Should we offer incentives to fill it with small retailers? How do we convince the mayor and economic development group? 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. […]
Business plans are not worth the paper they’re written on
by Deb Brown At least, the old way of doing them Writing a business plan is an intense project that takes up a lot of your time. You spend weeks and weeks on it, and you’re not even sure everything in it is correct. Your financial projections are just wild guesses. You’re not even open […]
The Stop Doing List for Communities
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 […]
Gathering the Doers
The first vision board presented by the design:SD team to the community of Webster, South Dakota, on Sept. 27, 2014, stated the following phrase in bold lettering: GATHERING THE DOERS. There were approximately 50 people in the room that day and surprisingly none of them got up and ran out in fear upon seeing the design:SD team’s […]
