Having trouble getting customers in the door? Consider these tips. Photo by Becky McCray

If you have a retail store in a small town, you know how difficult it can be to attract customers in the door. With so much online competition and limited resources, it is hard to get people in the store and buying your products. In this article, we’ll share some of our best ways to get customers in the door of your retail store.

In our recent Survey of Rural Challenges, one store owner said, “Our challenge is getting customers in the door. They assume the selection and prices will be better at big box stores. If we can get people into the store they see that we have better quality at better prices, and we get the sale.”
Another said even bribery wasn’t working: “People who live in town have never walked through the door. Even when I sent them a $20 gift card to entice them.”

Check your store’s product selection. Is it what people really want these days? Photo by USDA

Do you have what they really want?

Make sure you have what your customers want. All the promotion in the world won’t drive customers to a business that doesn’t offer what people want.

The first retailer above said if customers do come in, “we get the sale.” That’s a good indication that you’re on target.

Limited business hours are the Number One complaint against small town businesses. Most of us don’t live on this schedule any more. Photo by Becky McCray.

Are you open when they’re shopping?

They can’t come in the door, if the door isn’t open.

Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor, made a house call with us some time ago to talk through small town retail challenges. Here’s his advice about hours:

“Studies have shown that, in order, these are the best money making times for retail:

1. Saturday 11 am – 1 pm
2. Saturday 3 pm – 5 pm
3. Sunday 3 pm – 5 pm
4. Sunday 11 am – 1 pm

“If your store is closed on Sundays, you may be missing out on two of the top four money-making times! You have to test these against your store to see if it proves true.”

I ran a retail store for almost 13 years in a small town. We were open 10am to 9pm, Monday through Saturday. Sales from 5-9pm were always more than sales from 10am to 5pm. Almost every single day for over 4000 days, evenings beat day time for us.

If you’re willing to do some simple research, you can find out the best hours for a store in your town.

You have a lot of marketing tools at hand today. Use them to remind people over and over that your store is here and what you offer.

Invite them in again and again, at least 13 times

Our contributor Glenn Muske said, “Research has found that potential customers need to hear or see the name of a new business three to five times before they even recognize that the business exists. Thus, a one-time big advertisement will do little to bring in customers. Continuity in the early days is crucial.

“Knowing about the business is only part of step one, however. You now have to get customers in the door. Research suggests that potential customers may need another five to seven contacts with your product or service to recognize its benefits to them. Remember, the customer wants to solve a problem.”

Contacts with your customers can be all the times they see your ads, social media posts, flyers, online listings, signs or sponsorship of local causes. You don’t get to count the ones they don’t see.

You have to put your business out there a lot more than you think in order to get just one customer in the door.

Musicians on the sidewalk? Tool days in the parking lot? Dinner in the greenhouse? There’s no end to the experiences you can create in or outside your store that help you bring people in the doors. Photo by Becky McCray.

Create experiences with events

To survive in independent local retail today, you must provide an experience that can’t be duplicated by chain stores or online or in the big city. Events are one of the best ways to create a meaningful experience that is tough for any big store to duplicate.

Hold an event that is a real experience

The owner of a retail hardware store and greenhouse in rural Kansas started brainstorming ideas for events he could hold to create an experience for customers.

• Tool Days. Bring in the guy who does blade sharpening for the afternoon. Set up tents in the parking lot and have people teach how you use tools of all kinds. Do demonstrations and hands-on (appropriate) play with tools.
• Dinner in the Greenhouse. His well-stocked greenhouse is a wonderfully green and lush space in dry Western Kansas. There’s room for a couple of tables, and there’s a bubbling fountain. It’s great! Let’s have dinner there! Get a local eatery or aspiring chef to cater. Have fun with it. Use a jungle theme. Get creative. Since there are only a couple of tables available, turn it into a super-exclusive special thing that not everyone can do. Sell out early.

Do a bunch of mini-events

I’ve shared these ideas for mini-events for rural retail businesses before:

• Recruit anyone who gives lessons to hold a student performance (could be music, dance, martial arts, drama, writing, language, anything!) Students bring families, instant crowd
• Bring games, tables and chairs and hold a game night (board games, card games, dominoes, adult coloring books, you name it)
• Bring beach chairs and umbrellas and pretend you have a downtown beach (play beachy summer music for bonus points)
• Hold a tasting or sampling from any local winery, food business, or even cooking classes
• Read poetry or start community conversations on any topic you like (poetry slam?)

