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Are small towns destined to die?
At a recent event, a fellow small-town resident asked me, “Isn’t small towns dying just part of a natural progression?” I said no. Here’s why. We’ll always need small towns. Small towns combine natural...
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Facebook F-Commerce for small town businesses
I love talking to my friend Paul Chaney because he really gets both small business and small towns. He wrote a great book on the basics of social media for small business called The Digital Handshake....
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Every week, I fail in business
Every business person, no matter how successful they appear, deals with failure daily. It’s just a part of doing business. Every week, I fail in my business.I never can outguess the customers! Looking...
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Boo-yah! No More Fear of Technology
Sheila Scarborough has been my friend for over 4 years, which is a long time online. She’s one of the most confident and capable people anywhere. She’s made an impressive transition from an officer in...
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9 Outsourcing Options You Should Not Ignore
This article comes from my friend Stephanie Ward. She’s originally from Oklahoma, but currently lives in The Netherlands. She wants to help you become a more meaningful entrepreneur, making a...
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The Number One Complaint About Small Town Businesses
James Dalman is another of my Oklahoma friends. He does terrific web design, and he designed my personal site at BeckyMcCray.com. I’ve seen his love for small towns. When he told me this story, I...
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The small town take on Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday is focusing more people’s attention on small businesses for holiday shopping. That’s good. But what does it mean? How can small town businesses benefit? What do we need to do?...
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Building a Startup Community in a Small Town
Over at Michele Price’s site, a reader asked:How would one create a startup community in a more rural area where people don’t really get “the internet” and could care less about Facebook, Twitter, or...
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Customers are Showrooming: using smartphones to compare prices from your store
Showrooming is a bit of a new trend. Your customers, even in small towns, are standing in your store and using their smartphone to compare your price with online retailers. If the product is cheaper at...
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What small towns can learn from Zappos remaking downtown Las Vegas
Prosperous entrepreneurs can reshape communities. That’s one of my key beliefs, and an example is playing out in Las Vegas right now. Zappos, the online shoe retailer, is relocating their corporate...
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How to market a community
Recently, I listened to a session on How to Market a Community with Roger Brooks of Destination Development International. I wanted to share my notes with you. The first fact he mentioned is about how...
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The attitudes to succeed in a small town
I got a call from a freelance reporter last week. She was assigned to write a positive story about the future of rural. Someone told her she should call me, so she did. It was hard, but I want you to...
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Small town economic development idea: The Tour of Empty Buildings
Best small town economic development idea I’ve seen in months, hands down. Downtown Webster City, Iowa. Photo by Deb Brown, used by permission. My friend Deb Brown is the new director of the Webster...
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Is it time to ban “Shop Local”?
Has “Shop Local” been so overused that it has become garbage? This first appeared in our weekly email newsletter, A Positive View of Rural. Even though I love local business, I’m about ready to ban...
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Say Thanks to Small Business Owners
Don, the hardware store owner, in Concrete, Washington. Photo by Becky McCray. We walk and drive by small businesses every day. We go in their doors, make purchases and continue on our way without...
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Tourism essentials for small towns: wifi and workspaces
Are you making your visitors stay offline or work from their cars in parking lots? Time to add wifi and workspaces to your tourism amenities. Photo by Cory Miller, used with permission. Now that most...
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What businesses would work in a small town? Filling empty buildings
This empty building in Waynoka, Oklahoma, is in luck. The Project Waynoka Foundation has taken it on to renovate. Photo by Becky McCray. Dina Jackson is with the City of Harriman, in Tennessee, USA....
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Weakness 1. Limited Business Hours
The 7 Most Common Weaknesses of Local Shops And what we’re all going to do about them. As we head into the busy holiday shopping season, we’ll see lots of Shop Local messages working to get customers...
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Alternative ways to take credit cards. Ditch your merchant account!
Business today is too mobile and too flexible to stick with inflexible traditional merchant accounts for credit card processing. New options are here and tip the scales in favor of small businesses....
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How we switched to an iPad Point-of-Sale system
We just converted our liquor store from using an old-fashioned cash register and paper records to using an iPad-based Point of Sale system. I learned so much in the process that I knew you’d want to...
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