work.

Trying to decide what business to start, determining if there is an audience, and getting your systems in order takes a lot of your effort. And these initial tasks happen at a time when you have only yourself or, at best, limited help available.

As I talk with startup-business owners, they often comment about looking forward to getting beyond the startup stage when they won’t have to work so hard.

Thinking it gets easier, though, is somewhat of a myth.

Yes, certain things do get easier. You have a market of regular buyers. Certain aspects of the business become routine. Your business has an established presence, it’s visible. And you have key employees performing some of the key tasks.

Probably one of the biggest things is that money is coming in and you have established a cash flow that can be used to pay bills and expenses. Plus that cash flow is allowing you to pay yourself and pay off some of the debt you probably took on when you started the business.

But while certain things get easier, new tasks come along and existing tasks get harder.

One of the biggest challenges is how to keep things new and fresh for you existing customers. It is much easier to sell to someone who has already purchased from your business. However with all of the competition, it can be hard to keep the customer coming back to your store.

Keeping things new means not only updated products and services but bringing on new products and product lines. It means new means of service. New ways to market and even new ways for customers to pay (think near-field communication or payment through an app) are now your challenges. New regulations come along. Finally, your cash-flow issues don’t go away. They change to finding ways to allow for your growth and to increase wages and benefits.

The bottom line, as reported by existing business owners, is that running a business gets different but it doesn’t get easier.

This should not stop you and your pursuit of a dream. Small-business ownership offers great opportunities and rewards. Just understand the realities and then enjoy the ride.

Want to start your own business? Start by experimenting with borrowed space inside an existing business. Photo by Becky McCray

In a recent conference call by the Orton Family Foundation, one of the listeners asked a great practical question:

What are 3 actions most effective at starting a local company? —Jay B., KS

My answer was:

Try 3 small scale tests.

That’s how you’ll build knowledge of what works, build an initial following in the market, and build assets toward your next, bigger step.

What can you do to test a business idea?

• Try something temporary: pop-up for a day, a week or a season
• Try something tiny: look for just a few hundred square feet to set up in
• Try something together: set up your business inside an existing business, coworking space, maker space, shared art studio, or shared commercial kitchen
• Try a truck or trailer: use more than one town to gather enough customers

Those are four of the Innovative Rural Business Models. They are the best way to build up to bigger future business successes. (Watch for a more in-depth article on this updated version of the Innovative Rural Business Models, coming soon.)

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

Photo by Becky McCray

The day is nearly here for you to open the doors of your new business. What a great feeling!

Have you thought about who might be your first customer? Might I suggest that the first person should be your worst critic, or might I even say nightmare?

That comment probably dampened your enthusiasm. Why start with such a person?

The answer is simple. You want someone who will hold your business up to the highest standards, and will critique your business from your front door through all of the processes, right down to how clean the bathrooms are and the condition of the sidewalks in front of your store.

Some might suggest that the first customer be you. My feeling is that you are too invested in the business and might not see or you might overlook some of the issues. Your first customer needs to be someone who:

• Can tell you exactly what he or she saw and what he or she experienced
• You can yell at when he or she is honest with you and who then will tell you even more
• Will take the time to methodically test your staff and procedures, from the initial greeting through sales, any delivery or service you offer, customer complaints and returns.

Sometimes a business does what is considered a soft opening. That’s an opening with no publicity, just word of mouth. The idea means that you and your staff are not overwhelmed with customers. And that is a good idea, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it until you already have given everything a rigorous testing.

Another approach often used is to invite family and friends to a pre-opening. This is another good idea, especially because they represent your cheering section (you will need one) and often are investors. Yet they often want to say good things and find that “laying it on the line” is hard to do. A pre-opening is a good public relations move, but it doesn’t help you work out the bugs.

Your goal at this point is to be as ready as you can be for the first day of business. That first day might be the soft opening or the friends-and-family event or something else. No matter what day one is, you want everything to be operating as best it can.

One person sometimes suggested as your reviewer is someone in the same business as you. However, you may not want someone from your own community, although that person would bring a richness of community knowledge that would be useful. You may want to bring in someone who runs a business in a community like yours but in a town some distance away.

When I asked the question about who your first customer might be, you probably thought about the first real customer.

That first customer will come. You want to make sure that he or she will come back.

Capital City Public Market, taken by Melissa Nodzu, used with permission. Brett “Buzz” Davis of Long Valley Coffee.

Admit it. You want to own your own business.

Saying this is OK. Many people feel the same as you do. Owning a business is a goal many of us have, just like we want to own our own house.

Yet turning that wish into reality is the hurdle where many people stop. It’s scary. Besides knowing exactly what type of business they should start, the idea of giving up that sure thing, their paycheck and associated benefits, stops them from reaching for the dream.

Some families make the leap by having one of the partners keep his or her job. Yet even that is not always possible because we tend to have set our spending at a level where we need two incomes. So we stall out.

This hurdle, though, need not stop us. Many business startup guides encourage people to start the business on the side.

Starting a side business is a win-win tactic. You get to keep your day job and the security of the paycheck and benefits package while you explore your business idea. And keeping that paycheck will help limit the amount of outside funding you might need. You can put more of your own resources into starting the business and need little or no funding just to pay for daily living expenses.

So how does one do it? It starts with hustle or, what some might say, burning the candle at both ends. It means perhaps having to let go of some favorite recreational pastime, as least in the short term. And it also may mean less family time and/or sleep.

Just these changes alone mean you need to have a good talk with yourself; now might be a time to bring in a mentor. You also need to have a conversation with your spouse or partner, along with any children or parents who you might be assisting.

You may well want to reach out to other business owners and find out who else started this way. Ask them how for tips on how they did it.

A second issue is what business model to use. You’ve probably heard that you can’t open a storefront if you aren’t there. That’s true but only if you are thinking of a typical storefront. What about a pop-up business, a short-term, perhaps seasonal effort? This may take your vacation time. But isn’t the end goal worth it?

Or maybe you can run the business on nights and weekends only. You can start many businesses at this level just to explore the market.

You also can talk with your current employer. Maybe you can work out a modified work schedule or take some time off without pay.

Starting a business is a dream of many. Beginning your business on the side might be the way to make it happen.