A local furniture store hosts two temporary businesses for a special shopping event, combining business-in-a-business and pop-ups to benefit everyone. Photo by Becky McCray.

Host a pop-up business inside your business

Invite another business to set up in a corner of your shop, as a pop up. This could be an artist, artisan, maker, crafter or tinkerer.
Look for those that are doing business from their homes. Maybe they are just beginning to think about making some money with their products or are just starting to get an online following.

Once they setup, make more of it:

• Hold a meet the artist event
• Have a party announcing your new acquisition
• Create a Facebook event and do something special to announce their arrival

Joann Schissel shared her pop-up event success story with me:

“My partner and I have a winery business (Nearwood Winery). He makes the wine, and I’m in charge of customer experience. We have a small tasting room on the square in Knoxville. We’ve found that pop-up shops or a one-time event seems to bring in customers. Our next community event is “Living Windows” which kicks off the holiday shopping season. We invited a crafter to set up her “shop” inside our wine tasting room for that evening. She sells hand made gift bags that hold a bottle of wine. Other pop ups we’ve had is book signings by local authors and art exhibits by local artists. All these type of promos seem to bring in customers. We try to focus on products/services that enhance the wine experience. Our motto is “where creatives gather.”

Three local stores cooperated on this joint ad, marketing their stores together. Photo by Becky McCray.

Cooperate with other businesses

Leverage your relationships with other businesses to put together a tour of businesses, or an experience that includes more than just your business.

Joann did this, too! She created a local fashion show:

“I reached out to our business owners that had fashions or a tangent business. I know a jewelry designer that will match her product with the clothes from the boutiques. A local photographer will take photos of the models and the event. A fabric designer that makes her own jackets will model her creations.

“I charged $5 advance tickets (available online or at the shops) and $10 at the door. The first beverage is free, so there is very little ‘risk’ to the guests, but allows me to gauge interest and attendance. We had 15 models (includes kids) and friends/relatives were in the audience. I am focused on ‘gathering my crowd’ strategy and catering to established groups of people that have their own crowd. I loved working with the women business owners and promoting their products.”

The retail store owner’s dream: so many customers, they can’t all get in the doors at once! Photo by Becky McCray

Keep trying and keep trying

After more than a dozen years of small town retail experience, I understand how it feels to stand in an empty store and wonder where all the customers went. But today, we have so many tools to market our businesses, serve customers in new ways, and create experiences they can’t get anywhere else. Our best bet for survival is to keep trying new experiments and keep the ones that work best. Then try more new experiments.

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Cited by:

Get Customers in the door, Atchison County Development Corporation Newsletter, (Missouri) Spring 2023

EV charging stations are popping up in lots of rural places, especially along interstate highways and along the coasts in the US. They’ve become relatively common at some motels as well.

Chargers are also popping up globally in rural places. Deb Brown reported seeing electric vehicle chargers in rural Portugal in Dec 2022.

Photo by Becky McCray

This EV charging station is near an interstate highway in Flagler, rural East Central Colorado. Seems kinda boring.

How visitors use electric vehicle charging stations

Most drivers are stopping at chargers for a boost, rather than driving until the battery is empty and charging it to 100%. As Canary Media reported, “EV charging tends to come in sips, rather than gulps.”

How long does EV charging take? Quick chargers take 15 to 30 minutes to deliver this kind of sip. 

Imagine people pulling off the highway and into your small town, then standing around or sitting in their cars for 15 to 30 minutes. What could you do to turn them into visitors?

Idea 1. Post wayfinding signs

If you already have way-finding signs for your community, look for EV charging stations to post them at.

Photo by Becky McCray

Limon, Colorado, has the full wayfinding sign package: directional arrows to all the amenities, plus a map of the town mounted on the post.

Idea 2. Include signs to businesses

What local businesses might a traveler visit? Any kind! Of course retail, convenience, grocery stores and restaurants. But while you’ve got the chance, why not go all out and share a huge business directory sign?

Photo by Becky McCray

This wayfinding sign is not far from the EV charging station shown at the top of this article. It’s in Flagler, Colorado, and includes an easily-updateable  list of businesses and a pointer to the business district.

Idea 3. Feature your local culture

Photo by Becky McCray

When you pull into Concrete, Washington, from the highway, you come to a stop at the main intersection facing this wayfinding sign with a list of businesses and direction arrows. The chainsaw art border reflects their local mountain culture and history.

