Welcome to Small Biz Survival, dedicated to the regular everyday small business people in small towns and all over the rural world. I’m glad you stopped in! You can read more about us, if you’d like, and you can read our current disclosures. Let me give you a tour around the place.
What can you expect to read here? Articles by and for small business people in rural areas and small towns. You face some special challenges in a small town small business, including:
- Pressure from competitors in bigger cities,
- Pressure from competitors online, world wide,
- Scarce, or variable quality, resources to assist you locally,
- Tight labor supply, and a graying workforce,
- Lack of skills in your workforce,
- Isolation from your industry peers.
But for each challenge, there is also opportunity.
- The online market opens the world to you.
- Involvement in your community is your way to fight against decline.
- Land is usually cheap, compared to growing areas.
- Regulatory burdens tend to be lower than in well-developed regions.
- A little payroll usually goes a long way.
- Work ethic is usually high.
I believe…
- Entrepreneurship is the best way to support small towns. When the local people start their own businesses and prosper, they help their town to prosper, too.
- Small town business people have a lot to teach the rest of the business world. Small town rules of customer service, tenacity, caring and community are long overdue for a come back.
Regular Features
Based on those challenges and opportunities, we talk about small business basics, tourism, marketing, and economic development. To help you connect with each other, we have a Brag Basket every week. It’s your chance to share your successes and celebrate with others. On the Front Page you’ll find links to our recent stuff, by category.
What Stage Are You In?
Since “small business” is such a broad category, we’ve created three guides for the stages of business: Dreaming, Doing and Growing, and Leveling Up.
Searching and Finding
Stop by the Front Page. In the right-hand column, you’ll see a search box. That is the built in search-function, and it’s the easiest way to find anything you’re looking for here.
To find all the categories here, there’s another box on the Front Page in the right-hand column. That’s an easy way to browse by topic.
Want to catch up? You can browse the most recent posts in the archive.
Do you like what you see?
Come back and visit often! And feel free to comment. We enjoy a good conversation. We welcome your story ideas, feedback, tips, and ideas for us to share with everyone. Don’t miss out! Make sure you get our updates, in which ever form you like best: Subscribe.
Reprints
All works here are copyrighted by Becky McCray, or by their contributors and are used by permission.
If you’d like to reprint or re-use any of our materials, you can request permission on the Reprint Request page.
That’s all!
So that’s the tour. Hope you found something useful for yourself and your business. Thanks for stopping by. If you check the Front Page, I’m sure you’ll find something of interest.
If we haven’t been introduced, you might want to catch us on the About page.
Keep in touch through our updates.