Idea 4. Show them a map

Photo by Becky McCray

This wayfinding map of the town of Lumby, British Columbia, Canada, includes an inset map of the town park. The design is printed on metal and mounted on the building. When it fades, it will be easy to replace.

Idea 5. If signs aren’t allowed, paint a map mural nearby

Photo by Becky McCray

If wayfinding signs aren’t allowed, how about an artistic map mural? Here Concrete, Washington, lays claim on being the Center of the Known Universe. This mural led me to discover the historic concrete bridge at the edge of town which was well worth a visit for an infrastructure nerd.

Get more top topics for small towns

This is just one of the 5 top topics that Deb Brown and I put together. These topics are ones we think don’t get enough attention right now. Discover the other 4 topics at LearnTo.SaveYour.Town: 5 Top Topics. No charge.

The Santa Fe Trail wagon ruts are still visible near Lakin in Western Kansas. You can walk across the little dam, past the tree and right out to the original trail, but there isn’t a lot to see.

Here’s a closer view of the ruts. The ruts are running diagonally from top left toward the lower right. It’s still not what you’d call much to see, and the “Wagon Ruts” sign isn’t terribly helpful.

For places like this where the is little left to see, a smart addition would be a “look through” sign like this one, shared with me by Doug Mackenzie. You look through the sign, and it shows you where things used to be.

If you stand in the right place and line up the outline of the courthouse with the actual courthouse in the distance, you can see the locations and outlines of other buildings that were there in 1920.

Imagine a similar design showing wagons and people walking. When you looked through the sign and lined up the horizon, the outlines of wagons and people would line up with the remains of the Santa Fe Trail ruts. I think that would be cool.

Here’s the Kansas Historical Marker at the site, describing how to find the ruts.

Another obvious addition is any mention of the Indigenous people. The marker mentions “attack” but no context or story about the conflict between people here. It would be another way to add value and meaning to the scant remains of the old Santa Fe Trail.

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Guest post by Rob Hatch

My dear friend John Grossman and his wife Dawn own the Holyoke Hummus Company in Holyoke, Massachusetts. I’ve marveled at how they grew from setting up a small folding table at a local park selling falafel sandwiches to acquiring a cart. Next, they outgrew the cart and bought a food truck. They eventually opened a restaurant.

I appreciate their growth because John tested each stage and grew based on the results.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy, and some steps tripped him up, but each stage built on the success of the previous one.

Pandemic Adjustments

In the early days of the pandemic, restaurants shut down. So, like many others, John made the switch to pick-up or delivery orders. But maintaining a full, sit-down restaurant didn’t make sense financially. [Read our October 2020 story on Holyoke Hummus.]

John adjusted quickly. He moved his food prep operations to a co-kitchen. Then, he partnered with a new cannabis dispensary where he could park his truck and serve. This spot became the new pick-up (and walk-up) location.

It was great. Locals could venture to the truck to grab a bite, and the online delivery orders kept coming.

Of course, that changed when restaurants reopened. Suddenly those pick-up orders slowed down.

So, John adjusted again.

Not going back to a restaurant

He stopped his truck service at that location and shifted his focus to his business’s catering and events side. He continued to use his food truck and food trailer, which are far more profitable than the restaurant.

While this was all happening, John hired a food scientist to replicate his hummus recipe for large-batch preparation and eventual supermarket distribution.

From the outside, owning and operating a restaurant has all the indicators of achieving a certain level of success. But, in reaching that point, it might be tempting to hold on to it too long for fear of having to do what feels like a failure or at least take a step backward.

John’s story is different. First, he did what he could to make adjustments and stay put through the pandemic. But when it became clear that wasn’t going to work, he changed his model.

Shift to What Works

The phrase Fail Forward gets used a lot. And while I get that, it seems like that’s what is happening here. But I’m not sure it is.

At its core, the Holyoke Hummus Company makes and sells delicious food. They have a variety of proven methods for getting that food to their customers. And when one of those methods stopped working, John shifted to something else; something that had worked for him before.

And the shift did work until it didn’t. So John shifted to something else that has worked.

We spend so much time worrying about our failures or attempting to mine them for precious lessons.

Maybe we need to change that approach and shift to what works.

Find out about Rob Hatch’s coaching

Could you squeeze in an extra desk or two in your business? It could be an extra line of income for you. Photo via Pexels.

With more people working remotely, more people are working from places that are neither their offices or their homes. Cue the rise of the Third Workplace.

You may remember “third places” as places you hangout that aren’t home and aren’t work. Coffee shops, bars and places like that. “Third workplaces” are places you work that aren’t home and aren’t the office.

Since rural places host a lot of professionals working from the field, we’ve long had people who wanted temporary and flexible places to work. What we haven’t had was much supply. Now with more remote work and more entrepreneurship, we expect to see more people looking for places to work. That’s a business opportunity.

Any small town or rural business could potentially create a new line of income from any  space that could be adapted for a third workspace to rent out. 

Adding additional lines of income is one of the Small Town Rules: always have more than one line of income.

All kinds of small town businesses have extra workspace, including the tire store. Photo by Jon Swanson

The larger trend

Of course this is all about remote work, whether it’s current residents or people moving to rural places working online. The pandemic accelerated this, and it’s still going.

• People who may want a change of scene from their home office.
• People may crave more work interaction than they get at home.
• People may want to feel part of the larger business community.
• People who work from an office might benefit from getting away for some focused work.

One of our favorite trendwatchers, Emergent Research said:

We’re seeing signs that, thanks to the shift to remote work, the paradox of place is breaking down and workers and companies are geographically spreading out. We expect both the trends towards greater use of 3rd places for work and economic de-agglomeration to continue.

Have some extra reception space? Even couches or soft seating can be office-like enough for a third workspace. Photo by WOCinTech.

What would you need to set up a workspace?

1. Chairs or places to sit are good.
2. Desks or tables would be nice.
3. Wifi would help.

Pretty much everything else is negotiable.

Even wifi, which feels like an absolute requirement, can be flexible. If your wifi isn’t great, some workers may have a wireless hotspot they can use. (But still, faster and more reliable wifi would be better.)

The basic amenities are chairs and work surfaces, because otherwise remote workers will make do with almost nothing. Photo by Becky McCray.

Even if other co-working places exist in your town, you can still create your own third workspace with your own personality. Different people will like different kinds of workplaces.

Some people want a noisy coffee shop. Some will like quiet libraries. Some want a more homey place, and others will feel more business-like in an office-style setting. Whatever the feel of the work space you create, there is someone who will love it.

Are guest rooms going empty? Those are potential workspaces. Photo by C.C. Chapman.

What businesses could make money from extra workspace?

Coffee shops, cafes and food businesses have long been used as informal workspaces. What if you made a just slightly upgraded workspace for an extra charge?

Business incubators could create office space and co-working space.

Hotels, motels or bed and breakfasts may already offer a workstation or two for guests. Could you expand the workstation to accommodate regular co-working? Could you rent guest rooms as temporary offices?

RV Parks, too. 

Outdoor workspaces including parks, yards, porches and RV parks have income-producing potential. Photo by C.C. Chapman.

Any business with room for an extra desk or office. Maybe an insurance company has some open space in their offices. Maybe an attorney has an extra partners office they only use for storage.

Nonprofit organizations, economic development groups or chambers may have offices or meeting rooms that aren’t in use all the time.

Churches, worship centers, fellowship halls, or youth centers may have classrooms or offices they could share.

If your space is accessible by wheelchairs or people with mobility issues, you can serve more people. Glenda Watson Hyatt who uses a wheelchair brings her own roll-up keyboard that’s easier for her to use when working. Photo by Becky McCray.

Two real life examples: bringing clients in, and The Smoffice

What to look for: empty space or storage space in any businesses’ office

Mike Samson, co-founder of crowdSPRING, said they partnered with a design development firm, and the deal included a tiny amount of office space. This worked for them for nine months before they outgrew it.

Samson said there is a big difference between working at home, and working with other people who have ideas, connections, networks, and can invite you to events. We’ll talk more about the benefits of third workplaces, below.

Deep display windows downtown can turn into small offices. Photo courtesy of The Smoffice.

What to look for: deep display windows downtown going empty: The Smoffice

In Durham, North Carolina, a local coffee shop had big display windows up front they weren’t sure how to use. So they turned one into a small office space. They called it The Smoffice, and held a contest to find a tiny entrepreneur that wanted to use it. Everyone benefited from the publicity, and the two businesses actually interacted and helped each other while they were located together.

Deep display windows downtown can turn into small offices. Rendering courtesy of The Smoffice.

Bonus Points: Third workspaces bring side benefits to workers, entrepreneurs and the community

Better workers: When people who usually work from home do some of their work from a co-working space, Emergent Research said that they feel more engaged and motivated, they expand their professional networks and feel more successful.

Better entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurs learn best from each other. When they’re in close proximity, they have opportunities to run into each other randomly. They’ll talk to each other, answer questions for each other, come up with ways they might work together or potential customers they might refer to each other.

Better community: When people who work from home or remotely meet at these third workspaces, they’ll start to build connections. That’s an essential part of building community and social capital.

Coworking groups and clubs can form in shared workspaces. that helps build beneficial social capital in your community. Photo by Sheila Scarborough.

Dorrigo in New South Wales, Australia, population 1100, created an entire event to support local makers. David from the Red Dirt Distillery told us about Made in Dorrigo Day, where everything offered for sale had to be made, grown or produced in their local 2453 postcode area.

Back in 2014 when they started, David said, “Like with everything, it is just up to a few individuals to run the whole show BUT, we are doing something and it does make a difference.. even if it isn’t a “roaring success, financially” it does provide all those other immeasurable things – pride in community, and even [the feeling of] “community” sooooo important in our small (struggling) towns…”

As I write this in 2021, they’re still doing Made in Dorrigo Markets several times a year. They’ve taken small steps to build something meaningful out of their local arts, crafter, makers and manufacturers.

Holding “Made in” events helps redefine how people see your town. We just aren’t aware of how many different things are made, grown or produced locally. Getting them all together in one place can really make an impression on people’s thinking.

You’ll be influencing the growth of your future maker entrepreneurs and your future creative workforce.

Bonus: This would make a great tie in with MFG Day or Manufacturing Day in October.

Get more ideas for building your local maker economy with SaveYour.Town’s rural craft entrepreneurship video.

This is the story of Avard, Oklahoma, a town that knows how to make something out of nothing. Often listed as a ghost town, their population was never more than 300, and has declined since the 1950s. Avard is the kind of creative place where they wanted to raise money to restore their little lake that had dried up, so they sold dehydrated fishing licenses–good for all the dehydrated fish you could catch from the dry lake. Something from nothing!

In the 2000s, almost all of the 33 residents played a role in the Avard Folk Festival to bring cowboy and pioneer folk arts and crafts to life. Over 100 artists came from all across Northwest Oklahoma. Traditional musicians performed while craftspeople showcased their rope making, candle making, quilting and blacksmithing. They put on a trail ride, a dutch oven cook off, and an old fashioned baking and canning fair.

One of the organizers, Donna Schmidt said their goal was to preserve these arts by supporting the current artists, as well as providing exposure and hands-on experience to everyday people in a fun setting. They attracted over 500 attendees to their little “ghost town” and kept it going for several years.

That’s a terrific example of using what you already have, right down to the dry lake bed. In our Idea Friendly Method, this is the Take Small Steps part, and it focuses on creating more opportunities for your craft entrepreneurs.

Get the full video: Crafters Create Prosperity

This video clip is a sample from the SaveYour.Town video on rural craft entrepreneurship: Crafters Create Prosperity.

Your town has people and assets to build on. You have local crafts, local arts, and people who make things. We’re going to give you practical steps you can take to use what you have and what you make to create prosperity.

Find out more

More articles for arts and crafts entrepreneurship

Overcoming the Challenges of Craft Vending in Small Towns – Jeriann Ireland shares her story as she steps up from a craft hobby towards a craft business.

10 Tips for Increasing Your Sales at Art and Craft Shows – micro biz enthusiast Glenn Muske has 10 tips to get more money coming at shows.

Donna Maria on wholesaling your products – helping you think through the process of growing beyond shows.

A “micropolitan area” is US term for smaller metropolitan areas between 10,000 and 50,000 people.

• Micropolitans provide shopping and services to their core population and even more rural people in surrounding regions.
• About 27 million US residents live in micropolitan towns. 

Nanopolitans are towns with between 1,000 and 10,000 people.

• Nanopolitans serve as smaller regional centers.
• The range of retail and services varies depending on the sparsity of surrounding rural areas. 
• An estimated 21 million US residents live in nanopolitan towns of between 2,500 and 10,000 population. 

Towns under 1,000 are picopolitan areas.

• Services, trade and economic status of picopolitans varies widely. 
• They are most important in sparsely populated areas. 

With a population under 12,000 people, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a small micropolitan area. Photo by Becky McCray.

By Becky McCray

Why smaller urban areas matter

The US needs a secure food supply, ongoing conservation and restoration work in natural areas, reliable production of natural resources and controlled access to nature for recreation. That means we need people living in small towns and rural places, and those rural people rely on micropolitan, nanopolitan and picopolitan areas to provide services and support necessary for their everyday lives.

Micropolitans

Micropolitans are key to rural America’s prosperity. They are regional centers of employment, higher education, retail shopping, health care and other essential services for tens of thousands of rural people in their trade areas.

• Micropolitans gained attention in 2020 and 2021 as people relocated from dense urban areas to less crowded urban places, leading to the term Zoom Towns for attracting more rural remote workers.
• Economic developers have started paying more attention to micropolitans as big opportunities for business growth.
• With over 500 of them, not all micropolitans are the same. Some micropolitans are stronger economically than others.

Nanopolitans, picopolitans

Small towns between 1,000 and 10,000 people nanopolitans, and towns under 1,000 are picopolitan areas.

These towns serve as regional trade centers with limited retail, employment and services. These smaller centers often rely on nearby micropolitans for a more expanded set of services, especially higher education and health care.

The further people are spread apart in surrounding areas, the more these small population centers play a driving role in their regional economy. The further communities are from major metropolitan or larger micropolitan areas, the more the people will rely on their small population centers for services.

• Economic developers are paying increased attention to the opportunities in nanopolitan towns and picopolitan towns.

How many people live in nanopolitan or picopolitan towns?

It’s hard to say for sure, because there are no official government definitions of these terms. Also, the Census Bureau definitions of rural vs. urban places and the Office of Management and Budget definition of core urban areas don’t line up.

By taking totals from different and not necessarily comparable reports, at least 21 million people live in smaller towns between 2,500 (the upper limit of “rural” for the Census Bureau) and 10,000 (the lower limit for “micropolitan” for the Office of Management and Budget).

‘Micropolitan’ Official definition

The term “micropolitan” has only been used by the US government since 2003.

Micropolitan is defined by the US Office of Management and Budget as a concentrated or core urban area with at least 10,000 people but fewer than 50,000 people. A micropolitan area includes this core urban area, its central county or counties, and any adjoining counties that contribute a significant number of commuters. Officially, there are more than 540 micropolitan areas with a population of over 27 million. Here’s the US Census Bureau page on Micropolitans.

In January 2021, the Office of Management and Budget proposed raising the minimum size for a core metropolitan area from 50,000 to 100,000. That would cut 144 cities out of metropolitan status and reclassifying them as micropolitans, affecting 18 million people.

This would cause a complicated set of changes, as the affected cities would no longer qualify for a whole range of US federal programs, but might qualify for other programs targeted to non-metropolitan areas. There is no one list of all the federal programs and funding streams that would change for the individual cities.

Will this reclassification happen? Since it was a last day proposal by one presidential administration, it may or may not be taken up by the following administration.

If that does happen, the term “minipolitan” could be applied to towns between 50,000 and 100,000. (“Mini” is sometimes applied to larger values than “micro” when used as a size prefix.) Maybe that’s why the OMB started their classification of smaller-than-metropolitan areas with micropolitan, leaving room for an eventual minipolitan classification.

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Your downtown is your core, your front door, your barometer. Photo by Deb Brown.

Why does downtown matter?

I’ve been asked why downtowns matter to small towns. Why should you invest your time and money into revitalizing your downtown? What makes it more important than any other area of town? What about that highway frontage? Or the edge of town where the discounters locate?

In our Survey of Rural Challenges, people ranked downtown as one of the top challenges, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021. It doesn’t matter whether you call it your Main Street, High Street or town centre, you’re not alone if it’s a challenge.

Joe Borgstrom with Place and Main said that your downtown is your front door, barometer, recruiting tool and collectively a large employer.

Don’t miss those last two: collectively, your downtown is both a recruiting tool and a large employer. Make sure downtown businesses have a seat at the table for economic and community development decisions.

Downtown matters because it represents your town as a whole. One mayor said downtown is like the core of an apple. No one wants a mushy core. 

If your downtown buildings are mostly boarded up windows or empty storefronts, that represents your town to everyone who drives through town. If your downtown is busy with lots of businesses, that represents you, too. And you have the power to change your downtown from empty and boarded up to busy and full of life.

Downtown is a symbol of the social connections we yearn for.

We have a drive to be better connected with other people. We want to belong to something. We want to be able to trust our community members. We want to be social. That’s easiest to imagine happening on downtown sidewalks and streets, not highway frontage or discounters on the edge of town.

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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